>> Welcome back to Intro to Philosophy
1010, the summer session 2019.
Here's our book, Introduction to World
Philosophy and Multicultural Reader.
In this video, we're going
over Leibniz in preparation
for Exam 2, and also discussion question 2.
The exam question is Number 5 Part A. What
does Leibniz mean when he accuses Locke
of not recognizing anything potential in us.
How's that accusation related
to Plato's doctrine
of reminiscence from Chapter 9 of our book?
So, if you look on page 386, that is where on
the right hand column is where Leibniz talks
about potential and potentialities.
When he's talking about potential knowledge
imprinted in our souls or on our mind, so,
Locke was an empiricist who says
knowledge comes from our five sense organs.
If we can see it, touch it, smell it, taste
it, or hear it, then that's knowledge.
So, for Locke, and I said to skip
the Locke reading because, you know,
it's an intensive six week course,
and we're going to cover his basic
philosophy by going over Leibniz anyway.
So, I figured we'd just stick
with the most basic idea.
So, for Locke, knowledge comes from the senses.
And then reflecting on our sense perceptions.
Those are the two sources of knowledge.
So, Leibniz is responding to Locke.
And he's saying, doesn't the soul have
any knowledge imprinted on itself?
Does all knowledge have to
come from the outside?
Don't we have any innate ideas, like
Plato said, imprinted on the soul?
So, we're going to go back to what we
covered for Exam 1 in Chapter 9 of the book,
Plato's dialogues about Phaedo and the Phaedrus,
where he talks about the idea
of knowledge is remembering.
Remembering what?
These absolute ideas, like
beauty and justice and truth.
In the Phaedo, he talks about
we are the light of the mind.
That's the self illuminating
lamp that we were discussing
in the video about Nagarjuna and Gangesha.
This is, according to Plato, these are the
sources of knowledge, the absolute ideas
that are imprinted on the soul of each
individual, but the individual's soul is one
with the soul of the universe as a whole,
which in the Phaedrus we discover is
located specifically at the outermost spear
of the universe, where the absolute
ideas reside, and the soul merges
with that outermost sphere and
perceives truths imprinted on herself.
So, that is the rationalist perspective.
So, there's two main schools in philosophy;
empiricists, who say knowledge comes
from sense perceptions, and
rationalists, who say knowledge comes
from these absolute ideas imprinted on the soul.
The reason is the ability to relate
empirically observable objects back
to their absolute source, which is
the archetype, the absolute idea.
So, we admit for Plato's idea of
ideas, we know something is a tree
because we have the absolute idea
of a true imprinted on our soul.
And when we see the many facsimiles
of the absolute eternal spiritual idea
of a perfect tree, that makes
us remember that absolute idea.
That's what reason is, it's taking the empirical
sense perceptions and tracing them back
to their root in some absolute idea.
And then they'll say in the republic, the
[inaudible] called the republic, that the,
all of the ideas come from
the absolute idea of the good.
That's the source of all of the ideas.
So, getting back to Leibniz here,
I'll just read a few selections.
It's not that long.
It's two and a half pages.
On page 384, G.W. Leibniz from
[inaudible] concerning human understanding.
So, in the parentheses, he
says, although the author
of the essay says a thousand
beautiful things that I applaud,
he's talking about John Locke,
our systems differ greatly.
He has more in common with Aristotle and mind
of Plato, though we depart from the doctrines
from the these two ancient
philosophers on many issues.
So, John Locke, the empiricist, is like
Aristotle, and Leibniz, the rationalist,
is more like Plato, all of these
differences mean Locke and Aristotle,
as well as between Leibniz and Plato.
So, continuing, he says, he says,
our disagreements are on
subjects of some importance.
It is a question of knowing whether the
soul in itself is empty entirely like a page
on which one has not written anything,
tabula rasa, that's the Latin term, term,
as Aristotle and Locke maintained.
And all that is traced there comes
only from the senses and experience,
or what of the soul contains originally the
principles of several concepts and doctrines,
which external objects only awaken on certain
occasions, as I believe, along with Plato,
and even the schoolmen, as well as those who
understand the significance of the passage
of St. Paul from Romans 215 that declares
the law of God as written in our hearts.
