Real Alternatives, Leibniz’s Metaphysics of Choice

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-ix

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Reginald Osburn Savage

   Pages 1-19

3. Complete Concepts and Counterfactuals

   • Reginald Osburn Savage

   Pages 20-49

4. Deliberation and Counterfactuals

   • Reginald Osburn Savage

   Pages 50-77

5. Personal and Metaphysical Identity

   • Reginald Osburn Savage

   Pages 78-98

6. Compossibility and Creation

   • Reginald Osburn Savage

   Pages 99-131

7. Perceptual Incompossibility

   • Reginald Osburn Savage

   Pages 132-148

8. Infinite Analysis and Counterfactuals

   • Reginald Osburn Savage

   Pages 149-174

9. Conclusion

   • Reginald Osburn Savage

   Pages 175-182

10. Back Matter

    Pages 183-198

    PDF

In the `Preliminary Dissertation' of his Theodicy, Leibniz declares himself an apologist for the compatibilist doctrines of original sin, election and reprobation propounded by the theologians of the Augsburg Confession. According to those theologians, man's actions are determined but man retains the power to act otherwise and therefore is responsible for his actions. Savage argues that Leibniz, in formulating his apology, availed himself of both his doctrine of possible worlds and his finite-infinite analysis distinction (the latter being applied within the former). Savage challenges the dogma that Leibniz's metaphysical principles entail that individuals are powerless to act otherwise and that God cannot conceive of them acting otherwise. He argues that interpreters deduce the dogma from those principles with the aid of dubious extra-textual premises, for example, that a Leibnizian individual has only one complete concept or cannot be persons other than the person it actually is.

• Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
• argue
• metaphysics

• North Carolina State University, Raleigh, USA

  Reginald Osburn Savage

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