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.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
Leibniz's final metaphysics is monistic in the sense that, although monads are hierarchically ordered, there is only one basic kind of subject. Spinoza's metaphysics, by contrast, is monistic in the sense that it recognizes the existence of only one subject, God. Indeed, Leibniz's theory of monads can be regarded as an attempt to refute Spinoza's objections to a plurality of subjects. 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 subjects 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 subjects, 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.
A substance, then, is an ultimate subject. ... — Wayfarer
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
Given that there are only substances and modes, and that modes depend on substances for their existence, it follows that substances are the most real constituents of reality.'
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
To be a unity for Leibniz is to be simple and without parts, and so the ultimate constituents of reality are not composite or aggregative beings. That substances are simple has metaphysically significant consequences; Leibniz infers in the Principles of Nature and Grace and elsewhere that “Since the monads have no parts, they can neither be formed nor destroyed. They can neither begin nor end naturally, and consequently they last as long as the universe.”
"To be a unity for Leibniz is to be simple and without parts, and so the ultimate constituents of reality are not composite or aggregative beings. That substances are simple has metaphysically significant consequences; Leibniz infers in the Principles of Nature and Grace and elsewhere that “Since the monads have no parts, they can neither be formed nor destroyed. They can neither begin nor end naturally, and consequently they last as long as the universe."
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
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