How Aquinas confuses the First and Second way

[balto]

I didn’t separate sempiternal from eternal, but that doesn’t change my arguments: Going vertical is the second way, not the first way.

Now let us examine the Summa Contra Gentilies First Part.

Thank you, that helps me to see where you are coming from . Here is the full context for those who are following the conversation: Summa Contra Gentiles Part I Chapter 13.

The animal is moved by the soul, which uses the legs, two at a time, to move. The two other legs are at rest while the others move. There is no reason to assume that motion doesn’t explain itself.

See, he contradicts himself: “what is moved by violence is not moved by itself… If it is moved through itself, then it is moved either violently or by nature.” He says animals move themselves, but that “everything that is moved is moved by another”.

He’s trying to show that if something is seemingly self-moved, as in the case of the animal, it is not the case that it is moving itself through its nature: the soul is moving it. By soul he’s referring to the form of the body, and in the case of the animal the soul is sensitive. The soul is in turn moved by sensible species. For instance, the animal perceives something and then directs its appetible will towards it, causing the motion in the animal body. For humans with rational souls, we may also be moved by an intelligible species in other objects, i.e. the forms that are abstracted from particulars that we perceive through sensation.

So when he concludes that everything that is moved is moved by another, he is not contradicting himself. He could have been a little bit clearer here though, I will grant you that.

 

[balto]

No, it is moved in eternal time. If he believes an eternal world is possible, wouldn’t eternal time be a necessary factor?

But he attempts to clarify things in paragraph 13:

[14] The second argument proving the same conclusion is the following. In an ordered series of movers and things moved (this is a series in which one is moved by another according to an order), it is necessarily the fact that, when the first mover is removed or ceases to move, no other mover will move or be moved. For the first mover is the cause of motion for all the others. But, if there are movers and things moved following an order to infinity, there will be no first mover, but all would be as intermediate movers. Therefore, none of the others will be able to be moved, and thus nothing in the world will be moved.

That is the first way, and it contradicts an eternal world. It doesn’t surprise me that he contradicts himself. I am reading Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and he contradicts himself. It is not uncommon for philosophers to contradict themselves. Philosophy is deep

Okay, I see he’s discussing intermediate movers here. But again, nothing he’s said contradicts a past-infinite world because the preceeding paragraphs made it clear that he’s discussing the vertical, essentially ordered series and not a temporal horizontal one. “Intermediate mover” refers to any mover in between the unmoved Mover and the thing at the bottom of the chain that is only moved. So yeah, if you chop off the unmoved Mover then none of the intermediate movers will not be doing any moving anymore since they need to be moved themselves and none of them has the power of moving without being moved (only the unmoved Mover has that ability). I still don’t see the contradiction .

 

[thinkandmull]

Again, you are confusing as other posters have pointed out in later posts between an order of efficient causes per se acting together at the same time or simultaneously and an order of efficient causes per accidens which are non-simultaneous acting causes. In the first and second proofs for the existence of God in Aquinas’s Summa Theologica, Aquinas is talking about an order of movers and efficient causes per se and the eternity or non-eternity of the world is irrelevant which is why he makes no mention of it. Even if the world was eternal, it would require a first mover and a first efficient cause.

You seem to have a problem that a first mover or first efficient cause requires of necessity that it be prior in time to whatever it is moving or causing but this is not necessarily so. It only need be prior in nature. Since God’s will is the cause of things and His will is eternal, He could have produced an eternal effect if he had so willed it. However, we believe that from all eternity God did not will that the world should be eternal and as Aquinas says it shows more the power of God and that God is the cause of the world as there are religions even today who confuse the existence of the world with God.

In the catholic faith in the Trinity, we believe that the Father is the origin or the principle without a principle of the Trinity. The Son is from the Father and the Holy Spirit is from the Father and Son. Yet, the Father is not prior in time to the Son nor are the Father and Son prior in time to the Holy Spirit. For all three persons of the Trinity are eternal.

The fact that you said it requires a first mover AND an efficient cause refutes your position. For Aquinas doesn’t believe that there must be a first mover, but merely an efficient cause, which in a strange way could be called a first mover, but they are not different as you try to make them out to be. Aquinas’s distinction of infinite causes per se vs. accidental doesn’t make sense in this context. If you need to move something in order to cause a good, and in order to move it you must move an infinite amount of other things, the task would never be done. But that is taking a point and extending it infinitely out there and trying to reach a point an ending, which is impossible. But Aquinas rejects the kalam cosmological argument which says which takes the exact same principle and flips it. The kalam cosmological arguments shows through common sense that there had to be a beginning of time. This is separate from the Trinity, which is in Eternity.

