Descartes

Descartes believes he can persuade anyone who "attentively considers the nature of time." If I understand this correctly, it seems to be one thing for the parts of time itself to be independent, and another for the temporal stages of things that exist in time to be independent. He is trying to explain that time itself can be independent but so can the stages of things. They do not have to relate to one another. While people believe that we have to have a cause at a certain part of the day to produce an outcome. 

"The natural light does not establish that the concept of an efficient cause requires that is be prior in time to its effect. On the contrary, the concept of a cause is strictly speaking applicable only for so long as the cause is producing the effect, and so it is not prior to it. " (Descartes)

What he is trying to get across is that the natural light does not cause the person do it something, it is the cause that makes the person do it producing the effect. 

"Now I regard the divisions of time as being separable from each other, so the fact that I now exist does not imply that I shall continue to exist unless there is a cause which creates me afresh, as it were, at each moment of time."

Descartes is saying that he is exists but unless there is a cause he does not need to exist. This would create the moment of time. Not time creating the cause and the production.


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Philosophy is hard...