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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
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    Home/Original/inverse
    See Original
    Inverse View

    It is not the case that So-called second causes are not real causes because real causes cannot be spatially or temporally distinct from their effects.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.A real cause cannot produce effects in a time and place in which the cause itself is not present.
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    • 2.Second causes are spatially or temporally distinct from their effects.
      ?

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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Genuine causal power requires the cause to be continuously present throughout the production of its effect, as Malebranche argued in his Search After Truth.
      ?

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    • 2.Any gap between cause and effect—spatial or temporal—requires an explanatory bridge that itself must be continuously present, making the alleged second cause causally idle.
      ?

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    • 3.The only entity capable of bridging all causal gaps without itself requiring a further bridge is an omnipresent, continuously acting substance such as God.
      ?

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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Hume demonstrated that we never observe necessary connection between distinct existences, only constant conjunction, undermining the credibility of transeunt causation entirely.
      ?

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    • 2.If spatiotemporally distinct relata lack observable necessary connection, the causal relation between them is merely nominal, not a genuine productive relation.
      ?

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    • 3.Edwards's occasionalism preserves genuine productive causation precisely by locating it in an immanent divine act rather than in a nominal relation between discrete finite events.
      ?

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