Hylomorphism

This article is about the concept of hylomorphism in Aristotelian philosophy. For the concept in computer science, see Hylomorphism (computer science).

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Hylomorphism (Greek ὑλο- hylo-, "wood, matter" + -morphism < Greek μορφή, morphē, "form") is a philosophical theory developed by Aristotle, which analyzes substance into matter and form. More precisely, substances are conceived of as forms inherent in matter.

Medieval theologians, newly exposed to Aristotle's philosophy, applied hylomorphism to Christian doctrines such as the transubstantiation of the Eucharist's bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus. Theologians such as Duns Scotus developed Christian applications of hylomorphism.

Matter and form

In Aristotle's writings, the term "matter" (hyle) has a somewhat different meaning than the term "matter" in modern English.^[1] In modern English, the term "matter" often refers to a specific kind of substance, namely physical substance. In contrast, for Aristotle, "matter" is a relative term.^[2] For Aristotle, the question is not "Is X matter?" but, rather, "What is the matter of X?" Aristotle defines X's matter as the "constituents" of X, as "that out of which" X is made.^[3] Thus, in Aristotle's scheme, something can be matter without being physical. For example, letters are the matter of syllables.^[4] Aristotle even calls the parts of a geometrical shape (that is, of a pure geometrical shape, considered apart from any physical object having that shape) "intelligible matter".^[5]

When some X is produced, X's matter is what undergoes the change into X and remains constant throughout the process.^[6] For example, consider bronze. Bronze is the matter of both a bronze statue^[7] and a bronze sphere.^[8] When a bronze statue changes into a bronze sphere or vice versa, the bronze remains constant throughout the change. The bronze is potentially both a bronze statue and a bronze sphere: while remaining bronze, it can become a bronze statue or a bronze sphere. Thus, matter is "potentiality":^[9] M is X's matter if and only if M has the potential to be X.

Given this definition of matter, we can distinguish between what Aristotle calls "proximate matter" and what he calls "non-proximate matter". X can both have matter and also be matter. Clay is the matter of bricks, but bricks in turn are the matter of a house. So bricks both have matter (clay) and are matter (for a house). The house's proximate matter is the bricks, and its non-proximate matter is the clay, because the bricks are closer to being a house than is the clay.^[10]

Whereas matter is potentiality, form is actuality.^[11] According to Aristotle, if bronze is a bronze sphere’s matter, then roundness is its form.^[12] Bronze is potentially a bronze sphere. It becomes actually a bronze sphere when given roundness. Thus, roundness is an "actuality" of the bronze sphere—or, rather, part of the bronze sphere's actuality: it is the shape that a thing needs in order to actually be a bronze sphere. Forms need not be shapes. According to Aristotle's theory of perception, the senses perceive an object by receiving its form.^[13] The senses receive such things as colors and flavors.^[14] Thus, forms include such properties as colors and flavors, not just shapes.

Substantial form, accidental form, and prime matter

See also: Substantial form

Medieval philosophers who used Aristotelian concepts frequently distinguished between substantial forms and accidental forms. A substance necessarily possesses at least one substantial form. It may also possess a variety of accidental forms. For Aristotle, a "substance" (ousia) is an individual thing—for example, an individual man or an individual horse.^[15] The substantial form of substance S consists of S's essential properties,^[16] the properties that S's matter needs in order to be the kind of substance that S is.^[17] In contrast, S's accidental forms are S's non-essential properties,^[18] properties that S can lose or gain without changing into a different kind of substance.^[19]

In some cases, a substance's matter will itself be a substance. If substance A is made out of substance B, then substance B is the matter of substance A. However, what is the matter of a substance that is not made out of any other substance? According to Aristotelians, such a substance has only "prime matter" as its matter. Prime matter is matter with no substantial form of its own.^[20] Thus, it can change into various kinds of substances without remaining any kind of substance all the time.^[21]

Body-soul hylomorphism

Basic theory

See also: On the Soul

Aristotle applies his theory of hylomorphism to living things. He defines a soul as that which makes a living thing alive.^[22] Life is a property of living things, just as knowledge and health are.^[23] Therefore, a soul is a form—that is, a property or set of properties—belonging to a living thing.^[24] Furthermore, Aristotle says that a soul is related to its body as form to matter.^[25]

