God, the laws of nature, and occasionalism

Abstract

Abstract Occasionalism is often seen as a peculiarity of early modern philosophy. The idea that God is the sole source of efficient causation in the world strikes many as at best implausible. It was, however, a natural inference based on the seventeenth-century view that the laws of nature are simply God's decrees. The question here is whether such a view and its more recent descendants entail occasionalism. I argue that they do not, but showing why involves a new take on what exactly the laws of nature do.