[The non-philosophical] determination-in-the-last-instance or 'as if' causality must not be thought of as a mysterious causality from an 'ulterior' world, some 'world-behind-the-scenes'. It is not causa sui, but determined 'before all determination'. It is the causality specific to non-philosophy in general; an immanent, occasional causality. Being wholly uni-directional, from the Real to the thought-world, it is 'rigorously irreversible' (and not just empirically so, but conceptually too). And being a kind of occasional cause means that determination-in-the-last-instance is a causality of the moment (in-the-last-instance). This singularity of the 'last-instance' indicates that the Real is the unique real cause (as the void is for Badiou) and is 'occasional' because it is dited 'to the moment where it manifests itself'. But this moment, though singular, is not in the present. The temporality of the occasion of futural and explains why this determination is hypothetical, following the deductions of a 'what if' thinking ('what if thought was a thing'). The event of thought is the advent of thought, its manifestation-in-the-last-instance, the force (of) thought.
John Mullarkey, Post-Continental Philosophy: an outline, p. 147.