Gandhi is a great leader - he effectively created the electorate - he got the people to follow his vision of a free India. Hitler on the other side (on the evil side) is also a great leader. He also carved his own path and got the German people to follow. — Agustino

Both these people were products of their times. In another century, Ghandi would have ended up dead in a ditch somewhere. Born a little earlier or later, maybe Hitler would have made it into art school and poured his bile out onto canvases.

The President isn't there to be an engineer to say this is HOW we'll get to B. Only that we must get to B. — Agustino

You missed the 1980's when the "networking leader" was all the rage.

All the visions for the US were similar until now. No big differences. This time it's different. — Agustino

You're setting yourself up for a massive disappointment. There is something cool about the USA. It doesn't usually show up in politics, in my experience.

Yea.. I get that. A political theory:

There are two kinds of situation:

1. We're facing a crisis of a sort we've never known before. Nobody knows what to do because we're in uncharted waters. Our best bet is to unify behind a leader even if that leader is as clueless as we are. The saying for it "Do something even if it's wrong." It means there are times when paralysis will definitely kill you, so loosen up and allow yourself to try something. You at least give yourself a chance that way.

2. We're facing problems that have unfolded over an extended period. It's stuff we've been fighting for years. It's already come up that we failed to listen to people who demonstrated that they did know what to do (as with the derivative market crash and maybe the invasion of Iraq.) It's time for a leader who has mastery over information management and decision making.

Which sort of situation are we in? Mostly 2. We might be presently sliding toward 1, but we aren't there now.

Which one is Donald Trump best suited for? Neither one, unfortunately. He is refreshing, as you say. But he's also incredibly divisive. So he's no good for situation 1. He's no good for situation 2 because he's just uninformed. Face it: he's fun to watch. That's about it.

What about Hillary Clinton? In her long years of political service, I don't think she's proved herself for either role. But the alternative to her on the Democratic ticket was Sanders. Pfft. Hillary would break Bernie Sanders in half. Ready or not, it has to be her.

We might just "run amok" rather than be blown up. — Bitter Crank

The libertarians would finally be happy?

However, voting for Clinton is a no-no from the start. — Agustino

If you aren't a US citizen, why do you give a flip?

including once when some general in command of a base decided it was best to just get it over with and send all the commies to hell. — wuliheron

Fortunately Dr Strangelove was on the scene with a post-doomsday plan. The real-life general who wanted to get it over with was Douglas MacArthur. He was fired.

Well the person I'm mostly interested in analysing is myself. Understanding my own understanding is just what I am interested in. Sometimes it looks like psychoanalysis, and sometimes it looks more like philosophical analysis. — unenlightened

Cool.

So I am suggesting a reason. Whether it is true for another is for them to find out for themselves or not as they wish. Your health warning will no doubt be heeded by some, but for those that like to think too hard about such things, I plan to continue to dispense my rather vague psychobabble.

Personally, I think the toddler deserves to be taken seriously and offered an apology and compensation. I don't find the anger of the powerless that funny. — unenlightened

My warning comes from learning the hard way that pain, anger, and other difficult emotions are sometimes messengers I'd like to shoot. Analysis can be loaded gun for that purpose. I see you aren't having that kind of issue.

My two cents worth: in the same way a baby lion instinctively tries out its claws and jaws, that toddler is flexing muscles that have to do with her potential for social magic (as Confucius put it). She's learning how to get what she wants. The fact that the family is laughing makes me suspect that they already know that this kind of thing runs in their family: a tendency to react to stress with anger.

In some worlds, a human like that will become a military leader. People will tend to ally themselves with her because she does get what she wants. In other worlds, this little girl would lead a short life as the people around her seek to declaw her, cripple her, and finally either directly or indirectly kill her.

I think that the sense of self you spoke of is not necessarily there prior to the outburst of anger, but can instead be a product of it. Likewise groups of people can experience an invigoration of identity through collective abiding wrath. Fascism is a desperate attempt to gain that strength artificially.

If the OP is saying that anger has something to do with identity, I'd agree with that. So would Aeschylus. But like Hanover, I'd warn against trying too hard to make an emotion encyclopedia.