Hence, Aristotle argues, there is no problem in explaining the unity of body and soul, just as there is no problem in explaining the unity of wax and its shape.^[26] Just as a wax object consists of wax with a certain shape, so a living organism consists of a body with the property of life, which is its soul. On the basis of his hylomorphic theory, Aristotle rejects the Pythagorean doctrine of reincarnation, ridiculing the notion that just any soul could inhabit just any body.^[27]

According to Timothy Robinson, it is unclear whether Aristotle identifies the soul with the body's structure.^[28] According to one interpretation of Aristotle, a properly organized body is already alive simply by virtue of its structure.^[29] However, according to another interpretation, the property of life—that is, the soul—is something in addition to the body's structure. Robinson uses the analogy of a car to explain this second interpretation. A running car is running not only because of its structure but also because of the activity in its engine.^[30] Likewise, according to this second interpretation, a living body is alive not only because of its structure but also because of an additional property: the soul is this additional property, which a properly organized body needs in order to be alive.^[31] John Vella uses Frankenstein's monster to illustrate the second interpretation:^[32] the corpse lying on Frankenstein's table is already a fully organized human body, but it is not yet alive; when Frankenstein activates his machine, the corpse gains a new property, the property of life, which Aristotle would call the soul.

The problem of living bodies

Some scholars have pointed out a problem facing Aristotle's theory of soul-body hylomorphism.^[33] According to Aristotle, a living thing's (proximate) matter is its body, which needs a soul in order to be alive. Similarly, a bronze sphere's (proximate) matter is bronze, which needs roundness in order to be a sphere. Now, bronze remains the same bronze after ceasing to be a sphere. Therefore, it seems that a body should remain the same body after death.^[34] However, Aristotle implies that a body is no longer the same body after death.^[35] Moreover, Aristotle says that a body that has lost its soul is no longer potentially alive.^[36] But if a living thing's matter is its body, then that body should be potentially alive by definition.

One approach to resolving this problem^[37] relies on the fact that a living body is constantly losing old matter and gaining new matter. Your five-year-old body consists of different matter than does your seventy-year-old body. If your five-year-old body and your seventy-year-old body consist of different matter, then what makes them the same body? The answer is presumably your soul. Because your five-year-old body and your seventy-year-old body share your soul—that is, your life—we can identify them both as your body. Apart from your soul, we cannot identify what collection of matter is your body. Therefore, your body is no longer your body after it dies.

Another approach to resolving the problem^[38] relies on the distinction between proximate and non-proximate matter. When Aristotle says that the body is matter for a living thing, he may be using the word "body" to refer to the matter that makes up the fully organized body, rather than the fully organized body itself. Unlike the fully organized body, this "body" remains the same thing even after death. In contrast, when he says that the body is no longer the same body after its death, he is using the word "body" to refer to the fully organized body, which (according to this interpretation) does not remain the same thing after death.

Medieval modifications

Many medieval theologians and philosophers followed Aristotle in seeing a living being's soul as that being's form—specifically, its substantial form. However, they disagreed about whether X's soul is X's only substantial form. Some medieval thinkers argued that X's soul is X's only substantial form, responsible for all of the features of X's body.^[39] In contrast, other medieval thinkers argued that a living being contains at least two substantial forms—(1) the shape and structure of its body, and (2) its soul, which makes its body alive.^[40]

Thomistic Dualism

Thomas Aquinas claimed that X’s soul was X’s only substantial form, although X also had numerous accidental forms that accounted for X’s nonessential features.^[41] Aquinas defined a substantial form as that which makes X's matter constitute X, which in the case of a human being is rational capacity.^[42] He attributed all other features of a human being to accidental forms.^[43] However, Aquinas did not claim that the soul was identical to the person.^[44] He held that a proper human being is a composite of form and matter, specifically prime matter. Form and matter taken separately may retain some of the attributes of a human being but are nonetheless not identical to that person.^[45] So a dead body is not actually or potentially a human being.^[46]

Eleanore Stump describes the soul alone as configured, while the soul together with matter is a “configured configurer”.^[47] A dead body is merely matter that was once configured by the soul. It does not possess the configuring capacity of a human being.

