You might think that after a chapter on
empirical psychology Wolff would turn into rational psychology, that
is, that he would explain what has been observed of human
consciousness. Yet, a chapter on cosmology or the study of world
intervenes with the pretext that knowing the essence of human soul
requires knowing the essence of the world.
The basic structure of the world Wolff
discovers through observation: world is a series of variable things
that exist side by side one another (i.e. in space) and one after
another (i.e. in time) and generally are connected to one another in
the sense that anyone of the things contains a reason why the others
near it in space and time are situated as they are. World is then a
complex thing, that is, a thing consisting of things that are parts
of the world.
The notion of a complex thing is
familiar already from Wolffian ontology, and indeed, most of what
Wolff finds characteristic of the world is a simple application of
previous ontological results. Thus, world as a complex is defined by
being a certain combination of its parts, like a structure built out
of Lego blocks. Yet, the temporality of the world ensures that it is
not a mere static structure, but processual, and indeed, its later
states are based on nothing else but its previous states. The world
is then like a machine – and Wolff specifically compares it to a
clockwork, where the position of the hand is determined by its
earlier positions and by the movement of the machinery.
World is then for Wolff deterministic
and all events in the world are certain, if the previous events are
known. Yet, this does not mean that the events would be necessary:
they could have happened otherwise. Analogically, there is not just
one possible way to make a clock, but the parts could have been
assembled differently. True, we don't see any alternative worlds
lying around, like we do see clocks of various sorts, but we can read
alternative world histories in works of fiction. Wolff is here
applying the idea of possible worlds, which he has probably picked
from Leibniz.
The assumption of possible worlds
creates doubles of the modalities of necessity and possibility.
Firstly, we could speak of absolute possibility and necessity, that
is, of what is possible or necessary in all possible worlds.
Secondly, we could speak of possibility and necessity within one
possible world: what is possible in this sense is something that has
happened, happens or will happen in this particular world. What is
specifically impossible in one possible world are the events of all
the other possible worlds. The possible worlds contradict then one
another: only one of them can be actual, no matter what David Lewis
says.
As any philosophy student should know,
the idea of possible worlds was important for Leibniz as a component
in the justification of the perfection of the actual world: God knew
all the possible worlds and as a wise and good person chose the best
possible world to be actualised. We are still at a chapter on
cosmology and God will be investigated only later on. Still, Wolff
prepares the issue by characterising the notion of the perfection of
a world.
Wolff begins by noting that all complex
things and thus all worlds have some sort of regularity and are
therefore valuable: remember that in the chapter on ontology Wolff
had defined perfection through regularity. Yet, worlds are not all of
same value, Wolff adds: some are more regular than others. By
regularity Wolff does not mean a mere uniformity, which by itself
would not mean perfection. Instead, diversity is also an essential
component in perfection. In other words, the value of the world is to
be decided by the question what sort of laws it has: a good world
follows a number of laws, all of which form a rational hierarchy.
Note that Wolff does not intend that we could deduce what these laws
could be. Instead, one finds the particular laws through abstraction
from the actual phenomena and more general laws through abstraction
from more general laws. In this manner Wolff justifies the general
law that nature makes no leaps.
The possible worlds are nowadays
treated as a legitimate way to explain e.g. modal properties of
sentences. Yet, Wolff's manner of suggesting a scheme for the
perfection of the world is rather unbelievable, because there are a
number of possible scales for measuring the perfection of anything.
The problem can be better grasped through the analogy of clockworks.
There are rather different types of
clocks and watches, although the main principle and purpose is the
same for all of them. Now, while one clock might beat the others by
being more realiable and always on time – say, some atomic clock –
another clock might be cheaper, although not as precise as a time
keeper. Then again, a fancy pocket watch might not be cheap nor
reliable, at least if its owner forgets to wind it, but it still is
ecological, requiring no batteries, and probably the most sylish of
the three examples. It would be rather difficult – if not downright
impossible – to say which of the three clocks is the most perfect:
all of them are good in some respect and bad in other respects.
It appears reasonable to suppose that
the perfection of possible worlds would be similarly and most likely
even more multidimensional: that is, there would be no single
criteria for deciding the perfection of the world, but several.
Hence, although one world might perfect according to one criterion,
another world could well be perfect according to another criterion.
How should one then choose between them?
True, the Leibnizian-Wolffian God might
have some clever mathematical formula that would take into account
all the different aspects of perfection and hence be a perfect
criteria for deciding between several possible worlds. The problem
with this solution is that one should still demonstrate that this
clever formula could not give the same value to two different
possible worlds: otherwise, the possibility of two equally good
worlds would still remain. We shall see later if Wolff has any
argument to support this claim.
So much for macrocosm, next time we
shall visit the opposite context or the microcosm.
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