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    The First must be able to produce at least one first effe... — Carmelics
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    Home/Divine Attributes
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    The First must be able to produce at least one first effect without an instrument or material substrate

    Divine AttributesNatural Theology
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    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.The First cooperates with external instruments and material substrata in producing some of its effects
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    • 2.If the First could not produce any effect without an instrument or substratum, it would not be able to produce anything at all
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.A being that acts through intermediaries in all cases may still be the ultimate sufficient cause, requiring no instrument-free production to ground its primacy.
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    • 2.Al-Farabi's inference from 'cooperates with instruments sometimes' to 'must act without instruments at least once' commits a non-sequitur, since necessary dependence on mediation is consistent with being the first in an ordered causal series.
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    • 3.Neoplatonic emanationism, as in Plotinus's Enneads, holds that the One produces the Intellect necessarily and without deliberation, yet this necessity precludes the kind of free, unmediated agency the argument presupposes.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.If the First's causal power is constitutively relational—defined only through its effects on pre-existing eternal matter, as in Aristotelian hylomorphism—then instrument-free production is metaphysically impossible without undermining the First's own nature.
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    • 2.The argument wrongly assumes that inability to produce without a substrate entails total causal impotence, but a being can be the highest causal principle within a necessarily co-eternal material order, as Aristotle's unmoved mover suggests.
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    Topics

    Divine AttributesNatural Theology

    Connections

    1 linked claim

    The First must be able to produce at least one first effect without an instrumen...

    Related

    A being that acts through intermediaries in all cases may still be the ultimate ...Al-Farabi's inference from 'cooperates with instruments sometimes' to 'must act ...If the First could not produce any effect without an instrument or substratum, i...If the First's causal power is constitutively relational—defined only through it...
    +4 moreShow less
    Neoplatonic emanationism, as in Plotinus's Enneads, holds that the One produces ...The First cooperates with external instruments and material substrata in produci...The First must be able to produce at least one first effect without an instrumen...The argument wrongly assumes that inability to produce without a substrate entai...

    Similar

    The First must be able to produce at least one first effect without an...95%The First does not require anything other than its essence — no accide...82%If the First could not produce any effect without an instrument or sub...81%The existence of the First is a sufficient cause of the existence of t...71%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: al-farabi-metaphysics
    View source passageHide passage
    but he gives no argument that the First’s existence entails the existence of other things. Rather, he seems to rely on the argument that since other things in fact exist, their existence must ultimately be caused by the First; his main concern is not to show that the First causes the existence of other things, but to show how it causes the existence of other things, and in particular to show that that by which the First causes the existence of other things is identical with its essence, just as
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit