Thus the agent will not bring anything into being until it has already brought something into being, and it will not produce one thing until it produces another. If the second event is taken to be distinct from the first, the sequence is called “infinite regress”; if the very genus of production is made dependent on production itself, it is called “circularity.” Accordingly, when one speaks of one occurrence after another, the problem is an infinite regress; but when one speaks of the very class of occurrences, the problem is circularity. Now, the succession of one event after another can only obtain if there is a producing agent who brings things into existence successively. The bare fact of its being an agent does not hinge on the occurrence of any particular thing; that is inherent in its essence. What may be contingent is its producing a given particular, which in turn might depend on its producing yet another particular.
The real thrust of their argument is that to assert the origination of the genus of action entails either that the effect is delayed with respect to a fully sufficient cause, or that it exists without such a cause. What they style an “infinite regress” ultimately boils down to the effect’s existing without a fully sufficient cause. Their proof rests on two premises:
- Preference without a preferrer is impossible.
- An infinite regress is impossible.
The first premise entails that an effect cannot be set apart from its fully sufficient cause by any interval of separation or disjunction. The second entails that no effect can issue forth in the absence of a fully sufficient cause. In short, everything returns to a single principle: the necessary concomitance of the fully sufficient cause and its effect. There is never a fully sufficient cause without its concomitant effect, nor an effect without its concomitant fully sufficient cause. Whether the relationship between the effect and its fully sufficient cause is temporal or merely logical is another discussion, not to be pursued here.
Once the fundamental principle on which their argument rests is understood, the statement of one who says