Continuing philosopher Graham Harman's work on Occasionalism in the context of Object Oriented Ontology, in 2020 Simon Weir proposed an alternate view of the relationship between Quantum theory and Occasionalism, opposed to the Copenhagen Interpretation, where virtual particles act as one of many kinds of mediating sensual objects.
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Hence the doctrine is named occasionalism. Malebranche was well-known and celebrated in his own time, but has since become somewhat of an obscure figure in the history of western philosophy. His philosophy had a profound effect on it, however, through its influence upon Spinoza and Hume, whose problem of causation was influenced by Malebranche’s occasionalism. It’s possible that Malebranche also influenced George Berkeley, although he rejects any association with Malebranche beyond superficial similarities.
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A prominent version of parallelism is called occasionalism. Defended by Nicolas Malebranche (1638–1715), occasionalism agrees that mind and body are separated but does not agree with Descartes's explanation of how the two interact. For Malebranche, God intercedes if there was a need for the mind and body to interact. For example, if the body is injured, God is aware of the injury and makes the mind, or the person (subject of experience), feel pain.
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A nonce word (also called an occasionalism) is a lexeme created for a single occasion to solve an immediate problem of communication.The Cambridge Encyclopedia of The English Language. Ed. David Crystal. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
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In reality, the mind and body are not actually in contact with each other, it just seems that way because God is intervening. Occasionalism can be considered as parallelism with divine intervention, because if God did not mediate between the mind and body, there would not be any interaction between the two.
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Occasionalism is a philosophical theory about causation which says that created substances cannot be efficient causes of events. Instead, all events are taken to be caused directly by God. (A related theory, which has been called "occasional causation", also denies a link of efficient causation between mundane events, but may differ as to the identity of the true cause that replaces them.Steven Nadler, 'The Occasionalism of Louis de la Forge', in Nadler (ed.), Causation in Early Modern Philosophy (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993), 57–73; Nadler, 'Descartes and Occasional Causation', British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 2 (1994) 35–54.) The theory states that the illusion of efficient causation between mundane events arises out of God's causing of one event after another.
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Economic historian Joel Mokyr has argued that Islamic philosopher al-Ghazali (1058–1111) "was a key figure in the decline in Islamic science", as his works contributed to rising mysticism and occasionalism in the Islamic world. Against this view, Saliba (2007) has given a number of examples especially of astronomical research flourishing after the time of al-Ghazali.
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793; Google Books. Gousset published a Hebrew lexicon: Commentarii linguae ebraicae (1702), later editions as Lexicon linguae hebraicae. He was also a defender of Cartesianism against occasionalism. He had known Louis de La Forge from early life, and had talked to him then on the underlying philosophical issues, and for this reason took him to be the founder of the occasionalist theory.
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When I will that my arm should rise, my volition is the "occasion" or the "occasional cause" of the movement of my arm; the efficient cause of both my volition and the movement of my arm is God. Malebranche's doctrine, which could be found in contemporary commentaries on Aristotle, and which first appeared in certain Arab philosophers, is therefore called "occasionalism".
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Louis de La Forge (1632–1666) was a French philosopher who in his Tractatus de mente humana (Traité de l'esprit de l'homme, 1664; in English, "Treatise on the Human Mind") expounded a doctrine of occasionalism. He was born in La Flèche and died in Saumur. He was a friend of Descartes, and one of the most able interpreters of Cartesianism.
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With regard to this second half of Malebranche's occasionalism, Hume wrote: :We are got into fairy land, long ere we have reached the last steps of our theory. ...Our line is too short to fathom such immense abysses.An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, section 7, part 1. Hume's empiricist epistemology led him to distrust Malebranche's confidence in discovering abstruse metaphysical truths through an intellectual union with God.
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Four varieties of dualist causal interaction. The arrows indicate the direction of causations. Mental and physical states are shown in red and blue, respectively. Interactionism can be distinguished from competing dualist theories of causation, including epiphenomenalism (which admits causation, but views causation as unidirectional rather than bidirectional), and parallelism (which denies causation, while seeking to explain the semblance of causation by other means such as pre-established harmony or occasionalism).
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Nicolas Malebranche, Oratory of Jesus (; ; 6 August 1638 – 13 October 1715), was a French OratorianNot to be confused with the Congregation of the Oratory of Saint Philip Neri. priest and rationalist philosopher. In his works, he sought to synthesize the thought of St. Augustine and Descartes, in order to demonstrate the active role of God in every aspect of the world. Malebranche is best known for his doctrines of vision in God, occasionalism and ontologism.
