Choose from one of the two provided passages. In no more than 500 words describe the argument or point in the passage in as plain English as possible. The is due via email Friday, September 30 by 5 p.m.
Passage One
Paremenides, Fragment 8:
for what coming-to-be of [being] will you seek? In what way, whence, did [it] grow? Neither from what-is-not shall I allow You to say or think; for it is not to be said or thought That [if] is not. And what need could have impelled it to grow Later or sooner, if it began from nothing? Thus [it] must either be completely or not at all.
Passage Two
Descartes, Meditations III
it is manifest by the natural light that there must be at least as much [reality] in the efficient and total cause as in the effect of that cause. For where, I ask, could the effect get its reality from, if not from the cause? And how could the cause give it to the effect unless it possessed it? It follows from this both that something cannot arise from nothing, and also that what is more perfect - that is, contains in itself more reality - cannot arise from what is less perfect. And this is transparently true not only in the case of effects which possess [what the school philosophers call] actual or formal reality, but also in the case of ideas, where one is considering only [what they call] objective reality (7:40-1).