Hylomorphism provides an attractive framework for addressing issues in philosophical anthropology. After describing a hylomorphic theory that dovetails with current work in philosophy of mind and in scientific disciplines such as biology and neuroscience, I discuss how this theory meshes with Christian eschatology, the doctrine of resurrection in particular.

There is a very deep tension that exists at the heart of Aristotle’s metaphysical system in virtue of the fact that his works seem to contain two distinct and not obviously commensurate ontologies: an early ontology that Aristotle outlines in the Categories and a later ontology that he develops in his physical–metaphysical treatises. In this paper I briefly describe the two ontologies, discuss the sources of conflict and outline different scholarly speculations about the relationship between the two.

In this paper, I argue that attempts in the philosophy of biology to show that organisms are processes rather than substances fail. Despite what process ontologists have said, I argue that substance ontology is perfectly able to accommodate the dynamic nature of organisms, their ecological dependence, and their vague boundaries, and that their criticisms are not directed at substance ontology simpliciter, but only at specific (perhaps untenable) characterisations of substances. The paper ends by considering what a processual philosophy of biology (...) that is radically in conflict with an ontology of substances might look like. (shrink)

The principal differences between the contemporary philosophic traditions which have come to be known loosely as analytic philosophy and phenomenology are all related to the central issue of the interplay between predication and perception. Frege's critique of psychologism has led to the conviction within the analytic tradition that philosophy may best defend rationality from relativism by detaching logic and semantics from all dependence on subjective intuitions. On this interpretation, logical analysis must account for the relationship of sense to reference without (...) having recourse to a description of how we identify particulars through their perceived features. Husserl' s emphasis on the priority and objective import of perception, and on the continuity between predicative articulations and perceptual discriminations, has yielded the conviction within the phenomenological tradition that logical analysis should always be comple mented by description of pre-predicative intuitions. These methodological differences are related to broader differences in the philosophic projects of analysis and phenomenology. The two traditions have adopted markedly divergent positions in reaction to the critique of ancient and medieval philosophy initiated by Bacon, Descartes, and Hobbes at the beginning of the modern era. The analytic approach generally endorses the modern preference for calculative rationality and remains suspicious of pre-modern categories, such as formal causality and eidetic intuition. Its goal is to give an account of human intelligence that is compatible with the modern interpretation of nature as an ensemble of quantifiable entities and relations. (shrink)

The paper comprises an attempt on the part of the author to understand what hylomorphism is, both in its original Aristotelian guise, and in recent work by philosophers who defend what they call hylomorphism. Two species or strands of hylomorphism are identified and discussed. Universals, essences, and substantial and accidental forms make cameo appearances, and the implications of an Aristotelian ontology of stuffs are explored.