The Role of Efficient Causation in Leibniz’s Metaphysics

Raleigh Miller
The Ohio State University, 2009

§1. Introduction

In explaining the role of the monad in the causal order, Leibniz makes some
use of an Aristotelian account of cauation. According to Aristotle’s four-fold division
of causes, a single object, event or state of affairs has an efficient cause, a formal
cause, a final cause, and a material cause. Only the first three will be relevant here.
The efficient cause is the productive power that brings about an object or state.
The final cause of an object or state is its teleological end, its purpose for existing or
obtaining. The formal cause of an object or state is the account of what the object
or state is to be. This raises an issue concerning the sorts of causal roles that
various members of a Leibnizian ontology are equipped to play, particularly in light
of Leibniz’s apparent realism with respect to intrasubstantial monadic causation and
his anti-realism with respect to intersubstantial creaturely causation. Sukjae Lee
(2004) has argued that intrasubstantial monadic causation, by which a monadic
perceptual state M1 brings about monadic perceptual state M2, is best construed on
the model of final and formal causation. This is contrary to the claim that
intrasubstantial causation, if it is to be genuinely causal at all, must be efficient
causation. Donald Rutherford has also argued for a “final cause” interpretation of
intra-substantial causation, but he retains a robust role for efficient causation to
play. Rutheford writes:

If the appetitive forces associated with monadic states do not function as efficient causes, how
are we to understand the capacity of those states to lead spontaneously to new states? The
problem in this case is largely terminological. While maintaining that souls, or monads, “act
according to the laws of final causes,” Leibniz is clear that appetitive forces are genuinely
efficacious in bringing about changes in a monad’s states. His point, therefore, is not that
monadic states do not act as efficient causes of subsequent states, but that those actions
cannot be explained by appeal to the laws of efficient causation that govern the actions of
bodies. Rather, changes within the monad are produced by forces that act according to the
laws of final causes. (Rutherford, 166)

It will be useful to separate the characterizations of Lee and Rutheford into two
distinct claims regarding the status of efficient causation in a full account of
intrasubstantial causation.

Lee: God is the only efficient cause. Monadic states, however, have true
causal power in bringing about subsequent monadic states by virtue of being
 formal and final causes. As monads contain within them the complete
determination of all of their past and future perceptive states, and as those
states are directed at the greatest possible good, its transition from state M1
to state M2 is an internally caused transition insofar as the telos of the
monad’s complete determination of past and future states will determine the
state that will follow.

Rutheford: Monadic states are efficient causes of other monadic states.

Explanatorily, however, we cannot account for monadic transitions by
appealing to their productive power. Pre-established harmony insists that
this particular world, and all the monadic perceptual series contained therein,
was actualized because these particular monadic series are directed towards
the most perfect end, so we can explain the actual existence of actual
monadic transitions by appeal to the end that is furthered or brought about
by those transitions. We best explain M1’s transition to M2 by considering
M1 as containing the final cause of M2. We must consider monads under the
model of final causation in order to explain their behavior, but the intrinsic
causal powers contained in the monads themselves are actually efficient
causes.

This dialectical point is a very important one. On the one hand, it signals that all
parties are willing to recognize the role that final causes are to play in a complete
Leibnizian metaphysic. However, both positions present prima facie problems in
terms of a faithful exegesis of Leibniz. In this paper, I will evaluate both accounts,
and point out prima facie problems with each. I will conclude that Lee’s account is
superior to Rutherford, and that it deserves a position of privilege in the current
dialectic.

In §2, I will outline and explicate Rutheford’s commitments and motivations.

This section will conclude by showing that positing truly efficient causes in monadic
substances is in tension with assumption that conservation is continuous creation
(CCC). Insofar as Leibniz endorses CCC, this will be an exegetical problem that
Rutherford cannot avoid so long as he attributes efficient causation to monadic
states. Looking then, in §3, to an account that does not commit such an attribution,
I will outline and explicate Lee’s commitments and motivations. This section will
conclude by suggesting that expunging efficient causation from monadic causation,
and positing God as the only efficient cause, might be problematic in our attempt to
make sense of the freedom of the soul, and the robust distinction between
Leibnizian pre-established harmony and occasionalism. Insofar as Leibniz insists
that the soul is free, and that occasionalism is false, this will be a difficulty for the
Lee’s model. In §4, I will provide some reasons to believe that Lee presents the best
position in the dialectic, all things considered. First (4.1), I will suggest that
reflections upon the relationship between Leibniz’s God and possibility can solve the
problems raised in section 3. Second (4.2) I will point to passages in Leibniz’s
correspondence with Bayle that suggest a dispositional theory of intrasubstantial
causation. Such a dispositional theory can render more plausible the final and
formal model of intrasubstantial causation. However, (4.3) I will suggest that
reflections upon the intersubstantial phenomenon of monadic domination will raise
some serious problems for Lee’s account of monadic causation. I will argue,
however, that this problem, unlike the problems with Rutherford’s account, has the
potential to be solved, and I will suggest some potentially promising venues for
solving it. I will conclude in that, for all that’s been said, Lee’s position is a more
promising venue for making sense of a Leibnizian theory of intrasubstantial
causation, but that certain problems will persist, presenting promising avenues for
future research.

