Mind-to-Mind Communication and the Case of Inter-mental Occasionalism

Abstract

This article studies the communication between pure minds (angels, demons, and separated souls) on occasionalist grounds, or in terms of (as I shall call it) inter-mental occasionalism. Inter-mental occasionalism has been overlooked by historians and perhaps taken for a purely logical possibility. To close this lacuna, this article presents three case studies of inter-mental occasionalism: (1) Géraud de Cordemoy (1626–1684), (2) Nicolas Malebranche (1638–1715), and (3) the early Christian Wolff (1679–1754). Overall, this article shows that occasionalism has been a popular account of mental causation just as much as physical causation.