Occasionalism is a
philosophical
Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...
doctrine about
causation which says that created substances cannot be
efficient cause
The four causes or four explanations are, in Aristotelianism, Aristotelian thought, four fundamental types of answer to the question "why?", in Posterior Analytics, analysis of change or movement in nature: the Four_causes#Material, material, the ...
s of events. Instead, all events are taken to be caused directly by
God
In monotheism, monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator deity, creator, and principal object of Faith#Religious views, faith.Richard Swinburne, Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Ted Honderich, Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Ox ...
. (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.
Islamic theological schools
The doctrine first reached prominence in the
Islamic theological schools of
Iraq
Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq ...
, especially in
Basra
Basra ( ar, ٱلْبَصْرَة, al-Baṣrah) is an Iraqi city located on the Shatt al-Arab. It had an estimated population of 1.4 million in 2018. Basra is also Iraq's main port, although it does not have deep water access, which is hand ...
. The ninth century theologian
Abu al-Hasan al-Ash'ari
Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī (; full name: ''Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Ismāʿīl ibn Isḥāq al-Ashʿarī''; c. 874–936 CE/260–324 AH), often reverently referred to as Imām al-Ashʿarī by Sunnī Muslims, was an Arab Muslim scholar ...
argued that there is no
Secondary Causation
Secondary causation is the philosophical proposition that all material and corporeal objects, having been created by God with their own intrinsic potentialities, are subsequently empowered to evolve independently in accordance with natural law. Tra ...
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
Ashʿarī theology or Ashʿarism (; ar, الأشعرية: ) is one of the main Sunnī schools of Islamic theology, founded by the Muslim scholar, Shāfiʿī jurist, reformer, and scholastic theologian Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī in the ...
occasionalist doctrine was
Abu Hamid Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Ghazali, an 11th-century theologian based in
Baghdad
Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon ...
. In ''
The Incoherence of the Philosophers
''The Incoherence of the Philosophers'' (تهافت الفلاسفة ''Tahāfut al-Falāsifaʰ'' in Arabic) is the title of a landmark 11th-century work by the Persian theologian Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Ghazali and a student of ...
'', Al-Ghazali launched a philosophical critique against
Neoplatonic
Neoplatonism is a strand of Platonic philosophy that emerged in the 3rd century AD against the background of Hellenistic philosophy and religion. The term does not encapsulate a set of ideas as much as a chain of thinkers. But there are some id ...
-influenced
early Islamic philosophers such as
Al-Farabi
Abu Nasr Muhammad Al-Farabi ( fa, ابونصر محمد فارابی), ( ar, أبو نصر محمد الفارابي), known in the West as Alpharabius; (c. 872 – between 14 December, 950 and 12 January, 951)PDF version was a renowned early Isl ...
and
Ibn Sina. In response to the philosophers' claim that the created order is governed by secondary efficient causes (God being, as it were, the Primary and Final Cause in an
ontological
In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, becoming, and reality.
Ontology addresses questions like how entities are grouped into categories and which of these entities exi ...
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, the Islamic theologian
Fakhr al-Din al-Razi expounded upon similar theories of occasionalism in his works.
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.
In a 1978 article in ''
Studia Islamica
''Studia Islamica'' is an academic journal of Islamic studies focusing on the history, religion, law, literature, and language of the Muslim world, primarily Southwest Asian and Mediterranean lands. The editors-in-chief are A. L. Udovitch (Prin ...
'', Lenn Goodman asks the question, "Did Al-Ghazâlî Deny Causality?" and demonstrates that Ghazali did not deny the existence of observed, "worldly" causation. According to Goodman's analysis, Ghazali does not claim that there is never any link between observed cause and observed effect: rather, Ghazali argues that there is no ''necessary'' link between observed cause and effect.
Dualism
One of the motivations for the theory is the
dualist
Dualism most commonly refers to:
* Mind–body dualism, a philosophical view which holds that mental phenomena are, at least in certain respects, not physical phenomena, or that the mind and the body are distinct and separable from one another
** ...
belief that mind and matter are so utterly different in their
essence
Essence ( la, essentia) is a polysemic term, used in philosophy and theology as a designation for the property or set of properties that make an entity or substance what it fundamentally is, and which it has by necessity, and without which it ...
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
Johannes Clauberg (24 February 1622 – 31 January 1665) was a German theologian and philosopher. Clauberg was the founding Rector of the first University of Duisburg, where he taught from 1655 to 1665. He is known as a "scholastic cartesian".
...
,
Claude Clerselier
Claude Clerselier (1614, in Paris – 1684, in Paris) was a French editor and translator.
Clerselier was a lawyer in the Parlement of Paris and resident for the King of France in Sweden. He was the brother-in-law of Pierre Chanut, and served as ...
,
Gerauld de Cordemoy,
Arnold Geulincx
Arnold Geulincx (; 31 January 1624 – November 1669), also known by his pseudonym Philaretus, was a Flemish philosopher, metaphysician, and logician. He was one of the followers of René Descartes who tried to work out more detailed versions of ...
