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Ideas for 'works', 'Summa Theologicae' and 'Semantics for Natural Languages'

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3 ideas

9. Objects / C. Structure of Objects / 2. Hylomorphism / a. Hylomorphism
13276 The unmoved mover and the soul show Aristotelian form as the ultimate mereological atom [Aristotle, by Koslicki]
     Full Idea: Aristotle's discussion of the unmoved mover and of the soul confirms the suspicion that form, when it is not thought of as the object represented in a definition, plays the role of the ultimate mereological atom within his system.
     From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 6.6
     A reaction: Aristotle is concerned with which things are 'divisible', and he cites these two examples as indivisible, but they may be too unusual to offer an actual theory of how Aristotle builds up wholes from atoms. He denies atoms in matter.
9. Objects / C. Structure of Objects / 2. Hylomorphism / d. Form as unifier
13277 The 'form' is the recipe for building wholes of a particular kind [Aristotle, by Koslicki]
     Full Idea: Thus in Aristotle we may think of an object's formal components as a sort of recipe for how to build wholes of that particular kind.
     From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 7.2.5
     A reaction: In the elusive business of pinning down what Aristotle means by the crucial idea of 'form', this analogy strikes me as being quite illuminating. It would fit DNA in living things, and the design of an artifact.
16765 Humans only have a single substantial form, which contains the others and acts for them [Aquinas]
     Full Idea: A human being has no substantial form other than the intellective soul alone, and it contains the sensitive and nutritive souls, and all lower forms, and it alone brings about whatever it is that less perfect forms bring about in other things.
     From: Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologicae [1265], Ia Q76 4c), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 25.1
     A reaction: He says brutes and plants also have a single soul. Pasnau says this is Aquinas's most distinctive doctrine, because other thinkers postulate a whole hierarchy of substantial forms.