In rereading the paper, I would change many things. In fact, I believe that some serious objections can be raised against my argument at crucial points which would defend the hylomorphist view. Please read the paper below before these notes, which won't make any sense otherwise.
The most important change I would make is that I think the hylomorphist could say that "your soul informs and configures immaterial substances that function similarly to material substances. As such, you do exist in the afterlife; it is not your soul thinking your thoughts, but you." I had charged that this was ad hoc, but I do not think so now. Why?
If we look at the Bible, the account of Jesus' post-resurrection body is that it had properties that were not strictly "material" as we know. He could pass through walls or disappear completely and reappear in another location. He also "ascends into heaven", and so his "body" is in heaven, where presumably, no merely material (as we know) entity could exist. However, he could be touched and he could eat in his post-resurrection body, so he could interact with the material world as we know it, though he was not bound by it. Catholic Christians would also point to the doctrine of Mary's assumption into heaven, "body and soul". Consequently, such a move is not ad hoc for a Christian that already believes these things, and it makes sense of scripture and doctrine for how Jesus' post-resurrection body could interact in the physical world while also passing into heaven and having an after-life existence.
This move also has other explanatory power. For example, it explains how we as material beings could have an afterlife (i.e., we configure immaterial substances in heaven). Since we are a body-soul composite on this view, you do exist in the afterlife as a soul-configuring-immaterial-substance into-a-body-composite. You are the thing that thinks in the afterlife, which traditional theology requires and which is in accordance with the Thinker Thesis. So I do not think that this is ad hoc anymore, and as such, it is a good move for the hylomorphist to make.
Regarding my comment about the soul coming into existence only with the emergence of psychological properties, I believe a lot of issues can be avoided by asserting that a human soul can have potential properties and powers that are not yet actualized or realized. This allows for a human soul to come into existence at conception, which makes the most sense for the hylomorphist, since the soul is the configuration of the body (and the body begins at conception). For example, I remain a human even though my rational powers are not always active (e.g., sleeping, unconcscious). What is important is that I have the potential to exercise rational powers in the course of my normal development, and this is perhaps what distinguishes my human soul from the souls of other animals and plants.
The hylomorphist should also not be afraid to say that souls can have defects. Since the hylomorphic soul is the configuration of the body, if the body is deformed or abnormal in some way, the soul is as well. The soul can configure and be configured in an imperfect or incomplete manner while still being a soul. A broken car engine is still a car engine and not just a hunk of metal, even if it is defective in some way. Indeed, the Christian can easily embrace this view since he or she already takes the soul to be defective morally and rationally. It is not a big step to also say that the defect extends to a flawed or incomplete configuration of the material body was well.
I admit I am still bothered by the issue of identity in which one's configurational state could be instantiated in multiple places, or about how to resolve Parfit division cases. However, these are issues not unique to the hylomorphic view, so I don't think it suffers any distinct disadvantage here. It seems nobody has a really good response to these concerns.
Below is the paper. Enjoy :)
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Hylomorphism, as espoused by Aristotle, claims that the soul is the form of the body. The form of the body is the configuration and ordering of the matter composing a human. This particular arrangement and ordering of matter is what accounts for our capacities and powers as completely material human animals. In contemporary terms, Aristotle’s view can be characterized as a version of non-reductive physicalism. Lower-level individuals and properties make up higher-level individuals and properties (e.g., psychological) when they are joined together in complex causal relationships. These higher-level properties are not reducible to the properties of the lower-level realizers that make them up. Notice that on Aristotle’s view, the soul is not separable from the body, nor is the body separable from the soul. Each essentially depends on the other for its existence, for the soul just is the way the body is configured, and the body must have a configuration (McMahan 11). Consequently, there is no disembodied afterlife possible because there is no immaterial thing that we could survive as. It is at this point that Aquinas departs from Aristotle. The soul is no longer merely a description of the configuration of the body. Instead, it is the principle that configures, orders, and enlivens the body. It is therefore separable and distinguishable from the body and can survive the death of the body.