§III: Rutherford: Intrasubstantial Causation as Final and Efficient Causation

Rutherford argues that a transition between monadic state M1 and a monadic
state M2 operates according to a “law of natural teleology”, according to which

The effectiveness of the force in bringing about a transition from S1 to S2 is explained by the
fact that S2 is objectively the best state for the monad to be in next…If appetition operates
according to the law of natural teleology, then changes within the monad are determined in
accordance with an external standard of goodness. Given any state of the monad, there is a
determinate answer to the question of what its next state should be relative to the rest of the
universe. (167)

Rutherford contrasts the law of natural teleology with the law of desire teleology,
according to which the transition from S1 to S2 is explained by the fact that the
monad represents S2 as the best state for it to be in next. This account is
appropriately rejected, except as a contingently correct account of some monadic
states. If the monadic transition operates according to law of desire teleology, than
for any given M2, the monad at M1 represents M2 as containing the most objective
value, and this explains the monad’s transition to M2. But though it may often be
correct that the monad represents M2 as containing the most value, this is not
necessary; the monad perceives its future states, and the representation perceived
contains the value that will inhere in its future states, and thus the monad’s states
reflect which future state contains the most objective value, but this is consistent
with the monad’s not representing the most valuable state to itself as containing
the most value. God, and not necessarily the monad, can discern from a
representation of the monad’s future state that the state will contain the most
overall value. Thus to endorse the law of desire teleology is to misunderstand the
relationship between the monad’s own representations of the value that inheres in
future monadic states and the actual value that obtains in future monadic states. It
is the latter, and not the former, that determines God’s actualization of future
monadic states. Thus, the law of natural teleology is a preferable explanation of
monadic spontaneity as such.
Thus, in order to explain why a particular monadic transition obtains,
Rutherford believes that we need to appeal to the representation of the monad’s
future state, which is the final cause of that future state in virtue of being the
representation from which the value that would inhere in that future state could be
discerned. Insofar as that representation is contained in the monad itself, the
explanation of monadic transition will appeal to the monad’s representation as the
final cause of monadic transitions. However, for Rutherford, the law of natural
teleology plays only an epistemic role, rather than a metaphysical role. Taking
monadic states to be the final causes of their successive states is necessary in order
to explain the law of the series according to which the monad operates. However,
in a brute account of what is actually going on in the monad, the operative cause
remains efficient, or productive. As Rutherford explains:

While maintaining that souls, or monads, “act according to the laws of final causes,” Leibniz is
clear that appetitive forces are genuinely efficacious in bringing about changes in a monad’s
states. His point, therefore, is not that monadic states do not act as efficient causes of
subsequent state, but that those actions cannot be explained by appeal to the laws of efficient
causation that govern the actions of bodies. Rather, changes within the monad are produced
by forces that act according to the “laws of final causes”. (Rutherford, 166)

Is Leibniz as clear as Rutherford insists? In defense of this claim, Rutherford draws

our attention to section 15 of the Monadology, in which Leibniz writes:

The action of the internal principle which brings about the change or passage from one
perception to another can be called appetition. (WF 268)

This seems a strange passage upon which to base such confidence. To say that
Leibniz is here, in a manner that is “clear”, attributing efficient causation to
monadic states is to assume that productive power is the only appropriate
interpretation of “brings about”, but this is contrary to the very spirit of the
Aristotelian account of causation that Leibniz is invoking. Any answer to a “why is it
such?” question will be an Aristotelian cause, and productive explanations are not
the only appropriate answers to such questions. Further, when asking why
something was “brought about”, the appropriate answers are as multifarious as
Aristotelian causes. If I see a statue and ask of it “why is it such?”, and if in so
doing it is clear (perhaps by virtue of the conversational context) that I am seeking
a final cause (“this statue was sculpted to honor the queen”) this would be a case in
which ‘the goal of honoring the queen’, in some sense, brings it about that the
statue is sculpted. If such language is uncomfortable, it is not nonsensical, and the
language of “brings about” is simply not determinate enough to do the theoretical
work that Rutherford straps it with.
Further, there are very good reasons to shield Leibniz from Rutherford’s
interpretation of the phrase. In particular, it is unclear how Rutherford could make
sense of Leibniz’s Leibniz’s well-established views on the nature of divine
conservation. According to this view, all created substances depend upon God for
their initial creation. An omnipotent God would always be capable of destroying
substances dependent upon Him, so likewise created substances depend upon God
for their continued existence, or their conservation. But what sort of act is divine
conservation? According to one position, one common in the modern period and
explicitly endorsed by Leibniz, to conserve a substance is to continuously create
that substance. This position has been referred to as CCC, or conservation as
continuous creation. As Leibniz writes in his Discourse on Metaphysics, “created
substances depend on god, who conserves them and indeed who produces them
continuously by a kind of emanation” (WF, 66).
There is no doubt that Leibniz endorsed CCC, and any view that we are to
attribute to Leibniz ought to be consistent with CCC. This is a problem for
Rutherford, insofar as his attribution of efficient causation to monadic states is, I
submit, not consistent with CCC. If it is true that monadic state M1 is productively
causing M2, it would be quite uncomfortable to say that the monad at T2, in state
M2, is created by God. How could M1 produce something whose complete creation
emanates from God at T2, when M1 does not exist at T2? It is fair enough to say
that we make sense of a succession of monadic states by referring to final causes,
but to say that final causes play a merely epistemic role, that they only serve our
purposes in explanation, and that some other productive causal relationship must
obtain in M1 itself, Rutherford must ignore Leibniz’s commitment to CCC. And any
view of Leibnizian causation that respects CCC simply cannot countenance efficient
causes that emanate from anything except God; the only way for Rutherford to
answer this is to retract his claim that monadic states are efficient causes, but this
claim is integral to his account. The language in section 15 of the Monadology may
be suggestive of monadic states having efficient causal power, but this
suggestiveness is not decisive. To develop from this line a view of Leibnizian
causation according to which CCC cannot be rationally maintained incurs far too
great a cost. Thus, it would fair to regard Rutherford’s account as intractably
inadequate so long as he attributes efficient causation to monadic states. A
preferable account will discard the idea that monadic states are efficient causes,
and make more of the role of final causes in an account of monadic states’ causal
power. Such an account is provided by Sukjae Lee, to whom I now turn. We will see
that Lee’s position is a significant dialectical improvement over Rutherford’s, but
that it will also raise serious problems that demand careful attention.
§II. Lee: Creature Causation as Formal and Final Causation

