Hylomorphism

Journal of Philosophy

Volumn 103, Issue 12, 2006, Pages 652-698

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EID: 60949576787     PISSN: 0022362X     EISSN: 19398549     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/jphil2006103125     Document Type: Review

References (21)

1. A question explored in detail by Peter van Inwagen in his Material Beings(Ithaca: Cornell, 1991).
2. For an extensive examination of this semantic question, see Friederike Moltmann, Parts and Wholes in Semantics (New York: Oxford, 1995).
3. See Fine, "Things and Their Parts, " in Peter French and Howard Wettstein, eds., New Directions in Philosophy: Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Volume XXIII (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1999), pp. 61-74;
4. and Koslicki, The Structure of Objects (forthcoming).
5. Whereas Koslicki's postulation of formal parts is to some degreemotivated by a desire to preserve the principle of uniqueness of composition, this does not appear to be motivating Fine's view. For Hylomorphism withoutforms as parts, see my "Constitution Is Not Identity, " Mind, CI(1991): 89-105.
6. Gelman, The Essential Child: Origins of Essentialism in Everyday Thought(New York: Oxford, 2003).
7. For an experimental exploration of hylomorphic elements in our conceptualscheme, see Sandeep Prasada, Krag Ferenz, and Todd Haskell, "Conceiving of Entities as Objects and Stuff, " Cognition, LXXXIII (2002): 141-65,
8. as well as Prasada and Elaine M. Dillingham, "Principled and Statistical Connections in Common Sense Conception, " Cognition(forthcoming).
9. Compare David Lewis, On the Plurality of Worlds (New York: Blackwell, 1986), particularly the discussions of counterpart theory and the account ofwhat it is to be a possible world. Lewis characteristically insisted on therelativization of questions of essence to different counterpart relations acrossworlds; but in his wonderful book, he in fact offers a real definition of apossible world, a real definition which is not naturally tied to any counterpartrelation. Given this, Lewis was, perhaps unwittingly, a crypto-essentialist, inthe old, absolutist sense of "essentialist." An essence, properlyunderstood, is what Lewis is attributing to his possible worlds in hisdiscussion of what it is to be a possible world.
10. As Fine has reminded us in a series of important papers; see, forexample, "Essence and Modality, " in James E. Tomberlin, ed., Logic and Language: Philosophical Perspectives, Volume III (Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview, 1994), pp. 1-16,
11. "The Logic of Essence, " Journal of Philosophical Logic, XXIV(1995): 241-73,
12. "Senses of Essence, " in Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, ed., Modality, Morality, and Belief (New-York: Cambridge, 1995), pp. 53-73.
13. Essay concerning Human Understanding, 11, xxvii, 1.
14. Wiggins, "On Being in the Same Place at the Same Time, "Philosophical Review, LXXVII (1968): 90-95.
15. Fine, "A Counterexample to Locke's Thesis, " The Monist, LXXXIII(2000): 357-61.
16. Alvin Plantinga quite plausibly argues that this view of the first beingas an attribute makes nonsense of traditional theism; see Does God Have ANature? (Milwaukee: Marquette, 1980).
17. Neale, Facing Facts (New York: Oxford, 2000).
18. Davidson, Truth and Predication (New York: Oxford, 2005).
19. For a presentation of Leśniewski's theory, see Henry S. Leonardand Nelson Goodman, "The Calculus of Individuals and Its Uses, "Journal of Symbolic Logic, V (1940): 45-55.
20. Here is an option for the mercologist: Follow Judith Jarvis Thomson anddistinguish what she calls "all-sums" and "some-sums"; wherethe first exist only when all their parts exist, while the second exist when atleast one of their parts exist. See Thomson's "The Statue and the Clay, " Noûs, XXXII (1998): 149-73;
21. and also Fine's "Compounds and Aggregates, " Noûs, XXVIII(1994): 137-58, where compounds are very like all-sums and aggregates likesome-sums. I believe that in most philosophical applications of mereology, ithas been some-sums which were in play. So the four-dimensionalist supposes that I am a some-sum of temporal parts. Impure sets, it might be said, compete withall-sums in respect of parts and principles, but do not compete with some-sums.For an impure set exists at t only if all its members exist at t. So we candistinguish some-sums and impure sets, and allow for both. That thought does notsurvive the argument in the man body of the text. The proposed principle ofunity for some-sums is this: the xs exist at some time or other, where the xsare the relevant summands. There is then a state of the xs which is theirexisting at some time or other. And there is another state of that stateexisting at sometime or other (presumably this state exists at any of the timesat which one of the xs exist.) So once again, on the proposed principle of unityfor some-sums, there ought to be two sums with the very same summands. But itis axiomatic that there are not such sums. Hence the argument in the main bodyof the text goes through even if sets are all-sets and sums are some-sums.Another remark about sum-sums and all-sums is worth making. Consider the happyperiod when Plato and Socrates both existed. If we believe in some-sums andall-sums, then we should admit that during that period there were two sums with Plato and Socrates as summands, sums distinguished by their distinct principlesof unity. To accommodate this, we could contemplate a natural restriction on theaxiom that distinct sums have distinct summands, namely that this is true onlyif they are both all-sums or both some-sums. Once we see that, a similar view ofimpure set theory might seem plausible. So there is room to recognize some-setsas well as all-sets. But then each some-set will have the same parts andprinciple of unity as a some-sum, and each all-sum will have the same parts andprinciple of unity as an all-set. The sets will again "drive out" thesums.