Which concept posits that God mediates all interactions between the mind and body?

The concept that posits that God mediates all interactions between the mind and body is occasionalism. This philosophical viewpoint asserts that when a mental event occurs, it does not directly cause a physical response; instead, it is God who intervenes and causes the physical response to follow the mental event. This perspective was mostly developed in the context of discussions on dualism, particularly during the 17th century by philosophers like Nicolas Malebranche, who argued that the regularities observed in the mind-body relationship are a result of divine intervention rather than a direct connection between the two.

Occasionalism stands out because it seeks to resolve the challenges of explaining how two distinct substances (the mental and the physical) could interact without direct causation. Instead of a physical trigger being the cause of a mental or bodily response, God is seen as the active mediator that ensures those responses occur in coordination with each other, maintaining a consistency that observers can perceive.

In contrast, determinism suggests that all events, including human actions, are determined by previous causes and conditions, without invoking divine mediation. Double-aspectism holds that the mind and body are two aspects of a single reality and can be regarded as two ways of looking at the same thing, which does not