Occasionalism
Encyclopedia
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.) The theory states that the illusion of efficient causation between mundane events arises out of God's causing of one event after another. However, there is no necessary connection between the two: it is not that the first event causes God to cause the second event: rather, God first causes one and then causes the other.
schools of Iraq
, especially in Basra
. The ninth century theologian Abu al-Hasan al-Ash'ari
argued that there is no secondary causation in the created order. The world is sustained and governed through direct intervention of a divine primary causation. As such the world is in a constant state of recreation by God. The most famous proponent of the Asharite
occasionalist doctrine was Abu Hamid Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Ghazali
, an 11th century theologian based in Baghdad
. In The Incoherence of the Philosophers
, Al-Ghazali launched a philosophical critique against Neoplatonic
-influenced early Islamic philosophers
such as Al-Farabi
and Ibn Sina
. In response to the philosopher's claim that the created order is governed by secondary efficient causes (God being, as it were, the Primary and Final Cause in an ontological and logical sense), Ghazali argues that what we observe as regularity in nature based presumably upon some natural law is actually a kind of constant and continual regularity. There is no independent necessitation of change and becoming, other than what God has ordained. To posit an independent causality outside of God's knowledge and action is to deprive Him of true agency, and diminish his attribute of power. In his famous example, when fire and cotton are placed in contact, the cotton is burned not because of the heat of the fire, but through God's direct intervention, a claim which he defended using logic
. In the 12th century, this theory was defended and further strengthened by the Islamic theologian Fakhr al-Din al-Razi
, using his expertise in the natural sciences of astronomy, cosmology
and physics.
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. On this understanding, apparent anomalies such as miracles are not really such: they are simply God behaving in a way that appears unusual to us. Given his transcendent freedom, he is not bound even by his own nature. Miracles, as breaks in the rational structure of the universe, can occur, since God's relationship with the world is not mediated by rational principles.
belief that mind and matter are so utterly different in their essence
s that one cannot affect the other. Thus, a person's mind cannot be the true cause of his hand's moving, nor can a physical wound be the true cause of mental anguish. In other words, the mental cannot cause the physical and vice versa. Also, occasionalists generally hold that the physical cannot cause the physical either, for no necessary connection can be perceived between physical causes and effects. The will of God is taken to be necessary.
The doctrine is, however, more usually associated with certain seventeenth century philosophers of the Cartesian
school. There are hints of an occasionalist viewpoint here and there in Descartes's
own writings, but these can mostly be explained away under alternative interpretations. However, many of his later followers quite explicitly committed themselves to an occasionalist position. In one form or another, the doctrine can be found in the writings of: Johannes Clauberg
, Claude Clerselier
, Gerauld de Cordemoy, Arnold Geulincx
, Louis de La Forge
, François Lamy
, and (most notably), Nicolas Malebranche
.
in the fourteenth century, and were later taken up by David Hume
in the eighteenth. Hume, however, stopped short when it came to the positive side of the theory, where God was called upon to replace such connections, complaining that 'We are got into fairy land [...] Our line is too short to fathom such immense abysses.' Instead, Hume felt that the only place to find necessary connections was in the subjective associations of ideas within the mind itself. George Berkeley
was also inspired by the occasionalists, and he agreed with them that no efficient power could be attributed to bodies. For Berkeley, bodies merely existed as ideas in percipient minds, and all such ideas were, as he put it, 'visibly inactive'. However, Berkeley disagreed with the occasionalists by continuing to endow the created minds themselves with efficient power. G.W. Leibniz agreed with the occasionalists that there could be no efficient causation between distinct created substances, but he did not think it followed that there was no efficient power in the created world at all. On the contrary, every simple substance had the power to produce changes in itself. The illusion of transeunt efficient causation, for Leibniz, arose out of the pre-established harmony
between the alterations produced immanently within different substances.
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
theory about causation
Causality
Causality is the relationship between an event and a second event , where the second event is understood as a consequence of the first....
which says that created substances cannot be efficient causes of events. Instead, all events are taken to be caused directly by God
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
. (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.) The theory states that the illusion of efficient causation between mundane events arises out of God's causing of one event after another. However, there is no necessary connection between the two: it is not that the first event causes God to cause the second event: rather, God first causes one and then causes the other.
