Nadler, Steven. Causation in Early Modern Philosophy (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 1993).

The topic of causation was prominent in seventeenth century philosophy in large part because of the need to reconcile mechanistic physics and traditional beliefs regarding the relation between God and creation (1). Prior to the seventeenth century, Western philosophy largely considered the concept of causation as unproblematic, and one whose intelligibility was not an issue. However, during this period many philosophers questioned the intelligibility of certain types of causal interaction and of causation itself. Natural philosophers attempted to explain causation in terms of matter and motion alone. There were 3 main areas that the problem of causation is arises: 1). The realm of purely physical inquiry, 2). Regarding the relations between mind and body, and 3). Regarding philosophical inquiry into the mind alone. Nadler asserts that three accounts of causation stand out in this period: Cartesian Interactionism, Occasionalism, and Leibniz’ Preestablished Harmony.

Descartes essentially tried to modify and even rebut the Scholastics re: the forms and qualities and occult qualities. In the traditional Aristotelian conception of substance, there are essential properties and causal powers that inhere and individuate a particle of matter. Descartes banished forms from inanimate nature and thereby removed the primary causal mechanism of the Aristotelian mechanism of causation. Additionally, Descartes apparently treats causation as a matter of transference of motion from one body to another. 

Occasionalism:

Is the theory that finite, created beings have no causal efficacy within themselves whatsoever. God is the only true cause, immediately, proximately, solely, and mediately. 

DESCARTES:

Occasionalism is directly derived from the metaphysics of Descartes and his followers. In a personal letter to Elizabeth, Descartes writes, for example, “God is the universal cause of everything in such a way that he is in the same way the total cause of everything, and thus nothing can happen without his will. Elsewhere, Descartes writes, “I consider ‘matter left to itself and receiving no impulse from anything else’ as plainly being at rest. But it is impelled by God, conserving the same amount of motion or transference in it as he put there from the first”, which definitely a remnant of VITALISM. Descartes is not an Occasionalist, as per se, but may well be labeled as a proto-occasionalist. 

MALEBRANCHE:

Malebranche claims that between a cause and its effect there must be a necessary connection. God’s continual recreation of is from moment to moment. For the “occasional causes”, the real cause is God.  For M, God is omnipotent in the sense that God can do anything within reason. So then, God respects the principle of noncontradiction. On the principle of archetypal forms, God creates a contingent world and sustains it in existence by the power of his will. By having God play a central role in his Occasionalism, M abandons the Scholastic differentiation of theology and natural philosophy. According to the Scholastics, theology deals with the primary cause, God, whereas natural philosophy deals with secondary causes, that is, matter within the world (84-85). Malebranche is an avowed Occasionalist. M writes, “[a]s I understand it, a true cause is one in which the mind perceives a necessary connection between the cause and its effect.” I WONDER IF THIS INFLUENCED HUME???

Leibniz:

As was mentioned before regarding Malebranche, who posited that God is omnipotent in the sense that God can do anything within reason, Leibniz similarly claims that God can do anything that is possible, which can be defined as that which is free from self-contradiction.. To illustrate, for Leibniz, an example of impossibility, he cites “the most rapid motion”, as the ascription itself sustains contradictory conclusions. Leibniz goes further, “[i]f all possibles existed, no reason for existing would be needed, and possibility alone would suffice. Therefore there would be no God except in so far as he is possible. But such a God as the pious hold to would not be possible if the opinion of those is true who believe that all possibles exist.” Leibniz defines compossible as “what, when taken with another does not imply a contradiction.”

According to L, all states of a substance follow from its essential nature. For L, whatever state a body is in at any particular moment follows immediately and only from its own previous state, which APPARENTLY INFLUENCED HUME. Like the Occasionalists, L is committed to a complete noninteractionism among finite substances. 

Writing to Leibniz in 1687, Arnauld claims that God does not cause movement “at the moment by a new act of will each time that I wish to raise my arm, but by a single act of the eternal will by which he has chosen to do everything.” Whereas Arnauld may not correctly understand the Occasionalist’s position on God’s causal activity, he nonetheless seems to minimize the differences between Occasionalism and Preestablished Harmony and posits that the two essentially assert the same thing and the two essentially reduce into one another. However, I assert that it is clear that God acts directly and immediately within the Occasionalism causal paradigm, whereas God acts mediately and indirectly within the Preestablished Harmony paradigm. Leibniz writes that “god has given to each [substance]… from the start a nature whose own laws bring about its changes, in such a way that in my view the actions of souls neither increase nor decrease the quantity of moving force which is in matter, nor even change its direction.” Moreover, Leibniz writes, “souls or vital principles, according to my system, change nothing in the ordinary course of bodies and do not even give God the occasion for doing so. Souls follow their laws, which consist in a definite development of perceptions according to goods and evils, and bodies follow theirs, which consist in the laws of motion; nevertheless, these two beings of entirely different kind meet together and correspond to each other like two clocks perfectly regulated to the same time. It is this that I call the theory of pre-established harmony, which excludes every concept of miracle from purely natural actions and makes things run their course regulated in an intelligible manner. Instead of this, the common system has recourse to absolutely unexplainable influences, while in the system of occasional causes God is compelled at every moment, by a kind of general law and as if by compact, to change the natural course of the thoughts of the soul in order to adapt them to the impressions of the body and to interfere with the natural course of bodily movements in accordance with the volitions of the soul. This can only be explained by a perpetual miracle, whereas I explain the whole intelligibility by the natures which God has established in things.”