 

[thinkandmull]

But he attempts to clarify things in paragraph 13:

He’s talking about the mover and the thing being moved as existing simultaneously, so it is clear that he is referring to an essentially ordered causal series. But when you are talking about his belief in the possibility of an eternal world, you’re talking about an infinitely long accidentally ordered series, so you are not addressing his argument. Aquinas seems to be discussing Aristotle’s argument in the Physics that it is impossible for an infinite essential series to give rise to something that is moved in finite time (i.e. it is impossible for the thing at the bottom of the vertical chain to be moved over a finite timespan if the vertical chain extends upwards infinitely). I don’t know why this is the case. I guess I would have to read the relevant parts of the Physics but it is clear though that Aquinas and Aristotle are addressing the impossibility of an infinite essential series and not an accidentally ordered one as you are assuming.

Okay, I see he’s discussing intermediate movers here. But again, nothing he’s said contradicts a past-infinite world because the preceeding paragraphs made it clear that he’s discussing the vertical, essentially ordered series and not a temporal horizontal one. “Intermediate mover” refers to any mover in between the unmoved Mover and the thing at the bottom of the chain that is only moved. So yeah, if you chop off the unmoved Mover then none of the intermediate movers will not be doing any moving anymore since they need to be moved themselves and none of them has the power of moving without being moved (only the unmoved Mover has that ability). I still don’t see the contradiction .

First, Aquinas clearly contradicts himself when he says “what is moved by violence is not moved by itself… If it is moved through itself, then it is moved either violently or by nature.” And he contradicts your position when he says in the Contra Gentiles “all those infinites are moved in a finite time” because that is not your conclusion. Your conclusion follows that Summa that an eternal world with eternal time is rational.

Suppose there is an infinity of past moments and there is God as a first mover. Then suppose you found out (say, from the problem of pain) that you don’t believe in God anymore. The infinite series of the past is still there. It doesn’t need something to sustain it. This is basically the contingency argument all over again. There is no reason if the world is eternal that matter is not just there, just existing. If there was a beginning of the world, even Aquinas admits that would more easily point to a God

 

[thinkandmull]

Let me ask you this. Why doesn’t Aquinas make the First and Second Way separate?

 

[thinkandmull]

Aquinas sometimes says nonsense things, like “For when matter receives its form perfectly, the qualities consequent upon the form are firm and enduring; as when, for instance, water is converted into fire.”

He is also very ambiguous sometimes, like when he says “the rays of different stars produce different effects according to the diverse natures of bodies.” By bodies, does he mean the stars or the bodies on earth?

 

[balto]

First, Aquinas clearly contradicts himself when he says “what is moved by violence is not moved by itself… If it is moved through itself, then it is moved either violently or by nature.”

I responded to this in an earlier post and you did not address it:
"balto:

He’s trying to show that if something is seemingly self-moved, as in the case of the animal, it is not the case that it is moving itself through its nature: the soul is moving it. By soul he’s referring to the form of the body, and in the case of the animal the soul is sensitive. The soul is in turn moved by sensible species.

And he contradicts your position when he says in the Contra Gentiles “all those infinites are moved in a finite time” because that is not your conclusion. Your conclusion follows that Summa that an eternal world with eternal time is rational.

This is making it more evident to me that you are still not understanding the difference between an essentially ordered series and an accidentally ordered one. I don’t know what else we can say to get the point across. Aquinas is not concerned to show that God is the first mover in a temporal causal series but that He is first mover in an essentially ordered, vertical one that is making the change observed at this instant in time real. I suppose if God is construed as being the first mover in a temporal series, then it would follow that the universe must be past-finite. But such a God would not be pure act because the later events in the series do not depend on His continual action, so you still would need to posit the existence of a pure act that is over and above this deistic conception of God you have.

