Description
Book SynopsisLeibniz's theory of knowledge, unlike his logic and metaphysics, has until now received little attention from philosophers.
This book attempts to give coherence to the elements of his epistemology, scattered as they are throughout his writings, by seeking to determine what Leibniz meant when, on three occasions and each time without explanation, he said that thought and the faculty of understanding are the products of the conjoining of apperception and perception. To discover what he meant is to arrive at his conception of what on the side of the mind constitutes the necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge.
Almost half of the study is taken up with Leibniz's theory of perception -- with its initially strange notion of perception as expression and as activity -- and with such questions as: What is sensation and how is it related to perception and apperception? How are the soul's perceptions produced? The answer to the last question involves a new look at Leibniz'