Sukjae Lee begins his analysis of Leibnizian causation by considering Leibniz’s

status as a divineconcurrentist. Divine concurrentism is the view that created
substances and God both play an important causal role in bringing about new states
of affairs, or as Lee writes “both God and the creature are directly involved in the
occurrence of these effects.” (2004, 1) An important question faced by the
Liebnizian, then, is how CCC and divine concurrentism could be compatible. If God,
in conserving all created substance, is perpetually creating all created substance,
then all subsequent states of the created substance will likewise be caused by God.
On this picture, what role is left for creaturely causation? We have already seen
that this tension is robust enough to render intractably inadequate a Rutherfordian
account that attributes efficient causation to monadic states.

Lee’s solution begins by arguing against reductionism with respect to

causation. Divine concurrentism insists that for each state, S, in a created
substance, both divine will and the substance’s prior states are causally responsible
for bringing about S. Lee’s regards this to be a very uncomfortable position for
Leibniz so long as one regards productive or efficient causation as the only type of
causation, and the type to which all other causal relations ultimately reduce. We
see such a reductivism in Rutherford. In spite of Rutherford’s comfort with
attributing final causation to monadic states, he is not able to shed the notion that,
insofar as monadic states are going to have causal power, then must have
productive, efficient causal power.
But this reductivist view of causation renders concurrentism very puzzling.
How could God and a substance both serve to produce the substance’s future
states? What productive role could the monad possibly play, when it is God that is
at each moment creating the monadic substance? In order to render the position
intelligible, then, we need to appreciate that a variety of relations between states of
affairs may be called, appropriately, causal relationships. In particular, we look to
Aristotle’s four-fold model of causation.
On Aristotle’s four-fold model of causation, this productive cause is the
efficient cause. But there are three other relationships between events that are fit
into the full causal story in the production of an object or state: material, formal,
and final causality. The material cause is “that out of which” the event comes, such
as the bronze out which a statue is sculpted. The formal cause is “the account of
what-it-is-to-be”, for instance the shape which the bronze is sculpted to take. The
final cause is “that for the sake of which a thing is done” or the reason the statue
was sculpted at all (Falcon, 2008). Lee’s account takes it that when a monadic
state, M, obtains, its productive cause is God. There are no productive causal
powers in created substances. Created substances, however, are concurrent in
causing their subsequent states by providing the formal and final causes of those
states. How are we to understand this, and why does Lee think that we should
accept it?
Lee draws our attention to a passage in the Theodicy:
God produces the creature in conformity with the exigency of the preceding instants … and the
creature operates in conformity with that nature which God conveys to it in creating it always.
The limitations and imperfections arise therein through the nature of the subject, which sets
bounds to God’s production; this is the consequence of the original imperfection of creatures.
(T 358)

We recall that one desideratum in a successful account of Leibnizian causation is

that it be compatible with CCC, the thesis that conservation is continuous creation.
This passage, in referring to “God creating [the monad] always”, is clearly
suggestive of CCC, but it adds an interesting condition. If a creature, N, exists at T1
and T2, God’s role in conserving N involves His creating N at T1 and T2 respectively,
according to CCC. But in creating the substance at T2, God does so “in conformity
with the exigency of” N at T1. So the states of the creature at T1 bear directly upon
the way in which N is created at T2. The nature of this bearing, Lee suggests, is
that N at T1 contains within it the reasons for God to create N at T2 in the way that
He does. Lee writes:
My proposal is that the nature of a creature cooperates in the production of the modification
by setting bounds to God’s production in the sense that it provides the reasons that determine
and demand which modification God is to produce among infinite possibilities. (Lee, 221)

In order for God to create N at T2 as he does, there must be a reason for his doing
so, and this reason is to be found in the state of N at T1. These reasons, first,
determine the sort of modification that God will produce in N when creating it at T2.
If this is correct, then the state of N at T1 provides the rational determination for the
way in which N will be modified to exist at T2. In this way, N at T1 provides the
formal cause for the way in which N will be produced at T2. To say that the state of
N at T1 is the formal cause of the state of N at T2 is to say that the monad,
possessed of perceptions of the entirety of the world’s past and history, contains
the perceptual information that provides the rational justification for N’s being a
particular way at T2. Thus, in providing the rational determination for its
subsequent states, N at T1 determines N at T2 and is its formal cause. Distinct, but
related, is the status of N at T1 as the final cause of N at T2, by virtue of the
modification of N that N at T1 demands. Lee writes:
…the present state also provides a reason in another sense, in that the present state will also
demand or urge that this particular state be brought about, by presenting the goodness or
value of the state as a reason for God to bring it into existence over others. (ibid.)