Suppose there is an infinity of past moments and there is God as a first mover. Then suppose you found out (say, from the problem of pain) that you don’t believe in God anymore. The infinite series of the past is still there. It doesn’t need something to sustain it. This is basically the contingency argument all over again. There is no reason if the world is eternal that matter is not just there, just existing. If there was a beginning of the world, even Aquinas admits that would more easily point to a God

If somebody had difficulty with the problem of pain, then the logical conclusion would not be that God does not exist, but that God is not loving or personal. One could argue that matter was simply always there, but given that matter is contingent and not necessary since it does not exist by nature I don’t think that position is ultimately defensible. The hypothetical skeptic would most likely wind up as either a deist or a pantheist.

I don’t know if having a past-finite universe would make someone more likely to believe in God. If it does, then that is an emotional reason and not a rational one. It doesn’t seem to matter all that much to moderns, since if someone doesn’t want to believe in God, then it really doesn’t matter what you say about the universe’s past because they’re not going to believe in God’s existence no matter what you argue.

 

[balto]

Let me ask you this. Why doesn’t Aquinas make the First and Second Way separate?

He did make them separate. That’s why they are called the “First” and “Second” Ways. Why do you think they are not separate?

Aquinas sometimes says nonsense things, like “For when matter receives its form perfectly, the qualities consequent upon the form are firm and enduring; as when, for instance, water is converted into fire.”

He is also very ambiguous sometimes, like when he says “the rays of different stars produce different effects according to the diverse natures of bodies.” By bodies, does he mean the stars or the bodies on earth?

Well I could open any book I have sitting on my bookshelf and read one or two sentences and have it appear to be nonsensical, but to do so would be to do injustice to the reader who wrote it as part of a larger context. Add on top of that the fact that Aquinas was writing in the thirteenth century and you have an even larger context that you need to consider.

I’m not going to pretend that Aquinas is somehow infallible since he’s a human being that makes mistakes just like the rest of us, but I don’t think you’ve been able to demonstrate that he has contradicted himself in his discussion of the First Way. Why do you seem to have a bone to pick with him?

 

[thinkandmull]

“what is moved by violence is not moved by itself… If it is moved through itself, then it is moved either violently or by nature.” The context in given in my above post

Balto said “He’s trying to show that if something is seemingly self-moved, as in the case of the animal, it is not the case that it is moving itself through its nature: the soul is moving it. By soul he’s referring to the form of the body, and in the case of the animal the soul is sensitive. The soul is in turn moved by sensible species. For instance, the animal perceives something and then directs its appetible will towards it, causing the motion in the animal body. For humans with rational souls, we may also be moved by an intelligible species in other objects, i.e. the forms that are abstracted from particulars that we perceive through sensation. So when he concludes that everything that is moved is moved by another, he is not contradicting himself. He could have been a little bit clearer here though, I will grant you that.”

Aquinas says that what moves itself is not by violence, and yet if it moves through itself, it is moved either by violence or nature. He contradicts himself, and you also since he says that “by nature”. He contradicts you elsewhere. “Now that which enters into the composition of something does not act primarily and through itself. Rather does the thing composed do so. Thus it is not the hand that acts, but the man who acts by means of it”
biblehub.com/library/aquinas/nature_and_grace/article_eight_whether_god_enters.htm

The soul of the animal moves itself, and is not moved by another

Balto said “I suppose if God is construed as being the first mover in a temporal series, then it would follow that the universe must be past-finite. But such a God would not be pure act”

We believe that by faith? So Catholic faith is deistic? The statement in the Contra Gentiles that “all those infinites are moved in a finite time” doesn’t make sense in the context as I have shown above.

“I don’t know if having a past-finite universe would make someone more likely to believe in God.” Aquinas says the opposite in the Summa

Finally, there has never been a proof given that matter is contingent, and thus neither from the jump from an accidental eternity of motion to God eternally sustaining it. Let me ask you, is the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity contigent?

 

[thinkandmull]

He did make them separate. That’s why they are called the “First” and “Second” Ways. Why do you think they are not separate?

Well I could open any book I have sitting on my bookshelf and read one or two sentences and have it appear to be nonsensical, but to do so would be to do injustice to the reader who wrote it as part of a larger context. Add on top of that the fact that Aquinas was writing in the thirteenth century and you have an even larger context that you need to consider.

I’m not going to pretend that Aquinas is somehow infallible since he’s a human being that makes mistakes just like the rest of us, but I don’t think you’ve been able to demonstrate that he has contradicted himself in his discussion of the First Way. Why do you seem to have a bone to pick with him?

