Person: McDonough, Jeffrey
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McDonough
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Jeffrey
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McDonough, Jeffrey
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Publication Leibniz on Monadic Agency and Optimal Form(Franz Steiner Verlag, 2016) McDonough, JeffreyPublication The Heyday of Teleology and Early Modern Philosophy(Wiley Periodicals, 2011) McDonough, JeffreyPublication Freedom and the Ability to Sin(University of Notre Dame, 2016) McDonough, JeffreyPublication Leibniz, Spinoza and an Alleged Dilemma for Rationalists(University of Michigan Library, 2015) McDonough, JeffreyIn a stimulating recent paper, “violations of the principle of Sufficient Reason (in Leibniz and Spinoza),” Michael Della Rocca argues that rationalists face a daunting dilemma: either abandon the principle of Sufficient Reason or embrace a radical, parmenidian-style monism. The present paper argues that neither historical nor contemporary rationalists need be afraid of Della Rocca’s dilemma. The second section re-constructs Della Rocca’s argument in five steps. The third section argues that Leibniz’s treatment of relations undermines one of those steps in particular and thus provides him—as well as contemporary rationalists—with a way out. The fourth section argues that a similar way out is available to Spinoza, and that it’s a better way out than either of the two options Della Rocca offers on Spinoza’s behalf. The essay concludes with an historically-minded suggestion for those eager to revitalize the once-again popular notion of grounding.Publication Leibniz and the Foundations of Physics: The Later Years(Duke University Press, 2016) McDonough, JeffreyPublication Leibniz’s Conciliatory Account of Substance(University of Michigan, 2013) McDonough, JeffreyThis essay offers an alternative account of Leibniz’s views on substance and fundamental ontology. The proposal is driven by three main ideas. First, that Leibniz’s treatment should be understood against the backdrop of a traditional dispute over the paradigmatic nature substance as well as his own overarching conciliatory ambitions. Second, that Leibniz’s metaphysics is intended to support his conciliatory view that both traditional views of substance are tenable in at least their positive and philosophical respects. Third, that the relationship between immaterial substances, corporeal substances, and ordinary bodies in Leibniz’s metaphysics is best understood as one of “material” constitution. The interpretation as a whole thus suggests that Leibniz needn’t be read as offering either an exclusive defense of corporeal substance realism, nor of immaterial substance idealism, nor as being deeply torn (at a time or over time) between two such views. He may instead be seen as offering a carefully presented, consistent, and sophisticated conciliatory account of substance.Publication Defending the Refutation of Idealism(Southwestern Philosophical Society, 2000) McDonough, JeffreyIn his Kant and the Claims of Knowledge, Paul Guyer offers an influential reading of Kant’s famous “Refutation of Idealism.” Guyer’s reading has been widely praised as Kantian exegesis but less favorably received as an anti-skeptical line of argument worthy of contemporary interest. In this paper, I focus on defending the general thrust of Guyer’s reading as a response to Cartesian skepticism. The paper falls into two sections. The first section constructs Guyer’s central argument in three steps and gives it a quasi-formal presentation. That presentation reveals the principal obstacle to the argument’s being convincing to a contemporary audience, namely, its apparent reliance on Kant’s prohibition against psychological laws governing mental states. The second section constructs a lemma in defense of Guyer’s general line of attack. In effect, it suggests that that line does not depend on a metaphysical ban on psychological laws, but only on the modest premise that according to the Cartesian’s concept of knowledge such laws cannot justify claims about the temporal order of the self.Publication Leibniz's Optics and Contingency in Nature(MIT Press, 2010) McDonough, JeffreyIn the late 1670's to early 1680's, Leibniz came to hold that the laws of nature are paradigmatically contingent, that they provide the basis for a new argument from design, and that they presuppose the existence of active, goal-directed powers reminiscent of Aristotelian entelechies. In this essay, I argue that the standard view according to which Leibniz forges these signature theses in the domain of physics and opportunistically carries them over to the domain of optics gets things essentially the wrong way around. The crucial nexus of views at the heart of Leibniz's mature philosophical understanding of the laws of nature has its most intelligible roots in his optical derivations, which appear to have paved the way-both historically and conceptually- for the philosophical significance he assigns to his discoveries in the domain of physics. Optics the horse, as it were, physics the cart.Publication Leibniz's Two Realms Revisited(Wiley Periodicals, Inc., 2008) McDonough, JeffreyIn his attempt to reconcile piety and the new science, teleology and mechanism, final causation and efficient causation, Leibniz often speaks of there being two realms – a “kingdom of power or efficient causes” and “a kingdom of wisdom or final causes.” In this essay, I explore Leibniz’s attempt to apply this doctrine to the natural world. The essay falls into four main parts. The first part looks to Leibniz’s much neglected work in optics for the roots of his view that the world can be seen as being governed by two complete sets of equipotent laws. The second offers an account of how this picture of lawful over-determination is to be reconciled with Leibniz’s mature metaphysics. The third addresses a line of objection proposed by David Hirschmann to the effect that Leibniz’s two realms doctrine as applied to the physical world undermines his stated commitment to an efficient, broadly mechanical, account of the natural world. Finally the fourth part suggests that Leibniz’s thinking about the harmony of final and efficient causes in connection with corporeal nature may help to shed light on his understanding of the teleological unfolding of monads as well.Publication Leibniz on Natural Teleology and the Laws of Optics(International Phenomenological Society, 2009) McDonough, JeffreyThis essay examines one of the cornerstones of Leibniz’s defense of teleology within the order of nature, namely, his derivation of the two central laws of geometrical optics from his “Most Determined Path Principle” or “MDPP”. The first section places the MDPP in its historical context, and argues that it allows Leibniz to bring to the fore philosophical issues concerning the legitimacy of teleological explanations by addressing two technical objections raised by Cartesians to non-mechanistic derivations of the laws of optics. The second section argues that, by drawing on laws such as the MDPP, Leibniz is able to introduce a thin notion of teleology that gives him the resources to respond to the most pressing charges of his day by showing how teleology within the order of nature may be stripped of problematic Scholastic commitments, fitted to accepted explanatory structures, and successfully applied to a wide and promising range of natural phenomena. Finally, the third section argues that contemporary philosophers have been overly hasty in their dismissal of Leibniz’s account of natural teleology, and indeed that their own generally thin conceptions of teleology have left them with few well-motivated resources for resisting Leibniz’s elegant position.