Aquinas, as a Christian, is trying to affirm the goodness and existence of both the material and immaterial worlds by claiming that we are material beings that can also survive in a disembodied state in the afterlife. Thus, Aquinas is attempting to walk a fine line in joining the material and immaterial into one substance: a human being. A human being is a composite of matter and soul, and out of the configuring, ordering, and enlivening of matter by the soul, a single substance emerges: you.
What does this mean? First, this means that you have a soul essentially. What is the soul? This is surprisingly difficult to answer. Aquinas uses many different terms to describe the soul, not all of which seem compatible. First, the soul is called the form of the body, “the form in virtue of which the matter informed by it (that is, the matter-form composite) constitutes a living human body” (Stump 508). Thus, we might think of the soul as a sort of universal that is instantiated into different groups of matter to create human beings. That is, there is a universal “human soul,” but each and every human being has a soul that is an abstract particular instantiation of the general “human soul.” Second, the soul is also thought of as a configurational state of the body (Olson, What are We? 174). But on Aquinas’s account, the soul is not a static state; it is dynamic. It is “something that includes the functioning of and the causal interactions among the parts” (Stump 509); it makes a body alive and capable of actions and functions (Leftow 127). Thus, we might think of the soul as the principle of life and mental activity in a body. It is what makes a body a body, for a body is essentially living (Leftow 136). Related to this, we might say that the soul is a bundle of causal powers, and a human soul exists in a bunch of matter when that matter has the essential causal powers characteristic of humans (Leftow 126). Thus, we can say that the soul is the sum total of all of the different causal relations resulting from a very specific organizational state of the matter composing your body.
Such a view of the soul is attractive. There is no mind-body problem since there is no interaction of immaterial and material substances. The soul and body together form a single material substance (where substances are ordered or configured groups of matter) (Leftow 123). There is no pairing problem since the soul just is the configurational state of the body. This view also fits well with functionalist views of the mind that rely on non-reductive making-up relations between lower-level and higher-level properties. Finally, it affirms an “emergent” view of life in which non-biological matter can give rise to living biological matter when properly organized.
However, such a view does not seem to allow for disembodied survival, despite Aquinas’s assertions that it does. If the soul is a configurational state of matter, then it does not seem that a configurational state can exist without its matter (Stump 513). Furthermore, the soul not only exists in the afterlife, but has mental capacities and volition (Eberl 339). But how is this possible if the soul depends on the body for the exercise of its capacities? Clearly, one’s cognitive activity depends in some way on the brain, despite Eberl’s insistence that “intellective cognition and volition… do not depend upon any bodily organ to function” (Eberl 342).
Second, the view offers no explanatory power. As Leftow states, “all my soul ‘does’ to me, in enlivening me, is be there” (Leftow 132). Similarly Stump claims, “there is no efficient causal interaction between the soul and the matter it informs, and all cognitive functions can be implemented in the body” (Stump 518). What use is there in hypothesizing a soul then, since it does not explain anything? Furthermore, if the soul is just the sum total of all the causal relations and properties of the material making up an individual, then Aquinas can no longer say that the soul is an immaterial particular. Rather, the soul is purely descriptive; it is not any thing. This also concedes that there is no property of the body (e.g., psychological properties) that cannot be realized by lower-level properties, leaving us with no reason to assert, as Aquinas does, that the human soul is created directly by God.
Third, the soul is not sufficient for identity. It seems that another individual could have the exact same soul as you. Indeed, identical twins have the same configurational states initially, so they have the same soul initially (apart from differing spatial locations). Or if we think of the soul as a universal or form that is instantiated into individuals, then these twins do share the same soul, though not the same instance. Furthermore, each twin can die, yet the form will still exist. Thus, when we die, we cease to exist even though the form that we participated in continues to exist. Consequently, any future instance of the form would be a numerically different individual from us, so we could never come back into existence. We could revise Aquinas’s account to say that the soul is a particular instance of a universal that is further individuated by changes in the body (after all, identical twins are not qualitatively identical). However, it is difficult to understand how an instance of a universal that becomes modified could exist outside of the material world as an abstract entity and not become another universal. For example, there may be a particular configurational state in the afterlife qualitatively identical to the one you had before you died (indeed, it exists only because of you). But God could configure two groups of matter with this same configurational state at the resurrection. Which one would be you? Thus, there is nothing that is essentially unique and persists through life, death, and resurrection with which we can identify you.