Okay, so, is our mind like a blank slate upon
which nothing has been written originally,
and then all of our sense perceptions inscribe
that knowledge onto that blank tablet,
the tabula rasa, or is our mind already
preprogrammed with seeds of knowledge?
So, I'll continue on the
right hand column on page 384.
He says, the modern philosophers give them
other beautiful names, these absolute ideas.
And jewels [inaudible], in particular, name
them semina artene [phonetic] tartis [phonetic],
aterne [phonetic] tatis [phonetic], okay,
eternal seeds, living fires or flashes
of light hidden inside us, but
maybe visible by the stimulation
of the senses as sparks struck on steel.
And it is not without reason that we believe
that these flashes mark something divine
and eternal that appears
especially in necessary truths.
So, we have these eternal seeds of knowledge,
like little sparks of knowledge imprinted
on our souls, which is what Plato believed,
and this is what Leibniz is trying to prove.
And so there are a lot of details
that can get pretty tedious.
And I'll get into some of them.
But I want to try to keep the, you know,
this course as an introductory course.
I'm trying to keep it as, more basic as
opposed to getting too much into the details.
But it's an important point when he mentioned
that the sense perceptions
awaken these absolute ideas.
So, going back to the left hand column on page
384, he says that, so, does everything come
from sense and experience, or whether the
soul contains originally the principles
of several concepts and doctrines,
which external objects only
awaken on certain occasions.
So, we have these absolute ideas.
So, Plato would say, or he did say in the
Phaedo that we approach knowledge most perfectly
when we blank out sense perceptions
altogether, because they tend to distract us
and make us seem like we're whirling around.
Leibniz, we saw that the Phaedo, but elsewhere,
Plato says, yeah, you need, in the republic,
for example, you need to study nature in
order to learn about the absolute ideas.
And that is what the aspect of Plato's
philosophy that Leibniz is talking about here,
that it's not that the rationalists say we can't
gain knowledge from empirical observations.
What they're saying is that our empirical
observations aren't putting knowledge into us,
but they are awakening the
knowledge that's already there.
When we see things like mathematical
truths, when we add up, you know,
here's one pen and here's another pen.
Oh, there are two pens.
So, that's empirical observation led me
to an eternal truth, 2 plus 2 equals 4.
That's a, you know, you had to
first do the empirical observation,
but then you realize, oh, that's eternally true.
So, some eternal truths can come
from empirical observations.
In the next part of the book, we're going to go
over Immanuel Kant, and then we'll start to get
into more of the details of things
like synthetic a priori truths,
and that's, so we'll save that for then.
But, so for now, I'm just going to
read a few selections and then go back
to read some selections from Plato.
So, on the right hand column of page 384,
Leibniz says, this raises another question,
whether knowledge of all
truths depends on experience.
That means whenever they say
experience, it means [inaudible].
On induction from particular cases, or if
there are some which have another foundation,
the other foundation would be
not empirical observations.
For if some events can be foreseen
before any test is made of them,
it is manifest that we contribute
something of our own.
The sense is, though, necessary for all
our current knowledge are not sufficient
to provide them all, since
the senses never give anything
but instances, particular or individual truths.
All the instances that confirm a general truth,
however, no matter how numerous they are,
or not enough to establish the
universal necessity of the same truth,
because it does not follow that what has
happened will always happen in the same way.
All right, so, I'll start at the
second part of his argument there.
He's saying we can't gain absolute truth
about anything that will happen everywhere
in the universe without fail by just
observing individual instances of things.
His example is, oh, the Greeks
and Romans said a day is 24 hours.
Every day, the combination of light and
day in that cycle adds up to 24 hours.
So, therefore, that's an
eternal universal truth.
Leibniz says, well, not at the North Pole.
And not even if you say, okay, well,
the North Pole is eternally going
to be however many hours of
night and day you get there.
But these things will never change.
And then Leibniz says, well, it could change
because the Sun could disappear,
the Earth could disappear.
One day they won't exist.
So, those empirical observations
of, oh, every day, it's 24 hours,
they can't give you any absolute certain truth.
So, if there ever is any such a thing as
absolute certain truth, it cannot possibly come
from repeatedly observing things
with your sense perceptions.