Islamic theological schools
The doctrine first reached prominence in the Islamic theologicalIslamic theology
Islamic theology is a branch of Islamic studies regarding the beliefs associated with the Islamic faith. Any religious belief system, or creed, can be considered an example of aqidah. However, this term has taken a significant technical usage in Islamic history and theology, denoting those...
schools of Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
, especially in Basra
Basra
Basra is the capital of Basra Governorate, in southern Iraq near Kuwait and Iran. It had an estimated population of two million as of 2009...
. The ninth century theologian Abu al-Hasan al-Ash'ari
Abu al-Hasan al-Ash'ari
Abū al-Hasan Alī ibn Ismā'īl al-Ash'arī was a Muslim Arab theologian and the founder of the Ash'ari school of early Islamic philosophy and Islamic theology.-Biography:...
argued that there is no secondary causation in the created order. The world is sustained and governed through direct intervention of a divine primary causation. As such the world is in a constant state of recreation by God. The most famous proponent of the Asharite
Ash'ari
The Ashʿari theology is a school of early Muslim speculative theology founded by the theologian Abu al-Hasan al-Ash'ari...
occasionalist doctrine was Abu Hamid Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Ghazali
Al-Ghazali
Abu Hāmed Mohammad ibn Mohammad al-Ghazzālī , known as Algazel to the western medieval world, born and died in Tus, in the Khorasan province of Persia was a Persian Muslim theologian, jurist, philosopher, and mystic....
, an 11th century theologian based in Baghdad
Baghdad
Baghdad is the capital of Iraq, as well as the coterminous Baghdad Governorate. The population of Baghdad in 2011 is approximately 7,216,040...
. In The Incoherence of the Philosophers
The Incoherence of the Philosophers
The Incoherence of the Philosophers is the title of a landmark 11th century polemic by the Sufi sympathetic Imam Al-Ghazali of the Asharite school of Islamic theology criticizing the Avicennian school of early Islamic philosophy...
, Al-Ghazali launched a philosophical critique against Neoplatonic
Neoplatonism
Neoplatonism , is the modern term for a school of religious and mystical philosophy that took shape in the 3rd century AD, based on the teachings of Plato and earlier Platonists, with its earliest contributor believed to be Plotinus, and his teacher Ammonius Saccas...
-influenced early Islamic philosophers
Early Islamic philosophy
Early Islamic philosophy or classical Islamic philosophy is a period of intense philosophical development beginning in the 2nd century AH of the Islamic calendar and lasting until the 6th century AH...
such as Al-Farabi
Al-Farabi
' known in the West as Alpharabius , was a scientist and philosopher of the Islamic world...
and Ibn Sina
Avicenna
Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Sīnā , commonly known as Ibn Sīnā or by his Latinized name Avicenna, was a Persian polymath, who wrote almost 450 treatises on a wide range of subjects, of which around 240 have survived...
. In response to the philosopher's claim that the created order is governed by secondary efficient causes (God being, as it were, the Primary and Final Cause in an ontological and logical sense), Ghazali argues that what we observe as regularity in nature based presumably upon some natural law is actually a kind of constant and continual regularity. There is no independent necessitation of change and becoming, other than what God has ordained. To posit an independent causality outside of God's knowledge and action is to deprive Him of true agency, and diminish his attribute of power. In his famous example, when fire and cotton are placed in contact, the cotton is burned not because of the heat of the fire, but through God's direct intervention, a claim which he defended using logic
Logic in Islamic philosophy
Logic played an important role in Islamic philosophy .Islamic Logic or mantiq is similar science to what is called Traditional Logic in Western Sciences.- External links :*Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy: , Routledge, 1998...
. In the 12th century, this theory was defended and further strengthened by the Islamic theologian Fakhr al-Din al-Razi
Fakhr al-Din al-Razi
Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Umar ibn al-Husayn al-Taymi al-Bakri al-Tabaristani Fakhr al-Din al-Razi , most commonly known as Fakhruddin Razi was a well-known Persian Sunni Muslim theologian and philosopher....
, using his expertise in the natural sciences of astronomy, cosmology
Islamic cosmology
Islamic cosmology refers to cosmology in Islamic societies. It is mainly derived from the Qur'an, Hadith, Sunnah, and current Islamic as well as other pre-Islamic sources...
and physics.
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. On this understanding, apparent anomalies such as miracles are not really such: they are simply God behaving in a way that appears unusual to us. Given his transcendent freedom, he is not bound even by his own nature. Miracles, as breaks in the rational structure of the universe, can occur, since God's relationship with the world is not mediated by rational principles.