Anger is a component of PTSD and typical grief. Why? Don't know. A naturalistic answer is easy: anger is a source of energy for fight/flight. Having worked in neonatal intensive care, my assessment is that anger is there long before there is any sense of identity to reinforce.

Its there prior to mastery of language and during the development of that mastery. One point I'd make is this: that's a person you're analyzing. Take a moment to become aware of your own motives for doing psychoanalysis. Check out Thomas Moore's Dark Eros for a full check list of possibilities.

Toddler rants at violated property rights. Family thinks it's funny:

It all sounds good to me, but does he say what a monad is? All we can see is a myriad of colours and shapes and ideas, we can't actually see a monad, subjectively. — Punshhh

Probably the most immediate evidence of your monadness is the unity of your consciousness. I was going to start a thread on that topic. but it's still percolating. Unity of consciousness (UOC) is supposed to be in evidence anytime you compare things... relate A to B... Some argue against UOC. And then there are brain diseases in which UOC is missing... don't know what to do about that. :)

Wonderful.

You're correct. Though the human species, for instance, is a pile of monads, there are no causal relationships.

Whereas old hippies have assured me that Jimi Hendrix was an incarnation of the god of music. What prize do you get for that?

A substance, then, is an ultimate subject. ... — Wayfarer

Yea. This definition wasn't sufficient for Leibniz. I think I explained that earlier (or did I hallucinate that?)

But they're not objective constituents, in the way atoms are conceived to be; Leibniz posited monads in opposition to the purported 'material atom'; they're souls, rather than objects, in an ultimately mental or spiritual universe, of which this material world is only an appearance. — Wayfarer

Close, but not quite, Wayfarer. Monads are immaterial objects. It is entirely correct to think of them as atomic in character. Some partake of mind, some don't. There's a hierarchy.

Leibniz explicitly stated that he was not eliminative about materiality. So if you mean by "only an appearance" that Leibniz declared the material world to be illusory, you are wrong.

Signing every note "curious" sounds like a general confused wonderment. Curious.

I'm going to change my name to Balls.

It's valuable to compare Leibniz to Descartes and Spinoza. Descartes proposed two substances where Leibniz allows only one. Can we substitute subject for substance there? No.

Wow! That description is very close to my experience. Ancient archetypes awaken to the sounds and words of that song.

The problem is that though it's not too hard to nail down what Leibniz means by "substance" (it's just a signal that we're doing ontology), I don't know exactly what you mean by "subject."

Leibniz believed that the basic building blocks of the universe are immaterial. His reasoning involves infinite divisibility of the material on the one side and unity of consciousness on the other.

"SubjectIve" is a kind of narrative. The philosophical subject is one pole of an opposition. That opposition is superficial to ontological questions, to my mind. Maybe you mean the word differently. Don't know..

This is an awesome song. Poetry? Literature? It's an awesome song.

Man in the Long Black Coat
Bob Dylan

Crickets are chirpin' the water is high
There's a soft cotton dress on the line hangin' dry
Window wide open African trees
Bent over backwards from a hurricane breeze
Not a word of goodbye not even a note
She gone with the man in the long black coat.

Somebody seen him hangin' around
As the old dance hall on the outskirts of town
He looked into her eyes when she stopped him to ask
If he wanted to dance he had a face like a mask
Somebody said from the bible he'd quote
There was dust on the man in the long black coat.

Preacher was talking there's a sermon he gave
He said every man's conscience is vile and depraved
You cannot depend on it to be your guide
When it's you who must keep it satisfied
It ain't easy to swallow it sticks in the throat
She gave her heart to the man in the long black coat.

There are no mistakes in life some people say
It is true sometimes you can see it that way
But people don't live or die people just float
She went with the man in the long black coat.

There's smoke on the water it's been there since June
Tree trunks uprooted beneath the high crescent moon
Feel the pulse and vibration and the rumbling force
Somebody is out there beating on a dead horse
She never said nothing there was nothing she wrote
She gone with the man in the long black coat.