,
Louis de La Forge 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 ...
,
François Lamy, and (most notably),
Nicolas Malebranche
Nicolas Malebranche ( , ; 6 August 1638 – 13 October 1715) was a French Oratorian Catholic priest and rationalist philosopher. In his works, he sought to synthesize the thought of St. Augustine and Descartes, in order to demonstrate the ...
.
Hume's arguments, Berkeley and Leibniz
These occasionalists' negative argument, that no necessary connections could be discovered between mundane events, was anticipated by certain arguments of
Nicholas of Autrecourt
Nicholas of Autrecourt ( French: ''Nicholas d'Autrécourt''; Latin: ''Nicolaus de Autricuria'' or ''Nicolaus de Ultricuria''; c. 1299, Autrecourt – 16 or 17 July 1369, Metz) was a French medieval philosopher and Scholastic theologian.
Life a ...
in the fourteenth century, and were later taken up by
David Hume
David Hume (; born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS (26 April 1711 OS) – 25 August 1776) Cranston, Maurice, and Thomas Edmund Jessop. 2020 999br>David Hume" ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Retrieved 18 May 2020. was a Scottish Enlightenment philo ...
in the eighteenth century. 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.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz . ( – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the history of philosophy and the history of mathema ...
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
Gottfried Leibniz's theory of pre-established harmony (french: harmonie préétablie) is a philosophical theory about causation under which every " substance" affects only itself, but all the substances (both bodies and minds) in the world never ...
between the alterations produced immanently within different substances. Leibniz means, that if God did not exist, "there would be nothing real in the possibilities, not only nothing existent, but also nothing possible."
Quantum mechanics
In 1993,
Pierce College
Pierce College may refer to:
* Pierce College (Washington)
* Los Angeles Pierce College
** Pierce College station
See also
* Peirce College
* Franklin Pierce University
Franklin Pierce University is a private university in Rindge, New Hampsh ...
chemistry professor Karen Harding published the paper "Causality Then and Now: Al Ghazali and Quantum Theory" that described several "remarkable" similarities between
Ghazali Ghazali is an international surname and given name with different spellings (e.g. Gazali, Gazzali, Gazzaly, Gassaly, Garzali), it may refer to:
* Ahmad Ghazali (c. 1061–1123 or 1126), Persian mystic
* Lynda Ghazzali, Malaysian porcelain painter
...
's concept of occasionalism and the widely accepted
Copenhagen interpretation
The Copenhagen interpretation is a collection of views about the meaning of quantum mechanics, principally attributed to Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg. It is one of the oldest of numerous proposed interpretations of quantum mechanics, as featu ...
of
quantum mechanics
Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistry, ...
. 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-Ghazali) or by an observer (the Copenhagen Interpretation)." She also stated:
Continuing from philosopher
Graham Harman
Graham Harman (born May 9, 1968) is an American philosopher and academic. He is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles. His work on the metaphysics of objects led to the developme ...
's work on occasionalism in the context of
object-oriented ontology
In metaphysics, object-oriented ontology (OOO) is a 21st-century Heidegger-influenced school of thought that rejects the privileging of human existence over the existence of nonhuman objects.. This is in contrast to what it calls the "anthropocent ...
, Simon Weir proposed in 2020 an alternate view of the relationship between quantum theory and occasionalism opposed to the Copenhagen interpretation, where
virtual particle
A virtual particle is a theoretical transient particle that exhibits some of the characteristics of an ordinary particle, while having its existence limited by the uncertainty principle. The concept of virtual particles arises in the perturbat ...
s act as one of many kinds of mediating sensual objects.
[{{Cite journal, last=Weir, first=Simon, date=2020-04-21, title=Living and Nonliving Occasionalism, journal=Open Philosophy, language=en, volume=3, issue=1, pages=147–160, doi=10.1515/opphil-2020-0010, doi-access=free]
See also
*
Pre-established harmony
Gottfried Leibniz's theory of pre-established harmony (french: harmonie préétablie) is a philosophical theory about causation under which every " substance" affects only itself, but all the substances (both bodies and minds) in the world never ...
*
Providentialism
In Christianity, providentialism is the belief that all events on Earth are controlled by God.
Belief
Providentialism was sometimes viewed by its adherents as differing between national providence and personal providence. Some English and Americ ...
*
Psychophysical parallelism
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 bod ...
*
Theological determinism
Theological determinism is a form of predeterminism which states that all events that happen are pre-ordained, and/or predestined to happen, by one or more divine beings, or that they are destined to occur given the divine beings' omniscience. T ...
Notes
External links
Cosmological Argument aiming to establish OccasionalismInternational Society for the Study of Occasionalism''Occasionalism''article in the ''
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The ''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (''IEP'') is a scholarly online encyclopedia, dealing with philosophy, philosophical topics, and philosophers. The IEP combines open access publication with peer reviewed publication of original pape ...
''
Causality
Metaphysics of religion
Dualism (philosophy of mind)
Theory of mind
Conceptions of God