Forms are not emergent powers

ABSTRACT

Hylomorphism is the Aristotelian theory according to which substances are composites of matter and form. If my house is a substance, then its matter would be a collection of bricks and timbers and its form something like a structure that unites those bricks and timbers into a single substance. Contemporary hylomorphists are divided on how to understand forms best, but a prominent group of theorists argue that forms are emergent powers. According to such views, when material components are arranged appropriately, a novel substance emerges with the power to impose unity on its components through time. I argue that these accounts of form fall prey to a bootstrapping problem, and so, suffer from issues of redundancy, given plausible assumptions about inherence. In their place, I suggest an ontologically minimalist conception of forms as collective manifestations of the powers of matter.

KEYWORDS:

• Hylomorphism
• form
• matter
• substance
• powers
• dispositions

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 While the language of composition suggests that matter and form are parts or constituents of substances, it is controversial, in both Aristotle scholarship and contemporary debates on hylomorphism, whether forms should be understood to bear a mereological relation to substances. Those who defend a mereological or constituent interpretation of Aristotle’s hylomorphism incluFine (1992), Haslanger (1994), Koslicki (2006), Lewis (1991, 1995), and Loux (2005, 2006), and those who reject it incluGill (1989), Halper (1985), Kosman (2013), Scaltsas (1994), Sellars (1967), and Wedin (2000). In the contemporary literature, Fine (1999), Koons (2014, 2018), Koslicki (2008, 2018), Oderberg (2007), Stump (1995), and Toner (2013) defend mereological or constituent versions of hylomorphism, and Evnine (2016), Jaworski (2014, 2016), Johnston (2006), Marmodoro (2013), Rea (2011), and Shields (2019) defend non-mereological versions. For a recent argument against mereological approaches to form, see Renz (forthcoming).

2 For further discussion and criticism of structural hylomorphism, see Evnine (2016: ch. 2), Koons (2014), and Rooney (2022: ch. 2).

3 My argument is focused on those who claim that forms are powers of emergent substances, but it applies to any hylomorphist who takes forms to be properties, qualities, features, or aspects of emergent individuals or substances, whether dispositional or not.

4 Hylomorphists often distinguish between predication and inherence. Forms are predicated of portions of matter, while regular, mundane properties, so-called accidental forms, inhere in substances. So, when a predication obtains, the result is a substance, while inherence obtaining makes for an accidental unity, or a propertied substance. For my purposes here, this distinction makes no difference; for Jaworski and Marmodoro, forms are powers, and powers are not predicated of matter, they inhere in subjects. My point is just to highlight that forms are the sorts of entities that exist in subjects. For further discussion of the distinction in Aristotle, see Lewis (1991) and Loux (1991). For discussion of the distinction in Aquinas, see Brower (2014).

5 Some hylomorphists, for example, Thomists such as Jeffrey Brower and Eleonore Stump, may object, claiming that some forms, namely, human souls, can exist independently of a subject. I register this point here but pay it little attention: (1) these authors deny that it is natural for a human soul to exist apart from matter, and (2) a human soul existing apart from matter is a limit, not primary, case.

6 Some deny this, arguing that inherence may be, in some cases, a many-one relationship. For example, Caves (2018) and Cornell (2017) argue that certain pluralities may serve as subjects for the inherence of properties. However, these authors are motivated by a desire to countenance emergent, or non-redundant, properties within a metaphysics of mereological nihilism. Given that hylomorphists are squarely at odds with mereological nihilism, I see little reason why they would be open to these arguments.

7 Note that this second point is wholly compatible with the view that we can and do truthfully predicate things of collections and entities that aren’t sufficiently unified. It is true that ‘the collection is yellow,’ but what makes this predication true are the individual, one-to-one instances of inherence that hold between the lemon, banana and post-it note and the color yellow. So, truths and their truthmakers might not be ‘ontologically isomorphic.’ See Heil (2003: ch. 3).

8 More specifically, Jaworski (2016: ch. 4) endorses a powerful-quality view of properties of the sort developed by Heil (2003, 2012), Heil and Martin (1999), Jacobs (2011), and Martin (2007). On such views, a property has both a qualitative side or aspect and a dispositional side or aspect. For instance, a banana is yellow, and so, being yellow is a quality of the banana, a way that it is, and, moreover, the banana’s yellowness enables it to behave in various ways, e.g., to appear yellow to observers.

9 You might think that Jaworski, inasmuch as he takes properties to be particulars, is not committed to anything like an inherence relation. Inherence, the thought goes, is something the realist must countenance to explain how universals are tied to particular subjects. Because of this, perhaps Jaworski’s view isn’t bound by my two points about inherence. In response, I just don’t see how this could be so, given Jaworski is committed to a two-category ontology. If there are substances and properties, whether those properties are universals or particulars, there must be some account of how properties are borne by substances, some account, whether it posits a genuine relation or not, of the relationship between properties and property-bearers. While Jaworski (2016:, 47) appears silent on this issue, he seems comfortable with an account of the relation between substances and properties called characterization, propounded by E.J. Lowe (2006: ch. 3). Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for bringing this objection to my attention.

10 The ontological dependence of forms on substance is widely discussed, but see Corkum (2008) for discussion.

11 Many thanks to two anonymous reviewers for bringing this important objection to my attention.

12 To be clear, I am not attributing this view to Marmodoro; my discussion here is just a fleshing out of the ways one could interpret her view. Marmodoro is clear, in other places, e.g., her (2013), that she does not conceive of forms as special parts of substances.

13 See also Johnston (2006), although he denies forms bear a mereological relation to the substances

14 To be clear, I do not think that the material components of substances possess special uniting powers. Rather, material components have powers, like charge, that enable them to unite. Following Heil (2003, 2012), I take powers to be multi-track: one and the same powers can bring about different types of manifestations, given that power is stimulated differently, or mingled with different powers. For instance, a ball is round, and in virtue of this power, the ball can (1) roll when placed on an incline, (2) appear round to an observer, and (3) leave a circular impression on a pillow. So, the proton is positively-charged, and this enables it to repel other protons, but it also enables it to capture and so unite with an electron. What powers account for the unity of substances, then, will be an empirical project.

15 We might follow Heil (2012: ch. 6) and call forms, the manifestations of powers, ‘happenings.’

16 However, Koons seems to have changed his account of forms. See his (2018).

17 See Heil (2003) for a strategy for making representations of mereologically complex objects truth-apt and meaningful without taking them to be full-blown, fundamental substances.

18 See also Koslicki (2018:, 208–215).

19 Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for bringing this objection to my attention.

20 Thanks to two anonymous reviewers for pushing me to consider this objection.