Aquinas believed that rational capacity was a property of the soul alone, not of any bodily organ.^[48] However, he did believe that the brain had some basic cognitive function.^[49] Aquinas’s attribution of rational capacity to the soul allowed him to claim that disembodied souls could retain their rational capacity, although he was adamant that such a state was unnatural.^[50]

The problem of the intellect

See also: Nous, Active intellect, and Passive intellect

Aristotle says that the intellect (nous), the ability to think, has no bodily organ (in contrast with other psychological abilities, such as sense-perception and imagination).^[51] In fact, he says that it is not mixed with the body^[52] and suggests that it can exist apart from the body.^[53] This seems to contradict Aristotle's claim that the soul is a form or property of the body. Thus, interpreters of Aristotle have faced the problem of explaining how the intellect fits into Aristotle's hylomorphic theory of the soul. To complicate matters further, Aristotle distinguishes between two kinds of intellect or two parts of the intellect.^[54] These two intellectual powers are traditionally called the "passive intellect" and the "active intellect" or "agent intellect".^[55]

According to one interpretation, a person's ability to think (unlike his other psychological abilities) belongs to some incorporeal organ distinct from his body.^[56] This would amount to a form of dualism.^[57] However, according to some scholars, it would not be a full-fledged Cartesian dualism.^[58] This interpretation creates what Robert Pasnau has called the "mind-soul problem": if the intellect belongs to an entity distinct from the body, and the soul is the form of the body, then how is the intellect part of the soul?^[59]

Another interpretation rests on the distinction between the passive intellect and the agent intellect. According to this interpretation, the passive intellect is a property of the body.^[60][61] In contrast, the agent intellect is a substance distinct from the body. Some proponents of this interpretation think that each person has his own agent intellect, which presumably separates from the body at death.^[62][63] Others interpret the agent intellect as a single divine being, perhaps the Unmoved Mover, Aristotle's God.^[64][65]

A third interpretation^[66] relies on the theory that an individual form is capable of having properties of its own.^[67] According to this interpretation, the soul is a property of the body, but the ability to think is a property of the soul itself. If that is the case, then the soul is the body's form and yet thinking need not involve any bodily organ.^[68]

Recently, with the advent of computers, a new interpretation has emerged;^{[citation needed]} to wit that most if not all of what constitutes intellect is an information-processing process, executing by means of sequences as well as parallel activations of electro-chemical changes in neurons and neural connections. The general "how" of how the mind "executes its thinking processes" on the brain can be understand in direct analogy to how software information processing processes execute on a computer. Analogy may be too weak a word. It may in both cases (computer and brain) be, in essence, the same kind of relation that holds between an abstract information-processing process (software, or the mind) and cascades of changes of state of physical hardware. That is, it may in both cases be the emergence of complex and abstract information processing from regulated coordination of very large numbers of simple physical changes.

Teleology and ethics

See also: Nichomachean Ethics

Aristotle holds a teleological worldview: he sees the universe as inherently purposeful. Basically, Aristotle claims that potentiality exists for the sake of actuality.^[69] Thus, matter exists for the sake of receiving its form,^[70] and an organism has sight for the sake of seeing.^[71] Now, each thing has certain potentialities as a result of its form. Because of its form, a snake has the potential to slither. Hence, we can say that the snake ought to slither. The more a thing achieves its potential, the more it succeeds in achieving its purpose.

Aristotle bases his ethical theory on this teleological worldview. Because of his form, a human being has certain abilities. Hence, his purpose in life is to exercise those abilities as well and as fully as possible.^[72] Now, the most characteristic human ability, which is not included in the form of any other organism, is the ability to think.^[73] Therefore, the best human life is a life lived rationally.^[74]

Hylomorphism and modern physics

The idea of hylomorphism can be said to have been reintroduced to the world when Werner Heisenberg invented his duplex world of quantum mechanics.^[75]

"In the experiments about atomic events we have to do with things and facts, with phenomena that are just as real as any phenomena in daily life. But atoms and the elementary particles themselves are not as real; they form a world of potentialities or possibilities rather than one of things or facts ... The probability wave ... mean tendency for something. It's a quantitative version of the old concept of potentia from Aristotle's philosophy. It introduces something standing in the middle between the idea of an event and the actual event, a strange kind of physical reality just in the middle between possibility and reality."

