HoP 490 Steven Nadler on Occasionalism

History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps

Peter Adamson

Society & Culture:philosophy, Philosophy, Society & Culture

4.7 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 5 April 2026

⏱️ 32 minutes

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Summary

What inspired the occasionalist theory embraced by the 17th century Cartesians? We find out from a leading specialist on the topic.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of the philosophy department at King's College London and the LMMU in Munich, online at historyof philosophy.net. Today's episode will be an interview about Malabranch and Occasionalism with Stephen Nadler, who is Vilas Research Professor and William H. May the 2nd Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Hello, Steve. Hello, Peter. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
0:38.0	It's great to have you on because you've written some of the best work on occasionalism,
0:41.7	so you're the man to talk to about this.
0:43.8	And I have an obvious first question.
0:46.0	How would you define occasionalism?
0:47.8	All right.
0:48.1	Well, that's the easy question.
0:49.7	Occasionalism is the philosophical position that natural objects, human bodies, inanimate bodies, natural objects
1:01.3	have no true causal efficacy whatsoever. They are not true causes. Bodies do not bring
1:07.8	about effects in other bodies. They don't cause motion in other bodies.
1:11.9	Minds do not cause motion in bodies.
1:15.4	Minds do not cause their own mental states.
1:18.4	This should be the most thoroughgoing version of occasionalism.
1:21.4	The only true causal agent, the entire universe on this view, is God.
1:32.5	It's called occasionalism because the contact of one body with another serves as an occasion for God to move the bodies in the appropriate ways.
1:39.2	The damage to the skin of a human being is the occasion for God to cause a sensation of pain in that person's mind.
1:48.9	My volition to raise my arm is the occasion for God to make the arm to rise.
1:55.6	And my desire to imagine a unicorn or an elephant is the occasion for God to reveal to me the appropriate
2:06.2	ideas. And so in all of these domains, body body, body, mind, and the mind alone,
2:14.4	God is responsible for all causal activity. Now that's the most thoroughgoing version of
2:20.5	occasionalism. There are some philosophers in the 17th century who I would call partial
2:25.3	occasionalists. They're occasionalists when it comes to body-body relations, but they leave the
	...

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