If these problems about space and time belong to metaphysics only in the post-Medieval sense, they are nevertheless closely related to questions about first causes and universals. First causes are generally thought by those who believe in them to be eternal and non-local. God, for example—both the impersonal God of Aristotle and the personal God of Medieval Christian, Jewish, and Muslim philosophy—is generally said to be eternal, and the personal God is said to be omnipresent. To say that God is eternal is to say either that he is everlasting
One major issue in the metaphysics of causation concerns specifying the relata of causal relations. Consider a mundane claim: an iceberg caused the Titanic to sink. Does the causal relation hold between two events: the event of the ship hitting the iceberg and the event of the ship sinking? Or does it hold between two sets of states of affairs? Or does it hold between two substances, the iceberg and the ship? Must causal relations be triadic or otherwise poly-adic? For example, one might think that we are always required to qualify a causal claim: the iceberg, rather than the captain's negligence, was causally responsible for the ship’s foundering. And can absences feature in causal relations? For example, does it make sense to claim that a lack of lifeboats was the cause of a third-class passenger's death?
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