For their statement:

“A temporal occurrence, precisely insofar as it is a temporal occurrence, must be preceded by something else; or motion, precisely insofar as it is motion, must be preceded by something else,”

can be answered as follows:

“A temporal occurrence in the abstract exists only in the mind, not in external reality. What exists externally consists only of successive existents, not things gathered together at one time, as are finite collections of contingent beings and things brought into being, and existent and nonexistent things. In external reality, there is only one temporal occurrence after another. Thus, the judgment must concern either each individual instance, a finite collection, or the enduring kind whose instances follow one another.”

You may therefore be asked:

“Do you mean that every temporal occurrence must be preceded by something else, that any finite collection of temporal occurrences must have something preceding it, or that the kind itself must have something preceding it?”

There is no dispute over the first two.

As for the third, it may be asked:

“Do you mean that the kind is preceded by its own nonexistence, or by its agent, in the sense that it must have someone who brings it into being? The latter is conceded; the former is the point at issue.”

The same applies to motion. If you say, “A particular motion is preceded by another motion or by nonexistence,” there is no dispute over this.

But if you say, “The kind itself is preceded by nonexistence,” this is the point at issue.

For their principal argument is their statement:

“Motion, precisely insofar as it is motion, entails being preceded by something else. Motion is a transition from one state to another, so one of the two states precedes the other. Thus, no motion can be conceived without one part preceding another, and whatever is preceded by something else cannot be beginningless. Therefore, motion