This paper is the first of a two-part reexamination of causation in Descartes's physics. Some scholars ? including Gary Hatfield and Daniel Garber ? take Descartes to be a `partial' Occasionalist, who thinks that God alone is the cause of all natural motion. Contra this interpretation, I agree with literature that links Descartes to the Thomistic theory of divine concurrence. This paper surveys this literature, and argues that it has failed to provide an interpretation of Descartes's view that both distinguishes (...) his position from that of his later, Occasionalist followers and is consistent with his broader metaphysical commitments. I provide an analysis that tries to address these problems with earlier `Concurentist' readings of Descartes. On my analysis, Occasionalism entails that created substances do not have intrinsic active causal powers. As I read him, Descartes thinks that bodies have active causal powers that are partly grounded in their intrinsic natures. But I argue ? pace a recent account by Tad Schmaltz ? that Descartes also thinks that God immediately causes all motion in the created world. On the picture that emerges, Descartes's position is both continuous with, and a subtle departure from, the Thomisitic theory of divine concurrence. (shrink)

There is considerable debate among scholars over whether Descartes allowed for genuine body–body interaction. I begin by considering Michael Della Rocca’s recent claim that Descartes accepted such interaction, and that his doctrine of the creation of the eternal truths indicates how this interaction could be acceptable to him. Though I agree that Descartes was inclined to accept real bodily causes of motion, I differ from Della Rocca in emphasizing that his ontology ultimately does not allow for them. This is not (...) the end of the story, however, since two of Descartes’s successors offered incompatible ways of developing his conflicted account of motion. I contrast the occasionalist view of Nicolas Malebranche that changes in motion derive directly from divine volitions with the non-occasionalist claim of Pierre-Sylvain Regis that such changes derive from a nature distinct from God. In light of Della Rocca’s interpretation, it is noteworthy that the issue of eternal truths is relevant to both alternative accounts. Indeed, Regis took the doctrine that such truths are created to provide crucial support for his alternative to an occasionalist account of body–body interaction. What does not help Della Rocca, however, is that Regis’s view of motion requires a fundamental revision of Descartes’s ontology. Author Keywords: Descartes; Malebranche; Regis; Causation; Motion; Eternal Truths. (shrink)

The philosophical and theological debate between Nicola Malebranche and Antoine Arnauld is one of the most important philosophical exchanges of the late seventeenth century. One of the most significant products of this debate is Malebranche's clarification of his theory of causality, known as occasionalism. A theory of causality, in this case, is a theory in answer to the question, what is the extent of God's causal agency in the world and what room does that leave for causality in created substances? (...) Occasionalism is a version of the view that God is the only causal agent. Arnauld's principal criticisms are directed against the details of Malebranche's account rather than the main thesis. Contemporaneously with this debate, Arnauld was carrying on his celebrated correspondence with Leibniz. Arnauld claims to Leibniz that the latter's own theory of causality, the theory of concomitance, is indistiguishable from occasionalism. By examining the details of occasionalism, as they are discussed in the Malebranche-Arnauld debate, it may be established to what extent Arnauld's claim is true. (shrink)