God forbade...must reading!

Pre-established harmony




  Gottfried Leibniz's theory of pre-established harmony is a philosophical theory about causation under which every "substance" only affects itself, but all the substances (both bodies and minds) in the world nevertheless seem to causally interact with each other because they have been programmed by God in advance to "harmonize" with each other. Leibniz's term for these substances was "monads" which he described in a popular work Monadology as "windowless".



  The monads are "substantial forms of being" with the following properties: they are eternal, indecomposable, individual, subject to their own laws, un-interacting, and each reflecting the entire universe in a pre-established harmony. Monads are centers of force; while space, matter and motion are merely phenomenal.


  Although Leibniz says that each monad is "windowless," he also claims that it functions as a "mirror" of the entire created universe.



  Leibniz casts God as a kind of "optimizer" of the collection of all original possibilities: Since He is good and omnipotent, and since He chose this world out of all possibilities, this world must be good—in fact, this world is the best of all possible worlds.



On the one hand, this view might help us rationalize some of what we experience:

  Imagine that all the world is made of good and evil. The best possible world would have the most good and the least evil. Courage is better than no courage. It might be observed, then, that without evil to challenge us, there can be no courage. Since evil brings out the best aspects of humanity, evil is regarded as necessary. So in creating this world God made some evil to make the best of all possible worlds.

  On the other hand, the theory explains evil not by denying it or even rationalizing it—but simply by declaring it to be part of the optimum combination of elements that comprise the best possible Godly choice. Leibniz thus does not claim that the world is overall very good, but that because of the necessary interconnections of goods and evils, God, though omnipotent, could not improve it in one way without making it worse in some other way.





  Under pre-established harmony, the preprogramming of each mind must be extremely complex, since only it itself causes its own thoughts or movements, for as long as it exists. In order to appear to interact, each substance's "program" must contain a description of either the entire universe, or of how the object is to behave at all times, during all "interactions" which will appear to occur.






   In Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time Michael Shermer relates to Voltaire's character Pangloss to show how smart people deceive themselves. Shermer explores the psychology of scholars and businessmen who give up their careers in their pursuit to broadcast their paranormal beliefs. In his last chapter, Shermer explains that "smart people" can be more susceptible to believing in weird things.





  Pangloss’s philosophy of life is that all is for the best in the “best of all possible worlds.” This optimistic philosophy actually is the key element of Voltaire’s satire. Pangloss’s philosophy is against the ideas of the Enlightenment period. Pangloss believes that a powerful God had created the world and that, therefore, the world must be perfect. When creatures of the world, see something as wrong or evil, it is because they do not understand the ultimate good that will come out of it. Voltaire satirically shows the reader that Pangloss is not a believable character. Voltaire illustrates this by showing us that he keeps his optimistic thought even when he is imprisoned. Pangloss ignores any evidence that contradicts his initial opinion. He also uses illogical arguments to support his beliefs. Pangloss’s philosophy tries to impose a passive attitude toward all that is wrong in the world. If the world is the best one possible, then there is no reason to make any effort to change things.




   Martin is more believable than Pangloss, not because he is more sophisticated, but because he is smarter and more likely to draw conclusions with which we can identify. Martin had been robbed by his wife and beaten by his son and deserted by his daughter and also endured financial setbacks, and therefore he’s a pessimist whereas Pangloss is an optimist. He uses his experiences to judge the world whereas Pangloss was merely using a theory. As a result, Martin is more insightful than Pangloss to foresee events that will happen. Even though Martin’s philosophy is more believable than Pangloss’s, he’s still not good at predicting how some people will behave because his philosophy is coming from extreme pessimism. Therefore it might not be wrong to say that Voltaire is trying to prove that we need flexible thought in our lives based on real evidence.





Wikipedia, OpPapers