Occasionalism in Islamic philosophy and theology

Named after Imam Ash’ari (936 AD), a famous scholar on Islamic theology, the Ash’arite tradition was the first school to embrace occasionalism consistently. In Ash’arite cosmology, the universe can be analyzed in terms of two main categories: those of substance and those of accident. An accident can be simply regarded as a property and a substance is the thing to which properties are attributed. Substances are usually identified with indivisible particles (atom). Atoms are homogeneous, and the diversity in nature appears as a result of the heterogeneity of accidents inhered in these substance-atoms. Accidents are considered to be perishable by their nature. No accident can endure but perishes in the second-instant of its coming to be if God does not recreate it in its substance. This is the crucial point in support of occasionalism. Accidents cannot exist by themselves and the atoms which need accidents to exist cannot exist by themselves either. All atoms and accidents need the power of God in order to exist and subsist over time. In Ash’arite metaphysics, it is not the case that God can create anything. Some things do not fall under the extension of divine power. It is absurd that substances can exist without accidents and there is no rationality in saying that God can create a substance without accident. Logically contradictory cases are also excluded from the scope of divine power. In other words, to say that God can create round squares or logically contradictory cases is a category mistake like saying that number 2 is green. Numbers are not the things to which the color predicates apply. In other words, color-predicates have a certain range or extension of applicability which excludes numbers. On the other hand, the properties of “being odd” or “being even” apply to numbers, but not to material objects. Saying that this chair is even is another category mistake. So each predicate has a certain extension to which this predicate legitimately applies. Things or expressions which are not in the scope (extension) of a certain predicate lead to a category mistake if they are associated with this predicate. So the sentence “God cannot do something” includes a category mistake if that thing in question is a contradiction for instance, because contradictions are not within the scope of divine power. In brief, the general features of the Ash’arite cosmology present a discontinuous universe, which depends on God’s creative power to exist and subsist at each moment. Furthermore, it does not consider certain cases such as absurdities to be possible with respect to creation. Al-Kindi supports the Ash’arite picture of the universe by indicating the impossibility of a real causal link between natural objects. He points out that anything which is being affected or being acted upon cannot be a true agent. The true agent acts upon what is affected without itself being affected by any kind of effect. Everything in this universe is acted upon and affected by something else. So God is the only true agent. The rest are only metaphorically causes which do not have real causal powers. Later, al-Ghazali focused on the apparent causal relations between events and argues that the causal relation between any two events can be justified neither logically nor by experience. Let’s consider his following example where fire and a piece of cotton are found together and the cotton is burned. A piece of cotton and fire cannot have a logically necessary relation between themselves because we can think of one event without the other, which does not lead to any contradiction. Observation cannot justify that burning of the cotton is a necessarily causal effect of fire because we can observe only that fire and the burning of cotton appeared together, but not that fire caused the burning. This occasionalist metaphysics does not deny that human beings are free in their choices and will be responsible for what they do. The Ash’arites suggest the following formula with respect to human acts: human beings acquire their acts, while God creates these acts. Al-Maturidi later clarifies the nature of the acquisition of their act by human beings by considering human choice as the ground for this acquisition. The thesis that God is the only causal agent in the universe provoked discussion as to whether or not human choice is created by human beings. If human choice is created by human beings, then occasionalism is rejected because, in that case, humans will have causal power together with God. If God creates human choices, then human beings cannot be held responsible for their choices simply because they are not their choices. Sadr-us Sharia and later Taftazani offer an ingenious solution to this problem by denying that human choice falls under the scope of divine power. In their view, human choice is a relational and relative matter that appears between the inclination and the action. For instance, assume that I have a desire to drink water. I choose to drink it and then take a glass of water and perform the action. My choice is a relational matter between my desire to drink water and the act of drinking it. Relations are not things that have definite existence. Think of rightness and leftness. My pen is on the right side of my tea cup from a certain perspective and is on the left side from another perspective. Even though my pen and my tea cup have definite existence, the relations of rightness and leftness which appear between them do not have. These relations are relative matters and because of that they are not genuine objects to which divine power is applicable. In other words, human choice as a relational matter is not under the scope of divine power as round squares are not. As a result, it would be a category mistake to say that God could or could not create human choices. Let’s see how occasionalism is articulated in the West.