The monad contains perceptions of all of its future and past states, and that
perception “present[s] the goodness or value” of the particular state. So the fact
that a monad perceives its future states not only determines that God will actualize
those future states, but also provides the telos for God’s doing so by providing the
perceptual information that is sufficient for God (by perceiving the monad’s
perceptions) to apprehend the value that would be produced by the monad’s being
so modified. God’s omniperfection determines that he choose and actualize the
best and most harmonious of all possible worlds. The objective value reflecting in
the perceptions of a future state, contained in the monad, determines God’s
actualizing one possible world and not another. In this way, the monad not only
determines its future states, but demands the actualization of its future states by
virtue of representing the value that would be instantiated in their obtaining. In
their role as demanding particular future states, monadic states are the final causes
of their future states.
A successful account of Leibnizian causation ought to respect Leibniz’s divine
concurrentism and his endorsement of CCC. On the picture that Lee paints, Leibniz
is respecting CCC by asserting that divine causation is the only species of
productive, efficient causation. For all configurations of monadic states that
actually obtain, at all actual times, God has, in conserving created substances,
created those substances at those times in the particular modes in which they
actually obtain. But if the story ends here, then we are presupposing causal
reductivism prematurely; the possibility of other, non-productive, non-efficient
causal relationships between events allows that God could indeed be continuously
creating the world and all of its actually existent monadic configurations, while
allowing for created substances status as the final and formal causes of their future
states, insofar as they determine and demand those future states via their
perceptions of those future states. So Lee’s account is successful in rendering
compatible CCC and concurrentism.
However, there are some reasons to be concerned about Lee’s thoroughly
depriving created substances of productive causal power. In particular, there are
two more desiderata that a successful account of Leibnizian causation ought to
satisfy. First, Leibniz believes that persons act freely. Any account of Leibnizian
causation that robs of us of our ability to understand human action as free action is
unacceptable. Second, Leibnizian pre-established harmony is not Malebranchean
occasionalism. If it can be shown that a particular account of Leibnizian causation
renders God the only true cause of all monadic states, this renders the account
unacceptable. In the remainder of this section, I will suggest that Lee’s account is
prima facie problematic in these ways; if monadic states have no productive causal
power whatsoever, it is not immediately clear how agents are free and how Leibniz
is not an occasionalist.
The extent to which Leibniz’s metaphysics allows for genuine free will is
widely discussed. Consider the following passage from the Discourse:
In his ordinary concourse with our actions, God only follows the laws which he has established;
that is to say, he continually conserves and continually produces our being in such a way that
our thoughts occur spontaneously and freely in the order laid down by the notion of our
 individually substance, in which they could be foreseen from all eternity. Furthermore, he
determines our will to choose what appears the best, yet without necessitating it. This is in
virtue of his decision that our will should always tend to the apparent good, thus expressing or
imitating the will of God in certain particular areas, with respect to which this apparent good
always has some truth in it. For speaking absolutely, our will is in a state of indifference,
insofar as indifference is opposed to necessity, and it has the power to do otherwise, or to
suspend its action altogether, both alternatives being and remaining possible. (WF 81)

Particularly suggestive is Leibniz oft cited claim that God inclines the soul towards
the good without necessitating it. This is a very difficult claim to make sense of, but
we are right to ask what sort of faculty a monadic state would have to have in order
to “have the power to do otherwise, or to suspend its action altogether”. Could this
power be understood on the model of final and formal causation alone? Perhaps,
but it is difficult to see how this would work. Lee has suggested that monadic state
M1 is the formal cause of monadic state M2 in virtue of its having a complete (if not
clear) perception of its future states, thus containing the rational determination of
those states. Further, monadic state M1 is the final cause of monadic state M2 in
virtue of its perceptions revealing to God the value that would obtain in M2’s
obtaining, and thus provides the teleological information that determines God to
effectively bringing about M2 in order to actualize the best possible world. But are
either of these models of causation capable of giving to the monad the capacity to
do otherwise then it actually does? They might not. An intuitive idea of what it is to
be free seems to require that a free subject is the productive source of its own
activity. It may be that the rational determination is not enough to ground an
attribution of free agency. It seems that the role monads are being given to play is
not sufficient for their being agentially, freely responsible for their future monadic
states. I will address this worry, and suggest that it need not be worrisome, in IV.1.
Next, it is unclear that Lee’s account provides a sufficiently robust distinction
between occasionalism and pre-established harmony. Lee has written at length to
ward off this objection, and I take his position on the matter to be summarized in
this quote:
A key difference is that Leibniz accepts the force of reasons as a genuine type of causation
while Malebranche does not. Putting the main difference this way might lead to the worry that,
when faced with Leibniz’s account of divine concurrence as I have been describing it,
Malebranche might simply say that if this is all that is meant by concurrence, then he’d be
happy to be a concurrentist as well. The difference, however, is not merely terminological: it is
not simply an issue of who calls the force of reasons what. There is a real and substantial
disagreement here in that I believe Leibniz thinks that the force of reasons is genuinely causal
and, by implication, that Malebranche is wrong to not take them as such. And the basis for this
disagreement, I believe, lies in a substantial difference between how Leibniz conceived of his
reasons and Malebranche of his occasions. So my basic response to this worry that my account
of Leibnizian concurrence collapses into Malebranche occasionalism will be that (1) Leibniz’s
 inclusion of formal and final, that is, “rationally determining,” causes on the roster of genuine
causes is the crucial difference between Malebranche and him, (2) there is an argument to be
made on Leibniz’s behalf to justify this inclusion, based on how Leibnizian reasons and
Malebranchean occasions differ, and (3) nonetheless, Malebranche would probably reject this
argument in that he would find that the Leibnizian conception of a rationally determining cause
(that is, reasons that motivate but do not necessitate) somewhat lacking, and thus too
problematic to be included in the pantheon of genuine causes. (Lee 230)