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Morris Ginsberg with students c.1930. In his thesis on Malebranche, Ginsberg mainly argued against Mario Novaro's criticisms of Malebranche's theory of occasionalism, claiming that Novaro "entirely ignored the main difference between Hume and Malebranche in regard to causality. Malebranche does not, in truth, deny a necessary connection between cause and effect."W. C. Swabey, review of Ginsberg's translation of the Dialogues on Metaphysics and on Religion by Nicholas Malebranche, in The Philosophical Review, Vol.
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Alfred North Whitehead and, later, David Ray Griffin framed a new ontology (process philosophy) seeking precisely to avoid the pitfalls of ontological dualism.Weber, Michel, and Anderson Weekes, eds. 2009. Process Approaches to Consciousness in Psychology, Neuroscience, and Philosophy of Mind, Whitehead Psychology Nexus Studies II. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. The explanation provided by Arnold Geulincx and Nicolas Malebranche is that of occasionalism, where all mind–body interactions require the direct intervention of God.
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Early Islamic philosophy and Islamic metaphysics, imbued as it is with Islamic theology, distinguishes more clearly than Aristotelianism between essence and existence. Whereas existence is the domain of the contingent and the accidental, essence endures within a being beyond the accidental. The philosophy of Avicenna, particularly that part relating to metaphysics, owes much to al-Farabi. The search for a definitive Islamic philosophy separate from Occasionalism can be seen in what is left of his work.
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In 1993, Karen Harding's paper "Causality Then and Now: Al Ghazali and Quantum Theory" described several "remarkable" similarities between Ghazali's concept of occasionalism and the widely accepted Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. She stated: "In both cases, and contrary to common sense, objects are viewed as having no inherent properties and no independent existence. In order for an object to exist, it must be brought into being either by God (al Ghazili) or by an observer (the Copenhagen Interpretation)." She also stated:.
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The nature of causality is systematically investigated in several academic disciplines, including philosophy and physics. In academia, there are a significant number of theories on causality; The Oxford Handbook of Causation encompasses 770 pages. Among the more influential theories within philosophy are Aristotle's Four causes and Al-Ghazali's occasionalism. David Hume argued that beliefs about causality are based on experience, and experience similarly based on the assumption that the future models the past, which in turn can only be based on experience – leading to circular logic.
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Occasionalism is a philosophical doctrine about causation which says that created substances cannot be efficient causes of events. Instead, all events are taken to be caused directly by God itself. The theory states that the illusion of efficient causation between mundane events arises out of a constant conjunction that God had instituted, such that every instance where the cause is present will constitute an "occasion" for the effect to occur as an expression of the aforementioned power. This "occasioning" relation, however, falls short of efficient causation.
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Press 1997 Apparently he found with it a convenient way to expose his own philosophy as it was elaborated in this period. What he proposed can be seen as a modification of occasionalism developed by latter-day Cartesians. Leibniz surmised that there are indefinitely many substances individually 'programmed' to act in a predetermined way, each substance being coordinated with all the others. This is the pre-established harmony which solved the mind-body problem, but at the cost of declaring any interaction between substances a mere appearance.
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The nature of causality is systematically investigated in several academic disciplines, including philosophy and physics. In academia, there are a significant number of theories on causality; The Oxford Handbook of Causation encompasses 770 pages. Among the more influential theories within philosophy are Aristotle's Four causes and Al-Ghazali's occasionalism. David Hume argued that beliefs about causality are based on experience, and experience similarly based on the assumption that the future models the past, which in turn can only be based on experience – leading to circular logic.
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Occasionalism and the vision in God seem to make the real existence of material substance redundant. Not only is it unable to be directly perceived, but it cannot actually affect us or anything else in any way at all. Descartes had also maintained that matter was not directly perceivable, but he had argued that the veracity of God could support a proof of its certain existence. Malebranche, however, weakened Descartes' argument, concluding that, from a philosophical point of view, its existence could only be shown to be probable.
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Al-Ghazali also used the theory to support his theory of occasionalism. In a sense, the Asharite theory of atomism has far more in common with Indian atomism than it does with Greek atomism. Other traditions in Islam rejected the atomism of the Asharites and expounded on many Greek texts, especially those of Aristotle. An active school of philosophers in Al-Andalus, including the noted commentator Averroes (1126-1198 CE) explicitly rejected the thought of al-Ghazali and turned to an extensive evaluation of the thought of Aristotle.
