Leibnizs Distinction Between Natural and Artificial Machines :: Philosophy Philosophical Essays

Leibnizs Distinction Between Natural and Artificial MachinesABSTRACT I represent that Leibnizs peculiarity mingled with entire machines of nature and the cardboard machine that we produce cannot be adequately understood exclusively in terms of differing orders of structural interlacingity. It is not obviously that natural machines, having been made by God, are infinitely more complex than the products of our own artifice. Instead, Leibnizs musical note is a thoroughly metaphysical one, having its root in his belief that every natural machine is a corporeal substance, the atomic number 53 and identity conditions of which derive ultimately from its substantial form. Natural machines are then true unities, while artificial machines are mere aggregates of substances and are thence only accidental unities. I briefly explore this connection between Leibnizs distinction between natural and artificial machines and his views about individuality. I intermit on a polemical note, in which it is suggested that these results undermine the currently best-selling(predicate) view that Leibniz renounced corporeal substances toward the end of his life. IntroductionLeibniz often distinguishes between organic machines of nature and the machines that we construct. This distinction might not seem to have been an authoritative contribution on his part. Similar distinctions were drawn by many former(a) modern philosophers, particularly Cartesians, who contrasted our machines with the much more complex (yet mechanical) products of the divine artifice. Leibnizs distinction was not this simple. For him, the difference between our machines and organic machines of nature was not simply a difference in degree it was not simply a matter of Gods machines being more structurally complex than the mechanisms that we produce. More generally, Leibnizs distinction between organic (i.e., natural) and human-made (i.e., artificial) machines cannot be understood as long as we confine our gaze to the realm of mechanical phenomena that are described by physics, for it is a deeper metaphysical distinction rooted in his views about substances.Leibniz does occasionally draw the distinction in terms of structural complexity, claiming that natural machines, since they were build by God, are infinitely more complex than the machines that we make. This might protrude to undermine my claim that Leibnizs distinction cannot (unlike similar distinctions drawn by his contemporaries) be understood simply in terms of varying degrees of structural complexity. However, I shall contend that his formulation of the distinction in terms of structural complexity presupposes a more basic difference between natural and artificial machines, a difference that can only be adequately characterized inwardly his metaphysics.