Philosophy 104 Prof. Don Rutherford
Malebranche and Occasionalism
1. The doctrine of occasionalism is the backbone of Malebranche’s philosophy.
Roughly, the doctrine asserts that God is the only real cause of any change in the world.
As against “the errors of the ancient philosophers,” Malebranche writes, he will establish
“that there is only one true cause because there is only one true God; that the nature and
power of each thing is nothing but the will of God; that all natural causes are not true
causes but only occasional causes…” (Philosophical Selections, 94). To call something
an “occasional causes” is to deny that it does anything to bring about a change in
something else; rather, the modifications of finite things (bodies, minds) are only the
occasions for God acting in the world.
2. The underlying motivation for this doctrine is, like so much else in Malebranche’s
philosophy, theological. This is apparent in the Search after Truth, VI.2.iii, a famous
chapter entitled “The most dangerous error of the philosophy of the ancients.” There
Malebranche argues that the idea of cause, or of power to act, represents something
divine. Therefore, any philosophy that assigns causal powers, forces, or substantial forms
to finite things is effectively a form of idolatry.
One of Malebranche’s most interesting arguments on behalf of this point is that we are
naturally prompted to love and fear “true powers--beings that can act upon us, punish us
with pain, or reward us with pleasure” (92). If we further assume that pain is an evil and
pleasure a good, then “reason seems to some degree to justify a religion similar to that of
the pagans, and to approve the universal disorder of morals” (93). We will end up
worshipping natural things (even leeks and onions!) as divinities, rather than God.
3. Malebranche also supports occasionalism with more properly philosophical
arguments. The most important of these rests on what we may call the True Cause
Principle (TCP):
“A true cause as I understand it is one such that the mind perceives a necessary
connection between it and its effects” (Philosophical Selections, 96)
TCP has some intuitive plausibility. It is commonly assumed that for a genuine causal
relation, a coincidence or mere correlation is insufficient. It is not enough simply for an
effect to follow a cause in a regular manner. In addition, the cause must somehow act to
bring it about that the effect occurs. Furthermore, causal connections should support
counterfactual statements of the form: if the cause had occurred, the effect would have
occurred, other things being equal (ceteris paribus). The ‘ceteribus paribus’ clause
responds to the fact that what we pick out as a cause (e.g. a lit match) is usually not a
total cause—other ancillary conditions (sufficient oxygen, absence of sprinklers, etc.)
have to be realized in order for the effect to be produced.
