ABSTRACT
Now enter a new theory about the world – according to which there is a real, mind-independent universe whose denizens include, in addition to monads, aggregates and animals. There are various analyses offered here. Most have a foothold in the texts, though, as with the Idealist options, they vary in the frequency of their appearance there. Leibniz seemed not to be much bothered by the redundancy involved in
having multiple Realist alternatives. Still, in the end I develop a comprehensive Realist account which incorporates themes from several areas of his thought. It accommodates all the aggregate thesis doctrines, and sets the stage for the Realist analysis of animals in Chapter 8. It is the fit between the Realist construal of aggregates and the Realist analysis of animals that enables Leibniz’s metaphysics to achieve a new sense of coherence and interest. The Realist theory (sometimes abbreviated to ‘‘Realism’’) places new
constraints on body. In particular, an aggregate must be composed of substances or contain substances and derive its reality and force from its constituent substances. At the most abstract level, the aggregate must be a whole, with substances serving as its components or constituents or parts. I should note at the outset that the position taken here represents a
departure from my earlier stance. I had written in 1992 that this world ‘‘contains exactly the substances it has, and no extra-mental aggregates’’ (1992, 542), saying that it was sufficient to ‘‘talk of aggregates as if they were mind-independent collections over and above their parts’’ and thus to indulge the ‘‘loose but useful’’ idiom of common sense (1992, 526). The sort of eliminative reduction I had in mind there for the aggregates of the Realist theory cannot work, as I now believe. For the only way to grant aggregates a strictly speaking, ‘‘not-just-as-if’’ mind-independent status is to make a decisive break with Idealism’s eliminative reduction of aggregates to substances. Theory-Pluralism helps me now make that break, granting me freedom to recognize mind-independent aggregates at no cost to Leibniz’s rationality.