See also

• Endurantism
• Hyle
• Hylozoism
• Identity and change
• Inherence
• Materialism
• Substance theory

External links

• Concise Britannica
• Oderberg, David. Hylomorphic Dualism. http://www.reading.ac.uk/AcaDepts/ld/Philos/dso/papers/Hylemorphic%20Dualism.pdf

Notes

1. ^ Normore 117
2. ^ Physics 194b9
3. ^ Physics 194b23-24
4. ^ Physics 195a16
5. ^ Mendell
6. ^ Robinson 18-19
7. ^ Physics 195a6-8
8. ^ Metaphysics 1045a26-29
9. ^ On the Soul 412a9
10. ^ Shields, "A Fundamental Problem"
11. ^ On the Soul 412a9
12. ^ Metaphysics 1045a26-29
13. ^ On the Soul 424a19
14. ^ On the Soul 418a11-12
15. ^ Categories 2a12-14
16. ^ Cross 34
17. ^ Kenny 24
18. ^ Cross 94
19. ^ Kenny 24
20. ^ Leftow 136-37
21. ^ Kenny 25
22. ^ On the Soul 413a20-21
23. ^ On the Soul 414a3-9
24. ^ On the Soul 412a20, 414a15-18
25. ^ On the Soul 412b5-7, 413a1-3, 414a15-18
26. ^ 412b5-6
27. ^ On the Soul 407b20-24, 414a22-24
28. ^ Robinson 45-47
29. ^ Robinson 46
30. ^ Robinson 46
31. ^ Robinson 47
32. ^ Vella 92
33. ^ Shields, Aristotle 290-93
34. ^ Shields, Aristotle 291
35. ^ On the Soul 412b19-24
36. ^ 412b15
37. ^ Shields, Aristotle 293
38. ^ Shields, "A Fundamental Problem"
39. ^ Kenny 26
40. ^ Cross 70
41. ^ Stump, "Resurrection, Reassembly, and Reconstitution: Aquinas on the Soul" 161
42. ^ Leftow, "Soul, Mind, and Brain" 397
43. ^ Stump, "Resurrection, Reassembly, and Reconstitution: Aquinas on the Soul" 165
44. ^ Eberl 340
45. ^ Eberl 341
46. ^ Stump, "Resurrection, Reassembly, and Reconstitution: Aquinas on the Soul" 161
47. ^ Stump, "Non-Cartesian Substance Dualism and Materialism without Reductionism" 514
48. ^ Stump,"Non-Cartesian Substance Dualism and Materialism without Reductionism" 512
49. ^ Stump, "Non-Cartesian Substance Dualism and Materialism without Reductionism" 512
50. ^ Stump, "Non-Cartesian Substance Dualism and Materialism without Reductionism" 519
51. ^ On the Soul 429a26-27
52. ^ On the Soul 429a24-25
53. ^ On the Soul 413b24-26, 429b6
54. ^ On the Soul 15-25
55. ^ Robinson 50
56. ^ Caston, "Aristotle's Psychology" 337
57. ^ Caston, "Aristotle's Psychology" 337
58. ^ Shields, "Some Recent Approaches" 165
59. ^ Pasnau 160
60. ^ McEvilley 534
61. ^ Vella 110
62. ^ Caston, "Aristotle's Two Intellects" 207
63. ^ Vella 110
64. ^ Caston, "Aristotle's Psychology" 339
65. ^ Caston, "Aristotle's Two Intellects" 199
66. ^ Shields, "Soul as Subject"
67. ^ Shields, "Soul as Subject" 142
68. ^ Shields, "Soul as Subject" 145
69. ^ Irwin 237
70. ^ Metaphysics 1050a15
71. ^ Irwin 237
72. ^ Nichomachean Ethics 1098a16-18
73. ^ Nichomachean Ethics 1098a1-5
74. ^ Nichomachean Ethics 1098a7-8
75. ^ Herbert, Nick (1885). Quantum Reality: Beyond the New Physics. New York: Anchor Books. pp. 26–27. 

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