Leibniz frequently uses the notion of expression. Expression is apparently a sort of representation relation. But what, according to Leibniz, has to happen for one thing to express another? Well, what often seems clear is the requirement that there be a regular relation between the expresser and the expressed. We might understand the debates in the secondary literature on this topic as largely about how exactly to understand Leibniz’s notion of a regular relation. There has been, for example, debate about whether expression is isomorphism. (See among others Kulstad, Mates, Simmons, and Swoyer.)
The most discussed examples of expression are cases like an ellipse expressing a circle and a map expressing a piece of land. But Leibniz puts the notion of expression to a variety of other uses. Among them is his claim that some, or perhaps all, substances express God. Thus in the Discourse on Metaphysics we learn that “God’s Extraordinary Concourse Is Included in That Which Our Essence Expresses…” (DM 16 title); that “our soul … express[es] God and, with him, all possible and actual beings, just as an effect expresses its cause (DM 29); that “Minds Express God Rather Than the World, but That the Other Substances Express the World Rather Than God” (DM 35 title); and that “we may say that, although all substances express the whole universe, nevertheless the other substances express the world rather than God, while minds express God rather than the world” (DM 36).
This issue of the expression of God has been rather less discussed than expression in general. However in one relatively recent discussion, Alan Nelson says that “…spirits express God in virtue of being able to know eternal truths” (“Leibniz on Modality, Cognition, and Expression”, 284). That is, only some substances (spirits) express God. And they do this by being able to know eternal truths. In this post and a couple of following ones I want to consider both the suggested restriction to some substances, and the reasons why substances express God. I pay particular attention to the 1686 Discourse on Metaphysics.
A first question then: why, according to Leibniz, should we think that minds express God? Well, DM 16 tells us that “an effect always expresses its cause and God is the true cause of substances”. Given that, we can construct the following argument:
1. An effect always expresses its cause.
2. Every substance is an effect of God. So
3. Every substance expresses God.
Similarly, Leibniz said — in some comments about expression in a letter written that year to Simon Foucher — that “Each effect expresses its cause, and the cause of each substance is the decision which God took to create it” (WFNS 53; A 2.2, p.91). That suggests a slight variant on the above argument:
1. An effect always expresses its cause.
2*. Every substance is an effect of God’s resolution to create it. So
3* Every substance expresses God’s resolution to create it.
Despite some variation in exactly what is said to be expressed — which may not even be real disagreement, without a more detailed understanding of what it means to express God — we have very similar argument in both cases here. Substances express God, because God is their cause. Moreover, all substances do this, not just minds.
More posts to come on this: on why Leibniz thinks that substances express their causes; on the passages in the Discourse that distinguish minds from other substances; and on the extent, if any, to which Leibniz maintained this view over time.
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I don’t know if this will help. Nelson Goodman (“Languages of Art”) thinks expression to be a special kind of exemplification. Literal exemplification: a fabric swatch exemplifies certain properties of (say) a man’s suit (color, texture) but not others (size, shape). Not quite what Goodman says, for he’s a nominalist. Certain “labels” apply to both the swatch and the suit (color terms, texture terms), but not others (size terms, shape terms).
Expression is metaphorical exemplification. “This combination of lines and color expresses sadness.” Again, certain labels apply to both the combination of lines and color, and to sadness, but apply metaphorically. (To apply metaphorically for Goodman is to really apply, but in some non-standard way – I know this is vague.)
I wonder if Leibnitz’s use of “expression” can be thought to be either literal or metaphorical exemplification.
Thanks. My first thought was that Goodman was just talking about something different from what Leibniz was talking about. But there are places where Leibniz somehow connects expressing God to being made in the image of God. So maybe there’s something to this approach, though it would seemingly take us even further away from the apparent core of Leibniz’s view about expression. I should think about this more when I get to the distinction between minds and other substances.
Thanks for mentioning my article! It claims that all substances express their “worldmates.” And since the actual world is created by God’s actualizing his idea of it, all substances express God’s idea of this world–a “part,” as it were, of the infinite intellect. Only apperceptive spirits, however, in virtue of being able to know necessary truths, express the entire infinite intellect .
Thanks Alan. I had taken you to think that what the non-spirit substances do doesn’t really amount to expressing God.
Anyway, one of the ideas I want to try out is that in the ‘Discourse’ (unlike, say, the ‘Monadology’) there isn’t much, if anything, of a difference between minds’ expression of God and other substances’. But I need to work through some related things to get there.
This is a great topic, thanks for posting on it!