So, where do we find things
that can be absolutely true
that we gain these truths not just
by individual sense perceptions?
And then he'll go on to say, the next paragraph
on page 385 on the left column, he says,
from this it appears that necessary truths,
such as those found in pure mathematics,
and in particular, and particularly in
arithmetic and geometry, must have principles,
the proof of which does not depend
on their instances nor consequently
on the testimony of the senses.
Though without the senses, it would never
have occurred to us to think of them.
So, we have these innate truths
in the eternal laws of reason.
For example, we find them in mathematics.
We couldn't come up with the laws of mathematics
without sense impressions forcing us to,
you know, how many sheep do I have over here?
Oh, so now this empirical observation
sheet leads to mathematical calculations.
But once we do the mathematical calculations, we
realize, oh, this is a universal eternal truth
that must always be true
everywhere in the universe.
Whenever you take two kinds of
things, no matter what they are,
and add them to two more
things, you'll have four things.
So, that's a mathematical law that must
necessarily always hold true everywhere.
And if we have such things, that means our
souls must be imprinted with this knowledge,
or at the very least, this knowledge is not
coming from our bodily sense impressions.
So, the implication is that the knowledge
is innate and that we need to uncover
that knowledge, and sense impressions help us
to dig up these absolute ideas that are kind
of buried under the muck of ignorance.
And that is one of the purposes of
science, to uncover these hidden truths.
So, over on the, this is just an
interesting thing here about animals.
So, not necessarily something
you'll refer to on the exam,
but on the top of the right hand
column on page 385, he's saying,
this is how our knowledge
differs from that of animals.
Animals are purely empirical and do
nothing but be ruled by instances.
As far as we can judge, they never
manage to form necessary propositions.
Human beings are capable of deductive sciences.
The faculty of reasoning in animals forms
consecutions, progressions of thought,
of the lower order than those
characteristic of human reason.
So, skipping a little bit, he says, this is
why it is so easy for men to catch animals,
and why it is so easy for a
simple empiric to make mistakes.
So, animals see things in the past, and
they assume, oh, because it happened
in the past, it must always be like that.
And they can't get outside of their
immediate empirical observations
to discover some underlying causative principles
that most always hold true everywhere.
So, that's, but humans can.
We can figure out the laws of gravity,
and, you know, oh, okay, well, we'll,
we'll figure out a way to trap this
animal at this, in some kind of a scenario
that the animal has never
experienced before, and, therefore,
not ever having direct empirical observation
of anything like this, we'll know what to do.
Put up a box with a stick, holding one edge of
the box up, and then tie a string to the stick,
and then put some bait under the box.
When an animal comes to eat the bait,
you pull the string, the stick goes away,
the box falls down, and you trapped the animal.
How come the animal couldn't figure
out, oh, look at this, this is a trap,
because the animal has never seen a box with
this stick holding it up and a string attached
to it, so it can't reason out
what might happen as a result,
because it needs to have direct
empirical observations for knowledge.
Whereas humans, on the other hand, it seems
we have these innate truths that awaken,
and when the empirical situation
warrants it, or instigates this knowledge,
and so that's what separates us from the
animals, he say, which is basically reason.
We have reason, which is the ability
to relate empirical observations
to their eternal innate truths
imprinted on the soul.
So, on the left hand column, on
386, near the top, he says, however,
reflection is just attention to what is in us.
And sensation does not give us
what we already carry with us.
So, Locke said, there's two sources of
knowledge; sense perceptions and then reflection
on those memories of our sense impressions.
And Leibniz is saying, it's not just
memories of sense impressions that are
in our minds, but other forms of knowledge.
And he lists them here.
He says, that being the case, can one
deny that much is innate in our minds,
since we are innate, so to speak, to ourselves?
And that there is in us to
what, and then he lists
in a bulleted list the different absolute ideas
that he thinks are imprinted on our souls.
Unit, substance, duration, change,
action, perception, pleasure.
And a thousand other objects
of our intellectual ideas.
So, let me read me this as a question.