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Philosophically speaking, Knutzen took an anti-Leibnizian standpoint, sustaining that the theory of pre- established harmony was as wrong, just like occasionalism, and that the only reasonable theory was that of physical influx, as suggested by Locke and corpuscularism. In fact, Leibniz’ theory of pre-established harmony in its strictest form was unacceptable for Knutzen on theological grounds. There were also differences and controversy between what Knutzen, Kant, Leibniz, Descartes and Newton thought about the concept of living force, dead pressure and momentum. And yet again, Newton was right in the end.
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The Incoherence of the Philosophers, written by the scholar Al- Ghazali (1058–1111), marks a major turn in Islamic epistemology. His encounter with skepticism led Ghazali to embrace a form of theological occasionalism, or the belief that all causal events and interactions are not the product of material conjunctions but rather the immediate and present will of God. While he himself was a critic of the philosophers, Ghazali was a master in the art of philosophy and had immensely studied the field. After such a long education in philosophy, as well as a long process of reflection, he had criticized the philosophical method.
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It was there that he first suggested that the technological and economic decline of the Muslim world was partly due to its embrace of the Ash'arite school of theology, which he regarded as fatalistic. He was particularly hostile to the occasionalism that became dominant in medieval Muslim thought, holding that its denial of the existence of secondary (created) causes hindered scientific enquiry.Saleh, Modern Trends in Islamic Theological Discourse in 20th Century Indonesia p.198-200 Nasution's solution was to defend a revival of the Mutazila view, which was (and still is) widely regarded by Muslims as a heresy.
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The Incoherence of the Philosophers propounds the Asharite theory of occasionalism. Al-Ghazali wrote that when fire and cotton are placed in contact, the cotton is burned directly by God rather than by the fire, a claim which he defended using logic in Islamic philosophy. He explained that because God is usually seen as rational, rather than arbitrary, his behavior in normally causing events in the same sequence (i.e., what appears to us to be efficient causation) can be understood as a natural outworking of that principle of reason, which we then describe as the laws of nature.
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According to the Jewish Torah which brought down the original idea in Genesis, the phrase "free will" is a mistranslation from the Torah, rather what humans are given is "freedom to choose". Freedom to choose to do God's Will at all times even though God gave us a good inclination and a not-good inclination to use in choosing, we are told "Therefore choose life". Occasionalism itself was derived from the earlier school of thought of “volunteerism” emanating from Al-Ash'ari who held that every particle in the universe must be constantly recreated each instant by God's direct intervention.
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Oleg Grabar characterizes forms in Islamic architecture as having relatively low levels of symbolism. While conceding this in a general sense, Yasser Tabbaa maintains that certain forms were initially very highly symbolic and only lost such associations over time. The phenomenon of muqarnas domes, in particular, is an example. Tabbaa explains the development and spread of muqarnas domes throughout the Islamic world beginning in the early 11th century as the visual expression of a theological idea of the universe propounded by the Ash'arites (a modification of the Atomism of Aristotle with Occasionalism), which rose to prominence in Baghdad at this time.
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His 11th century book titled The Incoherence of the Philosophers marks a major turn in Islamic epistemology. The encounter with skepticism led al-Ghazali to investigate a form of theological occasionalism, or the belief that all causal events and interactions are not the product of material conjunctions but rather the immediate and present will of God. In the next century, Averroes drafted a lengthy rebuttal of al-Ghazali's Incoherence entitled The Incoherence of the Incoherence; however, the epistemological course of Islamic thought had already been set. Al-Ghazali gave as an example of the illusion of independent laws of cause the fact that cotton burns when coming into contact with fire.
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He is noted particularly for his view that we see all things in God and for his adoption of psycho-physical parallelism and 'occasionalism' to deal with the problem of interaction between mind and body. However, his attribution of epistemological and explanatory primacy to God leads to difficulties. (1) If we see all things in God in the sense that He puts the ideas into our minds we can have no direct knowledge of the external world. We can appeal to clear and distinct ideas as a criterion for the veridicality of judgements about physical things, but it is God who is ultimately responsible for our ideas.
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In 1649, he became professor of philosophy and theology at Herborn, but subsequently (1651), in consequence of the jealousy of his colleagues, accepted an invitation to a similar post at Duisburg. Clauberg was one of the earliest teachers of the new doctrines in Germany and an exact and methodical commentator on his masters writings. His theory of the connection between the soul and the body is in some respects analogous to that of Malebranche; but he is not therefore to be regarded as a true forerunner of Occasionalism, as he uses Occasion for the stimulus which directly produces a mental phenomenon, without postulating the intervention of God.Cf. H. Müller, J. Clauberg und seine Stellung im Cartesianismus.