This is a satisfying argument for the claim that Leibniz’s metaphysics is distinct
from Malebranche’s metaphysics, but this was claim was arguably never the worry.
The worry was not that Leibniz had the same picture of the universe as
Malebranche (he clearly did not) but that Leibniz’s view, fully explicated, would
nonetheless be its own form of occasionalism. I would suggest that, with due
respect to the distinction Lee is drawing, we don’t yet have sufficient reason to
discard this worry. This can be seen by looking at the way in which the monad is
alleged to be the final and formal cause of its future states. Lee has argued that a
monad causes its future states because it perceives those future states, and thus
rationally determines God to actualize them, and that those perceptions include the
value produced by those future states, which teleologically determines God to
actualize them. But, of course, an omniscient God also has a complete perception
of the monads perceptions, including those of the monad’s future states and of the
value that inheres in those future states. Indeed, God’s perceptions of those states
are far clearer than the monad’s own. If the monad’s perceptions of its future
states are sufficient to for the monad to be the final and formal cause of its future
states, then God’s perceptions are even better poised to provide the same
contribution. It appears that on the model Lee is proposing, God is productive, final,
and formal cause. For every causal role that needs occupying, including final and
formal causal roles, God is best poised to play that role. This seems occasionalistic.
There is, once again, no causal role left over for the monad to play.
This might be too quick. Occasionalism is the theory that God is the only
cause. This is not equivalent to saying that God is has the potential to play every
cause. In what I have said above, I have shown that Lee’s attribution of formal and
final causation to monads is motivated by their containing representations of all
their future states, and additionally containing the reasons for those future states
and the value that will inhere in those future states. I have suggested that God,
because he is in possession of the same representations, and indeed possesses
them more clearly than the monad itself, is as well or better poised to fulfill the
same causal roles. But perhaps we can resolve this, and absolve Leibniz from the
charge of occasionalism by allowing for over-determination. If God, as the
aforementioned suggests, is the formal, final and efficient cause of all monadic
states, and monadic states are simultaneously the formal and final causes of their
future states, then occasionalism is false, strictly speaking. God is poised to play
every causal role, but God is not the only cause. If we can countenance
overdetermination, than perhaps Leibniz is not an occasionalist.
This is a common enough solution to related contemporary problems with
free will and agent causation. Many have sought to maintain a place for free will
and agent causation in a physicalist, deterministic universe by suggesting that
there is nothing problematic about molecular states and psychological states both
being given causal status with respect to a subsequent psychological state.
Unfortunately it is not available to Leibniz. For Leibniz and his contemporaries, a
causal theory that relied upon overdetermination was not acceptable; it signaled a
gratuitious excess of causal forces, and was in tension with divine simplicity. If this
is the only way to protect Leibniz from the charge of occasionalism, than the
Leibnizian has an unhappy choice to make between unacceptable consequences.
Thankfully, it is not the only response available.
As I have said, I think that Lee has available answers to both of these
objections, answers that I will elaborate upon in section four. In fact, both
difficulties will be answered in the same way, by recognizing that the monad is self-
sufficient and independent as a possibility, though dependent upon God for its
actuality. The monad, as mere possibility, has a complete individual concept that
decides all of the states it would enter into were it to be actualized. In section four I
will also provide some independent reasons for thinking that Lee’s account is the
best account on offer. To foreshadow, I will attempt to allay worries about non-
efficient causes by pointing to Leibniz’s correspondence with Bayle, which I think is
strongly suggestive of a model of causation that is friendly to Lee’s proposal.
§IV: Evaluation of Lee’s Account
In this final section, I will show (IV.1) that Lee has a solution to the problems
raised in the previous section. Subsequently, (IV.2) I will provide some independent
reasons to think that Lee’s account deserves a place of privilege in the current
dialectic. Finally, however, (IV.3) I show that the solution provided in IV.1 raises a
new problem. This problem, though (I think) tractable, raises deeper problems for
Lee’s account than those raised in section III, and discerning an appropriate solution
will provide some promising avenues for future research.
§IV.1: Freedom and Occasionalism
In section II, I argued that Lee’s account raised some prima facie problems in
light of Leibniz’s views regarding occasionalism and free will. In this section, I
attempt to disarm those problems, and suggest that they need not be worrisome.
This disarmament will be fostered by our appreciating the relationship between
Leibniz’s God and possibility. God, by virtue of being omniperfect, is determined to
efficiently produce the best possible world. Presented with an infinitude of possible
monadic configurations, God is able to perceive the resultant value in each of those
worlds, and actualizes the best among them. As the only efficient cause of a
monadic configuration’s being actualized, God makes all the actual things actual.
However, God does not make all of the possible things possible. Possible monadic
configurations, amounting to possible worlds, are logically antecedent to God’s
entrance upon the scene. God is not the source of possibility, only the source of
actuality.1 Prior to God’s perceiving a possible world, that possible world is
completely determined as a series of monadic states that would obtain if the world
were actualized, and each constituent monad has a complete individual concept
that determines the entire succession of states that would obtain in the monad
were actualized. In actualizing a particular world, God does not determine the
succession of monadic states that obtain in the world considered as possible; He
rather causes it to be the case that this possible world, rather than any other, will
be made actual.
How does this solve the problems of free will and occasionalism presented in
section III? It has the potential to solve both. First, let us to consider free will. One
thing is abundantly clear: Leibniz endorses a view that would, in the contemporary
literature, be called compatibilism. He believes that free will and determinism are
not incompatible with one another. In light of the considerations in III, this may
seem like a hand-waving cop out, but by recognizing that God is the source of
actuality rather than possibility, we can now see a principled reason to attribute
free agency to monads. We recall, from above, that Leibniz says of monads that
they could do otherwise than they do, and it seemed unclear how this could be true

