The mere absence of observed necessary connection does not eliminate real causal power, as Malebranche's own critics (e.g., Arnauld) argued that occasionalism conflates epistemic and ontological limits.
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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.
Ontological
"Ontological" refers to questions about what actually exists or is real. It's concerned with the fundamental nature of being—asking "What kinds of things are there?" rather than "How do we know about them?" For example, an ontological question might be whether numbers, ideas, or God actually exist as real things, or if they're just human inventions.
necessary connection(Hume's account of the origin of the concept of causation, Treatise I.III.14)
The felt sense of the mind being pulled from one impression to an associated idea, which the mind then projects onto external objects as if it were a connection among the objects themselves
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.