Malebranche’s occasionalism and the Cartesian tradition

Malebranche (d. 1715) is a follower of Descartes. He accepts the basic principles of the Cartesian philosophy and inherits the problems remained from Descartes. What is the exact nature of causality? How is the mind related to the body? These are some of the important questions the Cartesian philosophers tried to answer. Malebranche’s occasionalism is a reply to such problems as well as a result of his theological concerns. As far as his theological motivation is concerned, Malebranche concluded that a belief in secondary causality, namely ascribing causal power to beings other than God, leads to paganism. For Malebranche, if we are under the control of a power belonging to a natural being, then we should serve it because of the following principle of St. Augustine: whatever truly acts upon us, it is above us, and inferior things serve the superior things. As a result, he denies any causal efficacy in the created realm. Malebranche calls his doctrine “occasionalism” because God creates events, not arbitrarily but in a regular manner, where certain natural events are “occasions” for God’s creation of certain effects. What people ordinarily call “causes or natural powers” are in fact “occasional causes” in the sense that they are depicting the uniformity of God’s operation in the world and providing us with an ordered system of created nature. If we use al-Ghazali’s example, we can say that the existence of fire near a piece of cotton is the occasional cause for God’s burning of that cotton. Because of the emphasis on occasional causes, occasionalists do not rule out scientific activity-on the contrary, they encourage it. In their view, scientists are looking for the secret and hidden occasional causes and try to understand how God operates on earth. God is the only true cause having genuine causal power. According to Malebranche’s analysis of true causation, there must be a necessary link between a true cause and its effect. A necessary link holds only between the will of an infinitely perfect being and some effect. This is the reason why only God can be regarded as a true cause. In other words, any event or effect needs an absolute power to become existent. It is impossible for finite beings to cause anything at all. That is to say, the two types of finite beings of the Cartesian metaphysics, namely bodies and minds are causally inefficacious. Malebranche accepts Descartes’s characterization of bodies and minds. Bodies are essentially extended substances, minds are thinking substances. Bodies are by definition impotent because the idea of extension does not include the idea of power; there is no power belonging to the essence of bodies. Malebranche believed that observation or sense experience leads us to imagine a causal link between two interacting bodies such as when a billiard ball hits another one. He holds that reason corrects sensation and shows us the truth about the inefficacy of the balls in question by reflecting upon the concept of extension which excludes the concept of power or causal efficacy. Minds also are causally impotent. However, people have free will by which they are responsible for their acts. Malebranche abstains from ascribing causal power to the human will by saying “I do not know if that can be called power.” However, he does not offer a detailed account like that of Taftazani regarding the question as how people can be free without having causal powers of their own. Nevertheless, his occasionalism offers a good solution to the mind-body problem which bothered Descartes and many Cartesians. This problem is quite complicated because mind and body are postulated as two completely distinct substances having nothing in common. How then are they interacting, for instance, when we feel pain whenever we cut our hand or when we move a chair should we desire to do that? Malebranche resolves this problem by claiming that every state in mind and body is created by God in accordance with each other. It is God who creates the desire to drink water and again God who moves our arms without any intervention between mind and body and creates the action of drinking water. Simply speaking, the human’s role in this picture is choosing to actualize or ignore the intentions they have in their minds. Malebranche comes closer to the Ash’arites in his approach to the matter of absurdities. Contradictions and similar absurdities are not subject to divine power and will. This contention of Malebranche diverts him from Descartes’s path because Descartes allows that God could have changed logico-mathematical laws. Malebranche rejects this view and excludes logico-mathematical contradictions from the scope of divine power.