He says, that being the case, can one
deny that much is innate in our minds,
since we are innate, so to speak, to ourselves,
and that there are, that there is in us
to it these ideas, units, substance,
duration, change, action, perception, pleasure,
and a thousand other objects
of our intellectual ideas?
Why do you reject that we have these objective
real ideas imprinted on us, on our minds?
All ideas of the mind aren't subjective
interpretations that people come up with
after reflecting on sense
perceptions, says Leibniz.
There are objective truths imprinted on our
minds that are true everywhere in the universe,
and not only are they imprinted on our minds,
but they're imprinted on the minds of everybody.
There's these universal truths, archetypes
of the collective unconscious is what the
psychologist Carl Jung following Plato
and Leibniz would call them.
So, continuing here, he says, these
objects being immediate and always present
in our understanding, they can't always be
seen because of our distractions and our needs,
why be astonished that they say that these ideas
are innate in us with all that follows from it?
I have also made use of the analogy of a vain
slab or marble rather than a smooth marble slab,
or an empty page, what philosophers
call a tabula rasa,
for if the soul resemble an empty page, truths
would be in us as the figure of Hercules is
in a slab of marble, when the marble is
completely indifferent to receive this
or that figure, that if there are veins in
the stone which marked the figure of Hercules
in prevalence to other figures, Hercules
would be innate there in some fashion,
though we would need to work to
discover these veins and to clean them
by polishing while cutting
off what obscures them.
Thus, ideas and truths are innate in us, like
inclinations, natural dispositions, tendencies
or potentialities, and not like actions, though
these potentialities are always accompanied
by certain often insensitive
mental acts that answer to them.
All right, so I covered a lot there.
And this is the question about
Locke and any potentialities.
So, Hercules, if you want to make a statue
of Hercules from a block of marble, well,
if it's a tabula rasa, sure, the shape
of Hercules is in that slab of marble.
You just have to chisel a
little way to the exact shape.
But you're projecting that
shape onto that marble.
It's a blank slab.
You can make whatever you want out of it.
It doesn't prefer this shape
or that shape or any shape.
But then Leibniz says, well, what if you had
a block of marble with certain veins going
through it, you know, it lends
itself to certain shapes.
If you try to cut it certain
ways, it will shatter.
It forces you to choose from a
certain limited number of shapes.
And it could be a peculiarity of the marble that
it particularly looks like a statue of Hercules.
Well, you say, that's kind of like our
mind, it has these predispositions in it.
It's not blank.
It's not completely an empty page.
It has its own objects within it.
And he calls those the inclinations, natural
dispositions, tendencies or potentialities.
So, this is back up to the
right hand column of 386.
And not like actions.
Though these potentialities
are always accompanied
by certain often insensitive
mental acts that answer to them.
Continuing, he say, it seems like Locke
claims there is nothing potential in us,
and even nothing that we do not always realize.
But he cannot maintain that rigorously.
Otherwise, his views would be too paradoxical.
We are not always aware of the
dispositions and tendencies we have.
Our memories are not always before us.
They don't always come to
our help when we need them.
Even though we often easily call them to mind
on some light occasion, that makes us remember,
just as, all right, so, potentialities.
These are the ideas.
These are the absolute ideas on our soul.
Locke doesn't believe in that.
He's an empiricist.
He's not a rationalist.
Potential knowledge is what these absolute
ideas imprinted on the soul are like.
We are socially aware of everything in the
universe because all of the absolute ideas
that describe the universe, and from
which the universe itself emanates,
according to Plato, are there in our own soul.
So, Locke, we saw Locke in the first part of
our class, which was starting with Part 2,
we saw Locke say that it's impossible
not to know that we are knowing.
Whenever we have knowledge,
we know that we're knowing.
That's part of his definition of a self.
In that video, I said, well, is that true?
You could be driving home,
thinking about one thing.
Before you know it, you've arrived and
you don't remember any of the twists
and turns because you were on auto pilot.
Your unconscious mind was driving the car while
your conscious mind was contemplating whatever
it is.
So, it seemed that Locke didn't
have an idea of an unconscious mind
that contains these absolute ideas.
There's a certain threshold of energy
that an idea has to have to rise
up from the potential state to the actual state.
And it's really the first expression of the
idea of an unconscious mind in the modern world.
