imascholar

Nicolas Malebranche 1638-1715

Health problems. Priest in oratory of divine love, scholastics he didn’t like. Bookstore – treatise on man by Descartes, human body as extension, mechanistic terms. If Cartesian dualism is true, then mind is not mechanistic, we really are our minds, superior to our bodies. Ability to rise above physical limitations. Focus on mind, overcoming the body. M spread Cartesian ideas in Europe.

Ontologism or ‘vision in god’

We see all things in god, he is direct object of our mental activity, thru him we can think about anything at all. It was criticized widely.

Infinite, we can think bout things as infinite. We r finite yet we can recognize something as infinite. How? Well, we don’t really have any idea of infinite. World traveler argument. Perfectly round planet, man falls from clouds and starts walking on earth. He goes and goes, finally sits down. His journal: <0,1,2,3>, you can go forever. and so on as indefinite is Who knows how much more there is to go? Or ‘and so on’ as genuinely infinite as in math. We can make this distinction, which is in itself important. B/w indefinite vs infinite ‘and so on’. Then we do have some idea of infinite. Also, if we had no real idea of infinite, then Pythagorean theorem is false strictly speaking (infinitely precise number).

Q, this idea of infinite as we finite being have how is it related to us when we think about it. Is it in some way part of us, when we have intellectual perception of math. A puzzle! ‘how a finite being can contain something infinite?’. If we can’t contain something infinite, then that infinite we are perceiving is some object. So either we can contain an infinite (m denies) or what we think about when we think about infinite is actually existing something infinite, as perferct infinite being. When we think, we always think of something. When we think of nothing, we think of something really general, has no particular limits, its infinite, god. This thing has to be something, actually existing and distinct from us.

What if we think of finite and negating it, infinite is what is not finite. Ok, but w/o beggin the q, tell us how we rec things as finite? By recognizing that what we think about is not infinite. U can’t start with finite and then build infinite. Why? Infinite is not contructed out of finite, however if u have idea of something infinite, it gives u a way to recognize something as finite.

We might say, well we can take a bounch of finite things (circles) and smear them together in our minds, infinite grounds of possibilities. BUT, distinction b/w ‘and so on’s”. not indefinitely many possible circles but infinitely many possible circles.

God is precondition to any thought at all. This background contains all possibilities, when we think of any particular thing we recognize a particular way of infinite perfect being, rec potential of squares. Whenever we think of something we think of god, insofar as he cotains w/in himself a certain set of possibilities.

Still some ideas are more perfect than others, minds than bodies. Ideas in god have a certain order, and acc to it we measure ourselves morally. Universal reason as summing up of order of all ideas, all possibilities. Order is so fundamental, not even god can act against it. Reason there is ordre in god, that god has perfect self-knowledge, and in it he perfectly represents himself to himself. God loves his self-representation, so everything he does is part of his love of self-reason. So god can’t act contrary to order. We see this order, we have direct access to divine mind. This universal reason is 2nd person of the trinity “divine word”. God divine word is god’s intellectual conception of himself, traditional identification. But divine word is a ‘person’, thus reason is not a passive collection of ideas, it is a divine agent. It not only shows us ideas, reason shows ideas to us, thinking is done by divine word (god) not ourselves. It also gives us feelings, states of mind, like intellectual and moral conscience, gifts of universal reason.

Theory of idolatry

For Hume all ideas trace back to some sort of sensory impressions. M says that ideas are more fundamentally than impressions, all rationalists think that way. Hume is different. Impressions are more important. Ideas in terms of impressions. Yet Hume was very influenced by M thought, especially Hume’s theory of causation.

M holds that order is so fundamental that even god can’t act against it. God is good in general. God has to make everything that acts according to order. Being moral is acting according to order. But we don’t! b/c at some point we had a fall from reason. We have impulse, love of good in general (god), when we go wrong is when impulse to loving good in general occurs thru loving particular things (pizza). Problem is that we love a particular thing and we stop, instead of looking further for God.

Theory of causation – occasionalism

Bodies have power to act, causal powers, WRONG! Only god can be a true cause, only he can be as such that whatever he will, happens necessarily. Occasional causation, not true causation, bodies are not true causes, but occasional. God does everything acc to General Laws, or causal link b/w cause and effect. God is willing the general law so necessarily everything has to act according to it. Causation in regular world is regularity of events according to General Law. Things happen according to laws.

4 possibilities of where we get idea of cause: 1. external objects 2. will over bodies 3. will over mind 4. God. Hume argues against first 3, that this cannot be the source of our idea of necessary causation. Hume takes arguments from M.

Obj1, Billiard ball argument: All we see is one thing happens and then another thing happens.

Obj2, Anatomy arguments: when I will my hand to move, I don’t have any control over what is happening in my body, I don’t have direct access to way my muscles move or nerve signal travels, I trust that everything will occur according to laws, I only will and acc to general law my hand moves.

Obj3, Creation from nothing argument. Will over Mind: I will to think of something and it pops up in our mind. U think you create things from nothing. Its absurd to think you can create things from nothing.

Hume is skeptic, empiricist, very close to atheist. Similar to Malebranche's Idolatry, he has similar account to how paganism arises. P761, when ppl attribute bodies special power to make them happy or sad, hurricane or lightning is caused by some being.

Obj4, Hume breaks out from Malebranche. Hume argues, if we get idea of causation from god, then anything could happen, even most absurd things and there won't be any regularity. Malebranche disagreed, his occasionalism is in part based on his ontologism, that we have access to divine reason, which is divine order.

God, Free Will and Evil

Two basic positions, Jansenism – Determinism vs. Molinism – attempt to have both claims that god is omnipotent and all knowing and that we have general free will. M wanted middle position: so J are right in some sense; what free will is not something positive, like causal power, that would be a divine quality, but our free will is actually of free won’t. everything positive in our free will is directly from god, we contribute a limitation, we stop at something that we shouldn’t. God allows evil! (Leibniz) M argues that its impossible to have a completely perfect world, logical contradiction. For every world god could make he could make better one. Our world is under construction, incomplete, in it god chosen to act in simplest and most fruitful ways (general laws) so b/c of that evil happens. God act necessarily perfectly according to order but he makes and imperfect world as he is morally required to do so b/c acting in simplest ways allows evil to exist in imperfect world on particular level. Things go wrong on particulars, when everything is done on general laws. B/c god acts perfectly there is evil in this world. Leibniz would say that acting perfectly will create perfect things. He will argue that we live in best possible world. For M its an oxymoron, logical contradiction. 1-8 Discourse.