Justin E. H. Smith

A Recent Talk

From Tractorics to Pyrotechnics: Leibniz's Model of Animal Bodies

[Submitted for the First Quebec Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy, université de Sherbrooke, October 10, 2009]

Scholars have long been aware that 'mechanist' or 'mechanical philosopher' is a very slippery label. There seem to be no necessary or sufficient conditions for classifying certain philosophers as mechanists but not others, and much as with 'feminist' or 'analytic philosopher', the prudent taxonomist will simply permit all self-identifiers to come under the label, while withholding it from anyone who does not actively embrace it. But things may be even more problematic than we've thought: not only do we not really know what a mechanist is; we also don't have a clear idea of what is to count as a machine.  Most scholars have taken one kind of machine --the machine driven by pulleys, gears, and levers, and identified somewhat derisively by Kaspar Schott in his 1657 Mechanica Hydraulico-Pneumatica as a merely 'tractoric' machine-- as the model of mechanicity in general.  'Mechanist' philosophers have accordingly often been criticized for letting their analogical imaginations run wild, since patently animal bodies (to cite the most obvious stumbling block for a universally applicable science of tractorics) are not composed of gears and levers.  But there were in fact many other kinds of machine, driven by fundamentally different principles than those of the clock.  As the title of his book suggests, Schott was mostly interested in machines driven by water and air.  Others --particularly those such as Cornelis Drebbel and Joachim Becher who sought to build their own perpetual-motion machines-- were more interested in chemical principles such as fermentation than in tractoric principles as a source of machine motion. 

Still others, such as Robert Boyle and G. W. Leibniz, were principally interested in what Leibniz would call 'hydraulico-pneumatico-pyrotechnical [HPP] machines', that is machines that are kept in motion by the appropriate interaction of air, water, and a certain kind of chemical explosion akin to that in gunpowder.  Leibniz thought animal bodies were just such a machine.  Given that Leibniz was also a panorganicist who believed that, in the end, everything is an animal body or somehting like it, clearly it should be important for scholars to pay attention to the sort of machine he took animal bodies to be.  In this presentation, I shall summarize Leibniz's theory of HPP machines, and I shall attempt to show the importance of this theory for our understanding of his theory of corporeal substance, and ultimately for our understanding of his deepest ontological commitments.  On the basis of Leibniz's example, I shall further argue that much late-17th-century mechanism, far from amounting to a crude 'contraptionism' that would seek to reduce the complexity of natural beings to whatever passed at a given moment of history for state-of-the-art technology, in fact sought to incorporate knowledge of processes gained in the first instance from direct investigation of natural processes that clearly defied any attempt to model them tractorically. 

Interview with Cumhuriyet

[To be published, likely in an edited version, in the Turkish national newspaper, Cumhuriyet]

1. What is the current most important debate in the philosophy of science for you, philosophically and methodologically?

Only speaking for myself, and not for academic philosophy in general, I would say that the most important debate concerns the nature of scientific reasoning itself, what it has in common with other forms of human thought (e.g., ideology, mythology, morality, 'common-sense', etc.), and also how it is distinct from them. The prevailing idea of science for a long time had it that scientific reasoning makes a radical break with these other forms in that it gives us an impartial view of the world. While this is certainly to some extent true, more sophisticated reflection on science reveals that it is also deeply culture-bound, not just in the sense that cultural values play a role in the interpretation of data, but also in the very choice of programs of research. The sciences that deal with the distant, experimentally unrepeatable past, such as paleontology and cosmology, are particularly susceptible to influence by elements of pre-scientific thinking.  I've often thought, for example, that one would learn a good deal by doing a comparative study of Big Bang cosmology with creation myths from around the world. This is not to say that moden cosmology does not have a unique relation to the truth among all the different ways human beings have accounted for their origins, but only that it would be surprising if no pre-scientific, mythological tropes made their way into the way in which scientists talk about this highly speculative question. 

2. Did Harun Yahya send you his book of creation? What do you think about it? (Maybe you know that the magazine of the Turkish Academy of Science and Technology censored the February issue, which was about Darwin's theory. It was a big scandal here.)

No, and I'm offended that he left me out! I would have liked to pore over all the beautiful images, particularly the one of a caddis fly that turned out to be a fishing lure Harun Yahya had copied and pasted from the internet (to see the work of the talented artist who created it, go here: http://www.grahamowengallery.com/fishing/more-fly-tying.html). I have tremendous respect for traditional belief systems --I've already said I think we should study the way scientific thinking overlaps with them-- but there's nothing 'traditional' about a politically driven mass media campaign to deny the best available theory of the origins of life on earth. Real traditionalists are not worried about that theory. I think the content of the claims of creationists, whether of the Old Testament literalist school or of the intelligent-design school, are entirely without interest. To the extent that their movement is interesting, it is so as a social and political phenomenon.  One interesting question is why it only gains traction in certain societies, e.g., Turkey and the United States, and not so much in others, such as Saudi Arabia and Sweden.  It seems to me that in the Saudi Arabian case we are looking at a society in which what the individual citizen thinks about matters such as this is of no consequence, as long as the citizen behaves in the way that the state dictates.  In the case of Sweden there is a high degree of freedom of expression, coupled with high science literacy and a general lack of interest in fundamentalist or revivalist religious movements.  But in the US and Turkey both there is robust and chaotic democracy, with different factions competing to have their vision of the social good predominate. Couple these with mediocre science education, a proneness towards populist suspicion of elite expertise, and a religious tradition that cannot easily accommodate the thought that humans are a particular kind of animal, and what do you have? The spurious pseudoscience of people like Henry M. Morris and Harun Yahya.