And so that, so going to, let
me read this question again.
So, in Part A of Exam Number 2, Question Number
5, what does Leibniz mean when he accuses Locke
of not recognizing anything potential in us?
All right, so that's what he means.
He means Locke doesn't recognize that we
have part of our mind that contains objects
of knowledge that aren't yet, we're not yet
actively aware of, but they can become aware,
and they're not, that the awareness
doesn't have to come from outside of us
through empirical observations, that we have
these absolute ideas imprinted on our souls.
And even the very idea of memory,
oh, you have sense impressions,
and then you remember them later.
Well, where were they stored?
Where is memory?
Is it if we have a blank slate, it
would seem that everything that we learn
from empirical observations would be
written on that chalkboard of our mind,
not disappearing and then reemerging.
That's not like a chalkboard.
What's responsible for the fact that we
remember some things that happen 20 years ago,
and other times we can't remember
what we really need to know?
It implies that there's two levels of the mind,
and that some knowledge is
in the potential state.
In the unconscious mind is what it really is.
And that just because we can't easily just,
okay, oh, you say I have absolute ideas written
on my soul, well, let me take a look here.
Looking at it, nope, I don't see anything.
So, Leibniz says, no, it's
kind of like the marble.
You have to chisel away and
work hard and polish.
It's not open, an open book
for us to read easily.
It takes work.
But that just because it's not easily
accessible doesn't mean it isn't there.
And so I'll continue to read here on
page 386, because now he's going to get
into the question concerning Plato.
So, all right, so, Locke limits his thesis in
other places by saying that there's nothing
in us that we weren't aware
of at some earlier time.
But nobody can guarantee by reason alone how
far or forgotten our perceptions might extend.
The platonic doctrine of reminiscences,
the platonic doctrine of reminiscence,
fabulous as it is, does not contain
anything nakedly incompatible with reason.
In addition, say I, why is it
necessary that we apply everything
by our perceptions of external things?
Why can we unearth nothing in ourselves?
Is our soul, by itself, a vacuum?
And then he goes on to say,
and talking about tabula rasa,
have you ever seen a perfectly smooth
tablet, a perfectly blank page?
There's texture, there's always something there.
But that's how he concludes this excerpt.
But going back to his mention of Plato, he says,
but nobody can guarantee by reason alone how far
or forgotten our perceptions might extend.
The platonic doctrine of
reminiscence, fabulous as it is,
does not contain anything
nakedly incompatible with reason.
So, what is the platonic
doctrine of reminiscences?
So, Plato says, we have certain
forms of knowledge
that we could never have
gotten from sense perceptions.
For example, in the Phaedo, in the part that
we didn't read, in our book, the Phaedo,
the dialogue by Phaedo, starts on page 251.
In that dialogue, he gives proofs for the soul.
So, he's in prison, he's awaiting the hemlock.
He's been sentenced to death for
corrupting the youth and believing in gods
of his own invention instead
of the gods of the state.
So, his friends Simius and Cebes say, Socrates,
why are you so jolly when you're about to die?
Aren't you afraid?
And he says, no, I'm going to live eternally.
Prove it to me.
So, he has three main proofs.
And the most famous one is
that knowledge is recollection.
And the example he gives there is absolute
equality, these absolute forms of knowledge.
You've never seen two things in the
world that are absolutely equal.
You might have two, two pens that are
built by the same company, or two cars,
and they look the same, but on closer
inspection, you'll see minor differences.
So, if we've never had an empirical
observation of absolute equality,
how is it that everyone knows what that means?
Even little children?
If you give two little children, you know,
two and a half years old two pieces of cake
and one's a little bigger
than the other noticeably,
the one who gets the smaller piece is going
to say, that's not, those aren't equal.
And they're furthermore going to
relate that inequality to injustice.
They're not equal.
And, therefore, this is not absolutely just.
You're giving my sibling a larger piece of cake.
That indicates injustice.
So, where do these children ever
learn about absolute equality?
If you give two dogs two pieces of cake that
aren't exactly equal, they're not the one
who gets a little bit less
isn't going to complain.
It's not going to ignite this knowledge,
this memory of the absolute idea of equality
and how that's linked to the
idea of absolute justice.