A turbo-summary:

"Since Plato a recurrent theme of western philosophy is the contrast between appearance and reality: the nature of reality can be grasped only by turning away from the senses and consulting the intellect. This theme is present in Descartes's philosophy, but it is developed much further by Leibniz in his theory of monads, the metaphysics of his final years. The first section argues that Leibniz's theory of monads can perhaps be best understood as a form of atomism. Like traditional atoms monads are the basic building-blocks of reality, but unlike them they are spiritual, not physical in nature: the basic properties of monads are perception and appetite. The second section addresses the nature of Leibniz's monism by way of a comparison with Spinoza. Leibniz's final metaphysics is monistic in the sense that, although monads are hierarchically ordered, there is only one basic kind of substance. Spinoza's metaphysics, by contrast, is monistic in the sense that it recognizes the existence of only one substance, God. Indeed, Leibniz's theory of monads can be regarded as an attempt to refute Spinoza's objections to a plurality of substances. If successful, Leibniz's refutation of Spinoza's objections thus creates conceptual space for monads – monads are at least possible – but it still leaves open the question of why monads are actual. It is shown that Leibniz's arguments for monads turn on the need for basic substances which are not mere composites, and on the infinite divisibility of matter. The next section addresses a pressing question: if, as Leibniz says, there is strictly nothing in the universe but monads or simple substances, what is the status of bodies or physical objects? It is clear that Leibniz opts for a reductionist rather than an eliminativist approach to this issue: there are bodies, but they are not metaphysically basic entities. The nature of Leibniz's reductionism about bodies is controversial. Although Leibniz flirts with it in places, phenomenalism is shown not to be his preferred solution to the problem; instead Leibniz's official position is that bodies are aggregates which result from monads: the concept of resulting here is best analysed in terms of Leibniz's technical concept of expression. Leibniz's preference for the aggregate thesis over phenomenalism is probably best explained by his desire to provide a metaphysical foundation for his physical theory of force."

Jolley, Nicholas. Leibniz (The Routledge Philosophers) (pp. 90-91). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.

Easy. It's the same as the cause of adherence to the latest fad diet or fashion weirdness. What do I have to do to fit in?

Hopefully we're both just speculating based on our respective experiences. My opinion comes from working in healthcare where causing pain is part of the job. What's the source of your speculations?

And of course, the Quran and Hadith do in fact justify these behaviours. — tom

They are used to justify them, yes.

It's emotional responses to crime that generate harmful actions that make us all worse off. — andrewk

Emotional responses are the problem? Um.. no. It takes a hardening of the heart to be able to chop somebody's head off. The vileness actually starts with a lack of natural emotion.

We will never completely extinguish terrorism, just as we will never completely extinguish other forms of organized crime, but I believe a calm, thoughtful, determined application of the above approach can produce good results. — andrewk

Pretty unemotional answer there, Andrew. :)

Eh.. for my money, it's too soon to be deflecting grief and anger about recent attacks which were apparently done in the name of ISIS with "Yea.. Christians do bad things too." I have a gay friend who moved to Florida not too long ago... so I don't take what happened lightly.

How about: "I think we should think hard about the best way to respond to attacks like these. Should we respond to them with a violent spirit? Or should we take a different path?"

What's your answer Andrew? What words or actions would represent our best selves?

A cool conversation:

What traditions and ancient scriptures say is of very little importance. People that wish to be violent will always find ways to justify their violence. What is important is what the people who belong to religions that have those scriptures believe and do. — andrewk

To some extent this is true. You're explaining that people aren't slaves to scripture, but rather people define for themselves what's sacred by their innate knowledge of good and evil. You're on the verge of formulating a moral outlook that has its roots in Zoroastrianism, which is one of the tributaries of Islam.

However, there have been Muslims who justified slavery and rape by pointing to the life and words of the Prophet. That is beyond reasonable doubt. It's also a fact that Muslims are dependent on secular law to condemn these actions. That is a serious problem. Muslim scholars know it is. There just isn't any way to address that issue right now.

So Islam faces some serious challenges. We can't take those challenges off the table entirely and say they have nothing to do with events in the world. That would essentially be saying that Islam is a dead religion. It's not.