Fourth, even supposing that one can make sense of this soul, what about our relation to our bodies? Aquinas wants to affirm that this soul that exists in the afterlife is you. However, as Olson notes, “if it is hard to understand how an organism could persist without being an organism, that is nothing compared to understanding how an organism could persist without being a material thing at all” (Olson, What are We? 175). One cannot be wholly material at one time and wholly immaterial or abstract at another time, especially since material individuals seem to be essentially material, just as immaterial or abstract individuals seem to be essentially immaterial or abstract (Olson, “A Compound” 84). If we are wholly material animals, as Aquinas’s wishes to affirm, then we cannot exist as immaterial beings or as abstract entities, and so we cannot exist in a disembodied afterlife.
Finally, virtually anyone attracted to this view will want to say that you begin to exist at conception. However, such a position, as Aquinas himself admits, is not possible. For the “rational” soul does not exist at conception. The zygote does not have the sufficient configurational complexity to give rise to mental states. The rational soul at the earliest comes into existence midway into the pregnancy when the fetus could be said to have psychological properties that distinguish it from other animals. Thus, you come into existence only with the rational soul (Leftow 128). Furthermore, since the rational soul is supposed to be that which individuates us from other animals, then either we must say that many humans (e.g. babies, toddlers, vegetative humans, mentally disabled humans) do not have a rational soul, or we must say that many animals (e.g. primates) do have rational souls. Since the form’s job is “to give its bearer the power to do the acts characteristic of members of a particular natural kind,” if a human does not have these rational characteristics, then she does not have a soul and is therefore not a member of our kind (while some other animals arguably are) (Leftow 133). As such, the rational soul does not distinguish us from plants and animals while still including non-rational or irrational human beings.
It seems that only by conceiving of the soul as an immaterial substance can the soul do all of the work that Aquinas wishes it to do in a way that is appealing and at least slightly plausible. The rest of the paper will assume this revision. However, one can still maintain the essence of the hylomorphic view with this revision. You are essentially a body-soul composite; you have a soul essentially and a body essentially, but you are identical to their composition. The soul, under this revision, is a basic immaterial substance that is simple (i.e., indivisible) and spatially located with one’s body. However, the soul is mutable in the sense that it can acquire properties in virtue of its relationship to a particular body (more on this later). Furthermore, the soul does not have psychological properties essentially. In fact, it does not have psychological properties contingently either. You, the body-soul composite, have psychological properties contingently; neither your body nor your soul has psychological properties. Instead, your soul has the property that, when joined to a suitably complex body, the lower-level properties of both the body and the soul will make up the higher-level mental properties. Thus, rich psychological properties are “emergent” properties that come into existence only at higher levels of organizational complexity in a composite. These properties can be explained by the properties of the body and the soul, but are not reducible to the properties of either.
You also have a body essentially. One can still think of the body as matter that is informed by a soul. As such, your body is partially individuated by its relationship to your soul because it only exists as a living organism in virtue of having a soul. The soul is that which governs, guides, organizes, and gives life to the matter with which it is associated. These are all causal notions and not merely descriptive. Thus, the soul turns matter into an organism, which is an essentially living thing. While the body is dependent on the soul for its existence, it is not wholly individuated by the soul (at least initially). One’s body has distinct features from all other bodies even without reference to the soul. For example, it has a unique spatial location, it has a unique organizational structure, and it has (in most cases) a unique genome (Eberl 345). It is because of this initial bodily individuation that your soul is individuated from other souls.
