Nadler on occasionalism

Before leaving Cairo, I had the chance to start digging into Steven Nadler’s new book, Occasionalism. It’s very good, not surprisingly.

The main idea of the book is that occasionalism is a very serious philosophical thesis, not just an ad hoc theological maneuver to deal with the mind-body problem. As Nadler notes, it’s hard even to find any occasionalist arguments that are based on the mind-body problem.

Another point: the body-body problem is no less at stake here, as Leibniz already recognized.

Another point: there are Islamic roots to occasionalism. (In fact, it appears in Europe rather late, though perhaps Nadler will find it earlier than expeced in Europe; I’ve just started the book.)

The only reason I wouldn’t call myself an occasionalist is because, even if I were doing a theology, it would be a heretical theology in which God’s contact with other entities is indirect as well. If there’s a problem in the interaction between things, there’s no reason for God to be an exception to that problem. The problem of how things can make contact at all needs to be solved in a single stroke for all entities, not outsourced to one omnipotent entity.