Dualism
One of the motivations for the theory is the dualistDualism (philosophy of mind)
In philosophy of mind, dualism is a set of views about the relationship between mind and matter, which begins with the claim that mental phenomena are, in some respects, non-physical....
belief that mind and matter are so utterly different in their essence
Essence
In philosophy, essence is the attribute or set of attributes that make an object or substance what it fundamentally is, and which it has by necessity, and without which it loses its identity. Essence is contrasted with accident: a property that the object or substance has contingently, without...
s that one cannot affect the other. Thus, a person's mind cannot be the true cause of his hand's moving, nor can a physical wound be the true cause of mental anguish. In other words, the mental cannot cause the physical and vice versa. Also, occasionalists generally hold that the physical cannot cause the physical either, for no necessary connection can be perceived between physical causes and effects. The will of God is taken to be necessary.
The doctrine is, however, more usually associated with certain seventeenth century philosophers of the Cartesian
René Descartes
René Descartes ; was a French philosopher and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the 'Father of Modern Philosophy', and much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day...
school. There are hints of an occasionalist viewpoint here and there in Descartes's
René Descartes
René Descartes ; was a French philosopher and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the 'Father of Modern Philosophy', and much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day...
own writings, but these can mostly be explained away under alternative interpretations. However, many of his later followers quite explicitly committed themselves to an occasionalist position. In one form or another, the doctrine can be found in the writings of: Johannes Clauberg
Johannes Clauberg
Johannes Clauberg was a German theologian and philosopher. Clauberg was the founding Rector of the first University of Duisburg, where he taught from 1655 to 1665...
, Claude Clerselier
Claude Clerselier
Claude Clerselier was a French editor. He edited and translated several works by René Descartes, especially his letters , L'Homme, et un Traité de la formation du fœtus du mesme auteur avec les remarques de Louys de La Forge, 1664, L'Homme...et...Le Monde, 1667 et de ses Principes, 1681...
, Gerauld de Cordemoy, Arnold Geulincx
Arnold Geulincx
Arnold Geulincx was a Flemish philosopher. He was one of the followers of René Descartes who tried to work out more detailed versions of a generally Cartesian philosophy...
, Louis de La Forge
Louis de La Forge
Louis de La Forge was a French philosopher who in his Tractatus de mente humana expounded a doctrine of occasionalism...
, François Lamy
François Lamy
François Lamy was a French Benedictine ascetical and apologetic writer, of the Congregation of St-Maur.-Life:Lamy was born at Montireau in the Department of Eure-et-Loir. While fighting a duel, he was saved from a fatal sword-thrust by a book of the Rule of St. Benedict which he carried in his...
, and (most notably), Nicolas Malebranche
Nicolas Malebranche
Nicolas Malebranche ; was a French Oratorian 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...
.
Hume's arguments, Berkeley and Leibniz
These occasionalists' negative argument, that no necessary connections could be discovered between mundane events, were echoed by certain arguments of Nicholas of AutrecourtNicholas of Autrecourt
Nicholas of Autrecourt was a French medieval philosopher and Scholastic theologian....
in the fourteenth century, and were later taken up by David Hume
David Hume
David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...
in the eighteenth. Hume, however, stopped short when it came to the positive side of the theory, where God was called upon to replace such connections, complaining that 'We are got into fairy land [...] Our line is too short to fathom such immense abysses.' Instead, Hume felt that the only place to find necessary connections was in the subjective associations of ideas within the mind itself. George Berkeley
George Berkeley
George Berkeley , also known as Bishop Berkeley , was an Irish philosopher whose primary achievement was the advancement of a theory he called "immaterialism"...
was also inspired by the occasionalists, and he agreed with them that no efficient power could be attributed to bodies. For Berkeley, bodies merely existed as ideas in percipient minds, and all such ideas were, as he put it, 'visibly inactive'. However, Berkeley disagreed with the occasionalists by continuing to endow the created minds themselves with efficient power. G.W. Leibniz agreed with the occasionalists that there could be no efficient causation between distinct created substances, but he did not think it followed that there was no efficient power in the created world at all. On the contrary, every simple substance had the power to produce changes in itself. The illusion of transeunt efficient causation, for Leibniz, arose out of the pre-established harmony
Pre-established harmony
Gottfried Leibniz's theory of pre-established harmony is a philosophical theory about causation under which every "substance" only affects itself, but all the substances in the world nevertheless seem to causally interact with each other because they have been programmed by God in advance to...
between the alterations produced immanently within different substances.