‘A corporall Philosophy’: Language and ‘Body-Making’ in the Work of John Bulwer (1606-1656)

[To appear in Ofer Gal and Charles Wolfe (Eds.), Embodied Empiricism (Springer Verlag)]

Justin E. H. Smith

Francis Bacon, in his 1605 work The Proficience and Advancement of Learning, argued for a ‘real character’ or artificial language that would be able to communicate intended meanings from one person to another with perfect transparency.  This is a project that would be important throughout the rest of the century, with thinkers such as Samuel Hartlib, John Wilkins, and G. W. Leibniz all making significant contributions to the study of aritifical and formal languages. 

Notes of Cogitations are of twoo sortes; The one when the Note hath some Similitude, or Congruitie with the Notion; The other Ad Placitum, hauing force onely by Contract or Acception. Of the former sort are Hierogliphickes, and Gestures. For as to Hierogliphickes, (things of Ancient vse, and embraced chiefly by the AEgyptians, one of the most ancient Nations) they are but as continued Impreases and Emblemes. And as for Gestures, they are as Transitorie Hierogliphickes, and are to Hierogliphickes, as Words spoken are to Wordes written, in that they abide not.

In some fashion or other, it is the first kind of ‘Hierogliphickes’, in the sense Bacon describes here, that will dominate in the 17th-century efforts to develop an ideal, artificial writing system, one that would not be based on mere convention, but would instead serve transparently for producing ‘Emblemes’ of the things one wishes to denote.  The second variety Bacon identifies, gesture, will in contrast gain little attention.  Yet little attention is not none at all.  Over the course of the 1640s, the obscure Baconian natural philosopher John Bulwer would develop his predecessor’s notion of transitory hieroglyphics into an elaborate system, one that would indeed serve as the starting point for the later sciences of, among other things, sign language and sociolinguistics. 

According to Jeffrey Wollock, Bulwer would entirely ignore Bacon’s interest in an ideal language, focusing instead exclusively upon Bacon’s characterization of gesture, indeed turning this into the centerpiece of his chirological project. According to Wollock, “this was in part because [Bulwer] retained older views on the inherent ontological harmony between man and the universe, but also because, for Bulwer the physician, the underlying neurophysiological basis of gesture confirmed it as the universal ‘language’ of humanity.”  It would be more correct to say, however, that Bulwer does not abandon the search for an ideal language, but indeed believes that he has already found one in gesture.  In examining why he believes this, we might be able to discern an important rift in 17th-century debates about the universal character, between those who believe that this can be nothing other than an artificial language, and those who believe that it is precisely artifice that obscures meanings, and that any universally comprehensible system of communication will be perfectly natural as opposed to artificial.  But in considering Bulwer’s understanding of the natural, and of the way that nature equips bodies with a sort of mute natural language, we are also able to gain access to a curious, if not terribly influential,  theory constituting a point of contact between early modern philosophy of language on the one hand and the early modern metaphysics of body on the other.  The best way to draw this connection out, over the course of the following two sections, will be to focus on Bulwer’s very different --and at first glance unjustifiably different-- judgments about two different ways in which the body is implicated in human activity: as the vehicle of meanings in body language, and as the object of human artifice in tattooing, foot-binding, and other forms of body modification. 

PHIL 420/609B: MATTER THEORY AND ALCHEMY FROM JĀBIR IBN HAYYĀN TO ISAAC NEWTON

PROFESSOR JUSTIN SMITH (JUSTISMI@ALCOR.CONCORDIA.CA)
DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY, CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY

AUTUMN, 2009, CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY
W 17:45-20:15 SGW

With guest appearances from:

•    Victor Boantza, Department of History, McGill University
•    Andrea Falcon, Department of Philosophy, Concordia University
•    Vera Keller, Department of English, McGill University
•    Ted McCormick, Department of History, Concordia University

Brief Description:

The natural philosophy of the 17th century is marked by a widespread effort to redescribe natural change exhaustively in terms of the size, shape, and motion of subvisible particles or corpuscles. This endeavor has long been held to have constituted a wholesale rejection of premodern theories of natural change, which relied upon a metaphysics of matter and form being guided through change in accordance with their natural ends or teleology.

But early modern natural philosophy has its prehistory, too, and part of this takes us back to some rather unlikely sources. In this seminar, we will consider the roots of modern natural philosophy in the tradition of what Bill Newman, reviving a lapsed actor’s category, has called ‘chymistry’, which is to say the practical and theoretical investigation of the nature of mixtures and compositions. In passing, we will also touch upon a number of related subjects, such as the nature of ‘the occult’, the conceptual problems of perpetual motion and magnetism, and the epistemological issues arising within the new experimental philosophy of the early modern period. We will be adopting a rigorous historical and contextualist approach to the philosophical questions arising from our chosen topic, and so will also have occasion, in an interdisciplinary spirit, to consider the social, economic, and technological forces at play in the chapter of natural philosophy we have undertaken to study.

