~ from email ~
When I refer to occasionalism (I speak only for my version), I am first talking about metaphysics, not epistemology. When I apply it to epistemology, it is the metaphysics of epistemology, or the metaphysics aspect of epistemology.
It seems too infrequent for a philosopher to include a metaphysics of his epistemology — not his metaphysics apart from his epistemology, but the metaphysics of his epistemology. However, the metaphysics is essential, because knowledge does not happen without reality (by definition, nothing happens without reality), so a view of knowledge is incomplete and in fact impossible without a view of reality, and this view of reality must cohere with the view of knowledge. We can argue over which one we need to talk about first, but eventually we need both, and they need to agree with each other and support each other.
The empiricist claims that knowledge comes from sensation, but metaphysically, how can it happen, and how does it happen? What kind of world is this, in which what he says is possible and true? This must be a reality in which his theory of knowledge is possible and true, and his theory of knowledge must be able to discover and explain this view of reality. If he fails at either metaphysics or epistemology, or if he fails at relating the two, then both his metaphysics and epistemology fall apart.
This is straightforward. There are two things. They are two big things. They are two big different things. However, even this seems too much for some people, so they take it upon themselves to pontificate, although they cannot even distinguish and keep track of these too-big-to-miss topics. There are even some people who, thinking themselves clever, declare that my occasionalism is like empiricism, or just empiricism in disguise, since I sometimes talk about what can happen in the mind when a sensation occurs. Now, if occasionalism is foreign to them, it seems they are ignorant about empiricism as well, because if they understand either occasionalism or empiricism, it would be impossible for them to make this criticism.
Under empiricism, knowledge comes from sensations, and the sensations are basically reliable (whatever that means). Under occasionalism, nothing comes from the sensations, and what comes to the mind has nothing directly to do with the sensations, and may be completely different from, independent of, and even contrary to the objects and events that occasioned the sensations. In fact, a thought can occur in the mind without corresponding sensations, or ten thousand sensations can occur without any thought coming into the mind. How is that empiricism? Perhaps they have difficulty with this because the matter of metaphysics or the metaphysics of epistemology never even occurred to them, and so whatever I say, they are stuck thinking about knowledge acquisition and evaluation, when I am talking about a different topic. I am offering something they do not realize that they need.
Under empiricism, if you see a red car, you are supposed to think you see a red car, and you think that because you have the sensation that you see a red car. Under occasionalism, if you look at a red car, on the occasion this happens, the thought can occur in your mind that you see a green elephant, or that you smell coffee, or that you indeed see a red car, or no thought might occur at all. It has nothing to do with whether the thought is true or false, and it has nothing to do with judging whether the thought is true or false. God causes two independent events, but on the same “occasion,” so that they appear to be related, but that are in fact not related in themselves. How is this empiricism?
You wonder, if it has nothing to do with how I judge a thought, then what good is it? Again, we are not talking about that topic. This is metaphysics. I am talking about being and cause. It is a description of how something happens, how anything happens. This is the same description that I apply to human choice, the collision of objects, the digestion of food, and everything that happens in reality. God causes each thing that happens, and each thing is unrelated to another thing except by the apparent relationship that God arranges as he causes the two things to occur on the same “occasion.” It is not epistemology as such, but it must be applied to epistemology, because reality includes knowledge, and knowledge has to “happen” in reality, just as anything has to happen in reality.
Occasionalism has nothing immediately to do with whether something is true or false, good or evil. It only has to do with the fact that something happens. We can take an analogy from the difference between physics and ethics. Physics can describe a person taking up a knife and pushing it into another person. Even “person” and “knife” do not strictly come under physics, but if we will tolerate the verbs, we can say, “A takes up B, and pushes B into C.” This has nothing to do with good and evil. It is only a description of an event. You cannot even call it “killing” unless you bring biology into it. One would miss the point if he complains that this statement of physics is a defective theory of ethics because it does not tell him whether the event is good or evil. Any theory of physics would be immune to such an absurd criticism, since it would be a categorical error. You can call it a murder only under ethics, and you would make this judgment according to the moral principles in your worldview.
The physics and biology are necessary for this case in ethics, and assumed even if not mentioned, because a case of murder must happen in reality. Occasionalism describes, from the perspective of metaphysics, why you might have a thought when a sensation occurs, but it does not directly address the issue of whether the thought is true. It is talking about metaphysics. Truth is evaluated by another set of principles, such as the laws of logic and the axioms of the system. If you cannot judge something as true by the epistemological principles of your worldview, then you do not know it as true according to your worldview. You might, however, still hold it as your opinion.
For some reason, it appears that many people lack the mental ability to consider events as events. Murder, as murder, is ethically wrong, but it is possible to talk about murder as an event only from metaphysical, physical, and biological perspectives. Thus I refer to God as “the author of sin” from the perspective of metaphysics or ontology, because he is the author of every object and every event in this sense. Somehow people cannot wrap their minds around it. However, this is not some theological sideshow, but the foundation for everything. If you do not acknowledge this point, then in principle you cannot proceed to anything else in your system.
Like those people who cannot distinguish metaphysics and epistemology, or conceive of the necessity of metaphysics for epistemology, it seems Christians lack the mental ability to distinguish between theology/metaphysics and soteriology/ethics, and conceive of the necessity of theology/metaphysics for soteriology/ethics. People ask them a question about metaphysics, such as whether man has free will, and they answer with something from soteriology, like saying that true freedom is obedience to God. This does not at all address the topic. They lack the intelligence to make basic categorical distinctions. Such individuals are not qualified to pass judgment on what I say.