Can Causal Chains Extend Back Infinitely?

Travis Dumsday

Can Causal Chains Extend Back Infinitely?
Entailment, Determinism, and a Cosmological Argument

Article

19/2 - Fall 2014, pages 193-208

Date of online publication: 28 mai 2015

Date of publication: 30 mai 2015

Abstract

I develop a new argument to the effect that past causal chains cannot extend back infinitely, but must instead terminate in a first uncaused cause (or causes). It has the advantage of sidestepping a historically prominent objection to cosmological arguments of this general type, one leveled by Aquinas and various other Scholastics.

Keywords

Cite this article

Dumsday, Travis. “Can Causal Chains Extend Back Infinitely? Entailment, Determinism, and a Cosmological Argument.” Forum Philosophicum 19, no. 2 (2014): 193–208. doi:10.35765/forphil.2014.1902.10.

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