I meant to say “why are they separate”. Your position seems to be that the efficient cause argument is exactly the same as the argument from motion. Please explain how they are different.

I don’t have a bone to pick with Aquinas any more than any other philosopher. When they make a mistake, I call them on it.

biblehub.com/library/aquinas/summa_theologica/whether_light_is_a_quality.htm

Besides the fact that it is impossible to show that light is a quality (light has color, so can a quality have a quality? He says “it is impossible that what is the substantial form of one thing should be the accidental form of another”) the second sentence doesn’t follow from the first “For when matter receives its form perfectly, the qualities consequent upon the form are firm and enduring; as when, for instance, water is converted into fire.” Water turning into fire has nothing to do with the first sentence, even if water can turn into fire (which is crazy to believe in anyway. Did Aquinas never see steam?)

“We must say, then, that as heat is an active quality consequent on the substantial form of fire, so light is an active quality consequent on the substantial form of the sun, or of another body that is of itself luminous, if there is any such body. A proof of this is that the rays of **different ** (sic!)stars produce different effects according to the diverse natures of bodies.”

The last sentence there doesn’t follow from the previous one. Where’s the “proof”?

 

[thinkandmull]

“light produces natural effects, for by the rays of the sun bodies are warmed… it is impossible that what is the substantial form of one thing should be the accidental form of another” See, I think he contradicts himself. Light he says is an accidental form of the sun and yet a substantial form of its heat? He says “substantial forms are not of themselves objects of the senses; for the object of the intellect is what a thing is, as is said De Anima iii, text.26” So if it was possible to touch the sun, I would be touching accident. And yet the substantial form of the light is the sun itself and “it is impossible that what is the substantial form of one thing should be the accidental form of another”!

 

[Blue_Horizon]

. If you have an infinite series of motion, you never have a purely actual entity that can effect change without being moved itself. Such an infinite series does not explain the motion of anything in the series because nothing in the series has the inherent power of unmoved motion.

1. Can you then explain the sort of infinite chain of sequential efficient causality that Aristotle had in mind when he accepted the infinity (eternity?) of the world? What you just stated seems to be what Aristotle held isn’t it?
2. You distinguish two sorts of causal chains that we should not confuse in the First Way - simultaneous and sequential. The First Way appears to start out APosteriori where Aquinas observes one particular type of change (“motion”) and causal chains of such motion. Now I grant that this “motion” is bigger than just local motion. However, if local motion is a valid example of the concept then all that he concludes wrt his concept of motion must apply to local motion examples to be valid and consistant…yes?

Yet this does not seem to be the case. All real world (Newtonian) examples of cause/effect chains of local motion appear temporally sequential, never unambiguously simultaneous.
It also seems that our modern day definition of “effect” supports this understanding as it seems that observed “effects” can only be called “effect” once the instrumental cause of that phenomenon has itself stopped acting.

Therefore, with no clear, real world aposteriori examples of “chains of simultaneous efficient causality” based on local motion (Aquinas’s alleged starting point) it seems Aquinas’s argument is not so certain - or ends up being an APriori argument based on a definition of “motion” and efficient causality no one today easily accepts.

Can you advise a clear example of chains of simultaneous efficient causality" based on local motion? The potter’s hands one doesn’t seem to demonstrate this. Aquinas’s hand\ stick in-can? is better but it seems somewhat more sequential to me and I find it difficult to understand what he is getting at.

I think its good to keep in mind that not all types of potentiality/actuality examples are applicable in the First way.

Creatio ex nihilo is not an example of “motion”
“Self movers” (ie how the soul of living things moves the body) is not an example of “motion” (cf Magee - this is the basis of the 2nd Way).
Mixing Permanganate with Sugar (both cold resulting in hot) is an example of “motion” even though the “act” of the moving cause is not of the same type as that activated in the thing moved.

 

[Richca]

“light produces natural effects, for by the rays of the sun bodies are warmed… it is impossible that what is the substantial form of one thing should be the accidental form of another” See, I think he contradicts himself. Light he says is an accidental form of the sun and yet a substantial form of its heat? He says “substantial forms are not of themselves objects of the senses; for the object of the intellect is what a thing is, as is said De Anima iii, text.26” So if it was possible to touch the sun, I would be touching accident. And yet the substantial form of the light is the sun itself and “it is impossible that what is the substantial form of one thing should be the accidental form of another”!