New Table of Contents

DIVINE MACHINES:
LEIBNIZ’S PHILOSOPHY OF BIOLOGY

INTRODUCTION

1.    The Place of Biology in Early Modern Science
2.    Hard Problems, Old and New
3.    The Corporeal Substance Problem: Compatiblism, Incompatibilism, and Beyond
4.    Leibniz’s Towering Predecessors: Aristotle, Descartes, and Hobbes
5.    Leibniz’s Synthesis
6.    A Note on Terminology

PART I: FIRST THINGS

CHAPTER 1: ‘QUE LES PHILOSOPHES MEDICINASSENT’: LEIBNIZ’S ENCOUNTER WITH MEDICINE AND ITS EXPERIMENTAL CONTEXT

1.    Chemistry and Iatrochemistry
2.    The Directiones ad rem medicam pertinentes (1671)
3.    The Paris Notes
4.    The 1690s: Griping Pains and ‘Fables to the Deaf’
5.    The De causis febrium (1704-5)
6.    The Polemic against G. E. Stahl in Relation to Leibniz’s Earlier Works on Medicine
7.    Leibnz and Animal Experimentation

CHAPTER 2: ‘THE HYDRAULICO-PNEUMATICO-PYROTECHNICAL MACHINE OF QUASI-PERPETUAL MOTION’: LEIBNIZ ON ANIMAL ECONOMY

I.    The Idea of Animal Economy
8.    Introducing the Animal-Economical Manuscripts
9.    The Machina animalis (1677)
10.    The Corpus hominis et uniuscujusque animalis est machina quaedam (1682-6)
3.1. Nutrition
3.2. Fermentation
4. The De scribendis novis medicinae elementis (1682-3)
5. The De causis febrium (1704-5)
6. Nerve Fibers and Muscle Contraction: The Influence of Bernoulli, Baglivi, and Hoffmann
7. The Animadversiones in G. E. Stahlii Theoriam medicam veram (1709-10)
    7.1. Soul as Perceiver vs. Soul as Body-Preserver
7.2. Animal Economy, Preestablished Harmony, and the Best of All Possible Worlds
     8. Conclusion

Commentaire sur André Gombay, "Descartes et son chien"

Université du Québec à Montréal
29 avril, 2009

Pour faire un jugement dans le sens cartésien, explique André Gombay, il faut que tous les sens soient joints à une idée de soi, ce que les animaux n’ont évidemment pas.  Descartes parle toutefois des ‘peurs, espoirs et joies’ des chiens, des chevaux, des singes, sans admettre qu’en parlant ainsi on est obligé d'attribuer des esprits ou des intellects à ces bêtes mêmes.  Est-ce que Descartes se contredit ici? Pas forcément, d’après M. Gombay. 

Le chien ne peut pas se tromper quand il se lance sur un leurre qui ressemble à un canard, parce qu’il n’était pas capable avant de former le jugement que ce soit un canard, ni d’avoir l’idée de soi qui est présumément implicite dans n’importe quel verbe conjugué dans la première personne.  Ce n’est pas pour Descartes avec nos yeux que nous percevons le canard, c’est avec nos esprits ou, ce qui est le même, nos intellects.

Même sans les concepts nécessaires pour former des jugements, Gombay croit que le chien pourrait avoir des perceptions, qu’il qualifie comme ‘non-attribuées’. Le chien ne peut pas former le jugement ‘J’ai mal à la patte’, car il n’a pas le concept de ‘je’ ni de ‘patte’. Mais prenons un jugement, ou proto-jugement, comme ‘il fait mal’. Est-ce que ça c’est une pensée qui pourrait faire partie de ce que Gombay appelle l’‘expérience atmosphérique’ d’un animal? Pour un être qui n’a que des expériences atmosphériques, toute proposition commence par ‘il’, ce pronom designant la source d’un vaste donné non-structuré et tout-encompassant. Parfois il pleut, parfois il fait mal, parfois il fait plaisir, etc.

Si Gombay a raison, il faudra peut-être repenser si que nous avons longtemps considéré comme la nouveauté de la théorie de ‘petites perceptions’ de Leibniz. Car qu’est-ce que c’est qu’une expérience atmosphérique si non une perception sans apperception, c’est à dire une perception plus ou moins confuse qui n’est pas accompagnée par la conscience de soi.

Mais est-ce que Descartes aurait pu vraiment croire une chose semblable?

Il faut reconnaitre que les textes eux-mêmes ne nous donnent pas une reponse univoque. Gombay nous fournit une liste de toute les reférences aux animaux dans les travaux publiés et dans les correspondances. A ces reférences on pourrait probablement en ajoute encore une, quoique indirecte, qui se trouve parmi les notes que Leibniz a pris à Paris, probablement juste après que Claude Clerselier, l’éxecuteur du Nachlass de Descartes, lui a fourni accès à des manuscrits embryologiques et physiologiques de Descartes. Les notes que Leibniz a prises constituent la seule trace que nous avons de ces textes, et elles sont très révélatrices. Dans une note, appellée De animalibus, Leibniz écrit: “Cartesii vera mens fuisse videtur animalia etiam cogitare”: la vraie opinion de Descartes était que les animaux pensent.

De Animalibus

1672-6; LH 037, 02. 123v.

(To see a scan of the original manuscript, please go here. To read the original Latin, please click 'continue reading' below.)