What is one’s existential history on this view? Briefly, the soul is created directly by God and joined to the egg at the exact moment of fertilization. The egg and sperm cease to be governed by the soul of the parents (or perhaps just the mother) when fertilization takes place, at which point the new human soul takes over the configurational operations of the fertilized egg. This new human soul is an instance of a universal “human soul.” This instance however is immediately individuated by being joined to a specific fertilized egg in a specific location with a specific genetic structure (Eberl 352). Given the souls mutability, it bears the imprint of the body and of you - the body-soul composite. Over the course of your life, your soul changes and acquires new contingent properties. Your configurational structure, DNA, knowledge, and experiences come to be “imprinted” on the soul, as though it contained a copy of a code that exhaustively captures your life, history, and essential properties. With the development of a central nervous system and brain, the soul’s properties and the body’s properties working together begin to make up rich psychological properties. At this point, your soul has become “fixed” to the brainstem (though it spatially extends throughout your body), where it will remain fixed until you die. The soul relates primarily to the organism as a whole, though it works in every part of the body, including the brain, which is construed as a part of the animal.
When the material of your body decays and the soul can no longer keep it structured and configured, the soul detaches from the body and the organism ceases to exist, as do you. Your soul (though not you), exists in the afterlife and is continuously sustained in its mental activities by God (Stump 516). At the proper time, God causes your soul to inform new material, at which point your soul will be reunited with your body and you will come back into existence. The matter which constitutes your body can as a whole be properly called your body, not in virtue of having the same atoms that composed your body before you died. Rather, the body is your body because it is informed by your soul, the unique part of you that persists through time. Together, the body and soul create your contingent rich psychological properties (e.g., memories, beliefs), whose imprint has been retained in the soul and has been sustained by God.
Though this is a fairly rough sketch of the view, it is sufficient for our purposes. Let’s briefly consider the support for the view. First, this hylomorphic view supports the intuition that you were once a fetus. Since your soul is created and joined to your body at conception, you begin to exist at conception. Second, it maintains the intuition that one can survive the death of one’s body in the sense that one has an immaterial soul whose mentality will be maintained even while separated from a body. No materialist view can readily maintain this (although one can affirm the resurrection of the body). Third, this view provides a straightforward account of your identity over time: you essentially depend on your soul (and the body which it informs) for your existence. Thus, your soul grounds your identity. Materialist views have significant difficulty in accounting for identity over time in virtue of the fact that one’s material and mental properties change quite often in the span of one’s lifetime.
Such supporting reasons could be developed, but they are not new and are not unique to hylomorphism. The traditional dualist can make these same claims as well. As such, I will briefly turn to reasons that support hylomorphism over traditional (Cartesian) dualism. First, unlike dualist views that identify you with the soul, hylomorphism claims that you are identical to a composite of body and soul. Consequently, our ordinary ascriptions of physical properties to human beings are literally true. Second, on the hylomorphic view given, one ceases to exist at death. I do literally die when my soul ceases to inform my body, and I shall remain dead and non-existent until my soul is rejoined to a body. The view is thus more in keeping with the Christian hope in the resurrection of the body and in affirming the goodness of material existence. Third, this hylomorphic view affirms that cognitive activity and properties depend on the properties of the body (e.g., a functioning brain) in addition to the properties of the soul. It is thus more in accord with science and everyday experience.
Hylomorphism does share a few objections with dualism. First, it presupposes God’s existence in creating your soul and so is not as simple as other views. Second, it posits a unique causal relationship between immaterial and material matter that is potentially at odds with conservation of energy laws and scientific views of fundamental forces. The hylomorphist can appeal to any dualist responses to the objections. However, the hylomorphic view also suffers some disadvantages that traditional dualism does not. For example, like other materialist views, hylomorphism does not avoid the Paradox of Increase. You are composed of material parts that change over time and so it is difficult to say how you maintain your identity over time (except by grounding identity in the soul). The dualist avoids this problem. However, the paradox rests on controversial premises about identity over time and the problem is not unique to hylomorphism so I will not elaborate further.