Conclusion

For many people, the idea that the universe is constantly created and controlled only by divine power is difficult to grasp. Many tend to believe in a more naturalistic explanation of the universe, where everything has its own power and role in the whole system. Nevertheless, it is easy to see how we sometimes can be mislead if we remember of our inability to perceive movie frames. The picture of the reality is more complicated than its appearance. There are very good reasons to adopt an occasionalistic explanation of the universe. It is interesting to see that this explanation is advocated by both Muslim and Christian philosophers. We see many parallel lines between Malebanche and the Muslim philosophers on this issue. There are sufficiently strong arguments both from East and West showing that occasionalism is well justified, and has satisfying implications in terms of human responsibility and scientific activity.

Zeno of Elea was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher of southern Italy and a member of the Eleatic School founded by Parmenides. He argued that an object in motion can never pass from one position to another, because between the two there is always an “infinity” of other positions, however close, that must be successively traversed in the course of the motion, and this “infinity” can never be exhausted. David Hilbert is a German mathematician who postulated a hypothetical hotel with “countably infinitely” many rooms, all of which are occupied. Since the hotel has “infinitely” many rooms, we can move the guest occupying room 1 to room 2, the guest occupying room 2 to room 3, and so on, and fit a newcomer into room 1. By repeating this procedure, it may be argued that it is possible to make room for any finite number of new guests, although every room of this hotel initially contains a guest.

The following two quotations from two contemporary authors may provide more substance about the nature of the problem:

On the other hand, involvement with the infinite brings with it a huge range of difficulties. In particular, there are the many puzzles and paradoxes that have been outlined in the pages of this book. Moreover, there are the many quite fundamental problems that arise for such apparently simple notions as counting, adding, maximizing, and so forth. Because we are so firmly wedded to limit notions-“best,” “first,” “greatest,” “maximum,” and so forth-that do not sit easily with the infinite, it is very hard to see how we can make our peace with the infinite.

The infinite has always been a slippery concept. Even the commonly accepted mathematical view, developed by Georg Cantor, may not have truly placed infinity on a rigorous foundation.

In the present article, we attempt to summarize Rene Guenon’s (1886-1951) alternative way of thinking on the idea of infinite from the perspective of the traditional metaphysical science. Much more detailed presentation of his perspective can be found in his (1886-1951) valuable study The Metaphysical Principles of the Infinitesimal Calculus from which we will extensively quote here.

Guenon considered mathematics as providing a particularly proper symbolism for the expression of metaphysical truths to the extent that they are expressible. However, he states that “in order for this to be so it is above all necessary that these sciences be rid of the various errors and confusions that have been introduced by the false views of the moderns.” To follow Guenon’s paradigm it is necessary to start with the metaphysical notion of the universal-All which comprehends all possibilities, the non-manifested as well as the manifested Universe, that is, the cosmos. The universal All leaves outside itself only the impossible that is a pure nothing. A determination is to define a certain domain of possibilities in relation to all the rest which is expressed by Spinoza (1632-1677) as omnis determinatio negatio est (all determination is a negation). The first of all determinations is Being itself. “Number is only a mode of quantity, and quantity itself only a category or special mode of being, not coextensive with it, or more precisely still, quantity is only a condition proper to one certain state of existence in the totality of universal existence.” Number, space, and time are all determined conditions.

The Infinite, understood in its true, metaphysical sense, has no limits since its opposite, finite is synonymous with limited. Therefore, according to Guenon,

… one cannot correctly apply this term to anything other than that which has absolutely no limits, that is to say the universal All. Furthermore, there can obviously be only one Infinite, for two supposedly distinct infinities would limit and therefore inevitably exclude one another.

He further states, “The Infinite, in its true sense, can have neither opposite nor complementarity.” The scholastic distinction between “the infinite in a certain respect” and “the absolute infinite” cannot be accepted. If a thing is not limited in a certain sense or in a certain respect than one can legitimately conclude that it is limited in no way at all, and since a determined thing does not include every possibility, as such it can only be finite.

Given any number, one can form the next by adding a unit gives the sequence of numbers to us. Therefore, we cannot actually reach its limits. However, the impossibility of reaching the limits of certain things in the manifested Universe should not cause the illusion that these determined things have no limits at all. In order to replace the false notion of “determined infinite,” Guenon introduces, the idea of the indefinite, which is precisely the idea of a development of possibilities the limits of which we cannot actually reach; and this is why we (Guenon) regard this distinction between the Infinite and the indefinite as fundamental to all questions in which the so-called mathematical infinite appears.

