Towards a Hylomorphic Solution to the Grounding Problem
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements to Philosophy 82:333-364 (2018)
Abstract
Concrete particular objects (e.g., living organisms) figure saliently in our everyday experience as well as our in our scientific theorizing about the world. A hylomorphic analysis of concrete particular objects holds that these entities are, in some sense, compounds of matter (hūlē) and form (morphē or eidos). The Grounding Problem asks why an object and its matter (e.g., a statue and the clay that constitutes it) can apparently differ with respect to certain of their properties (e.g., the clay’s ability to survive being squashed, as compared to the statue’s inability to do so), even though they are otherwise so much alike. In this paper, I argue that a hylomorphic analysis of concrete particular objects, in conjunction with a non-modal conception of essence of the type encountered for example in the works of Aristotle and Kit Fine, has the resources to yield a solution to the Grounding Problem.
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Archival date: 2018-07-04
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Essence and Modality.Fine, Kit
Mental Causation.Yablo, Stephen
Spatio-Temporal Coincidence and the Grounding Problem.Bennett, Karen
Hylomorphism.Johnston, Mark
Things and Their Parts.Fine, Kit
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2018-07-04
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2018-07-04
Total downloads
79 ( #23,827 of 37,192 )
Recent downloads (6 months)
40 ( #8,931 of 37,192 )
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