More importantly, the hylomorphic view cannot avail itself to the strongest argument for dualism: the Unity of Consciousness. As modified to critique the hylomorphist, the argument proceeds as follows.
- None of the parts of a body-soul composite has a unified conscious experience.
- I have a unified conscious experience.
- I am not a part of a body-soul composite. (1, 2)
- Something that consists of parts cannot have different properties from those belonging to its parts.
- If a body-soul composite has a unified conscious experience, then one of its parts must have a unified conscious experience. (4)
- A body-soul composite does not have a unified conscious experience. (1, 5)
- So I am not a body-soul composite. (2, 6)
The hylomorphist (and any materialist) should reject premise (4). This premise relies on a reductivist account of properties in which higher level properties are not only explicable by but also reducible to lower level properties, and this is false. Composite objects do have properties that their parts do not have. A knife has the property of being sharp though none of its composing atoms is sharp. To attribute “sharpness” to an atom is to make the mistake of applying a higher-level property to a lower-level individual when only higher-level (that is, more organizationally complex) individuals can have higher-level properties. Thus, a body-soul composite can and does have a unified conscious experience, even though none of its parts do. Perhaps the dualist will claim that there is something unique about consciousness in which it can only be instantiated in a single basic substance. If this is true, the hylomorphist is no worse off than any materialist view. She can say that consciousness is instantiated in the soul (thus affirming (5)), but it is the body-soul composite, and not the soul, that thinks since the properties of the body and the soul together realize consciousness (more on this later). In any case, the hylomorphist cannot readily use this argument in her favor.
What of other living things on this view? Do plants and animals have souls? If we say that all living organisms require a soul, from plants to mammals to insects to bacteria, then the soul does almost no explanatory work except as being that which gives life to an organism. All other properties will result from the material complexity of that organism. If we say that only humans have souls, then it seems arbitrary to assert that higher level primates do not, for our differences seem to be of degree and not in kind (McMahan 11). There are many moves here that the hylomorphist can make to distinguish humans from other living things. Since none of them seems to be forced by anything that the hylomorphist is committed to, I will not elaborate further.
However, the hylomorphist must take a stand on marginal cases of humans: newborn babies, the mentally disabled, and those in vegetative states. While Aquinas’s conception of the human soul would have trouble with these cases, the view I have proposed does not. By construing the soul as an immaterial substance, we can say that all human beings, including marginal cases, have a human soul without defect. However, the matter to which the soul is joined is either immature and needs to develop in its organizational complexity, or its initial organizational complexity has a flaw that is beyond the power of the soul to correct. Thus, marginal cases pose no problem in distinguishing human beings from other animals. All human beings have a soul that when joined to a properly organized body, will allow that human being to instantiate rich psychological properties. It is having this kind of soul (a “rational,” personal, or human soul) that grounds the (moral and ontological) distinction between humans and other animals.
Nothing said so far has been largely in favor or opposed to the view. However, the hylomorphic view so construed faces devastating objections from the Thinker Thesis and the Too Many Thinkers argument. First, the view denies the Thinker Thesis, which asserts that you are the individual that thinks your thoughts and instantiates rich psychological properties. The problem is that Aquinas believes that your soul thinks your thoughts in the afterlife even though you do not exist. If this is the case, then it seems that you, a body-soul composite, only derivatively think in virtue of having a thinking part; your soul, a numerically different thing from you, is the thinker in the strictest sense (Olson, “A Compound” 76). While one could deny that the soul does any thinking in the afterlife, such an admission gives up any attractiveness of the view over dualist, animal, or psychological views.
In response, Eberl argues that a human being can be composed of a soul alone (Eberl 340). Thus, when your soul departs from your body, you depart with your soul and are composed solely by it. This possibility makes no sense. A soul is not an organism, a body, nor a composition of soul and body. It is simply a soul. As such, you cannot be composed by it alone. Another unsatisfying response is to say that after death, your soul informs and configures immaterial substances that function similarly to material substances. As such, you do exist in the afterlife; it is not your soul thinking your thoughts, but you. This response is extremely ad hoc, for there is no independent reason apart from the assumption that the hylomorphic view is true that would suggest that such a thing is possible, let alone plausible.
