Descartes. He was undoubtedly more optimistic about the trademark argument than we can be because he inherited a number of ideas from previous philosophical traditions. One very important one is that genuine causation is a matter of the cause passing on something to an effect. Causation is like passing the baton in a relay race. So, for example, it takes heat to make something hot, or movement to induce motion. This is a principle that surfaces again and again in the history of philosophy,