For L, there is some “vital principle superior to material motions” that explains why bodies behave the way in which they do. This later statement of L is starkly different from an earlier statement of L in a correspondence to E. Wiegel in which he intimates an Occasionalist type stance: “I judge that it is not so much that our mind acts on things as that God [acts on things] according to his will.”

Leibniz’s theory of substance is centered around two main claims: first, substances are endowed with an intrinsic force sufficient to determine all of its states, second, the determinations of this active power are in harmony with the active powers of all other substances. 

Influxus Physicus:

Although used in a different context, I like the implications and meaning of the following statement by Bacon. In speaking of how the agent brings about change in the recipient by inducing it to actualize its potentialityand not by any incursion into the recipient. Bacon writes, “The generation of species occurs… by a true alteration and bringing forth out of the active potentiality of the recipient matter.”

God in Science:

The Humean analysis of causation is still the predominant model within science, despite attempts by philosophers such as Kant and Einstein to reassert the notion of causal powers in nature. Hume finds the notion of creation as groundless as that of causation. 

Ron Harré states that the real task of the scientist is to find the “real essence of a thing… whatever is responsible for its causal powers.” Harré states further that “[t]he ultimate entities are causally responsible for the states of the world without anything being causally responsible for them.”

In speaking of the predominate Humean causal conceptioning in science, William A. Wallace writes, “I have… urged an expansion of causal thinking far beyond the narrow domain of Humean causation, to include what contemporary thinkers have spoken of as “powers,” “inner determiners,” and other real “explanatory factors” that can account for the phenomena being studied by today’s scientists… the manifold of ontological antecedents that can truly explain natural phenomena.”

¹ Louis Loeb, From Descartes to Hume (Ithaca: Cornell University, 1981), 17. ² Stephen Nadler, “Introduction” in Causation in Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Steven Nadler (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 1993), 1-2. ³ Stephen Nadler, “Introduction” in Causation in Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Steven Nadler (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 1993), 2. ⁴ Stephen Nadler, “Introduction” in Causation in Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Steven Nadler (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 1993), 3. ⁵ Stephen Nadler, “Introduction” in Causation in Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Steven Nadler (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 1993), 4. ⁶ Nicolas Malebranche, Oeuvres de Descartes, vol. IV, ed. by C. Adam and P. Tannery (Paris: J. Vrin, 1964-1976), 313-314. ⁷ Nicolas Malebranche, Oeuvres de Descartes, vol. V, ed. by C. Adam and P. Tannery (Paris: J. Vrin, 1964-1976), 404. ⁸ Richard A. Watson, “Malebranche, Models, and Causation” in Causation in Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Steven Nadler (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 1993), 75. ⁹ Nicolas Malebranche, Oeuvres Complètes de Malebranche, vol. III, ed. by A. Robinet (Paris: J. Vrin, 1958), 175. ¹⁰ Nicolas Malebranche, The Search After Truth, trans. by T.M. Lennon and P.J. Olscamp (Columbus: Ohio State University, 1980), 446. ¹¹ Margaret D. Wilson, “Compossibility and Law”, in Causation in Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Steven Nadler (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 1993), 119. ¹² G. W. Leibniz, “Meditations on Knowledge, Truth, and Ideas,” Philosophical Papers and Letters, ed. and trans. by L. Loemaker (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1969), 293. ¹³ G. W. Leibniz, Philosophical Papers and Letters, ed. and trans. by L. Loemaker (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1969), 169. ¹⁴ G. Grua, ed. G. W. Leibniz: Textes inédits, vol. 1 (New York: Garland, 1985), 325. ¹⁵ G. W. Leibniz, “Arnauld to Leibniz, 4 March 1687,” Die philosophischen Schriften von G. W. Leibniz, vol. II, ed. by C. I. Gerhardt (Hildesheim: George Olms, 1965), 84. ¹⁶ see D. Clarke, Occult Powers and Hypotheses: Cartesian Natural Philosophy under Louis XIV (Oxford: Clarendon, 1981), 121. ¹⁷ G. W. Leibniz, Die philosophischen Schriften von G. W. Leibniz, vol. III, ed. by C. I. Gerhardt (Hildesheim: George Olms, 1965), 122. ¹⁸ G. W. Leibniz, Philosophical Papers and Letters, ed. and trans. by L. Loemaker (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1969), 587. ¹⁹ G. W. Leibniz, “Specimen Dynamicum”, in Die mathematische Schriften von G. W. Leibniz, vol. IV , ed. by C. I. Gerhardt (Berlin and Halle, 1849-1855), 242. ²⁰ G. W. Leibniz, Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe, ed. by the German Academy of Science (Darmstadt: George Olms, 1923), 487. ²¹ Donald P. Rutherford, “Natures, Laws, and Miracles: The Roots of Leibniz’s Critique of Occasionalism”, in Causation in Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Steven Nadler (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 1993), 137. ²² Roger Bacon, The Multiplication of Species, 47. ²³ Richard A. Watson, “Malebranche, Models, and Causation” in Causation in Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Steven Nadler (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 1993), 85. ²⁴ Richard A. Watson, “Malebranche, Models, and Causation” in Causation in Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Steven Nadler (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 1993), 88. ²⁵ Ron Harré, The Principles of Scientific Thinking (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1970), 299, emphasis added. ²⁶ Ron Harré, The Principles of Scientific Thinking (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1970), 297. ²⁷ William A. Wallace, Causality and Scientific Explanation, vol. 2, Classical and Contemporary Science (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1974), 326.