Jo,
Thanks for adding your helpful perspective and observations. If you know of a good, simple, online reference summarizing and/referencing the principles and physicists you are referring to, I'd appreciate hearing about it. Otherwise, perhaps that would be a productive branch for you, Roger, and others to follow-up with if that's what leads you to think that Leibniz's thinking is the foundational cat's meow of consciousness research rather than someone else other others.
My perspective, when we drift back to prognostic about the earlier days of the 1600's is that the educational principle which Jon Amos Comenius sought (see header at magnetictetrahedra dot com), called out for the then as yet undiscovered, underlying principle of structured~duality. Descartes' instance: cube/subject-object, did become popular and set the tone for developments for the initial 350+ year phase of the scientific method.
Entering the second phase here in the early 21st century, though, does call for some structural adjustments, error correction and/or paradigmatic transition. It's been enough for me during the last 30 years to merely echo and point out that Descartes' instance is a good enough initial approximation but it generally misses the tetrahedral structure of the natural world. And that miss is pretty fundamental. It sounds like, Jo, you are saying that parallel developments in physics to "anomalies", particularly in the internally nested non-classical realms have been or seem to be supported by Leibniz-like attributes or apparent precedences. Considering the principles of "both and more", and "one world -- many descriptions", or to look straight into nested fields within nested fields, that would make sense, wouldn't it?
I don't think, however, that a simple switch or elevation from Descartes to Leibniz properly fills the bill. It might make nice for the kind of retrofitted simplifications we see in textbooks, but the facts are that Descartes put forth one helpful instance and Leibniz put forth another helpful instance. Both are important and viewing both within the developing context is rather necessary to flesh out the more robust, more unified view into which we are transitioning.
The misplaced debate, chit-chat and name-calling about physicalists and mentalists, is another case in point in the favor of the emerging underlying structured~duality. Readers MAY be able to capture the drift here simply by considering these as two categories of structure: a physical structure and a mental structure. Getting uppity or prejudiced about one form of nested structure versus another form of nested structure (or particularly, of various forms of nested structured~duality) is just downright myopic. Yes, I suppose all of these comparisons may better be seen as battles of sets of dueling mirror neurons -- of habituated clumps of nested structured~dualities, but again, the important point is the underlying foundation is nested structure. What is the basis for one claiming green-painted nested structure is more fundamental than red-painted structure other than personal predilection? Or claiming physical structure versus mental structure, WHATEVER those two interrelated distinctions may actually mean? The Leibnizian instance differs from the Cartesian instance, however, both are instances. It is important and helpful to keep those facts and other facts and features in focus.
The entire initial phase is provisional. As significant as Leinbiz is, he is not, and there is not actually an accurate, simplistic one-person dead-poet textbook fix.