But humans can do that.
We have sense perceptions of things.
And that makes us remember these
absolute ideas imprinted on the soul.
And Socrates in the Phaedo,
when he's getting ready to die,
he's saying that we can only perceive
these absolute ideas after we die,
because our sense perceptions
distract us from these pure truths.
If you look on page 252, this is
the Phaedo on the right hand column.
He's saying that philosophers
are always preparing to death.
It would be foolish for me as a
philosopher to worry about dying now.
On the right hand column, 252 up
at the top, he says, and in this,
the philosopher dishonors the body.
His soul runs away from the body and
desires to be alone and by yourself.
That's true.
Well, but there's another thing, Simius.
Is there or is there not an absolute justice?
Assuredly, there is.
And an absolute beauty and
absolute good, of course.
But did you ever behold any
of them with your eyes?
Certainly not.
Or did you ever reach them
with any other bodily sense?
And I speak not of these alone, but of
absolute greatness and health and strength
and of the essence or true nature of everything.
Have you ever perceived the reality of
them through your bodily organs, or rather,
isn't the nearest approach to the knowledge
of their several natures made by one
who so orders his intellectual vision
as to have the most exact conception
of the essence of that which he considers?
Certainly.
And he attains to the knowledge of
them in their highest purity who goes
to each of them with the mind alone.
He doesn't allow when in the act of thought
the intrusion or introduction of sight
or any other sense in the company of
reason, but with the very light of the mind,
in her clearness, he penetrates into
the very light of truth in each.
Okay, so the light of the
mind and the light of truth.
We're going to see in the Phaedrus that
that light of the mind and the light
of truth is related to the
outermost sphere of the universe,
where the absolute ideas exist,
goodness, beauty, justice.
As I'll be explaining in previous videos,
the idea of absolute justice means whenever
you see an act of justice or injustice
in the material world, you know that
it is an act of justice or injustice
because it makes you remember the absolute
idea of justice with which you're born.
You don't learn what justice is.
No one implants that knowledge into you.
Rather, instruction means helping
you remember what's already there.
So, you don't, your soul isn't a blank slate.
It's got absolute programming of universal
truths that you need to be trained
to control your sense desires in order to see.
And really you can't, as long as you have a
body, you'll never perceive them perfectly.
But you need to see them not while you're alive.
If you look on page 253, the left hand column,
in the, in the middle of the paragraph,
middle of the column, he says, all experience
shows that if we want pure knowledge
of anything, we must get rid of the body.
The soul in herself must behold
all things in themselves.
Then, I suppose, we'll attain what
we desire and what we say we love.
Wisdom. Not while we live, but after death.
For in the soul cannot have pure
knowledge while in company with the body,
one of two things seems to follow, either
knowledge is not to be attained at all,
which we saw Nagarjuna say in the previous
video, or if at all after death, for then,
and not 'til then, the soul will be
in herself alone and without the body.
Then we ourselves will know the clear
light everywhere, the light of truth.
So, what is the clear light everywhere?
If you look over on page 254 on the right
hand column, the last paragraph, he says,
but when returning into herself,
this is the soul, she reflects.
Then she passes into the realm of purity and
eternity and immortality and unchangeableness,
which are her kindred, and
with them she ever lives.
When she is by herself, unhindered,
then she ceases from her erroring ways,
and being in commune with
the unchanging is unchanging.
And this state of the soul is called wisdom.
So, yes, she lives forever in bliss, and that's
where God will bring my soul says Socrates
at the end of the, at the end
of our excerpt from the Phaedo.
So, now turning to the Phaedrus, this is
where we learn that those absolute ideas
of the soul are imprinted on the universal
soul, which encompasses the universe,
and that that's where we
strive to go after death.
So, if you look on page 257, the left
hand column, the bottom paragraph,
I will never to explain to you how the
mortal differs from the immortal creature.
The soul in her totality has the
care of inanimate being everywhere
and traverses the whole heaven,
appearing in diverse forms.
When perfect and fully winged, she
soars upward and orders the whole world.
So, the soul merges with the
whole heaven of the universe.
And when you die, the image was the soul's
like a chariot with two horses with wings.
