The Leibniz-Fouillé Argument for the Compatibility of Succession and Determinism

Abstract

In the mind of an average, classical determinist, succession and logical implication were simply juxtaposed and their incompatibility veiled by the ambiguity of the words “follows”, “antecedent”, and “consequent”, which were understood in both a temporal and logical sense. As long as he realized that temporal and logical sequence were two different things, he was satisfied to say that they were both empirically correlated; in other words, that the coexistence of causal necessity and succession was a datum of experience which did not need to be explained. But in a few instances an attempt was made to make this correlation intelligible, in other words, to explain it. Such was the case of the once famous French philosopher and psychologist, Alfred Fouille.