1
All references to “priority” and “antecedence” in what follows should be read as “logically
prior” and “logically antecedent”. I don’t mean to be making claims about a temporal order.
when God is the only efficient cause. However, when God actualizes a world that is
antecedently possible, the antecedently possible monad, as possibility, is genuinely
the source of all of its appetitive transitions between the possible monadic states
contained in its complete individual concept. There is an unthreatening sense in
which a monad couldn’t do otherwise than it does: if the monad were in any way
different it would have a different complete individual concept, and would be a
constituent of a different possible world. But the reason that this monad, with its
complete individual concept, is actualized, is because of the role it plays in a
possible world that is maximally good. Once actualized, the monad itself, whose
succession of monadic states was determined in the monad as possibility, is the
determinant of all successive monadic states that God will actualize.
This may seem rather unrecognizable as a form of compatibilism, but a brief
reflection will show that it has a good deal in common with contemporary
compatibilism. The insight of contemporary compatibilism is that hard determinists
have taken unwarranted liberties in assuming what the concept of free will contains.
The hard determinist has assumed that in order for the agent to be free, the agent
must serve as the productive cause of all its actions. If molecular or neural activity
is a more plausible constituent of a complete efficient causal story than the agent’s
thoughts or volitions, then the agent is not causing its action in a way that free will
would require. Or, so hard determinism argues. The compatibilist, on the other
hand, argues that free will was never so intimately tied to productive causation.
Rather, the most important component of an agent’s freedom is her possession of
the rational determination of the actions. That is, the free agent is one that acts on
her desires, that forms long term goals and works toward their fulfillment, and who
is responsive to reasons for and against acting in a particular way. Similarly, for the
Leibnizian compatibilist, the monad (as antecedent possibility) contains
representations of all its future and past states, and representations of the rational
determination that guides the succession from one state to another. God may, at
each instant, be the source of the monad’s actuality, but the monad itself is the
source of its rationality. This, it can be further noted, fits very comfortably with
Lee’s account of monads as formal causes of their future states. I conclude, then,
that conceiving of monads as formal and final causes of their future states, which
are prior, as possibility, to God’s actualization of them, provides a fairly neat answer
to the question of free will. Rather than problematizing Leibniz’s comments on free
will, Lee’s account illuminates them, and makes them newly intelligible.
I also argued in section III that, if Lee’s view is to be acceptable, it must be
capable of drawing a very sharp divide between pre-established harmony and
occasionalism. If monadic states are the causes of their future states in virtue of
their determining and demanding those states, and if their status as determining
and demanding those states is grounded in their having perceptions of those future
states and the value that would inhere therein, then a natural question is why God,
more clearly reperesenting those same states, could not likewise serve as the final
and formal cause of monadic states. We further saw that allowing for causal over-
determination, though possibly comforting to a contemporary audience, would not
have been a viable option for Leibniz.
Once again, the considerations with which I began this section will serve to
solve the problem of occasionalism. Once again, God is the source of actuality, but
not of possibility; the best of possible worlds, the one that God actualizes, is
logically antecedent to God as a possibility. The possible world that God actualizes
is already a possible configuration of monads, each in possession of their
completely determinate individual concept. If this is to be an occasionalistic
picture, than God must be the only cause that is active in the actual world being as
it is. But here we can see that this picture in no way suggests that God is solely
causally responsible for the actual world’s being the way it is. He is the only cause
of the actual world’s being actual, the only force that produces actual states out of
possible states. But this is nothing more than to say that God is the only efficient
cause. The configuration of monads that produces the maximal amount of good is
antecedently existent as a possibility, and contains in itself the determinate
rationality behind, and the representation of the value produced by, this particular
possible world. Though God alone causes the world to be actual, the world itself,
even as mere possibility and without prior action by God, independently contains
the rationality and value that inheres in that world if actualized. So the role that
monads play in rationally determining and normatively demanding their succession
of future states is, in fact, not a role that God is equipped to play. Monads fill a part
of the causal story that God does not fill, and cannot fill by virtue of his not being
the source of possibility.
 This not only shows that Lee’s LIeibniz does not reduce to an occasionalist,
but it further illuminates the sense in which the dispute between Malebranche and
Leibniz is not merely terminological…it is not a trivial fight over what gets to be
called a cause and what does not. Rather, a complete Leibnizian metaphysic
contains a novel source of determination in which God plays no part whatsoever. I
thus conclude that the model of monadic states as formal and final causes of their
future states will not force Malebranche into an uncomfortable occasionalism.
§IV.2: Dispositions as Causes
For all that has been said so far, I think that Lee’s view is in an extremely
strong dialectical position. I will provide one more reason to think well of Lee’s
account, prior to raising an issue that I think may give Lee some problems.
It is reasonable to ask whether Leibniz was comfortable with a notion of
causal relationships that severs any productive relationship between the relata.
Discomfort with this idea may have motivated the epistemic/metaphysical division
of labor that Rutherford attempts to introduce. Is there reason to think that Leibniz
was comfortable referring to nonproductive entities as causes? In this section, I
appeal to remarks Leibniz makes in his correspondence with Bayle in order to
suggest that the answer is yes. In the letter to which Leibniz is here responding,
Bayle is attempting to understand how it could be that a dog’s monad could
transition from pleasure to pain by virtue of the dogs body being struck
(surprisingly) by a stick. In particular, Bayle wants to know, how could such a
transition be a transition to greater perfection? In his response, Leibniz makes
comments that are suggestive in their attribution of causal powers to dispositions.
Leibniz writes
Thus the causes which move the stick…are also represented in the dog’s soul from the outset,
exactly and truly, but feebly, by small confused perceptions and without apperception….and
just as in the history of the material world these dispositions eventually produce the blow
firmly on the dog’s body, so similarly the representations of these dispositions in the dog’s soul
eventually produce the representation of the blow of the stick; and since that representation is
prominent and strong (which the representations of the predispositions were not, since the
predispositions affected the dog’s body only feebly), the dog apperceives it very distinctly, and
this is what constitutes its pain. (WF T11.E, emphasis added)

