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Continuous creation and secondary causation: the threat of occasionalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 June 2010

TIMOTHY D. MILLER
TIMOTHY D. MILLER*
Affiliation:
Lee University School of Religion, PO Box 3450, Cleveland, TN37320
*
e-mail: tmiller@leeuniversity.edu
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Abstract

One standard criticism of the doctrine of continuous creation is that it entails the occasionalist position that God alone is a true cause and that the events we commonly identify as causes are merely the occasions upon which God brings about effects. I begin by clearly stating Malebranche's argument from continuous creation to occasionalism. Next, I examine two strategies for resisting Malebranche's argument – strong and weak concurrentism – and argue that weak concurrentism is the more promising strategy. Finally, I argue that weak concurrentism requires a necessitarian approach to secondary causation.

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Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 47 , Issue 1 , March 2011 , pp. 3 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

Notes

1. I hope to examine the first objection on some later occasion. In an earlier essay I defended continuous creation against William Lane Craig's accusation that it fundamentally misconstrues the distinction between creation and conservation; see my ‘On the distinction between creation and conservation’, Religious Studies, 45 (2009), 471–485CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. Nicholas Malebranche Dialogues on Metaphysics and on Religion, Nicholas Jolley and David Scott (eds) (New York NY: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 106–111. Malebranche, of course, presented the argument not as an objection to continuous creation, but as an argument for occasionalism.

3. This is a historical oversimplification; many of the Cartesians applied the occasionalist analysis to some types of causal interactions (most commonly, interactions between material bodies) without extending it to others. Nevertheless, many of the arguments the Cartesians used to defend an occasionalist analysis of one type of causal interaction seem to establish it for the others as well. It is a curious fact that Malebranche never explicitly stated the continuous creation argument using a mind as his example instead of a material object, but there is no obvious reason for him not to do so, since nothing in the argument seems to depend upon differences between minds and bodies. However, Malebranche's views on the mind's causal abilities pose difficult interpretive issues; for an excellent recent discussion of these issues in connection with his continuous creation argument, see Lee, Sukjae ‘Necessary connections and continuous creation: Malebranche's two arguments for occasionalism’, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 46 (2008), 539–565.Google Scholar

4. Malebranche Dialogues, 115–116.

5. To my knowledge, Malebranche never explicitly discusses the possibility that secondary causes are overdetermining causes. Such a view would seem to be incompatible with Malebranche's understanding of God's infinite wisdom, which requires that God do things in the simplest possible way.

6. Alfred J. Freddoso draws a distinction between a no-action theory of occasionalism (creatures have causal powers but can never exercise them) and a no-nature theory of occasionalism (creatures simply have no causal powers); see his ‘Mediaeval Aristotelianism and the case against secondary causation in nature’, in Thomas V. Morris (ed.) Divine and Human Action: Essays in the Metaphysics of Theism (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), 74–118. Since the continuous-creation argument grants at the outset that creatures have causal powers, what it establishes, strictly speaking, is only the no-action theory. But Theodore clearly expects Aristes to reject the notion of causal powers that can never be exercised and accept the no-nature theory.

7. This formulation is based upon the theory Philip Quinn develops in his ‘Divine conservation, secondary causes, and occasionalism’, in Morris Divine and Human Action, 72–73; see also idem ‘Creation, conservation, and the big bang’, in John Earman (ed.) Philosophical Problems of the Internal and External Worlds: Essays on the Philosophy of Adolf Grünbaum (Pittsburgh PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993), 598. Quinn's own wording is slightly different, but equivalent.

To avoid saddling the theory with unnecessary metaphysical complications (e.g. problems of material constitution), it will be useful to suppose that the individuals God creates and conserves are simple (i.e. non-composite, atomic) individuals. Cf. Peter van Inwagen ‘The place of chance in a world sustained by God’, in Morris Divine and Human Action, 211–235. Quinn vacillates concerning whether to include composite entities or restrict the theory to simple individuals; for the former position see his ‘Conservation and occasionalism’, 51; for the latter see his ‘Conservation and the big bang’, 596.

8. McCann, Hugh J. & Kvanvig, Jonathan L ‘The occasionalist proselytizer: a modified catechism’, Philosophical Perspectives, 5 (1991), 592CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9. Malebranche focuses on the properties of location and movement because they are so fundamental to his Cartesian conception of material bodies, but his point does not depend in any essential way upon this conception of matter. As I understand it, his reasoning is perfectly general and applicable regardless of what properties bodies possess. For an alternative interpretation, see Pessin, Andrew ‘Does continuous creation entail occasionalism? Malebranche (and Descartes)’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 30 (2000), 413–440.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10. Malebranche Dialogues, 112.

11. Ibid.

12. Peter van Inwagen suggests that God could issue indeterminate creative volitions; he believes, for example, that God could issue decrees of the form ‘let either x or y exist’, leaving the specific outcome of such decrees entirely up to chance. If that is possible, then it would also seem to be possible for God to decree that a specific individual should come into existence, but leave the properties of that individual entirely to chance; and if that is possible, then CrD might be false.