According to Descartes (1596-1650), the indefinite is that of which we do not perceive the limits, and which in reality could be infinite. On the contrary, Guenon affirms that

(T)he indefinite cannot be infinite because it always implies a certain determination, whether it is a question of extension, duration, divisibility, or some other possibility; in a word, whatever the indefinite may be, and according to whatever aspect it is considered, it is still of the finite and can only be of the finite.

The idea of an “infinite number” understood as “the greatest of all numbers,” or “the number of all numbers” is contradictory. The impossibility of an “infinite number” can be established by various arguments:

(T)o every whole number (integer) there corresponds another number equal to its double, such that one can make the two sequences correspond term by term, with the result that the number of terms must be the same in both; but there are obviously twice as many whole numbers as there are even, since even numbers alternate by twos in the sequence of whole numbers; one thus ends up with a manifested contradiction.

Guenon insists that number, despite its indefinitude, is by no means applicable to all that exists and the multitude of all numbers cannot constitute a number, which, moreover, is finally only an application of the incontestable truth that what limits a certain order of possibilities must necessarily be beyond and outside that which it limits.

On the other hand, the idea of multitude, contrary to that of number, is applicable to all that exists which allows one to speak of the multitude of divine attributes for example, or again of the multitude of angels, that is, of beings belonging to states that are not subject to quantity, where, consequently, there can be no question of number.

Number itself can also be regarded as a species of multitude, but on the added condition that it be a “multitude measured by the unit” according to the expression of Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274).

The term “indefinite” consists of something unfinished. The “non-measured” is that which has not yet been defined, which is only incompletely realized within manifestation. The multitude of all numbers is “innumerable” or “non-measured,” which is not to say they are infinite, but merely that they are indefinite.

Guenon calls whole number as true number or pure number. He accepts that the numbers other than whole numbers can be considered as the extensions or generalizations of the idea of number. However, he adds that these extensions are also distortions. According to Guenon, numerical quantity has a discontinuous character, whereas spatial or temporal magnitudes, for example, are continuous quantities. “Between these two modes of quantity is a difference of nature such that a correspondence between the two cannot be perfectly established.” He distinguishes the arithmetical unit from the “units of measurement,” which are magnitudes of another sort than number, notably geometric magnitudes. He defines a continuous quantity as an extension-however small it might be that will always remain indefinitely divisible.

Guenon is against atomism, which necessarily implies the discontinuity of all things. He argues extension cannot be composed of indivisible elements, for these elements would have to be extensionless to be truly indivisible, and a sum of elements with no extension can no more constitute an extension than a sum of zeros can constitute a number, that is why points are not the elements or parts of a line; the true linear elements are always distances between points, which latter are only their extremities. Points multiplied by any quantity at all can never produce length, since, rigorously speaking, they are null with respect to length; the true elements of a magnitude must always be of the same nature as the magnitude, although incomparably less: this leaves no room for indivisibles.

Further,

The point, which, being indivisible, is by that very fact without extension, that is, spatially null, but which, as we (Guenon) have explained elsewhere, is nonetheless the very principle of all extension.

For Guenon, Zeno of Elea’s arguments are against atomism and indeed, they prove that without continuity there would be no possible motion.

It is this very conception of motion that is in error, for it amounts in short to regarding the continuous as if it were composed of points, or of final, indivisible elements, like the notion according to which bodies are composed of atoms; and this would amount to saying that in reality there is no continuity, for whether it is a question of points or atoms, these final elements can only be discontinuous.

And, “The possibility of motion presupposes the union, or rather the combination, of both temporal and spatial continuity.”

We consider Guenon as an important and prominent example of thinkers who tried to remind people of the traditional metaphysical ideas. This metaphysical perspective does not share the modern tendency to attribute more importance to the practical applications of science than to science itself. This perspective attempts to link science back to principles of a higher order so that a particular science can be used as a support for elevating oneself to a higher knowledge.