This passage makes an interesting claim, one that warrants closer inspection.
Notice that the object of inquiry is “the causes which move the stick”. A few lines
later, we see that “these dispositions eventually produce the blow firmly on the
dog’s body, so similarly the representations of these dispositions in the dog’s soul
eventually produce the representation of the blow of the stick”. What, we ask, are
these dispositions? The only appropriate antecedent is “the causes which move the
stick”. It appears, then, that the causes which move the stick are themselves
dispositions.
We noted several times in IV.1 that the monad’s prior to their actualization by
God, exist as possibilities, whose rational and teleological determination exists
antecedently within the monad’s complete individual concept. Further, these
rational determinations which determine possible successions of monadic states
exist as dispositions, they determine what perceptual states the monad would be in
if it were actualized, and the reasons that would govern those states if they were
actually made to obtain. These rational and teleological determinations, which exist
in the monads antecedent to and independent of any divine involvement, are
essentially dispositions for certain states to obtain if the monad is actualized. The
above passage suggests that we should not be uncomfortable with referring to such
dispositions as causes. But, I suggest, dispositions are in no sense efficient causes.
My disposition to drink water when I am thirsty does not itself act as an efficient
cause of my drinking water at any given time. Rather, the disposition itself is the
tendency of certain other states of affairs, namely my being thirsty, to reliably
cause me to drink the water. The disposition itself is merely a regularity between
certain states of affairs, not a productive power by which certain states of affairs
are brought about. If Leibniz is comfortable calling dispositions causes, this is
strongly suggestive that one of the causal powers that inhere in monads is the
tendency for certain monadic states to follow actualized monadic states, by virtue
of the rational and teleological determinations which exist in the monad and call for
those states to be actualized in the event that their prior states are actualized.
Insofar as the antecedently existent possible monads determine a series of
monadic states by providing the rational relationships between those monadic
states, those determinations are dispositional. That is, given a monad’s
actualization, the productive source of which is God alone, a monad’s containment
of the reasons for future states and the values that will inhere therein will determine
certain future monadic states’ being actualized. Recall that the formal and final
causal relationships between monadic states themselves exist in possible monads,
antecedent to those monad’s being actualized; such causal relationships obtain
completely in non-actualized possible worlds, as they obtain without any
involvement from God. Thus, since such causal relationships determine the
succession of states that would obtain should God actualize a particular world, they
are dispositions. Leibniz’s willingness to refer to dispositions as causes in his
correspondence with Bayle should inspire confidence in an interpretation of Leibniz
that attributes genuine causal powers to monadic states.
I draw attention to this in order to buttress Lee’s account of intrasubstantial
causation. It should be clear that Leibniz would be comfortable, as Lee suggests he
would be, with assigning causal power full stop to monadic states even if those
states exist in no efficient causal relationship with their future states. If the above
passage is representative of Leibniz’s view, this should ameliorate the concerns
some might have with assigning real causal status to final and formal causes.
§IV.3: Monadic Domination
Until now I have been building up the case for interpreting monadic causation
as formal and final causation. I hope that what has been said so far is sufficient to
grant substantial dialectical strength to Lee’s position. However, I do think that
Lee’s account has one significant problem. In this final section, I will suggest that
Lee’s account may have trouble reconciling two platitudes any Leibnizian
metaphysic. First, monads do not exist in a causal relationship with one another.
There is no intersubstantial causation, except that which obtains between monads
and God. Second, corporeal substances are composed of an infinitude of separate
monads that exist in domination/subordination relationship with one another. The
suggestion of this section will be that monadic domination, combined with Lee’s
account of Leibnizian causation, implies intersubstantial causation.
The dominant monad is the monad that gives the corporeal substance its
unique, conscious and unified point of view. The monad’s making up the body of
the corporeal substance are subordinate to the dominant monad. Given the
premise that there is no intersubstantial causation, this domination/submission
relationship ought not to imply a causal relationship between monads of any sort.
And indeed, by all accounts it does not. The dominant monad is dominant by virtue
of its clearer perception of the reasons that govern the transitions between monadic
states that obtain in subordinate monads. The dominant monad is uniquely in
possession of the rationality that governs the activity of a corporeal substance as a
whole, in a way that the subordinate monads, though they are instrumental in the
action of the greater organism, are relatively blind to. While each monad contains
perceptions of the entire universe at all times, these perceptions are by and large
confused and obscure. The dominant monad is superior to its subordinate monads
in that it not only clearly perceives the perceptions of the subordinate monads, but
it does so in a way that reveals the rationality of the subordinate monads
perceptions and appetitions in a manner that is far clearer than the subordinate
monads’ perceptions of one another or of the dominant monad.
This raises a problem, one that needs to be addressed before Lee’s account
