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Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Discourse on Metaphysics' and 'How Things Persist'

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17. Mind and Body / A. Mind-Body Dualism / 4. Occasionalism
Mind and body can't influence one another, but God wouldn't intervene in the daily routine [Leibniz]
     Full Idea: It is inconceivable that mind and body should have any influence on one another, and it is unreasonable simply to have recourse to the extraordinary operation of the universal cause in a matter which is ordinary and particular.
     From: Gottfried Leibniz (Discourse on Metaphysics [1686], §33)
     A reaction: Leibniz was the ultimate intellectual contortionist! Here he is rejecting Cartesian interactionism, and also Malebranche's Occasionalism (God bridges the gap), in order to prepare for his own (daft) theory of what is now called Parallelism.