The true opinion of Descartes appears to have been that animals think. Also in the book on the Method of contraries he appears to say this, indeed so that he should be more satisfying to the theologians, whose judgment he feared.  In his final letter to Henry More he did not show himself to be in doubt, but in the book on the passions, which is among the last, he said of the brutes that perhaps they do indeed think. This Malebranche did not notice. Lord Tschirnhaus believed himself to be able to show that there are no animals that do not arise from other animals.  Fleas and lice of various sorts are produced in various animals; various animals are able to produce themselves, where no animals were before. Redi performed experiments, [and] if he had followed them through, he would have arrived at this. There are at length certain black spots in men’s nostrils, and if they are pressed a sort of worm can be squeezed out of them, a larva, and this is confirmed by the example of pediculosis, but these perhaps demonstrate as much.  Visible animals often arise from invisible ones that make the air full, from indetectible spiders [come] these webs that fly through the air, which are called vulgarly Mariengarn ['Mary's thread'].  Fevers from the matter that has passed from the veins into the tissue.  Of course the supply of nutriment brings about extravasation, as other causes do constantly.  From here, blood is either expelled, or it stagnates.  If this arrives at the heart, and there brings about a fright because of its unaccustomed nature, the consumed matter returns in due time, and from here arise intermittent fevers. Artificial fever, if you poke yourself with a needle in the thumb, where on account of the hardness of the skin matter is not expelled well, and thus is carried by the blood to the heart, and brings about a little fever.  (Thus the doubt, for what is outside the vessels does not return to the heart.)  In dysentery there arises from a certain irritating matter a motion that is contrary to the peristaltic motion of the intestines, and from here, if nature should become accustomed [to this], the man dies.  Nor indeed can the one motion be made to harmonize with the other, and an untimely expulsion follows, and one that is opposed to nutrition.  A simple cure, if a man should not depart from his chair, and if he is turned every two hours, remaining until something is expelled.  Thereagter, a little concealed, he will sweat, and finally he will accept a hot broth.  These [things] suffice[:] the elements expel the irritant, opium diminishes the irritation. You will cure fever without a febrifuge if you sweat thoroughly, bringing down the fever; a certain person (though unfortunately) sweat only a little prior to paroxysm.  By a violent paroxysm the fright ceases, [and] the sweating ceases, and a slight cold is felt.  Thereupon, in turn, heat and sweat [followed], and thus the fever ceased.  (Fevers arising from wounds are artificial.)  It is noteworthy how tuberculosis comes about.

Kant on Jokes

[Draft of a paper presented to the Montreal 'Reflection on Art and Aesthetics' Workshop, 9 April, 2009].

Justin E. H. Smith

 We may as well start with a joke:

Primatologist to chimpanzee: “Bongo, bring me some food.”
(Bongo brings a pile of stones instead of food, and shows a wide, teeth-bearing grin.)

Alright, perhaps not a joke, really. More a primate proto-joke. However we classify it, though, I believe this report (based on a true story), gives us everything we need to generate a theory of humour. To get there, we will have first to do some propaedeutic work, in order to determine exactly what such a theory ought to explain, as also some metatheoretical work to explain where exactly such a theory fits in relation to other, similar projects. 

1. The Funny and the Beautiful

Arthur Danto has noted that every systematic philosopher, whether a refined aesthete or a complete philistine, has at some point taken on the topic of art.  One might add that nearly every one of these has included an account of wit, humour, jokes, comedy, or laughter, or some combination of these, within his theory of art and beauty.  Why is this? Is gelastics –to borrow a neologism coined by Mary Beard from the Greek ‘gelan’: ‘to laugh’-- a subdomain of aesthetics? Let us consider some of the reasons for holding such a view.

There seems to be a great similarity between the way people talk about the ‘aesthetic stance’ and the way they conceive the ‘sense of humour’. The perception of something as a joke or as a work of art requires a certain stance or perspective. Even if it is hard to say what this will be, it seems that the explanations for the one often serve just as well as accounts for the other. For example, Edward Bullough’s criterion of psychical distance, which would account for the reluctance theatre-goers feel at the thought of getting up to save Desdemona from Othello, seems to function in the same way to provide the moral distancing that enables one to laugh at a cruel joke (and most, perhaps all, jokes are cruel, a point to which we might return later).

Comments on Antonio Clericuzio

"Mechanical and Iatrochemical Theories in 17th-Century Physiology"

University of Sydney
Sydney, Australia, 20 February, 2009

In this subtle and well-argued paper, which takes up and develops some of the aspects of his  2000 book, Elements, Principles, and Corpuscles, Antonio Clericuzio seeks to challenge the traditional scholarly distinction between iatromechanism, representedmost prominently by Descartes, and iatrochemistry of the sort practiced by Paracelsus and J.-B. van Helmont.  Between the book and the numerous articles and papers that have followed, on the one hand, and on the other hand the equally forceful revisionist work of scholars such as John Henry, it seems to me however that it may be time now for scholars who do not draw a firm boundary between quantitative corpuscalarianism and qualitative chemical philosophy, but instead recognize an enormous middle ground of qualitative corpuscularianism, to stop thinking of themselves as the eternal opposition and to pronounce their historically more rigorous and adequate interpretation of the lay of the land in the 17th century instead as ‘the new tradition’. 

If we could make the two traditions distinct, if we could separate them conceptually even as we acknowledge that nowhere can they be found in their pure forms, we might say that, for an iatromechanist, living beings are ontologically of a pair with nonliving things, since their operations are peformed by particles of inert matter following the owhat Descartes calls the "minor laws" that govern the rest of nature.  Of iatrochemistry, we would say in contrast that the body is, as Clericuzio puts it, a chemical ‘laboratory’, whose most basic processes are chemical, and ultmatiely qualitative, changes.

