What does occasionalism mean?

Occasionalism is a philosophical doctrine about causation which says that created substances cannot be efficient causes of events. The doctrine states that the illusion of efficient causation between mundane events arises out of God’s causing of one event after another.

What is the doctrine of occasionalism?

Occasionalism, version of Cartesian metaphysics that flourished in the last half of the 17th century, in which all interaction between mind and body is mediated by God. It is posited that unextended mind and extended body do not interact directly.

What are occasional causes?

1a : a mental state (as desire or decision) considered as the occasion but not the real cause of a physical phenomenon (as bodily behavior) b : a physical phenomenon considered similarly as the occasion of a mental state — compare occasionalism.

Is there a connection between God and occasionalism?

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. The doctrine first reached prominence in the Islamic theological schools of Iraq, especially in Basra.

What does it mean to be an occasionalist?

Given this diversity of positions, it might be helpful to characterize occasionalism as follows: one is an occasionalist for domain x iff one holds that God is the unique genuine cause within domain x and other alleged causes within this domain are not real causes but at most occasional causes.

Where did the School of occasionalism come from?

Indeed, occasionalism is not peculiar to early-modern philosophy or Cartesianism at all, but was an influential school in both Latin and Islamic medieval philosophy extending back to the tenth century.

Who was the first philosopher of occasionalism in Islam?

If al-Ash’ari was the first of the Islamic occasionalists, it was al-Ghazālī (c.1055–1111), the great philosopher and theologian of the Ash’arite school, who presented some of the most significant and influential arguments for occasionalism in his influential work, The Incoherence of the Philosophers ( Tahâfut al-falâsifa ).