Bibliographic record
Abstract
Modality plays an important role in Leibniz's philosophy. One of Leibniz's major philosophical concerns was with formulating a theory of contingency with which to resist the threat of necessitarianism. In this dissertation I argue that Leibniz developed a theory—the inclination theory of contingency—according to which a truth is contingent if it depends on reasons that incline without necessitating, while necessary truths depend on reasons that necessitate. The inclination theory has so far been overlooked by Leibniz scholars. I argue that it was Leibniz's preferred theory of contingency from the 1680s, when he developed it, until the end of his life. The inclination theory has much to recommend it. It provides a better defense against the threat of necessitarianism than Leibniz's other theories and, moreover, it is far more philosophically plausible. I argue that the inclination theory supersedes the earlier, well-known per se possible theory, which many interpreters consider unsatisfactory. The inclination theory also provides a way of making sense of the later infinite analysis theory of contingency, which otherwise faces serious technical and philosophical problems, and which has also been regarded as unsatisfactory. I argue that the infinite analysis theory is best understood not as an independent theory of contingency, but as an aspect of the inclination theory. Finally, I argue that the inclination theory enables Leibniz to deny counterfactual identity without relying on a necessary connection between an individual and its predicates. Another important piece of Leibniz's philosophy is his doctrine of possible worlds. I argue that Leibniz developed an account of possible worlds—the laws-first account—according to which possible worlds are structured by laws of the general order that determine everything in them. Like the inclination theory, the laws-first account has so far been overlooked by Leibniz scholars, but it has certain advantages over the received the compossibility interpretation of Leibnizian possible worlds.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.011 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.008 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 0.003 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".