Leibniz on Reflection and its Natural Veridicality

Leibniz on Reflection and its Natural Veridicality EZIO VAILATI IN THE NEW ESSAYS (II, 27, 13) Leibniz makes this remarkable claim: We can be deceived by memory across an interval--one often experiences this and one can conceive of a natural cause for such an error. But present or immediate memory [souvenir],the memory of what was taking place immediately before--or in other words, the consciousness or reflection which accompanies inner activity---cannot naturally [natureUement] deceive [tromper] us. If it could, we would not even be certain that we are thinking about such and such a thing; for this too (sc. 'I think...' as well as 'I remember...') is silently said only about past actions, not about the very action of saying it. But if the immediate inner experience is not certain, we cannot be sure of any truth of fact. I have already said that there can be an intelligible reason for the element of error in perceptions which are mediate and outer, but with regard to immediate inner ones such a reason could not be found except by having recourse to God's omnipotence. By all standards, this is a dense and rich passage. In it, Leibniz makes two fundamental points, namely, (1) reflection is immediate memory; and, (9) reflection cannot naturally deceive, i.e., it is naturally veridical. He does not argue for (1) and says little (so little as to require an interpretative effort) on why (9) should be true. The philosophical importance of (1) and (9) can hardly be underestimated because of their explicit bearing on such a central topic in Leibniz's philosophy of mind as reflection. Their hasty treatment renders an understanding of the passage just quoted problematic, and the difficulty faced by the reader is compounded by the fact that it is not even clear what (9) means. I intend to tackle these difficulties by trying to explain why Leibniz holds (1) and (2). This paper is divided into two parts: the first is devoted to Leibniz's views on (1), and the second to his views on (2). 1. REFLECTION IS IMMEDIATE MEMORY Although Leibniz does not argue for (1), it is possible to construct a Leibnizian argument for it. In the following, my main aim is to produce such an [247] ~48 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 25:2 APRIL 1987 argument. The first section explains why, for Leibniz, reflection is a type of memory; the second explains why reflection is immediate memory; the third considers some possible objections and tries to answer them. Finally, the last section challenges a view of the relationship between a Cartesian ego and a Leibnizian monad which seems to me both widespread and wrong. la. WHY REFLECTION IS A KIND OF MEMORY Before facing the central topic of this section, some general considerations about Leibniz's notion of reflection in the New Essays are in order. Although Leibniz usually considers 'consciousness' and 'reflection' interchangeable, there is strong evidence that in the New Essays reflection involves consciousness of the mind and its own operations rather than the mere consciousness of images. So the consciousness of the smell of the rose in front of me is not yet reflection, while the consciousness of my mental action of smelling the rose is reflection. When I reflect on a perception, I am conscious not only of the object of my perception (the smell of the rose), but of the perception itself (the operation of the mind) as being mine, i.e., performed by me.' Let P be a perception and R(P) the reflection on it. The argument I attribute to Leibniz has two steps. First, I show that P and R(P) are two distinct acts of the mind. Then, I show that the fact that P and R(P) are numerically different, plus certain assumptions about their connection, entail that R(P) is a form of memory. The reason for claiming that P and R(P) are two distinct acts of the mind (two different thoughts) is based on their different content: "This thought of myself, who perceives sensible objects, and of my own action which results from it, adds something to the object...