But an allied point is this: people who are prone to judging large numbers of people they've never met won't be persuaded not to do that by the presentation of any facts. A person acts according to an innate moral compass, not by presented information. True? Sometimes. Sometimes not.

This of course leaves the door wide open. If you happen to express the view that the worship of a paedophile is alien to Western civilisation, you may well find yourself numbering among the hate-crime statistics. — tom

In some situations one may be unjustly verbally attacked for asking questions about the Prophet's history. I think it's a symptom of underlying stress. I found that moving on from that and pursuing some facts helped me lay the issue to rest. It surprised me that discovering the pertinent facts wasn't as easy as I thought it would be.

I'd advise against looking for answers on a forum like this. People will line up to give you incorrect information (while condemning you for asking). Read a good book about the history of Islam.

.

Cool stuff, guys!

Sure. That would be cool.

Baden, are you of the mindset that words spoken are equal to actions taken? — ArguingWAristotleTiff

So.. Tiff. Reality check. You know as well as I do what kind of man Trump is. You know as well as I do that trying to make this about Bill Clinton is a diversion.

Are there any decent conservative men? Absolutely. Prime example: David Brooks. Months ago he publicly stated that he couldn't vote for Trump because of matter of decency.

Hi Erik!

I don't think a self-labelled conservative in this or any other era has any business talking about a "new dispensation of history." You are a liberal.

Imagine a bunch of hunter-gatherers who over time have learned (sometimes the hard way) all sorts of things about what berries and mushrooms are edible, the best way to make leather, and so forth.

The people in the group who are most devoted to preserving those skills and passing them on to the next generation are the conservatives in the group. The guy over there trying to put up a tent in a way nobody's ever done it before.. he's a liberal. He thinks "changing the world" is important.

So though you may hold some views in common with conservatives, that alone doesn't make you a conservative. The beliefs that make up liberal vs conservative morph and change. There can be 180 degree shifts in a single lifetime. There can be periods of moderateness where it's hard to tell the difference between liberals and conservatives by their beliefs. Look at general demeanor. Conservatives tend to be somewhat afraid of change. They clearly see the risks in doing things differently.

Liberals come to the foreground of human life when the old ways aren't working. We have to try something new even if it's risky. That's obviously you.

I guess "every soul is a world apart", if you will, because self-awareness is sort of private?
I don't experience your self-awareness, you don't experience mine, we can't (unless we become the other) - we're apart (in that respect).
Self-awareness is essentially indexical, a kind of self-knowledge, and bound by ontological self-identity, like a kind of noumena.
Perhaps, by Leibniz, self-awareness is (implicitly or explicitly) integral to "soul", and thus inherently private (in part)? — jorndoe

Not all monads possess self-awareness. Monads are immaterial, immortal unities. There are an infinite number of them and each one has a unique perspective on the same world.

Both monads and the world are God's creation. It may be that Leibniz believed God stands in a causal relationship to the universe in the same way that Shakespeare does to things and events in the life of Othello.

Unfortunately, there is much that is unclear about Leibniz's outlook. Jolley leads his readers through a maze of candidates for his view about material objects, for instance. In some ways, it appears that he did philosophy backward. He started with conclusions and worked to support them. The insight I gather from that is more about me than him, though. It makes me realize the extent to which I assume philosophy ought to be like science (ideal science, that is).

Yea. I don't know how much the finer points of predestination translated out to the general Calvinist public. I think a religion can be a response to a particular psychic/social problem. In the case of Calvinism, it appeared around the same time that huge ambitions and unprecedented power were accompanying the rise of merchant class types. In the US, anyway, Calvinism is associated with working for the public good... in other words. it's saying that people should use their power to help others. Just using money and power to help yourself means nothing in the final analysis.

I disagree. It's a harsh response to the greed and amorality of capitalist types. The fierceness of its admonition to work for the glorification of God rather than riches is meant to match the voraciousness of that greed. An example of a cool Calvinist is Ben Franklin.