I do not find the motivation for this position convincing; van Inwagen supposes that a sort of Buridan's ass situation might arise in which God is indifferent between two incompatible creative options. Since van Inwagen finds the suggestion that God might choose arbitrarily offensive, he prefers to think that God would simply issue indeterminate volitions and leave the outcome to chance (see his ‘Place of chance’, 228–229). However, I find nothing particularly problematic about God's choosing arbitrarily if genuinely indifferent about the options. Fortunately, settling this issue is unnecessary for present purposes. We are concerned to determine whether it is possible for secondary causes to contribute to the properties possessed by individuals. Whether it is possible for the properties of individuals to be uncaused, or left entirely to chance, is a separate issue.

13. Malebranche Search, 678 ff.

14. Ibid., 680.

15. Freddoso discusses matters closely related to those of this paragraph in Freddoso, Alfred J. ‘God's general concurrence with secondary causes: pitfalls and prospects’, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 68 (1994), 142–145.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16. I illustrated this model above using the example of needing assistance lifting a piano; Freddoso discusses an analogous example in which two friends jointly lift the back of a car. Furthermore, Freddoso endorses the model as ‘a fitting one for the [strong] concurrentist, since according to [strong] concurrentism neither God's concurrence nor the secondary cause's influence can effect anything, or even exist, in the absence of the other. So the [strong] concurrentist must hold that in their cooperative actions God and the secondary cause constitute a single total cause that produces the relevant unitary effect by means of a single, undivided, action’; ibid., 153–154. By contrast, Louis Mancha denies that such a model is suitable for strong concurrentism; see Louis A. Mancha Concurrentism: A Philosophical Explanation (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Purdue University, 2003), 166.

17. Freddoso comes close to this conclusion, but tries to stop short by proposing that ‘certain features or aspects of the unitary effect are traceable primarily to God and that certain other features of the unitary effect are traceable primarily to the secondary agents’; see his introductory essay, ‘Suarez on metaphysical inquiry, efficient causality, and divine action’, in Francisco Suarez On Creation, Conservation, and Concurrence: Metaphysical Disputations 20, 21, and 22, trans. Alfred J. Freddoso (South Bend IN: St Augustine's Press, 2002), xcviii, emphasis added. Freddoso tries to illustrate the suggestion with the example of using a pen to write a letter, claiming that some aspects of the effect (e.g. that it is in black ink rather than blue) are attributable primarily to the causal powers of the pen, while other aspects of the effect (e.g. that ‘philosophy’, rather than some other word, appears in the letter) are attributable primarily to the causal contributions of the author; see his ‘Suarez on God's causal involvement in sinful acts’, in Elmar J. Kremer and Michael J. Latzer (eds) The Problem of Evil in Early Modern Philosophy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 14–15; cf. Mancha Concurrentism, 193. However, I do not find this example helpful because I see no reason why ‘primarily’ in the above claims should not be replaced with ‘entirely’; e.g. apart from the author's prior choice of pens (which Freddoso himself acknowledges is not pertinent), the fact that the letter is in black ink rather than blue is entirely attributable to features of the pen. Likewise, the fact that ‘philosophy’, rather than some other word, appears in the letter is entirely attributable to the author. Cf. Mancha Concurrentism, 196–197.

18. Weak concurrentists need not claim that all properties are caused by secondary causes. They might, for example, think God causes things to exist with their essential properties and/or their causal powers, leaving other features of them to be determined by secondary causes. Peter van Inwagen seems to have something like this in mind in ‘Place of chance’.

19. The only weak concurrentist Malebranche mentions by name is Durandus of Saint-Pourçain (c.1270–1334).

20. Malebranche Search, 680.

21. See, e.g. Jonathan Kvanvig & Hugh J. McCann ‘Divine conservation and the persistence of the world’, in Morris Divine and Human Action, 16; cf. Pessin ‘Does continuous creation entail occasionalism?’. Later, in ‘The occasionalist proselytizer’, McCann and Kvanvig reject weak concurrentism and defend occasionalism.

22. Quinn ‘Conservation and occasionalism’, 55.

23. Quinn notes that condition (1)–(iii) must be interpreted in terms of a ceteris paribus clause; see ‘Conservation and occasionalism’, 57. The ‘Δt’ in the formula indicates a small temporal increment.

24. I refer to this as an actualist assumption because I take it to entail that nothing ever instantiates such dubious properties as nonexistence or being impossible. Hence, such properties cannot constitute counter-examples to (3). Quinn simply treats such substitutions for F as ‘peculiar’ exceptions that can be noted and henceforth ignored; see ‘Conservation and occasionalism’, 57.

