Shaping Objects: Leibniz on Sense Perception and Representational Failures

FAVARETTI CAMPOSAMPIERO, Matteo

After reconstructing the general puzzle on sense perception and representational failures, I show that Leibniz (1) is well aware of the difficulty and (2) does actually propose a solution. This solution, on the one hand, enables him to make the admission of false pre-judgmental representations consistent with his claim that perceptions are always true. On the other hand, it requires Leibniz to depart from naif realism and recognize that our representation of the world is, up to an important degree, a mental construction – a picture that can always turn out to be inaccurate, or deceptive, or ‘false’, so that finally monads can hardly be taken to be merely mirrors of the world.

After reconstructing the general puzzle on sense perception and representational failures, I show that Leibniz (1) is well aware of the difficulty and (2) does actually propose a solution. This solution, on the one hand, enables him to make the admission of false pre-judgmental representations consistent with his claim that perceptions are always true. On the other hand, it requires Leibniz to depart from naif realism and recognize that our representation of the world is, up to an important degree, a mental construction a picture that can always turn out to be inaccurate, or deceptive, or 'false', so that finally monads can hardly be taken to be merely mirrors of the world.