ABSTRACT
G. W. Leibniz is attacking a model of the world which began its growth to maturity in his time and still holds utterly in its sway. The view might be called mechanical atomism, but nowadays there is no real commitment to indivisible and ultimate elements of matter nor to their purely mechanical interaction. Leibniz sees that even perfect correlation does not entail the kind of constitutive relation between matter and mind that the methodology of physical resolution requires. Leibniz's argument proceeds from the premise of the inexplicability of the relation between matter and consciousness to the conclusion that consciousness is not constituted out of matter or the modes of organization of matter. But the methodology of physical resolution provides a great deal of evidence that human beings are through and through physical creatures and hence that, however mysterious it undoubtedly is, consciousness too must be physical.