can be regarded as satisfactory. Monadic domination, on most reasonable
interpretations, takes the monad’s status as dominant to consist in its having
relatively clear perceptions of the perceptions of its subordinate monads, as well as
the rationality that underlies transitions between monadic states in those monads,
and the value that will inhere in the monads transitioning as they do. On Lee’s
account, the monadic state M1 is deserving of being called the cause of M2 by
virtue of its perceptions of future states providing the rational determination of M2
and the teleological demand for M2. The relationship between monadic states in
intrasubstantial causation and between distinct monads in monadic domination are
strikingly, and problematically, similar. It is difficult to see what principled
distinction could be drawn according to which one of these is a causal relationship
and the other is not. Monads exist in causal isolation from one another. If the
dominant monads perceptions of its subordinate monads perceptions and the telos
that govern their appetitions does not entail that the dominant monad can serve as
the final and formal cause of the subordinate monads perceptual states, why does
the same model serve to vindicate the causal status of the monad’s intrasubstantial
transition between states? The worry is that Lee’s account of intrasubstantial
causation yields the unacceptable consequence that dominant monads can act as
final and formal causes of their subordinate monads’ perceptual states.
Notice further that while appreciating God’s status as the source of actuality
but not possibility was able to allay our previous concerns, such is not a viable
response to the present worry. Monads exist, as possible monads, prior to God’s
actualizing them, and the rational and teleological determinations that govern their
series of perceptual states obtain dispositionally among possible monads without
any help from God. This, however, will not show a significant distinction between
intrasubstantial causation and monadic domination. A dominant monad and its
subordinates both exist concurrently as possible monads prior to their actualization
by God. Just as each monad’s complete individual concept exists as possibility prior
to actualization, and thus provides the rational determination for the monad’s series
of perception, so two distinct monads, with their respective complete individual
concepts, exist as possibilities prior to God’s actualization, and their possibility
contains the complete determination that would provide the rational basis for
domination/subordination relationships that obtain among them. Appealing to
monads’ existing as possibilities prior to their actualization will not serve to
distinguish between intrasubstantial causation and domination/subordination.
This final problem is, I believe, tractable. Solving it will require pointing to a
relevant difference between the manner in which the monad perceives its future
states and the values that inhere in those states and the manner in which the
dominant monad perceives the perceptions of its subordinate monads. One
possible way to articulate this difference is to argue that the perceptions of a single
monad cannot exert causal influence of any sort upon a distinct monad because one
monad’s perception of another monad’s perceptions can only be an awareness of,
and not a determination of, the reasons that underlie the transitions in perceptual
states that the dominant monad perceives. I have a hard time imagining, however,
a formulation of this response that does not, ultimately, rest on the unargued
assumption that whatever is obtaining between dominant and subordinate monads,
it can’t be causal. Alternatively, one could argue from the existential dependence
of a monad upon its future states. When a monad perceives its future states, the
object of its perception cannot be destroyed without the monad itself being
destroyed. Contrastingly, when a monad perceives a subordinate monad’s future
states, the object of this perception could be destroyed without destroying (indeed,
without even effecting) the first monad. Though it is clear enough that this would
be a difference, it is not clear that it is the relevant difference that Lee needs. It is
not clear that this sort of difference would be the difference between a causal
relationship and a non-causal relationship. These responses have some potential,
but more work needs to be done ensuring that the distinction drawn between these
two relationships is both relevant and principled. I will not attempt to provide a
decisive answer to this question here, and I think that the search for a satisfying
account of the relevant difference will provide a fruitful starting point for future
research on this topic.
 In conclusion, conditioned upon a satisfying answer to this latter query, I
hope to have shown Lee’s account occupies the strongest position in the current
dialectic. I have argued that construing intrasubstantial causation as formal and
final causation (1) is equipped render compatible concurrentism and Leibniz’s view
of divine conservation, (2) is not a problem for Leibniz’s compatibilism concerning
free will and determinism, and (3) does not force Leibniz into an unacceptable
commitment to occasionalism. I have suggested, however, that future research
needs to confront and refute the worry that this account entails the existence of
intersubstantial causation between dominant and subordinate monads.

Works Cited
Works By Leibniz
(WF) Philosophical Texts, edited by R.S. Woolhouse and Richard Francks. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1998.
(T) Theodicy, edited by W. Stark and translated by E.M. Huggard. New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1952)

Other Works
Falcon, Andrea, "Aristotle on Causality", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
edited by Edward N. Zalta. 2008.
Lee, Sukjae. "Leibniz on Divine Concurrence," The Philosophical Review 113:2
(2004) 203 – 248.
Rutherford, Donald. “Leibniz on Spontaneity.” In Leibniz: Nature and Freedom,
edited by Donald Rutherford and J.A. Cover, 156-180. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2005.