If one wishes to maintain the hylomorphic view, then I think the best response is to deny the Thinker Thesis. We should revise the proposed position to say that, strictly speaking, it is your soul that thinks your thoughts; it is the substance (and not the body-soul composite) in which your thoughts are instantiated. This move allows the view to cohere with and make use of the Unity of Consciousness argument. You think in a derivative sense by having a thinking part (a soul) whose mental activity depends on the properties of your body. When the body dies and the soul departs to God, then God sustains the (limited) mental activity of your soul even though you do not exist (Stump 519). You only come back into existence at the resurrection when your soul once again is united to a body and it is at this point that you regain the full use of your cognitive and other capacities. However, this move runs against the very strong intuition that you are the soul in this case. As Olson notes, this “would mean that psychological continuity was not sufficient for you to persist: here would be a case in which your soul is uniquely psychologically continuous with you as you were when you existed, yet without being you” (Olson 175). This is nearly unacceptable.
This problem is further aggravated by the Too Many Thinkers argument. The argument runs as follows:
- There is a body-soul composite that has a mental property instance in the spatial region of my body.
- There is a brain which has this same mental property instance in the same spatial region of my body.
- The brain and the body-soul composite are not identical.
- Therefore, there are two individuals which have the same mental property instance in the same spatial region.
- But there is only one individual that has this mental property instance in this spatial region.
- (4) and (5) form a contradiction. Therefore, (1), (2), (3), or (5) is false.
However, given what I said about the Thinker Thesis, this response is not available to the hylomorphist since the mental property is instantiated in the soul. So perhaps we should say, as Stump does, that “human cognitive functions are to be attributed to the whole composite and not to the soul alone, although the composite exercises functions by means of the soul” (Stump 519). But now the Too Many Thinkers argument can be rerun, asserting that the brain, and not the soul, instantiates mental properties. The hylomorphist can follow the dualist in asserting that, although there is correlation of brain activity with rich psychological properties, those properties are instantiated in the soul (though the brain provides some of the properties necessary for their realization). This response pushes hylomorphism further from the scientific mainstream.
If the hylomorphic view was not yet dead, Parfit Division cases seem to provide the final nail in the coffin. Suppose that your perfectly healthy and functioning cerebrum was removed from your body, split in two, and put into two other perfectly functioning bodies with brainstems but lacking cerebra. What has happened to you? If we do not flatly reject the nomological possibility of such a thing occurring, then under the proposed hylomorphic view, only two possibilities seem plausible. First, your soul stays with the brainstem of your body, and so you are the composite of your soul and your body (which lacks a cerebrum). The difficulty with this response is that we have the intuition (and some evidence to suggest) that your psychology would go along with each half of your cerebrum. Your psychology would now be realized by the properties of two other souls (in conjunction with the properties of your previous cerebral hemispheres) and instantiated by two other body-soul composites (or two other souls). Meanwhile, your soul would have no psychology. Further suppose that you die while these two other body-soul composites continue to live. Then your psychology continues to exist while you cease to exist, but it now occurs in three places: in two human beings on earth and by your soul in the afterlife. Alternatively, suppose that the two other human beings die. It seems that the psychology of their souls will be radically discontinuous in both the afterlife and at the resurrection.
The hylomorphist can say that the psychology of these other human beings is qualitatively identical to your psychology, but it is not your psychology. Your psychology stays intact as imprinted onto your soul, although you have no mental activity without your cerebrum. Your soul will continue its mental activity once you die, and this continued psychology will be instantiated by you in the resurrection. As for the psychology of the other two human beings, it seems that there are two possibilities. First, these human beings will instantiate psychology qualitatively identical to yours, but once they die, God will wipe away the discontinuous psychology and restore their original psychology that existed prior to the cerebrum transplant. It will be this psychology that each soul has and that each being will have at the resurrection. However, this would mean that any psychology gained or life experienced by these souls would be wiped away. Suppose that each human being went on to live long, healthy, and happy lives involving many significant relationships. Should this all be wiped away? It seems not.
