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'The Best of All Possible Worlds' Review: Leibniz Lives Again

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Re: 'The Best of All Possible Worlds' Review: Leibniz Lives Again

#21

Post by vanderZwan »

hks0 wrote: post #8

> Leibniz challenged “humanity to participate in the work of striving toward perfection,” > Because the world is the creation of a perfect being, it can achieve only the “best possible” state short of divine perfection. That's a lot of presumptions: That the creator is perfect, there is even a perfect, what I (Leibniz) call perfect is the god's/gods' perfect, ... while not giving a frame of reference. I find this a c…

> [that] there is even a "perfect"

This an important insight to this that I feel many people miss. Most of us consider "striving for perfection" to be equivalent to striving for the "absolute best". Real life often has no absolute best option. Real life is much more like an intricate web of interconnected rock-paper-scissors like relationships and choices, where "better" or "worse" is highly contextual and even conflicting. Aeon had a really nice essay about the problem[0].

Perhaps we tend to have a cultural blindness to this in cultures with European heritage due to the legacy of Plato's "perfect forms", and later how Christianity positions God.

[0] https://aeon.co/essays/attempts-to-choose-the-best-life-may-...

Re: 'The Best of All Possible Worlds' Review: Leibniz Lives Again

#22

Post by djaouen »

hks0 wrote: post #8

> Leibniz challenged “humanity to participate in the work of striving toward perfection,” > Because the world is the creation of a perfect being, it can achieve only the “best possible” state short of divine perfection. That's a lot of presumptions: That the creator is perfect, there is even a perfect, what I (Leibniz) call perfect is the god's/gods' perfect, ... while not giving a frame of reference. I find this a c…

The real question is, would a perfect Being create an imperfect creation? While I don't proffer any, I think there are valid reasons to do so.

Re: 'The Best of All Possible Worlds' Review: Leibniz Lives Again

#23

Post by jampekka »

Oarch wrote: post #15

My understanding was that Leibnitz was a pivotal figure in the ideas behind early computing. Didn't see that mentioned in the article so much.

He was pivotal in a lot of stuff, so such not being mentioned in an article discussing his metaphysical ideas is not surprising.

Re: 'The Best of All Possible Worlds' Review: Leibniz Lives Again

#24

Post by stiiv »

hks0 wrote: post #8

> Leibniz challenged “humanity to participate in the work of striving toward perfection,” > Because the world is the creation of a perfect being, it can achieve only the “best possible” state short of divine perfection. That's a lot of presumptions: That the creator is perfect, there is even a perfect, what I (Leibniz) call perfect is the god's/gods' perfect, ... while not giving a frame of reference. I find this a c…

Perfection for Leibniz might be considered more of a logical concept than an observable state. After all, he uses the same thing to argue (somehow) for the existence of god! https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/leibniz/#ExiGod

This leads to some strange conclusions about perfection that aren't intuitive, and sometimes seem monstous.

Re: 'The Best of All Possible Worlds' Review: Leibniz Lives Again

#27

Post by throw0101d »

hks0 wrote: post #8

> Leibniz challenged “humanity to participate in the work of striving toward perfection,” > Because the world is the creation of a perfect being, it can achieve only the “best possible” state short of divine perfection. That's a lot of presumptions: That the creator is perfect, there is even a perfect, what I (Leibniz) call perfect is the god's/gods' perfect, ... while not giving a frame of reference. I find this a c…

> That's a lot of presumptions: That the creator is perfect, there is even a perfect, what I (Leibniz) call perfect is the god's/gods' perfect, ... while not giving a frame of reference.

The Creator (First Mover) being perfect is not a presumption, but rather a conclusion; see Corollary 1.3:

* https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2014/11/first-way-part-iv-casca...

(You'll need to go through the series of weblog posts (they're not that long) to get the full logic of the argument.)

See also perhaps Aquinas, "Whether God is perfect?":

* https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1004.htm

Re: 'The Best of All Possible Worlds' Review: Leibniz Lives Again

#28

Post by graemep »

CannonSlugs wrote: post #4

> In such a way, Leibniz, to cite Milton, dared to “justify the ways of God to men.” Voltaire responded with a snarky misreading that exploited the undeniable empirical fact that evil was not balanced by good in the lives of every discreet individual. But Leibniz made no such claim. The best world was optimized as a whole, containing just as much good and evil as was required for the totality of creation. I like this…

> My question has rather been that, if suffering is required and a child getting bone cancer and dying at five is the best of all possible worlds, maybe the whole project should have been scrapped at the planning phase.

Is that better? it would also require not having all the good things from creation.

Re: 'The Best of All Possible Worlds' Review: Leibniz Lives Again

#29

Post by throw0101d »

stiiv wrote: post #24
hks0 wrote: post #8

> Leibniz challenged “humanity to participate in the work of striving toward perfection,” > Because the world is the creation of a perfect being, it can achieve only the “best possible” state short of divine perfection. That's a lot of presumptions: That the creator is perfect, there is even a perfect, what I (Leibniz) call perfect is the god's/gods' perfect, ... while not giving a frame of reference. I find this a c…

Perfection for Leibniz might be considered more of a logical concept than an observable state. After all, he uses the same thing to argue (somehow) for the existence of god! https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/leibniz/#ExiGod This leads to some strange conclusions about perfection that aren't intuitive, and sometimes seem monstous.

> * After all, he uses the same thing to argue (somehow) for the existence of god! https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/leibniz/#ExiGod *

His argument from contingency is probably a better one:

* https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2024/02/avicenna-aquinas-an...

Re: 'The Best of All Possible Worlds' Review: Leibniz Lives Again

#30

Post by [deleted] »

verisimi wrote: post #6
CannonSlugs wrote: post #4

> In such a way, Leibniz, to cite Milton, dared to “justify the ways of God to men.” Voltaire responded with a snarky misreading that exploited the undeniable empirical fact that evil was not balanced by good in the lives of every discreet individual. But Leibniz made no such claim. The best world was optimized as a whole, containing just as much good and evil as was required for the totality of creation. I like this…

> My question has rather been that, if suffering is required and a child getting bone cancer and dying at five is the best of all possible worlds, maybe the whole project should have been scrapped at the planning phase. I assume God was not forced to create a world? It is not really possible to answer these questions when one does not know the spiritual infrastructure. Eg, say reincarnation of the soul is real, and i…

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