Blake Dutton

One of the most striking features of speculative theology (kalāam) as it developed within the Ash'arite tradition of Islam is its denial of causal power to creatures. Much like Malebranche in the seventeenth century, the Ash'arites saw this denial as a natural extension of monotheism and were led as a result to embrace an occasionalist account of causality. According to their analysis, causal power is identical with creative power, and since God is the sole and sovereign creator, God is the only causal agent. To assert anything else is to compromise monotheism. This position, of course, was in direct opposition to the prevailing accounts of causality within the philosophical tradition of Islam at the time. The philosophers (falāasifa) had by and large taken over accounts of causality from Aristotle and the Neoplatonists and adapted them in accordance with their own set of concerns. In such accounts, while God stands as the first cause, secondary causation—the causative action of agents other than God—is unambiguously affirmed, even if variously understood. Thus, as they offered a sophisticated account of causal action in direct opposition to the occasionalist thesis, the falāasifa posed something of challenge to the theologians.

Indifference, Necessity, and Descartes's Derivation of the Laws of Motion BLAKE D. DUTTON WHILE WORKING ON Le Monde, his first comprehensive scientific treatise, Des- cartes writes the following to Mersenne: "I think that all those to whom God has given the use of this reason have an obligation to employ it principally in the endeavor to know him and to know themselves. This is the task with which I began my studies; and I can say that I would not have been able to discover the foundations of physics if I had not looked for them along that road" . ' As the letter makes clear, knowl- edge of the foundations of Cartesian physics is inextricably linked to the knowledge of God. Unfortunately, Descartes never explains why this is the case, and the relation in which his theistic doctrine stands to his physics remains unspecified. In what follows I wish to clarify that relation by examining some of the problems surrounding Descartes's attempt to locate the metaphysical founda- tions of his physics in his doctrine of God. I begin my analysis with a discussion of the doctrine of divine indifference and argue that this doctrine is of great importance to any interpretation of the foundations of Cartesian physics, insofar as it provides Descartes with a rationale for dismissing the appeal to final causation in scientific explanation. Insofar as this is the case, it supplies an important piece of his justification for mechanism...