the principle of causality is ‘a special case of the universal principle of sufficient reason’.23 Leroy Loemker states that the principle of mechanical or efficient causality is simply the general principle of sufficient reason applied temporally, and this seems to be a reasonable interpretation of Leibniz.24 When we ask for the sufficient reason for a thing or an event in a temporal sense, we are asking for its antecedent and contemporaneous necessary and sufficient conditions. In giving this sort
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