PHI-10 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Explanatory Gap
Document Summary
Third way: from necessarily and possibility (there must be a necessary being) Fourth way: from the degrees of reality and goodness in things. An efficient case is the agent of change. That which produces or brings about the change (or the motivating force ) Ex: roasting marshmallows- the fire is the efficient cause of the marshmallows" meeting. When you shovel dirt from here to there, you are the agent that caused the dirt to move. The second way: the main argument (look at handout) We come through and we discover, there needs to be some first cause: so we call that god. Aquinas is not talking about a temporal series. An ordering of explanatory priority (the come first in the order of explanation) All items in the order do their casual work at once/simultaneously; the first is the most fundamental- a necessary precondition for the rest. Ex: turning dirt with a shovel; applying paint with a brush.
