1. Causation exists.( Empirical Premise)
2. Act and Potency are classic terms we can use to explain causation: When something is in Potency it has the capacity to become something else, but is not it yet. A fertilized egg has the potency to turn into a chick, an unfertilized egg does not. When a potency is realized, it is actual. To actualize a potency is to take a property that something had in potency and make it actually inhere in the thing. The same thing, in this case, for things within an instant. While they are simultaneous they are still essentially ordered.
3. When we find an instance of causation in the world we find some potency being actualized.
4. Something that is only in potency cannot actualize anything.
5. For some potency to be actualized something actual must actualize it.
6. If A is actualized by B, then B must first be actual.
7. Either something must have actualized B from being in potency to be in actuality. Or B is either necessarily actual, having never been in potency before. ( A v B)
8. If the left disjunct “A” is true then premise 7 applies to a new cause C.
9. If disjunct “B” is true there is a “first” uncaused cause that is pure actuality.
10. If disjunct “B” is never the case then there is an infinite series of actualizations. And we can apply 7 to C, then to a new cause D, and so forth. With every being having its actuality derived from another being.
11. If “10” is the case then there can be no actualization, as every being in the series has its actuality derived from another being, but there is no being with actuality on it's own to derive the actuality from.
12. If “10” is the case there is no causation
13. There is causation ( from premise 1)
14. Premise “10” is not the case.
15. If premise 10 is not the case, then at some point in the series “9” is the case.
16. There is a first cause, which is a being of pure actuality.
I can help you if needed
More answer to your question in the next post.
part 2/3