Clericuzio surveys important moments of the chemical tradition from early Paracelsianism through Robert Boyle, (who is the terminus ad quem of Clericuzio’s story) showing how, particularly in the context of English physiological work of the second half of the 17th century, where Descartes had only very limited impact, the line between the two traditions is not nearly so distinct as we have ordinarily believed.   

Comments on Arash Abizadeh's The Oscillations of Thomas Hobbes

McGill University, 21 March, 2009

Justin E. H. Smith

Abizadeh’s Hobbes is an oscillator, not in the recent sense this term has acquired, of a measure in stable, repetitive variation around a central value, but in the original sense of the word --which makes its first appearance in English in 1658--  of something that swings unstably.  The oscillation is not around a central value, but between two poles, namely, mental inspection and linguistic convention.  The movement between these poles, Abizadeh thinks, is one that ripples throughout all of the subdomains of his vast philosophical project.   

With respect to his theory of truth, the oscillation manifests itself as one between correspondence and convention.  While most commentators have associated a correspondence theory of truth with Hobbes’s natural philosophy, and a conventionalist theory with his moral and political philosophy, Abizadeh thinks this is mistaken.  At the outset, at least, I am strongly inclined to agree with him: Hobbes had a unitary project, and to the extent that this project was seen to require a theory of truth as its foundation, he could not have risked fragmenting it by employing different theoretical accounts for different parts of it.   

It is also in part because Hobbes has a unitary philosophical project, in which the natural philosophy has consequences for the political, and vice versa, that one might have cause to fear a crippling bipolarity.  As Abizadeh explains in his elegant introduction, it is the sovereign who must be, for Hobbes, the ultimate arbiter of meaning and truth, while at the same time the fundamental truths of Hobbesian science must be true indepedently of the sovereign’s will.  Does, then, the sovereign have the authority to define words in a way that contadicts science?  Abizadeh maintains that, for Hobbes, insofar as he is  pulled toward the pole of mental inspection, the sovereign could not possibly make such science-contradicting propositions ‘stick’. The laws of nature do not morally oblige, even though they have independent evaluative standing to the extent that they point to instrumental goods that are independent of convention.  Science, as the product of mental inspection, identifies truths that limit the sovereign’s authority, while also discovering the need for an absolute sovereign, and the need to secure his absolute rule by means of convention.  

Geogony, Generation and History from the Consilium Aegyptiacum to the Protogaea

Justin E. H. Smith

[Presented at the Fondacion Orotava, Tenerife, Canary Islands, 14 February, 2009]

In an audacious text of 1671, entitled “A Method for Instituting a New, Invincible Militia that can Subjugate the Entire Earth, Easily Seize Control over Egypt, or Establish American Colonies,” written as an addendum to his better known Consilium Aegyptiacum, Leibniz sketches out a plan for training a new army of warrior slaves:

A certain island of Africa, such as Madagascar, shall be selected, and all the inhabitants shall be ordered to leave. Visitors from elsewhere shall be turned away, or in any event it will be decreed that they only be permitted to stay in the harbor for the purpose of obtaining water.  To this island slaves captured from all over the barbarian world will be brought, and from all of the wild coastal regions of Africa, Arabia, New Guinea, etc. To this end Ethiopians, Nigritians, Angolans, Caribbeans, Canadians, and Hurons fit the bill, without discrimination.  What a lovely bunch of semi-beasts!  But so that this mass of men may be shaped in any way desired, it is useful only to take boys up to around the age of twelve.

Leibniz proposes to segregate these prisoners according to language, which for him is the same as segregation by race or genus.  In this way, unable to communicate with any warriors beyond their own small squadron, the warriors will be unable to plan an insurrection.  In every race [genere], Leibniz writes,

whoever is most trained in his squadron, which is to say among those who speak his language, shall challenge those who are the best trained in the other squadrons.  The people [gens] that wins that year shall be the leaders.  They will be able to strike terrible blows with their very powerful curved swords, to hit targets with their slings, and to rip things apart with their lances.  They are to be trained to run races at such a speed as will be equal to that of horses. Which will come about first by pursuing them until they are able to touch the mane or the tail, and then freely [i.e., without horses].  They shall learn to swim first with the help of an outer shell or bladder, and thereafter without any covering; they will descend under the water after the example of diving bells [this probably an example inspired by Cornelis Drebbel], and they will learn the method of ascending and descending as they please. They shall learn to jump after the manner of the Tenerifeans, first jumping with the help of a lance... as far as human strength is able to reach, and afterwards without these. 

Leibniz goes on to describe the tremendous feats these warriors will perform with their lances: 

In the beginning they will alight from a higher place by the means of their lance touching the ground below; then they will leap horizontally on a level plane, and finally from below they will leap to the top. The will learn how to climb up smooth surfaces [per lubrica klettern]....  They shall become used to climbing however high their lance may be just by means of fixing their lances beneath them.  They will learn moreover to carry the greatest and strongest lances, like Achilles, and like other ancients.  Indeed, they shall learn to project them with great impetus towards a designated target, as well as of bringing one lance together with another if the one does not suffice for climbing.  By means of this art they will easily conquer the mightiest European fortifications.  They will be able to walk on their lances, as on stilts [wie auff stelzen]. 