A better response is to say that the souls of each human being would reject the brain transplant. Similar to any other organ transplant, the body (and soul) can reject parts that do not fit with the biological functioning of the organism. The properties of your cerebrum needed for the realization of psychological properties would not match those imprinted on the souls of the other human beings. As such, each soul would reject your hemisphere, and consequently, no psychological properties would be realized. However, it does seem that psychological properties would be realized if a transplant were to take place, and so this response does not seem plausible.
The second possibility of what happens to you is that your soul goes with one of the two halves of your cerebrum, and so you are a composite of your soul and one (but not both) of the bodies now having one half of your cerebrum as a part. This would mean that your soul is tied to your psychology and is not essential for the continuing governance of your body’s life. Instead of being fixed to the brainstem, your soul would be attached to one of your cerebral hemispheres. Which one? There does not seem to be a good answer since both have parts with properties that play an important role in realizing your psychology. Suppose, however, that your soul does go along with one hemisphere. What about the other hemisphere and body? There is no soul in that hemisphere or in that body, yet it still seems plausible that that body will be a functioning organism that instantiates psychological properties. It is ad hoc to say that God will create another soul for this new organism. In addition, your soul would now have two bodies imprinted on it. Which body would be yours at the resurrection? Perhaps the soul would reject the new body as in the prior possibility, and so the body including one half of your cerebrum would not have any mental life. However, this seems doubtful. Since none of these questions has a plausible answer, it seems best to reject this possibility as well, thus leaving us with no plausible account of what happens in these division cases.
As shown, the hylomorphist has many bullets to bite if she wishes to hold onto the view. The most devastating of these is that it denies the Thinker Thesis, its answer to the Too Many Thinkers argument pushes the view outside the scientific mainstream, and it offers no good response to the Parfit division cases. Given the many difficulties it faces it seems best to reject it. Where should one go from here? The preceding view can be easily modified into a contemporary dualist account by saying that you are the soul in every scenario. One can also return to Aristotle’s account as a form of animalism. However, I think that the Thomistic hylomorphist should instead embrace a constitution or psychological view of you over both dualism and animalism. This view strikes me as the most in keeping with Aquinas’s goals and can satisfy his major commitments. Indeed, many concepts that Aquinas employs have an almost direct translation into the contemporary psychological accounts. The rational soul that is the configurational state of the body is very similar to the person that is constituted by an appropriately complex animal. Both the soul and the person come into existence midway into pregnancy, and both have psychological properties essentially. Both are particulars that depend on bodies but are distinguishable from them (and can potentially survive in the afterlife with God’s help). Both also distinguish us from other animals. Thus, I recommend that the hylomorphist should reinterpret (and revise as necessary) Aquinas’s account into a psychological or constitution view of human beings, or simply abandon hylomorphism for other more favorable views.
Works Cited and Consulted
Eberl, Jason. “Aquinas on the Nature of Human Beings.” The Review of Metaphysics 58.2
(2004): 333-65. Philosopher’s Index. Web. 1 Nov. 2010.
Leftow, Brian. “Souls Dipped in Dust.” Soul, Body, and Survival: Essays on the Metaphysics of
Human Persons. Ed. Kevin Corcoran. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001. 120-38.
Print.
McMahan, Jeff. The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2002. Print.
Olson, Eric. “A Compound of Two Substances.” Soul, Body, and Survival: Essays on the
Metaphysics of Human Persons. Ed. Kevin Corcoran. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
2001. 73-88. Print.
---. What Are We?: A Study in Personal Ontology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Print.
Stump, Eleonore. “Non-Cartesian Substance Dualism and Materialism without Reduction.” Faith
and Philosophy 12.4 (1995): 505-31. Print.
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