There must be a First: Why Thomas Aquinas Rejects Infinite, Essentially Ordered, Causal Series (2013)
Several of Thomas Aquinas's proofs for the existence of God rely on the claim that causal series cannot proceed in infinitum. I argue that Aquinas has good reason to hold this claim given his conception of causation. Because he holds that effects are ontologically dependent on their causes, he holds that the relevant causal series are wholly derivative: the later members of such series serve as causes only insofar as they have been caused by and are effects of the earlier members. Because the intermediate causes in such series possess causal powers only by deriving them from all the preceding causes, they need a first and non-derivative cause to serve as the source of their causal powers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]
...MoreSimilar Citations
Chapter
Knuutila, Simo;
Kukkonen, Taneli;
(2011)
Thought Experiments and Indirect Proofs in Averroes, Aquinas, and Buridan
(/isis/citation/CBB001321020/)
Article
Marwan Rashed;
(2020)
Abū Hāšim Al-Ǧubbāʾī, algèbre et inférence
(/isis/citation/CBB164105590/)
Article
Gerogiorgakis, Stamatios D.;
(2005)
Wenn die Möglichkeit in Notwendigkeit umschlägt: Ein Beitrag zur Vorgeschichte modaler ontologischer Beweise
(/isis/citation/CBB000933644/)
Book
Roy, Ranjan;
(2011)
Sources in the Development of Mathematics: Infinite Series and Products from the Fifteenth to the Twenty-First Century
(/isis/citation/CBB001252404/)
Book
Godefroid de Callatay;
(2018)
On Composition and the Arts: An Arabic Critical Edition and English Translation of Epistles 6-8
(/isis/citation/CBB990518312/)
Article
Norman Biggs;
(2021)
Linear Programming from Fibonacci to Farkas
(/isis/citation/CBB910977328/)
Article
Srećko Kovač;
(2020)
On causality as the fundamental concept of Gödel’s philosophy
(/isis/citation/CBB991048612/)
Book
Leonardo Ambasciano;
D. Jason Slone;
Donald Wiebe;
Luther H. Martin;
Radek Kundt;
William W. McCorkle Jr;
(2018)
An Unnatural History of Religions: Academia, Post-truth and the Quest for Scientific Knowledge
(/isis/citation/CBB840908594/)
Book
John P. Burgess;
(2015)
Rigor and Structure
(/isis/citation/CBB621282384/)
Article
Dick, Stephanie;
(2011)
AfterMath: The Work of Proof in the Age of Human--Machine Collaboration
(/isis/citation/CBB001220009/)
Article
Abeles, Francine F.;
(2012)
Toward A Visual Proof System: Lewis Carroll's Method of Trees
(/isis/citation/CBB001214122/)
Article
Centrone, Stefania;
(2012)
Strenge Beweise und das Verbot der metábasis eis állo génos
(/isis/citation/CBB001210991/)
Article
Babbitt, Donald;
Goodstein, Judith;
(2011)
Federigo Enriques's Quest to Prove the “Completeness Theorem”
(/isis/citation/CBB001211747/)
Article
Anellis, Irving;
(2012)
Jean van Heijenoort's Contributions to Proof Theory and Its History
(/isis/citation/CBB001214119/)
Article
Fiorentino, Francesco;
(2007)
Causalità, infinito e sostanza in Francesco d'Ascoli
(/isis/citation/CBB001020537/)
Article
Galluzzo, Gabriele;
(2009)
Averroes and Aquinas on Aristotle's Criterion of Substantiality
(/isis/citation/CBB000932300/)
Article
Tanzella-Nitti, Giuseppe;
(2004)
L'ontologia di Tommaso d'Aquino e le scienze naturali
(/isis/citation/CBB000400965/)
Chapter
Caroti, Stefano;
(2006)
Nicolas d'Autrécourt, la génération, la corruption et l'altération
(/isis/citation/CBB001020317/)
Book
Yrjönsuuri, Mikko;
(2001)
Medieval Formal Logic: Obligations, Insolubles and Consequences
(/isis/citation/CBB000102010/)
Book
Fibonacci, Leonardo;
Sigler, L. E.;
(2002)
Fibonacci's Liber Abaci: A Translation into Modern English of Leonardo Pisano's Book of Calculation
(/isis/citation/CBB000301710/)
Be the first to comment!