MIWHP/SIMHP, programme, Winter/hiver, 2009

Programme du Séminaire interuniversitaire de Montréal en histoire de la philosophie, hiver, 2009

Montreal Interuniversity Workshop in the History of Philosophy, Winter Program, 2009

*

Wednesday, 7 January / mercredi 7 janvier, 11h-13h
Deborah Brown (University of Queensland)
"Descartes' Organic Unities"

Wednesday, January 28 / mercredi, 28 janvier, 18h
Mathieu Marion et Benoît Castelnérac (UQAM)
"Arguing for Invalidity: Dialectical Games in the Academy"

Wednesday, 4 February / 4 fevrier, 18h
Calvin Normore (McGill)
"Animal Souls in the Late Middle Ages"

Wednesday, 4 March / mercredi, 4 mars, 18h
Daniel Dumouchel (université de Montréal)
"Penser les dispositifs fictionnels dans la philosophie du 18e siècle"

Wednesday, 11 March / mercredi, 11 mars 18h
Richard Bodéüs (université de Montréal)
"Porphyre sur les Catégories d'Aristote"

Saturday, 14 March / samedi, 14 mars 10h30
Alan Code (Rutgers University)
TBA

Wednesday, 25 March / mercredi, 25 mars, 18h
Gideon Manning (Caltech University)
"Philosophy Needs Medicine: Historiography, Descartes and Other Minds"

Tuesday, 14 April / mardi, 14 avril 18h
Rachel Barney (University of Toronto)
TBA

Date to be determined / date à préciser
Thomas Lennon (University of Western Ontario)
"Heterogeneity: The Main Part and Pillar of Berkeley's Theory"

*

Sauf exceptions, les réunions se tiendront dans la Thomson House de l'université McGill, les mercredi, de 18h à 20h.

Unless otherwise indicated, the meetings will take place in the Thomson House of McGill University, Wednesday evenings, 6-8 PM.

*

Pour plus d'informations, veuillez contacter / For more information, please contact:

Daniel Dumouchel (daniel.dumouchel@umontreal.ca)
Carlos Fraenkel (carlos.fraenkel@mcgill.ca)
Sara Magrin (magrin.sara@uqam.ca)
Dario Perinetti (perinetti.dario@uqam.ca)
Justin Smith (justismi@alcor.concordia.ca)

A Method for Instituting a New, Invincible Militia

That Can Subjugate the Entire Earth, Easily Seize Control over Egypt, or Establish American Colonies

(1671, A IV i, 408-10. Translated here only in part. To see the corresponding Latin text, please click 'continue reading').

A certain island of Africa, such as Madagascar, shall be selected, and all the inhabitants shall be ordered to leave. Visitors from elsewhere shall be turned away, or in any event it will be decreed that they only be permitted to stay in the harbor for the purpose of obtaining water.  To this island slaves captured from all over the barbarian world will be brought, and from all of the wild coastal regions of Africa, Arabia, New Guinea, etc. To this end Ethiopians, Nigritians, Angolans, Caribbeans, Canadians, and Hurons fit the bill, without discrimination. What a lovely bunch of semi-beasts! But so that this mass of men may be shaped in any way desired, it is useful only to take boys up to around the age of twelve, as this is better than [attempting to] transform girls and adults.

In every race [genere], whoever is most trained in his squadron, which is to say among those who speak his language, shall challenge those who are the best trained in the other squadrons.  The people [gens] that wins that year shall be the leaders.  Thus they will be able to strike terrible blows with their very powerful curved swords, to hit targets with their slings, and to rip things apart with their lances.  They are to be trained to run races at such a speed as will be equal to that of horses. Which will come about first by pursuing them until they are able to touch the mane or the tail, and then freely [i.e., without horses].  They shall learn to swim first with the help of an outer shell or bladder, and thereafter without any covering; they will descend under the water after the example of diving bells, and they will learn the method of ascending and descending as they please. They shall learn to jump after the manner of the Tenerifeans, first jumping with the help of a lance, of the Springstecken, as far as human strength is able to reach, and afterwards without these. 

In the beginning they will alight from a higher place by the means of their lance touching the ground below; then they will leap horizontally on a level plane, and finally from below they will leap to the top. The will learn how to climb up smooth surfaces [per lubrica klettern], as the Japanese do on their cliffs, and as the gatherers of palm fronds among the Indians.  They shall become used to climbing however high their lance may be just by means of fixing their lances beneath them.  They will learn moreover to carry the greatest and strongest lances, like Achilles, and like other ancients.  Indeed, they shall learn to project them with great impetus towards a designated target, as well as of bringing one lance together with another if the one does not suffice for climing.  By means of this art they will easily conquer the mightiest European fortifications.  They will be able to walk on their lances, as on stilts [wie auff stelzen]. 

Peter the Great's Decree Appointing Leibniz to the Russian Justizrat

(I've retained as many of the features of the manuscript as possible. Two words remain undecipherable to me, though I confess my skills in early modern Slavonic paleography are a bit rusty. Translation to follow. I welcome comments from fellow Slavists.) 

Мы пεтръ пεрвыï Цръ и самѡдεржεцъ всεросиïскиï: Iпротчая ипротчая ипротчая; изобрѣли мы заблго ____ кȣрѳирстского икняжаго браȣнщвигъ люнѣбȣргъ таиного юстицъ рата готѳрида вилгεлма ѳонъ леïбница. Заεто намъ выхвалεнныя иот насъ изѡбрѣтεнныя изрядныя достоинства I искȣства тамождε внаши таиныя юстицъ раты опрεдεлить иȣчрεдить. Что намъ помεжε мы извεстны. Что ѡнъ поȣмножεнию матεматичεскихъ Iиныхъ искȣствъ ипроизыскиванью гисторεи ïкприрашεнию наȣкъ много вс'помоши можεтъ. Его поимεющемȣ нашεмȣ намѣрεнию что наȣки Iискȣства вншεмъ гдрствѣ вящεи цвѣтъ произошли употрεбить. Имы для вышεпомянȣтого εгѡ чина ншεго таиного юстицъ рата годовоε жалованьε потысячи ____ опрεдεлить изволили, которыя εмȣ отнасъ εжεгодно исправно заплачεны быть имѣютъ инчεму мы налεжащи Указы дать изволимъ. Аεто слȣжба начичаεтца снижεписанногѡ числа; воȣвεрѣние того сие заншимъ собствεннымъ рȣкопописаниεмъ игдрствεнною ншεю пεчатью Дано в Карлсьбадε [11 ноября] въ 1712 году. 

--

The manuscript is dated 11 November, 1712. Bodemann [El. Charl. 2, 324] provides a report from Elisabeth Charlotte d'Orléans from 10 December on Leibniz's meeting with the Russian Tsar a month prior:

"Es muß ein wildt wesen in Moskovien sein, ich finde also, daß herr Leibenitz groß recht hatt, nicht dahin gehen zu wollen.  Ich bin alß charmirt vom Czaar, wenn ich sehe, daß er so viel mühe nimbt, sein landt zu verbessern."

Which is to say:

"Muscovy must be a savage place. Thus I find that Herr Leibniz is right in not wishing to go there. I am as it were charmed by the Tsar, when I see how much care he takes to improve his country."

PHIL 226: Animal Minds and Human Morals

Concordia University
Winter, 2009
MW 13:15-14:30

Professor Justin Smith
Office: PR-402
Office Hours: M 11-13:00

Course Description:

What is going on in the minds of animals? How do we know what is going on in there? Do our ethical responsibilities towards animals, if we have any, flow from what is going on in there? That is, is there something about the inner lives of animals that compels us to take them seriously as beings with some moral status? If our knowledge of the cognitive capacities of the various species of animals is in fact the basis of our moral commitments to them, then why do we treat some animals (e.g., dogs) so much more gently than others (e.g., pigs), even though the scientific evidence tells us that the latter are no less intelligent than the former? Might our sense of what our varying moral commitments to various animals be based on something other than our knowledge (if in fact we have any) of the richness of their inner lives? On the basis of what, if anything, should we be seeking to ground our moral commitments to animals? In this class, we will try to answer all of these very difficult questions, with the help of a number of readings from some of the most influential recent philosophers to engage with the problem of animal minds and human morals. 

Means of evaluation:

•    One midterm exam consisting in short answer and essay questions (20%).
•    One final exam consisting in short answer and essay questions (30%).
•    12 one-page précis of the week’s assigned texts, due in class each Wednesday  (30%).
•    Class attendance and participation (20%).

Required Texts:

Stanley Cavell, Cora Diamond, John McDowell, Ian Hacking, Cary Wolfe, Philosophy and Animal Life (Columbia University Press, 2008).

J. M. Coetzee, The Lives of Animals (Princeton University Press, 2001).

Cass R. Sunstein and Martha C. Nussbaum, Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions (Oxford University Press, 2005).

Schedule of Classes:

Monday, 5 January: Introduction
Wednesday, 7 January: Coetzee, The Lives of Animals

Monday, 12 January: Coetzee, The Lives of Animals
Wednesday, 14 January: Coetzee, The Lives of Animals

Monday, 19 January: Coetzee, The Lives of Animals
Wednesday, 21 January: Cora Diamond, “Eating Meat and Eating People” (SN)

Monday, 26 January: Cora Diamond, “The Difficulty of Reality and the Difficulty of Philosophy” (CDMHW)
Wednesday, 28 January: Cora Diamond, “The Difficulty of Reality” (cont.)

Monday, 2 February: Richard A. Posner, “ Animal Rights: Legal, Philosophical, and Pragmatic Perspectives” (SN)
Wednesday, 4 February: Richard A. Posner, “Animal Rights” (cont.)

Monday, 9 February: Peter Singer, “A Response to Richard Posner” (SN)
Wednesday, 11 February (DM): Martha Nussbaum, “Beyond Compassion and Humanity” (SN)

Monday, 16 February (DM): Martha Nussbaum, “Beyond Compassion and Humanity” (cont.)
Tuesday, 18 February: Midterm Exam!

Monday, 23 February: Winter Break
Wednesday, 25 February: Winter Break

Monday, 2 March: Stanley Cavell, “Companionable Thinking” (CDMHW)
Wednesday, 4 March: Stanley Cavell, “Companionable Thinking” (cont.)

