Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun One who holds or adheres to the doctrine of occasional causes.
Etymologies
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Examples
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Blair is what political historians call an "occasionalist".
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These words seem to point exclusively to an occasionalist understanding of creation.
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Two distinctive results of this synthesis are Malebranche's doctrine that we see bodies through ideas in God and his occasionalist conclusion that God is the only real cause.
Nicolas Malebranche Schmaltz, Tad 2009
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However, there is some question whether this introspective report is compatible with Malebranche's occasionalist claim that God is the only real cause.
Nicolas Malebranche Schmaltz, Tad 2009
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In Marmura's view, al-Ghazâlî never deviated from occasionalism, while he sometimes expressed his opinions in ambiguous language that mocked philosophical parlance, probably in order to lure followers of falsâfa into the Ash™arite occasionalist camp.
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On first sight, it seems that only an occasionalist explanation of physical processes would fulfill these four conditions, and this is how this statement has mostly been understood.
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It can be gathered from isolated statements like the one above and the fact that after the Incoherence al-Ghazâlî wrote books where he maintained a distinctly occasionalist cosmology (al-Ghazâlî 1962) and others like the 35th book of his Revival or the Niche of Lights, where he uses language that is explicitly causalist.
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As a viable alternative to the occasionalist ontology, al-Ghazâlî considered the Avicennan model of secondary causes.
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Given that there will never be a break in God's habit, an occasionalist universe will always remain indistinguishable from one governed by secondary causality.
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A purely occasionalist model finds it difficult to explain how God can make humans responsible for their own actions if they do not cause them.
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