How to debunk the first cause argument without trying too hard

[Angrboda]

(See also Hume's analysis of cause and effect for another example of why our understanding of the nature of 'cause' is incomplete.)

Hume's analysis of cause and effect has been a major setback in philosophical progress and is itself one 'cause' of today's confusion. Hume mistakenly presents both cause and effect as discrete events.

Hume presents the two as discrete, but not necessarily events. The classic example of a billiard ball hitting another represents two discrete parts, the cause - the first billiard ball hitting the second - and the effect - the movement of the struck billiard ball. They are considered discrete because they are.

For example, Hume would say that the event of the brick being tossed is the cause of the event of the window breaking. This of course is nonsense. The cause is not an event. If you ask anyone what caused the window to break, they would tell you the brick caused it; not, the event of the brick being tossed.

This gobbledygook is nothing but a straw man of Hume. He says no such thing.

Hume wants us to ask, 'what connects the two events?'. That is the wrong question. The explanation of efficient cause rests on the relationship between a substantial form, like a brick, and the actualization of a dispositional property , like the shattering of glass.

Bollocks. Inventing attributes of matter like a class of dispositional properties only makes things worse. How do we determine whether the struck billiard ball's rolling is a dispositional property of the first billiard ball, the table, the air, or a man on the moon? This adds nothing to our understanding.