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Leibniz's Philosophy of Mind

Leibniz's Philosophy of Mind (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Leibniz's Philosophy of Mind First published Mon Sep 22, 1997; substantive revision Mon Nov 11, 2013 In a more popular view, Leibniz's place in the history of the philosophy of mind is best secured by his pre-established harmony, that is, roughly, by the thesis that there is no mind-body interaction strictly speaking, but only a non-causal relationship of harmony, parallelism, or correspondence between mind and body. Certainly, the pre-established harmony is important for a proper understanding of Leibniz's philosophy of mind, but there is much more to be considered as well, and even in connection with the pre-established harmony, the more popular view needs to be refined, particularly insofar as it suggests that Leibniz accepts a roughly Cartesian, albeit non-interactionist dualism, which he does not. In fact, Leibniz is justly famous for his critiques, not only of materialism, but also of such a dualism. (Whether Leibniz accepts, throughout his maturity, the idealistic view that all substances are simple unextended substances or monads is an important interpretive issue that has been discussed widely in recent years. We shall not try to resolve the issue here. (See Garber 2009 for comprehensive treatment.) In short, Leibniz made important contributions to a number of classical topics of the philosophy of mind, including materialism, dualism, idealism and mind-body interaction.

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