Online Encyclopedia

OCCASIONALISM (Lat. occasio, an event)

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Originally appearing in Volume V19, Page 966 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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OCCASIONALISM (
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Lat. occasio, an event)
  , in philosophy, a
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term applied to that theory of the relation between
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matter and mind which postulates the intervention of
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God to bring about in the one a change which corresponds to a similar change in the other . The theory thus denies any
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direct interaction between matter and mind . It was expounded by Geulincx and Malebranche to avoid the difficulty of Descartes's dualism of thought and extension, and to explain
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causation . Thus mind and matter are to Geulincx only the " occasional " causes of each other's changes, while Malebranche, facing further the epistemological problem, maintains that mind cannot even know matter, which is merely the " occasion " of knowledge .

End of Article: OCCASIONALISM (Lat. occasio, an event)
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WILLIAM OF OCCAM (d. c. 1349)
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