That sounds like an interesting art installation. Maybe film the black boxes wearing pink sunglasses? And have some boxes jiggling here and there while they appear to be making pancakes or mowing the lawn. And please don't have a bunch of blood and guts on the film. That's so freakin' lame.

Anyway, I'm making my way back to the OP. Nicholas Jolley affirms that though Leibniz did say throughout his life that his scheme solved the Cartesian mind-body problem with the pre-established harmony bit, we're not sure why he advertised that since he denies substance-hood to bodies. He doesn't have any mind-body problem to solve.

So what were his thoughts on bodies? Two parts:

1. Recalling that each monad expresses the universe:

Each substance is like a whole world, and like a mirror of God, or indeed of the whole universe, which each one expresses in its own fashion – rather as the same city is differently represented according to the different situations of the person who looks at it. In a way, then, the universe is multiplied as many times as there are substances, and in the same way the glory of God is redoubled by so many quite different representations of his work. In fact we can say that each substance carries the imprint of the infinite wisdom and omnipotence of God, and imitates them as far as it is capable of it. (DM 9 WF 61) — Discourse on Metaphysics 1686

Your body is part of that which you are expressing, and for rational monads, there's a closer kinship found in ideas a monad has about its body.

2. I'm having trouble with this one.

But Leibniz does not stop here, as he might have done; he further claims that the human mind expresses its body by perceiving it, perception being a species of expression.

Jolley, Nicholas. Leibniz (The Routledge Philosophers) (p. 103). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.

Next: innate ideas

You can't really be one of those sensitive philosophical types, have a Christian background, and not have covered this territory extensively.

You have no Christian background I'm assuming.

Yea. Really.

Belief in God's omnibenevolence is an essential foundation in traditional Christianity; this can be seen in Scriptures such as Psalms 18:30: "As for God, his way is perfect: the word of the Lord is tried: he is a buckler to all those that trust in him," and Ps.19:7: "The law of the Lord is good, converting the soul: the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple." This understanding is evident in the following statement by the First Vatican Council:

The Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church believes and acknowledges that there is one true and living God, Creator and Lord of Heaven and earth, almighty, eternal, immeasurable, incomprehensible, infinite in will, understanding and every perfection. Since He is one, singular, completely simple and unchangeable spiritual substance, He must be declared to be in reality and in essence, distinct from the world, supremely happy in Himself and from Himself, and inexpressibly loftier than anything besides Himself which either exists or can be imagined.[8]

The philosophical justification stems from God's aseity: the non-contingent, independent and self-sustained mode of existence that theologians ascribe to God. For if He was not morally perfect, that is, if God was merely a great being but nevertheless of finite benevolence, then his existence would involve an element of contingency, because one could always conceive of a being of greater benevolence.[9] Hence, omnibenevolence is a requisite of perfect being theology.[10] — Wiki on omnibenevolence

There are Christian outlooks that deny omnibenevolence, but they're fringe.

I am saying that the so-called 'problem of evil' is not one of them because as it is configured it simply does not apply to the Christian concept of God. — Barry Etheridge

It does. Christianity was historically vibrant and dynamic in part due to it's contradictions and open-ended problems such as the nature of God's justice.

I agree that the Platonic vision of divinity is at variance with what we might come across in some semi-pagan yuletide frolicking, but it's been central to Christian thought since pretty close to the beginning. That's supposed to be his likeness there in the Vatican.

Incorrect (and for a Christian as heretical as it is possible to be!) Even if we leave God out of it altogether the one simply does not follow from the other. — Barry Etheridge

Per Catholics and therefore most Protestants, God is considered to be perfect. The proposition that God is omnibenevolent follows from that. This is pretty standard stuff. Preston is presenting the problem of evil, which has floated about theology since around the 18th Century.

Then you contradicted yourself. You said doubt is like jello, there is always room for it... but apparently not for cogito ergo sum according to you. — intrapersona

I just assumed that everybody in the discussion would agree that necessary truths are exempt from global skepticism. Although, one could argue that this isn't so, I wouldn't.

Is it not possible to arrive at that conclusion without reason alone? — intrapersona

Uh.... what?

Leibniz was plagued by the problem of evil, otherwise known as the Atheist Argument.