Monday, 9 March: John McDowell, “Comment on Cavell” (CDMHW)
Wednesday, 11 March: Ian Hacking, “Deflections” (CDMHW)

Monday, 16 March: Ian Hacking, “Deflections” (cont.)
Wednesday, 18 March: Elizabeth Anderson, “Animal Rights and the Values of Nonhuman Life” (SN)

Monday, 23 March: Stuart Clark, Animals and their Moral Standing (handout)
Wednesday, 25 March: Stuart Clark, Animals and their Moral Standing (handout)

Monday, 30 March: Frans de Waal, Chimpanzee Politics (handout)
Wednesday, 1 April: Frans de Waal, Chimpanzee Politics (handout)

Monday, 6 April: Peter Singer, “Heavy Petting” (http://www.nerve.com/opinions/singer/heavypetting/main.asp)
Wednesday, 8 April: Review. (Final Paper Due!)

PHIL 339A: Philosophy of the Visual Arts

Concordia University
Winter, 2009
MW 16:15-17:30

Professor Justin Smith
Office: PR-402
Office Hours: M 11-13:00

Course Description:

Classical aesthetics is the philosophical study of beauty. It seeks to answer questions such as: What is beauty? What is it that all beautiful things have in common? What are the standards of judgment by which the beauty of a work of art may be determined?  In recent history, philosophers have begun to treat the question of the nature and ontology of works of art as distinct from the problem of beauty, since it is no longer at all clear that in order for a work to be a good work of art, or to be a work of art at all, its creator must seek to make it an instantiation of the Beautiful. Indeed, today some artists consciously aim to create revolting and ugly works.  In this course, we will focus on the classical aesthetic question of the nature of beauty in art, as well as on the problem of the ontology of works of art as it has been discussed in recent aesthetic theory, and particularly in the work of two prominent 20th-century aestheticians: Richard Wollheim and Arthur Danto.  Throughout, we will stay principally focused on the static visual arts, namely sculpture and painting. 

Required Texts:

Steve Cahn and Aaron Meskin (Eds.), Aesthetics: A Comprehensive Anthology (Blackwell Publishing, 2008).

Richard Wollheim, Art and Its Objects (Cambridge University Press, 1992).

Arthur Danto, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace: A Philosophy of Art (Harvard University Press, 1981).

Means of evaluation:

•    One midterm exam consisting in short answer and essay questions (20%).
•    One final exam consisting in short answer and essay questions (40%).
•    One final paper of 5-7 pages on an assigned topic (20%).
•    Class attendance and participation (20%).

Schedule of Classes:

Monday, 5 January: Introduction
Wednesday, 7 January: Plato, Republic

Monday, 12 January: Plato, Symposium
Wednesday, 14 January: Aristotle, Poetics

Monday, 19 January: St. Bonaventure, “On the Reduction of the Arts to Theology”
Wednesday, 21 January: Shaftesbury, Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times

Monday, 26 January: David Hume, “Of the Standard of Taste”
Wednesday, 28 January: Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful

Monday, 2 February: Gotthold Lessing, Laocoön
Wednesday, 4 February: Friedrich Schiller, Letter on the Aesthetic Education of Man

Monday, 9 February: Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Faculty of Judgment
Wednesday, 11 February (SH): F. W. J. von Schelling, Philosophy of Art

Monday, 16 February (SH): G. W. F. von Hegel, Philosophy of Fine Art
Tuesday, 18 February: Midterm Exam

Monday, 23 February: Winter Break
Wednesday, 25 February: Winter Break

Monday, 2 March: Wollheim, Art and Its Objects
Wednesday, 4 March: Wollheim, Art and Its Objects

Monday, 9 March: Wollheim, Art and Its Objects
Wednesday, 11 March: Wollheim, Art and Its Objects

Monday, 16 March: Wollheim, Art and Its Objects
Wednesday, 18 March: Wollheim, Art and Its Objects

Monday, 23 March: Danto, Transfiguration of the Commonplace
Wednesday, 25 March: Danto, Transfiguration of the Commonplace

Monday, 30 March: Danto, Transfiguration of the Commonplace
Wednesday, 1 April: Danto, Transfiguration of the Commonplace

Monday, 6 April: Danto, Transfiguration of the Commonplace
Wednesday, 8 April: Danto, Transfiguration of the Commonplace (Final Paper Due)

A Recent Talk

La nature ne joue pas

La paléontologie de Leibniz comme métaphysique appliquée

[Présenté dans la série des conférences du département de philosophie, Université du Québec à Montréal, 10 octobre, 2008]

Dans ce propos je veux tout d’abord esquisser les arguments principaux de la Protogaea de Leibniz, en les contextualisant par rapport à son oeuvre philosophique entier, aussi bien que  par rapport à la philosophie naturelle du 17e siècle.  Je vais me concentrer sur son argument concernant les origine des fossiles, tout en essayant de vous montrer comment cette question s’encadre dans des débats fondamentaux à l’age classique concernant l’ontologie et la modélisation des êtres naturels, concernant la faculté de l’imagination et son rôle dans la génération des formes, la nature et la fréquence des miracles, et les limites épistémologiques de tout effort de reconstruire des processus enterrés dans le passé lointain.  Finalement, dans la dernière partie de ce propos je veux proposer, d’une façon très speculative, un lien entre la négation leibnizienne d’une capacité de jouer dans la nature, d’une part, et, d’autre part, l’affirmation 130 ans plus tard du jeu ou Spieltrieb comme catégorie de perception ésthetique par excellence dans l’idéalisme allemand. 

Philosophical Anthropology and the Problem of Human Diversity in the New Science of Nature, 1500-1800

(Bibliography to my research grant application for funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Resarch Council of Canada, 2009-12)

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