 But this is not to say that the occasionalist is left without possible responses to this challenge. First of all, the occasionalists might suggest that such overdetermination implies that God is engaging in needlessly redundant causal behavior. Not only would God be producing the modes himself but he would also be producing the causal power of the creature that is an overdetermining cause of these modes. And the occasionalist could go on to argue that such redundancy is problematic. Second, and more importantly, if a core intuition behind the CCC thesis, as pointed out earlier, is the point that a creature’s dependence on God when it is conserved is no less than when it is initially created ex nihilo, then we might think that the overdetermination of an effect in conservation conflicts with this symmetric dependency. For if some effects are overdetermined in conservation, then with regard to those effects of the creature, the creature’s dependence is in some significant sense less than in creation, since the effects would come about even if the mode-producing causal activity of God were absent. The fact that the occurrence of these effects is causally guaranteed through overdetermination—particularly in virtue of the creature’s productive power—could be thought to be inconsistent with the radical dependence of creatures expressed in the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. A different way to put the point would be to argue that the view that allows for overdetermination in the production of modes would come dangerously close to mere conservationism in that the creaturely cause on the overdetermination view is capable of directly and immediately bringing about the mode in question. For the overdetermination scenario suggests that even if God were not to produce the mode directly, the mode would come about from the creature’s power in virtue of God conserving the creature with its power. Thus, insofar as the creature is an overdetermining cause, its causal power, in effect, is of a type that is typically endorsed by  conservationists.[27]  Though neither La Forge nor Malebranche directly address the possibility of overdetermination, the following passage from La Forge seems to support the view that this intuition about the symmetry of dependence is indeed part of his motivation behind his endorsement of the CCC thesis: