Robert Merrihew Adams, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, "Power, Cause, and Law in Malebranche's Occasionalism"

Abstract

No 17th century philosopher contributed more importantly to the development of modern understandings of causality than Nicolas Malebranche. This paper will examine the question, how the causal concepts involved in Malebranche's occasionalist theory, and his arguments for it, are related to those that are presupposed in his views about divine and human freedom.