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    Malebranche's occasionalism, which Edwards resembles, fac... — Carmelics
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    Challenges→God alone is the only real cause.

    Malebranche's occasionalism, which Edwards resembles, faces Leibniz's objection that a God who must constantly intervene to produce effects is less perfect than one who creates substances with genuine causal powers.

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    Key Terms

    Divine perfection(what the statement argues can be better preserved)
    The idea that God is perfect—traditionally meaning God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and completely flawless in every way.
    Edwards(as a philosopher who built on occasionalism)
    Jonathan Edwards, an 18th-century American philosopher and theologian who developed ideas based on Malebranche's theory about how God relates to human action.
    Leibniz
    Leibniz is a German philosopher and mathematician from the 1600s-1700s who developed calculus (a powerful math tool for measuring change and areas) independently around the same time as Isaac Newton. He's famous for creating much of the notation we still use in mathematics today and for arguing that everything in the universe follows logical principles. His ideas profoundly influenced modern science, mathematics, and philosophy, making him one of history's most important thinkers.
    Malebranche
    Nicolas Malebranche was a 17th-century French philosopher who developed the idea that God is the only true cause of everything that happens in the world, and that our minds and bodies don't directly interact but are coordinated by God like two synchronized clocks. He's important because his unusual theory tried to solve the puzzle of how a non-physical mind can affect a physical body, and his ideas influenced later European philosophy. His work represents one of the most creative attempts in Western thought to explain the relationship between mind and matter.

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    causal powers(Argued to be intrinsic features of the entity)
    The capacity of an entity to produce effects.
    occasionalism(Malebranche's metaphysics)
    The doctrine that bodies cannot directly cause modifications in minds (or in each other); instead, a causal relation between body and mind obtains only when God intends the mind to undergo a certain modification on the occasion of a certain bodily change.
    substances(Used to distinguish the category of substance from that of property in ontology.)
    Individual objects; the entities that properties are predicated of.

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    Causation1 linkedDivine Attributes1 linked

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    God alone is the only real cause.

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