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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 (See also:Lat. occasio, an event) , in See also:philosophy, a See also:term applied to that theory of the relation between See also:matter and mind which postulates the intervention of See also:God to bring about in the one a See also:change which corresponds to a similar change in the other. The theory thus denies any See also:direct interaction between matter and mind. It was expounded by See also:Geulincx and See also:Malebranche to avoid the difficulty of See also:Descartes's See also:dualism of thought and See also:extension, and to explain See also: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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