I’m curious what, given your statement that “in the ‘Discourse’… there isn’t much, if anything, of a difference between minds’ expression of God and other substances’,” you make of Discourse § 36 where Leibniz says, “though all substances express the whole universe, nevertheless the other substances express the world rather than God, while minds express God rather than the world.” What do you think this difference consists in? I’ve always been somewhat puzzled by this passage.
I think there are good reasons to take Leibniz to think that all substances (at least, all individual substances) express both God and the universe. The arguments above don’t make any distinction between minds and other substances. Nor, I believe, do the arguments for the claim that all substances express their causes.
I think that’s compatible with there being a distinction between minds and other substances that is related to expression, just not a distinction in which things they express. That seems to be compatible with the text of DM35 itself. All substances express God and the universe, but some of them do it better than others, knowing what they are doing. (34 makes a similar distinction.) The difference comes in the manner of expressing rather than the thing expressed.
That still leaves the difficulty of the section summary that you quote. I have to say, more or less, that it’s an over-abbreviated way of expressing the differences that are explained in more detail in the texts of 34 and 35.
I’ll try to write this up at greater length, but that’s the basic idea.
[…] might try (here’s me trying) to say that [B] is not to be taken literally, saying there’s not really a difference between […]
I’ve tried to write a few times on this, but always run up against dead ends in my thinking because I can’t see a way past the “rather than” problem.
But in case they’re any use, here’s a few things that occurred to me as a struggled. They’re not in anything like the organized form that Stewart gave us (and they may well seem somewhat vague and oblique), so apologies for that in advance.
1) It seems to me that one of the key things that distinguishes minds from other substances is their possession of concepts/ideas. And given that non-minds fail to have ideas, it looks like their expression of minds is going to be partial at best. This might give us a reason to think that they do/could not express God.
2) The capacity to express that substances that are non-minds possess seems to be identical with perception in Leibniz’s technical sense, and appears to go hand in hand with co-existence within a single spatio-temporal order.
3) If perception were limited as per 2), that would allow us to see why non-minds do not express merely possible things as well actual ones. Furthermore, it would give us a bit more handle on why they might be thought to fail to express God – given that these are both cases where the expression has to be of things that are spatio-temporally dislocated from the perceiver.
BUT both 2) and 3) require ignoring the important passages in which Leibniz seems to say that effects express their causes – something which would sustain a non-spatio-temporally mediated expression of God by all created substances.
4) Whilst non-minds might be said to perceive other substances, the relevant notion of perception leaves them in a position where they don’t represent them as anything (even as distinct from themselves). This seems to be different in the case of minds, and presumably partly dependent on the fact that minds also possess the relevant concepts.
5) Since the capacity of minds to express merely possible things doesn’t involve being co-existent in a spatio-temporal order with them – it looks like this might be something that is accomplished on the basis of something other than perception – presumably conception(?)
6) To the extent that this 6) is true, it might seem as though finite minds’ capacity to express possible worlds resembles God’s capacity to express all worlds (unless we want to allow that God and actual finite substances co-exist in a way that sustains the kind of expression involved in finite perception).
7) I also started to try to connect this up a bit (or rather struggle with the tensions between) with the kind of neoplatonic intuitions about creation as replication of essence that we find, e.g., in secs. 47-48 of the Monadology and the apparent discontinuity between the representative capacities of minds and other substances that are lurking in the other thoughts I was having.
8) In connection with 7), I again found myself wondering why Leibniz was not willing to allow that the substances that do not engage in mental activity nonetheless have mental capacities, and at least the potential to become mentally active. And I couldn’t/can’t see a ‘philosophical’ reason here.
PS. Just now read sec 83 of the Monadology for other reasons, where it is said that souls (ie., in this context, actual substances that are not minds) are images of the universe of creatures, but minds are ALSO images of the divinity and not RATHER THAN.
Thanks for that Paul.
In place of any sort of engaged reply, a tiny observation about the Monadology text: though the language of expression is used in the Monadology, it’s confined to relationships within the universe, while the substance-God relationship is described in terms of images of.
Also, a couple of texts related to the ‘rather than’ issue, which were supposed to be in a fourth post I haven’t managed to write, about shifts in these views over time.
Earlier, c.1680: “je suis asseuré que les esprits ont esté bien ordonnés preferablement à toutes les autres choses, qu’ils passent infiniment en noblesse, puisqu’ils expriment la perfection de leur createur d’une toute autre maniere que le reste des creatures incapables de cette elevation” (A 6.4.2271 in the “Conversation du Marquis de Pianese et du Pere Emerey Emerite”).
In 1688(?): “Quin imo cum Mens unaquaeque sit divinae imaginis expressio (nam dici potest caeteras substantias magis universum exprimere, Mentes magis Deum)” (A 6.4.1624 in the “Specimen inventorum de admirandis naturae generalis arcanis”).