Causation according to Malebranche
1. A causal relation is a metaphysically necessary relationship, rather
than a naturally necessary relationship.
2. One thing is the cause of another, or of an event, just in case it brings
it about. That is, a causal relation involves causal power.
Malebranche’s occasionalism emerges from these commitments.
Occasionalism: B (a body, a thought) occasions God to cause effect e (a
body, a thought).
Negative arguments
1. A posteriori argument: We have no available evidence that one thing
has the power requisite to bring about the effect with which it is
conjoined in experience. (34-35)
2. Metaphysical argument: “it is a contradiction … that bodies can act
on bodies”
A1. Bodies are simply extended things.
A2. Extension does not contain any principle of motion. It has no
active power, but is merely passive.
A3. Thus, bodies cannot move themselves.
B1. To claim that a body is in motion is simply to claim that it has
changing relations to other bodies. Equally, a body at rest has constant
relations to other bodies.
B2. Every body, insofar as it is extended, always stands in some
relation to other bodies. That is, a body is either in motion or at rest.
B3. God creates bodies. That is, bodies need to be brought into being.
B4. Moreover, bodies require God to sustain them in their being.
B5. At every moment, bodies are in the relations they are because God
is willing it to be so.
B6. That is, God is the cause of the motion of bodies.
B7. If God is the cause of the motion of bodies, then bodies cannot be
the cause of motion of bodies.
Positive Argument
B4. Above demands an argument.
1. A body depends on God for its existence.
2. A body has no intrinsic power of its own (A2 above).
3. That is, remaining in existence requires the same power that
coming into existence does.
4. A body cannot maintain itself in existence, since it lacks the
requisite power.
5. God has the requisite power.
6. God sustains bodies in existence.
That God causes motion in bodies is not yet the full story. Malebranche still
needs to explain the regularities in nature. He does so by asserting that God
prescribes for himself general laws which he abides by in willing what he
does on the occasion of a body’s being in a certain mode.
“God communicates His power to creatures and unites them among
themselves solely by virtue of the fact that He makes their modalities
occasional causes of effects which He produces Himself – occasional causes,
I say, which determine the efficacy of His volitions in consequence of
general laws that He has prescribed for Himself to make His conduct bear
the character of His attributes and spread throughout his work the uniformity
of action necessary to bind together all the parts that compose it and to
extricate it from the confusion and irregularity of a kind of chaos in which
minds could never understand anything.” (231)