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Malebranche

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I don't know off hand whether I've ever had reason before to mention Nicolas Malebranche, a great though idiosyncratic post-Cartesian French philosopher, in this blog. 

I think I may have mentioned him once, in connection with theodicy, i.e. his efforts to make the case for God's goodness despite the evil in the world God created. 

But today I've like to say something about a more fundamental issue in Malebranche's thinking: the nature of causation.

Malebranche said (1) that material things can't be the cause of themselves (they can't be fundamental), (2) minds are composed of ideas, raising the question of whether ideas can be fundamental, but (3) finite minds such as our own cannot account for the operation of physical laws in the world they quite imperfectly observe. Therefore (4) only an infinite mind, God's mind, can ground causal relations such as physical laws. 

All laws are only generalizations of the actions of God's mind, and for that mind every occasion is a separate one. 

So: one billiard ball hits another on a table. It stops, and the second billiard ball moves forward in the same line. What has really happened here? According to Malebranche, what has happened is that God made the first billiard ball move, made it stop, and made the other move forward from that point. The generalizations we might draw from this are generalizations about how God has always chosen to make billiard balls act. The first ball doesn't DO ANYTHING to make the second one move. God simply and consistently acts upon them both so that it looks that way. 

One can do some odd compare-and-contrast exercise with David Hume here. And, indeed, such exercises seem to be a cottage industry in the history of philosophy.

A toast, then, to all the relevant ivy-colored cottages!!!

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