I do not see where what you assert Aquinas says that light which is a quality, an accidental form, is the substantial form of heat? Both light and heat are qualities of a substance. Whether an accident can be the subject of another accident or accidents, Aquinas says yes. For example, in his treatise on the Eucharist in the Summa Theologica, he says that the dimensive quantity of the bread and wine which remains after the consecration of these substances at Mass, though itself it remains without a subject, i.e., matter by divine power, is the subject of all the other remaining accidents of the bread and wine.

 

[balto]

“what is moved by violence is not moved by itself… If it is moved through itself, then it is moved either violently or by nature.” The context in given in my above post

Balto said “He’s trying to show that if something is seemingly self-moved, as in the case of the animal, it is not the case that it is moving itself through its nature: the soul is moving it. By soul he’s referring to the form of the body, and in the case of the animal the soul is sensitive. The soul is in turn moved by sensible species. For instance, the animal perceives something and then directs its appetible will towards it, causing the motion in the animal body. For humans with rational souls, we may also be moved by an intelligible species in other objects, i.e. the forms that are abstracted from particulars that we perceive through sensation. So when he concludes that everything that is moved is moved by another, he is not contradicting himself. He could have been a little bit clearer here though, I will grant you that.”

Aquinas says that what moves itself is not by violence, and yet if it moves through itself, it is moved either by violence or nature. He contradicts himself, and you also since he says that “by nature”. He contradicts you elsewhere. “Now that which enters into the composition of something does not act primarily and through itself. Rather does the thing composed do so. Thus it is not the hand that acts, but the man who acts by means of it”
biblehub.com/library/aquinas/nature_and_grace/article_eight_whether_god_enters.htm

The soul of the animal moves itself, and is not moved by another

I explained this in the part of my post you quoted. An animal is moved by the sensible species, i.e. qualia, because it is part of its nature that it be directed to receiving and acting on experiences of qualia. It is only in this loose sense that an animal can be considered a “self-mover” but not in an absolute sense since an animal’s nature is composite of essence and existence which needs to be actualized by a first mover. I don’t have the time right now to search Aquinas’ writings to see if he explains this elsewhere, but here is commentary on the subject by a contemporary Thomist (edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2012/06/oerter-on-motion-and-first-mover.html)
Edward Feser:

Indeed, for the Aristotelian-Scholastic tradition, living things just are “self-movers” in a loose sense: Unlike a stone (say), a dog, bird, or snake can in an obvious sense move itself toward the realization of the ends toward which its nature points it (food, mating opportunities, etc.). And while inorganic natural substances don’t move themselves in the same manner, their behavior is nevertheless “spontaneous” in a way the operations of artifacts are not. (I borrow the term from James A. Weisheipl’s Nature and Motion in the Middle Ages, essential reading on the issues under discussion.) What that means is, not that their activity is without a cause, but rather that it flows from something immanent or intrinsic to them, from their very nature rather than being imposed from outside.

 

[balto]

Balto said “I suppose if God is construed as being the first mover in a temporal series, then it would follow that the universe must be past-finite. But such a God would not be pure act”

We believe that by faith? So Catholic faith is deistic? The statement in the Contra Gentiles that “all those infinites are moved in a finite time” doesn’t make sense in the context as I have shown above.

We believe what by faith? That the universe is past-finite. Yes, we do believe that by faith. If God is construed as a being that is simply the first causal player in a temporal series, then yes that God is deistic. Fortunately that’s not the kind of God the Catholic faith defends.

“I don’t know if having a past-finite universe would make someone more likely to believe in God.” Aquinas says the opposite in the Summa

Well okay, to each his own I guess. Maybe if he was around today and had to deal with contemporary secularists he might have come to a different conclusion.

Finally, there has never been a proof given that matter is contingent, and thus neither from the jump from an accidental eternity of motion to God eternally sustaining it. Let me ask you, is the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity contigent?

Matter is by definition contingent. If matter is necessary, then it would be pure act, but matter is the potentiality for act. Matter also changes; no one denies this fact. If it changes then you’re going to be susceptible to the arguments in the First Way. No, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity is not contingent and I don’t think I have said anything that would lead someone to believe otherwise. I don’t know where you are going with that question.

