Clauberg
Chapter 4 uses Clauberg’s theory of the mind–body union to show how a Cartesian thinker could respond to perceived problems with Descartes’ interactionism without adopting occasionalism. Section 4.1 presents Clauberg’s theory, according to which the mind is a “moral cause” of motions in the body, and corporal motions are “procatarctic causes” of ideas in the mind. Section 4.2 shows how Clauberg reconciles this account with the causal principles that “an effect may not be more noble than its cause,” and that a cause must formally or eminently contain whatever it brings about in its effect. Section 4.3 argues that Clauberg takes moral and procatarctic causes to be types of efficient causes. This is consistent with a broad conception of efficient causation, which section 4.4 argues Clauberg came to hold by the 1660s. The position that emerges thus represents an alternative to that of Cartesian occasionalists, such as Geulincx and Malebranche.