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In general, occasionalism is the view that there are no efficient causes in the full sense other than God. Created things are at best "occasions" for divine activity. Bodies and minds act neither on themselves nor on each other; God alone brings about all the phenomena of nature and the mind. Changes occurring in created things will exhibit regularities (and will thus satisfy a Humean definition of causation) because God in creating the world observes what Malebranche calls "order": he binds himself to act according to laws of nature chosen in accordance with his general will that the world be as good as possible, and thus (for example) that the laws be simple and few in number.
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Because God is usually seen as rational, rather than arbitrary, His behaviour in normally causing events in the same sequence (i.e., what appears to us to be efficient causation) can be understood as a natural outworking of that principle of reason, which we then describe as the laws of nature. Properly speaking, however, these are not laws of nature but laws by which God chooses to govern His own behaviour (His autonomy, in the strict sense) — in other words, His rational Will. This is not, however, an essential element of an occasionalist account, and occasionalism can include positions where God's behaviour (and thus that of the world) is viewed as ultimately inscrutable, thus maintaining God's essential transcendence.
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Psychophysical parallelism is a very unusual view about the interaction between mental and physical events which was most prominently, and perhaps only truly, advocated by Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz. Like Malebranche and others before him, Leibniz recognized the weaknesses of Descartes' account of causal interaction taking place in a physical location in the brain. Malebranche decided that such a material basis of interaction between material and immaterial was impossible and therefore formulated his doctrine of occasionalism, stating that the interactions were really caused by the intervention of God on each individual occasion. Leibniz's idea is that God has created a pre-established harmony such that it only seems as if physical and mental events cause, and are caused by, one another.
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Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (who met Malebranche in Paris in about 1675 and corresponded with him thereafter) also rejected the vision in God, and his theory of pre-established harmony was designed as a new alternative to occasionalism as well as to the more traditional theory of efficient causal interaction. However, in his own theodicy, even if it was somewhat more elaborate than Malebranche's, he did at least agree with Malebranche's fundamental contention that the simplicity of God's ways had to be given as much regard as the world's perfection. David Hume supported and drew upon Malebranche's negative arguments to show that no genuine causal connections could be conceived between distinct mundane entities. However, when it came to finding a positive replacement for such causal connections, he turned inwards to the workings of the human mind, instead of turning upwards to God.
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One objection often posed to interactionism is the problem of causal interaction – how the two different substances the theory posits, the mental and the physical, can exert an impact on one another. Descartes' theory that interaction between the mind and the physical world occurred in the pineal gland was seen as inadequate by a number of philosophers in his era, who offered alternate views: Nicholas Malebranche suggested occasionalism, according to which mind and body appear to interact but are in fact moved separately by God, while Gottfried Leibniz argued in The Monadology that mind and body are in a pre-established harmony. On the other hand, Baruch Spinoza rejected Descartes' dualism and proposed that mind and matter were in fact properties of a single substance, thereby prefiguring the modern perspective of neutral monism. Today the problem of causal interaction is frequently viewed as a conclusive argument against interactionism.
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In the book, he draws a connection between the decline of the "rational" theological school of Mu'tazila in favour of the rise of Ash'arism, which would become the mainstream Sunni theology, in the 10th century. In this the author sees an act of "intellectual suicide", the nucleus of the end of the Islamic Golden Age and the decline of Islamic civilization into a "dysfunctional culture based on a deformed theology" locked in determinism, occasionalism and ultimately fatalism. In his review of the book, Frank Griffith describes it as "war literature", and "a Catholic refutation of Ash'arite Muslim theology", complaining that Reilly constructs an undue equation between Ash'arism and contemporary Jihadism, while most Jihadists in fact follow Salafism and are hostile towards Ash'arism.Frank Griffe, Review of Reilly's Closing of the Muslim Mind in American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 28:4 (2011), Association of Muslim Social Scientists of North America and International Institute of Islamic Thought.
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In the philosophy of mind, psychophysical parallelism (or simply parallelism) is the theory that mental and bodily events are perfectly coordinated, without any causal interaction between them. As such, it affirms the correlation of mental and bodily events (since it accepts that when a mental event occurs, a corresponding physical effect occurs as well), but denies a direct cause and effect relation between mind and body. This coordination of mental and bodily events has been postulated to occur either in advance by means of God (as per Gottfried Leibniz's idea of pre-established harmony) or at the time of the event (as in the occasionalism of Nicolas Malebranche) or, finally, according to Baruch Spinoza's Ethics, mind and matter are two of infinite attributes of the only Substance-God, which go as one without interacting with each other. On this view, mental and bodily phenomena are independent yet inseparable, like two sides of a coin.
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