25. Of course, Quinn recognizes that the simple regularity theory stated in (1) is vulnerable to familiar counter-examples involving merely fortuitous, non-causal regularities. Nevertheless, he correctly notes that a strengthened analysis, ‘no matter how complicated and sophisticated it may be, will still comport well with my theory of creation and conservation, provided the Humean pattern is followed to the extent of using only de facto regularities in the analysans’; see his ‘Conservation and occasionalism’, 61.

26. It is no secret that Hume owed a great debt to Malebranche for his views on causation. For a detailed discussion of Malebranche's influence on Hume see Charles J. McCracken Malebranche and British Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), ch. 7.

27. See Lewis, David ‘Causation’, The Journal of Philosophy, 70 (1973), 556–567.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28. Quinn ‘Conservation and occasionalism’, 63. Although Quinn acknowledges that simple versions of the counterfactual account such as (10) are susceptible to some well-known counter-examples, he professes his confidence that the more sophisticated counterfactual analyses designed to avoid these counter-examples will also be consistent with CC as long as they start from similar definitions and assumptions; ibid., 67.

29. This point is noted by E. J. Lowe in A Survey of Metaphysics (New York NY: Oxford University Press, 2002), 186–188.

30. Lewis treated the similarity relation as primitive, noting that the relevant factors are ‘many and varied’. However, the two factors he specifically draws attention to – ‘similarities in particular matters of fact’ and ‘similarities of law’ – are closely related to the factors I have mentioned above. According to Lewis, these factors ‘trade off against’ each other; considerations of similarities in the laws or regularities are crucial, although they must be weighed against similarities in the particulars; Lewis ‘Causation’, 560. Lewis later offered a more specific ranking (from most to least important) of various types of similarity: (1) ‘avoid big, widespread, diverse violations of law’; (2) ‘maximize the spatiotemporal region through which perfect match of particular fact prevails’; (3) ‘avoid small, localized, simple violations of law’; and (4) ‘secure approximate similarity of particular fact’. See Lewis, David ‘Counterfactual dependence and time's arrow’, Nous, 13 (1979), 472CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31. It might be objected at this point that I have too quickly dismissed all causal facts from consideration. After all, Quinn's attempt to marry CC with the counterfactual theory involves accepting two disparate kinds of causal relations: the primitive necessitarian bringing about relation that holds between divine volitions and the events they bring about and the counterfactual dependence relation that holds between events involving contingent individuals. Perhaps facts about where the primitive bringing about relation obtains could be included in comparisons of overall similarity between worlds without falling into a vicious circle. In other words, perhaps the only causal facts that are off limits are the causal facts the theory is intended to analyse – namely, facts about secondary causation.

That may be right, but even if it is it cannot solve the counterfactual theory's problems. The counterfactual theory has the false consequence that e 2 is causally dependent on e 1 in Woc because of the regularities that e 1 and e 2 exemplify. Including facts about divine causation in the similarity comparisons would in no way change or eliminate those regularities. Of course, one could always rig the theory's definition of causation in a way that would make facts about divine causation more helpful. For example, (10) could be modified by adding a fifth condition that states: i 2's being G at t 1+Δt was not brought about by a divine volition. Thus modified, (10) would correctly describe Woc as an occasionalist world, and so it would pass our test for theories of causation. However, it would accomplish this only by adding a condition that seems objectionably ad hoc.

32. Quinn ‘Conservation and occasionalism’, 69.

33. See, for example: R. Harré & E. H. Madden Causal Powers: A Theory of Natural Necessity (Totowa NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1975); G. E. M. Anscombe ‘Causality and determination’, in Ernest Sosa (ed.) Causation and Conditionals (New York NY: Oxford University Press, 1975), 63–81; Dretske, Fred ‘Laws of nature’, Philosophy of Science, 44 (1977), 248–268.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tooley, Michael ‘The nature of laws’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 7 (1977), 667–698CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem Causation: A Realist Approach (New York NY: Oxford University Press, 1987); idem ‘Causation: reductionism versus realism’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 50 (1990), Supplement, 215–236CrossRefGoogle Scholar; D. M. Armstrong What is a Law of Nature? (New York NY: Cambridge University Press, 1983); idem‘Going through the open door again: counterfactual versus singularist theories of causation’, in John Collins, Ned Hall, & L. A. Paul (eds) Causation and Counterfactuals (Cambridge MA: The MIT Press, 2004), 445–457; Nancy Cartwright Nature's Capacities and their Measurement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994); idem ‘Where do laws of nature come from?’, Dialectica, 51 (1997), 65–78Google Scholar; Swinburne, Richard ‘The irreducibility of causation’, Dialectica, 51 (1997), 79–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Brian Ellis The Philosophy of Nature: A Guide to the New Essentialism (Ithaca NY: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2002).

34. I am grateful to my audience at the 2007 Pacific Conference meeting of the Society of Christian Philosophers, as well as to Monte Cook, Reinaldo Elugardo, Jim Hawthorne, Linda Zagzebski, and an anonymous referee for this journal for their helpful feedback on earlier drafts of this essay.