 The issue of whether Descartes himself was an occasionalist has been the subject of considerable debate. Given how many prominent Cartesians were indeed occasionalists, it is not surprising that Descartes has been suggested as the source of this new wave of occasionalism that swept through the European continent in the second half of the seventeenth century. Some interpreters, accordingly, have held that, while perhaps not fully endorsing occasionalism across the board, Descartes did hold occasionalist views with regard to extended substances, or bodies. According to these interpreters, Descartes denied that bodies acted on either other bodies or  minds.[4]  Others disagree and have argued, for instance, that in cases of body-body interaction, Descartes affirmed the genuine causal powers of extended  substances.[5]  Note that, given the general framework of Cartesian dualism, four types of causal interaction among finite substances are usually considered: (1) body-body causation, where one extended substance affects another; (2) body-mind causation, where bodily changes bring about changes in the mind; (3) mind-body causation, where the direction of causation is reverse to that of body-mind causation, and certain thoughts or volitions bring about changes in bodies; (4) intra-mental causation, where various forms of mental activity, such as producing ideas, are considered as typical cases. It is within this framework that the respective positions about causation, occasionalist or not, can be identified.