I meant to say “why are they separate”. Your position seems to be that the efficient cause argument is exactly the same as the argument from motion. Please explain how they are different.

All of the Five Ways are attempts to prove that God exists so they are necessarily going to converge at some point. The First Way is interested in starting with the reality of change and arguing for a First Mover. The Second Way is interested in arguing from the reality of efficient causes and whether an essentially ordered series of causes can extend to infinity without a first cause. Yes, it is true that an efficient cause just is something that actualizes a potential, which is why he says that the First Way is the most obvious proof for God’s existence. But suppose someone doesn’t accept or understand the act/potency distinction. They can understand the notion of an efficient cause and understand that an essentially ordered causal series cannot extend backwards to infinity.

 

[balto]

1. Can you then explain the sort of infinite chain of sequential efficient causality that Aristotle had in mind when he accepted the infinity (eternity?) of the world? What you just stated seems to be what Aristotle held isn’t it?

As far as I know Aristotle was interested in proving that the First Mover is first in an essentially ordered, simultaneous series, not a temporal one. He believed that the universe was past-infinite.

Yet this does not seem to be the case. All real world (Newtonian) examples of cause/effect chains of local motion appear temporally sequential, never unambiguously simultaneous.
It also seems that our modern day definition of “effect” supports this understanding as it seems that observed “effects” can only be called “effect” once the instrumental cause of that phenomenon has itself stopped acting.

Therefore, with no clear, real world aposteriori examples of “chains of simultaneous efficient causality” based on local motion (Aquinas’s alleged starting point) it seems Aquinas’s argument is not so certain - or ends up being an APriori argument based on a definition of “motion” and efficient causality no one today easily accepts.

Can you advise a clear example of chains of simultaneous efficient causality" based on local motion? The potter’s hands one doesn’t seem to demonstrate this. Aquinas’s hand\ stick in-can? is better but it seems somewhat more sequential to me and I find it difficult to understand what he is getting at.

You were arguing over this with another poster sometime over the summer and I’m still not clear why you don’t think there are real world examples of simultaneous causation. The potter’s hands do demonstrate this principle. The instant that the potter’s hands exert force on the clay (cause) is the instant that the clay experiences the force acting on it (effect). Nitpicking over the fact that the force is technically exerted first by a quark in the potter’s hands on a quark in the clay does nothing to deflect this argument, because there is still something exerting a force on something else which simultaneously experiences this force. There’s nothing about an effect that makes it essential that a human observer be able to sense the effect immediately. If you deny this, then you are committed to believing that the potter’s hand exert a force on the clay, but the force is not experienced by the clay until some finite time later. So energy is being exerted into nothingness for a short time and then energy is being created from nothingness to pour into the clay? I don’t think anyone accepts that conclusion and would instead accept simultaneous causation.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

You were arguing over this with another poster sometime over the summer and I’m still not clear why you don’t think there are real world examples of simultaneous causation. The potter’s hands do demonstrate this principle…

Perhaps I wasn’t clear enough in my query…

I was asking you to provide a example of local-motion based chain of simultaneous repeated cause/event links (ie involving a a couple of intermediate instrumental agents). The potter example does not appear to demonstrate that does it?

 

[Blue_Horizon]

Can you then explain the sort of infinite chain of sequential efficient causality that Aristotle had in mind when he accepted the infinity (eternity?) of the world?

You haven’t really answered my question. Maybe I can put it more clearly.

What exactly is the “rippled” change in Aristotle’s long chain of cause/effect links (which you call sequential) that can be validly said to be infinite … if that change is not local motion?

 

[balto]

Perhaps I wasn’t clear enough in my query…

I was asking you to provide a example of local-motion based chain of simultaneous repeated cause/event links (ie involving a a couple of intermediate instrumental agents). The potter example does not appear to demonstrate that does it?

You did say that, I apologize. But you’ve given me an impossible question to answer. Local motion is defined as essentially involving time (x = x0 + vt - 0.5at^2 if I am remembering my physics correctly), so how could there by an instance of local motion where no time passes?

 

[balto]

You haven’t really answered my question. Maybe I can put it more clearly.

What exactly is the “rippled” change in Aristotle’s long chain of cause/effect links (which you call sequential) that can be validly said to be infinite … if that change is not local motion?

If you are talking about temporally-separated causes and effects, such as local motion, then that series can potentially be infinite.