Notes

> Mind providing evidence or argument?

Ok. Here is the prime mover argument that I am studying right now.

**Preliminary points**

*Act and potency.*

The major distinction in Aquinas argument is between potential and actual. Let's illustrate this using an example. An acorn is actually a seed but potentially a tree. As we speak, the acorn is a seed but with the sufficient conditions in place, the acorn seed will fulfill its potential and mature into an oak tree.

Even if the acorn got eaten by a squirrel or went out of existence. It still had that potential.

*Essentially ordered and Accidentally ordered series*

An Accidentally-ordered series is a series in which each member temporally causes the next element like a human giving birth to a human that then gives birth to the next human that then give birth to the next human and so on.

Aquinas thinks such an accidentally ordered series could go on forever in the past.

in Summa Theologica I.46:

>...it is not impossible to proceed to infinity "accidentally" as regards efficient causes...as an artificer acts by means of many hammers accidentally, because one after the other may be broken.

An Essentially ordered series is like a chain of gears where each gear derives its motion from the previous gear. Each gear depends on the motion of the previous gear. ***The gears only transmit the causal power but do not create it themselves.*** Take one gear out and the whole thing fails. Another example that was given by one of my favorite theists is the laser and the mirrors. A laser bounces off a sequence of mirrors to eventually reach the eye. Take off one mirror and the whole thing is useless and the mirrors are only derivative of the effect (laser) as in none of the mirrors can produce the lasers but only move it along to the next mirror. Another example is a hand moving a stick moving a rock. The stick in this case is derivative only in the sense that it can not produce the causal power but merely passes it along to the rock. Strictly speaking, it is the hand moving the rock through the instrument of the stick. So the hand is the prime mover (generator of the causal power) and the stick is a secondary cause (since it only derives and passes along the causal power without producing the causal power). Same goes for the chain of gears example. The engine or motor is the prime mover and the gears are the secondary causes.



P1) Change occurs.

P2) Potency can not cause change

C1) only something actual can cause change.

P3) An essentially-ordered series must have a prime mover.

C2) There is a purely actual prime mover.