{"id":1205,"date":"2023-10-08T13:02:48","date_gmt":"2023-10-08T13:02:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2023\/10\/08\/from-the-mail-bag-occasionalism\/"},"modified":"2023-10-08T13:02:48","modified_gmt":"2023-10-08T13:02:48","slug":"from-the-mail-bag-occasionalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2023\/10\/08\/from-the-mail-bag-occasionalism\/","title":{"rendered":"From the Mail Bag: Occasionalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

A reader <\/a> e-mails:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Great blog, thanks for writing it!<\/p>\n

Are you familiar with the writings of the Muslim philosopher Al-Ghazali and his idea now called "Occasionalism"?  It seems to me that the person of faith must give up his\/her faith in cause and effect for the supernatural to make sense, and Al-Ghazali seems to be the only person to have ever understood this.<\/p>\n

Thanks again for your blog!  It's fantastic!<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Am I familiar with occasionalism?  Indeed I am and have given it quite a bit of thought.  I advocate a contemporary version of occasionalism in "Concurrentism or Occasionalism? American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly<\/em>, vol. LXX, no. 3, Summer 1996, pp. 339-359. This post<\/a> will give the reader some idea of what occasionalism is.<\/span><\/p>\n

Does the believer have to give up his faith in cause and effect for the supernatural to make sense?  No, at the very most<\/em> he would have to abandon certain views of causation.  That there is causation in the natural world is undeniable, a 'Moorean fact,' a datum.  Anyone who denies this is a lunatic who belongs in the same 'bin' with eliminativists in the philosophy of mind.    <\/span><\/p>\n

For if one were to deny causation, then one would in effect be denying that there is any difference between causal and non-causal event sequences.  But surely there is such a difference as all will admit including al-Ghazali and Malebranche.  I flip a switch (e1) and the light goes on (e2).  At the same time as e2 occurs the phone rings (e3).   E1-e2 is a causal event sequence. E1-e3 is not.  Philosophers are not in the business of denying such data as these.  Philosophical questions about causation first arise when we ask what it is<\/em> for one event to cause another.  That there is causation is a pre-philosophical datum.  What causes what is a question for experience and science.  What causation is is a philosophical question. In particular, what distingusihes a causal from a non-causal event-sequence?  The questions and problems ramify out endlessly from here.  For example, if causation is a dyadic relation, and events are its relata, and if a relation cannot obtain between x and y unless both x and y exist, does this commit us to the tenseless existence of events and the rejection of presentism in the philosophy of time? <\/span>And of course beyond all this lies the ultimate terminus of the philosopher's quest, the Uncaused.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some theories of causation are inconsistent with theism, but not all are.  For example, if it is maintained that all causation is event-causation and that there cannot be be agent-causation, then classical theism is ruled out.  For the causa prima<\/em> of classical theism, God, is obviously an agent-cause. And I should also point out that one can be a theist without holding an occasionalist theory of causation.  For example, once could be a concurrentist.  But this is not the place to go into these details.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A reader  e-mails: Great blog, thanks for writing it! Are you familiar with the writings of the Muslim philosopher Al-Ghazali and his idea now called "Occasionalism"?  It seems to me that the person of faith must give up his\/her faith in cause and effect for the supernatural to make sense, and Al-Ghazali seems to be … Continue reading “From the Mail Bag: Occasionalism”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[211,164],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-causation","category-occasionalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1205\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}