Topics will include the epistemology of perception, skepticism, naturalism, causation, inductive knowledge, knowledge of God's existence, and the mind/body problem.
Despite these explicit confirmations of the efficacy of dependent causes (i.e., those that are other than God), it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that La Forge assumes a clear conception of how God's creative action operates, and that the sufficiency of God's causation makes the causation of natural events redundant.
One might expect him to have argued in the opposite direction, from an understanding of causation in nature (however imperfect it may be) to a conception that is acknowledged to be less clear, and merely analogical, of causation in God.
The elusive notion of physical premotion is part of a general account of God's causation of the actions of creatures.
In the hands of Leibniz, this surprising view as to the nature of causation becomes the foundation of an original proof of God's existence.
Explaining this controversy leads into the heart of Spinoza's metaphysics, intersecting his views on causation, inherence, God, ontological plenitude and the principle of sufficient reason.
As Montagnes has pointed out, he came to place much greater emphasis on agent causation, the active transmission of properties from God to creatures, than on exemplar causality, the creature's passive reflection or imitation of God's properties.
Eyes are a great blessing of God.
That does not prove causation, of course.
Multifactorial causation of obesity: implications for prevention.
