Concept
Occasionalism
Overview
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. (A related concept, 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 doctrine 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.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
The latter point will become clearer by the help of some illustrations. For this purpose I shall consider a few maxims which have played a great part in the history of philosophy. (1) "Cause and effect must more or less resemble each other." This principle was prominent in the philosophy of occasionalism, and is still by no means extinct.
Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays
States what Occasionalism is; names Occasionalism.
We may therefore consider the relation of _contiguity_ as essential to that of causation; at least may suppose it such, according to the general opinion, till we can find a more proper occasion[2] to clear up this matter, by examining what objects are or are not susceptible of juxtaposition and conjunction.
David Hume, Philosophical Works, v. 1
The author is tied to Occasionalism in the knowledge graph.
It will only be proper, before we leave this subject, to draw some corrollaries from it, by which we may remove several prejudices and popular errors, that have very much prevailed in philosophy. First, We may learn from the foregoing, doctrine, that all causes are of the same kind, and that in particular there is no foundation for that distinction, which we sometimes make betwixt efficient causes and causes…
David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature
The author is tied to Occasionalism in the knowledge graph.
Philosophers who discussed Occasionalism
- Avicenna
- Giambattista Vico
- Nicolas Malebranche
- Arnold Geulincx
- Martin Knutzen
- Johannes Clauberg
- Louis de La Forge
- Edmund Pfleiderer
Related ideas
- Mind–body problem
- Avicenna
- George Berkeley
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
- Philosophy
- Al-Ghazali
- Early Islamic philosophy
- Nicolas Malebranche
- Al-Farabi
- Mind–body dualism
- The Incoherence of the Philosophers
- Ontology
- Neoplatonism
- Scientific law
- Quantum mechanics
- René Descartes
- Fakhr al-Din al-Razi
- Causality
- Baghdad
- Four causes
- Logic
- Essence
- God
- Basra
Place in the tradition
Part of Atomism.