Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The doctrine that God is the sole causal actor and that all events are merely occasions on which God brings about what are normally thought of as their effects.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun In philosophy, the doctrine that mind and matter can produce effects upon each other only through the direct intervention of God; the doctrine of occasional causes. See under occasional.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Metaph.) The system of occasional causes; -- a name given to certain theories of the Cartesian school of philosophers, as to the intervention of the First Cause, by which they account for the apparent reciprocal action of the soul and the body.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun philosophy A
metaphysical doctrine that holds that all events areoccasioned (caused ) byGod himself
Etymologies
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Examples
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Malebranche is known for his occasionalism, that is, his doctrine that God is the only causal agent, and that creatures merely provide the “occasion” for divine action.
Nicolas Malebranche Schmaltz, Tad 2009
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The theory called occasionalism simply concedes that the “local” counterfactual dependence of the behavior of a physical system on a non-physical event requires a miracle.
Metaphysics van Inwagen, Peter 2007
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I agree with the shulamite, though, that one of Berkeley's weaknesses is his occasionalism which is, in effect, what the post was criticizing.
Archive 2005-06-01 2005
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I agree with the shulamite, though, that one of Berkeley's weaknesses is his occasionalism which is, in effect, what the post was criticizing.
Catching Up 2005
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The effect is (in some sense) as much the cause of A as (in a different sense) A is of B. (Aside: this makes John Cramer's transactional quantum theory sound weirdly Aristotelian.www. npl.washington.edu/AV/altvw16. html) Consequently, when Hume and the other Early Moderns tossed out finality, they wound up tossing out causation as well and wound up with something weirdly like al-Ghazali's occasionalism.
November 4th, 2009 m_francis 2009
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The doctrine of occasionalism is reflected in Malebranche's insistence that God is our greatest good since He alone can cause our happiness.
Nicolas Malebranche Schmaltz, Tad 2009
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Malebranche was concerned to respond to all of these arguments against occasionalism, particularly as they were developed in the work of scholastics such as Suárez.
Nicolas Malebranche Schmaltz, Tad 2009
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However, occasionalism was already an old doctrine at the time that Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) wrote against it.
Nicolas Malebranche Schmaltz, Tad 2009
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The theocentrism that is evident in Malebranche's doctrines of the vision in God and occasionalism would lead us to expect that God plays a central role in his moral theory.
Nicolas Malebranche Schmaltz, Tad 2009
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In 1688, Malebranche published his Entretiens sur la métaphysique et la religion (Dialogues on Metaphysics and Religion), a concise summary of his main metaphysical doctrines of the vision in God and occasionalism that also addresses the problem of evil.
Nicolas Malebranche Schmaltz, Tad 2009
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