The View from Above: Structure, Emergence, and Causation

A defence of the Formal Identity Thesis and of the immateriality of the human intellect, based on specifically epistemological arguments about our knowledge of necessary or essential truths, including especially essential truths about value. In De Anima Book III, Aristotle subscribed to a theory of “formal identity” between the human mind and the extra-mental objects of our understanding. This has been one of the most controversial features of Aristotelian metaphysics of the mind. I offer here a defense of the Formal Identity Thesis and of the immateriality of the human intellect, based on specifically epistemological arguments about our knowledge of necessary or essential truths, including especially essential truths about value.

Howard Robinson argues that the early moderns were right to think that Aristotelian or scholastic hylomorphism was inconsistent with modern science. An emphasis on the teleological component in hylomorphism can, together with an appeal to Divine design, restore a kind of hylomorphism - and also help to articulate the doctrine of transubstantiation. None of this makes any serious contribution to solving the mind-body problem.

David Yates argues that some physically realised qualitative properties have their causal roles solely in virtue of being the qualities they are, and not in virtue of the powers bestowed by their physical realizers on a given occasion. In this paper I argue that some physically realised qualitative properties have their causal roles solely in virtue of being the qualities they are, and not in virtue of the powers bestowed by their physical realizers on a given occasion. This theory requires a broad notion of physical realization that encompasses the realization of properties such as structure and shape, as well as functional properties. I appeal to the causal role of molecular structure in support of my position, and suggest that powerful qualities of this kind exhibit emergent downward causation without violating physical realization, or the causal closure of the broadly physical. The resulting theory, I suggest, offers far better resources for explaining the autonomy of the special sciences than traditional alternatives such as functionalism and supevenience emergentism

Utilising recent advances in developmental biology, Christopher Austin argues that the hylomorphic framework is an empirically adequate and conceptually rich explanatory schema with which to model the nature of organisms. Although contemporary metaphysics has recently undergone a neo-Aristotelian revival wherein dispositions, or capacities are now commonplace in empirically grounded ontologies, being routinely utilised in theories of causality and modality, a central Aristotelian concept has yet to be given serious attention – the doctrine of hylomorphism. The reason for this is clear: while the Aristotelian ontological distinction between actuality and potentiality has proven to be a fruitful conceptual framework with which to model the operation of the natural world, the distinction between form and matter has yet to similarly earn its keep. In this talk, I offer a first step toward showing that the hylomorphic framework is up to that task. To do so, I return to the birthplace of that doctrine - the biological realm. Utilising recent advances in developmental biology, I argue that the hylomorphic framework is an empirically adequate and conceptually rich explanatory schema with which to model the nature of organisms.

William Jaworski argues why the hylomorphic structure is the best (and perhaps only) thing that can explain the persistence of individuals that change their matter over time. Hylomorphism claims that some individuals, paradigmatically living things, are composed of physical materials with a form or structure that is responsible for them being and persisting as the kinds of things they are. One objection to hylomorphism claims that an account of the physical materials composing an individual is sufficient to account for everything it is and everything it does. William Jaworski argues that the objection fails insofar as hylomorphic structure is the best (and perhaps only) thing that can explain the persistence of individuals that change their matter over time.