One horse is your bodily appetite,
the other horse is your passion.
And the driver is the intellect.
And if you can direct your soul
to the topmost vault of heaven,
you can perceive the absolute ideas.
So, if you, and the demigods
can go there easily.
And some humans with great
toil are capable of doing it.
So, on the right hand column on 257, he says,
but when they go up, but when they go to banquet
and festival, this is the demigods, then they
move up the steep to the top of the vault
of heaven, the chariots of the gods, and
even poise obeying the reign glide rapidly.
Everyone else is the greatest
hour of conflict for the soul.
For the immortals, when they're
at the end of their course,
go forth and stand upon the outside of heaven,
the revolution of the spheres carries them
around, and they behold the things beyond.
So, there abides the very being with
which true knowledge is concerned.
The colorless, formless and tangible essence
visible only to the mind, the pilot of the soul.
That's where you see knowledge
absolute in existence absolute
and all of the true existences
like beauty and truth and justice.
They're all out there.
So, I went into that.
If you look on page 258, the
right hand column near the bottom.
So, but the soul which has never seen the
truth will not pass into the human form.
So, after you see the, after you see the
absolute forms in the outermost boundary
of the universe, then you have
to be reborn again as a human
if you've seen those absolute forms.
If you haven't, then you'd become an animal.
So, for a man must have intelligence
of universals.
Those are the another word for
absolute ideas is universals,
because they're true everywhere in the universe.
And be able to proceed from the many particulars
of sense to one conception of reason.
This is the recollection of those things
which our soul once saw while following God.
When regardless of what we now call being,
she raised her head up towards the true being.
And, therefore, the mind of the
philosopher alone has wings.
This is just [inaudible] always according
to the measure of his abilities clinging
in recollection to those
things in which God abides.
And beholding them, he is what he is.
When God perceives the absolute ideas of
his own mind, that's what makes God God.
And he who employs a right, these
memories, is ever being initiated
into perfect mysteries and
alone becomes truly perfect.
So, and he's saying, but the [inaudible]
people call that kind of a person a madman.
So, the absolute ideas that are imprinted on
the soul are specifically, according to Plato,
imprinted on the soul of the universe, which
creates the material universe we perceive.
To me, this is especially interesting
in light of holographic string theory,
which Leonard Susskind used to defeat
Stephen Hawking in The Black Hole War.
And as I've discussed previously, the
cutting edge of academic cosmology today says
that the entire three dimensional volume
of the universe is recorded at every point
of the encompassing sphere, the cosmic
horizon, where space time is expanding
from our perspective on Earth
at the speed of light.
So, space and time stop there.
And then the illusion of three dimensional
objects enduring through time is,
shines in from that outermost sphere on
the cosmic microwave background radiation.
The echo of the big bang on
these fundamental threads.
Plato talks about those fundamental
threads at the end of the republic.
And the Upanishads mention them.
So, it's just interesting that modern
academic cosmology, which began with Plato,
Plato's academy, is coming full circle back to
Plato's idea of the absolute ideas imprinted
on the outermost sphere of the universe.
All right, so just going back to this question
here, Part A of Exam 2, Question Number 5,
what does Leibniz mean when he accuses Locke
of not recognizing anything potential in us?
How is that accusation related
to Plato's doctrine
of reminiscence from Chapter 9 of our book?
So, Locke does not recognize
these ideas imprinted on the mind
that are not readily accessible to, you know,
for Locke, if you're conscious of anything,
you're conscious of being aware of it.
There's no unconscious mind.
There's no potential forms of knowledge
embedded in the soul waiting to be activated.
All knowledge comes from sense
perceptions, and that's it.
So, it's not, he doesn't leave, he
specifically rejects the rationalist theory
of absolute ideas imprinted on the soul.
So, that is what the, that's
why Leibniz accuses Locke
of not recognizing anything potential in us.
And how is that accusation related
to Plato's doctrine of reminisces?
So, for Plato, we all have potential
knowledge of everything in the universe
because we've seen all the absolute
ideas or the absolute forms of knowledge
from which the universe radiates.
Specifically, in the outermost
valuate of heaven, in between lives.
So, that will cover Question Number 5.
