Uploaded June 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
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. In this talk, 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.
This talk was given by Professor William Jaworski as part of a 2018 conference at Corpus Christi College, Oxford under the title "The View from Above: Structure, Emergence, and Causation".
It's a common accepted assumption that reality includes the chemical, biological, and psychological, but are they anything over and above the physical? Or can they all be reduced somehow to the physical? Reductionism has been challenged by various forms of emergentism, which many philosophers still see as unsatisfactory. One alternative way to think about this issue, which has recently come to the fore in the metaphysical debates, is along the lines of Aristotle's Hylomorphism, a view that takes structure and organization to play a pivotal metaphysical role. The aim of this conference is to discuss the assumptions of Hylomorphism, and how it bears on reductionism in relation to special sciences (such as chemistry and biology) and in the philosophy of mind.
Read more on Aristotle's Hylomorphism: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/form-matter/
00:00 Talk
1:01:07 Q&A
#philosophy #aristotle #metaphysics #mind
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. In this talk, 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.
This talk was given by Professor William Jaworski as part of a 2018 conference at Corpus Christi College, Oxford under the title "The View from Above: Structure, Emergence, and Causation".
It's a common accepted assumption that reality includes the chemical, biological, and psychological, but are they anything over and above the physical? Or can they all be reduced somehow to the physical? Reductionism has been challenged by various forms of emergentism, which many philosophers still see as unsatisfactory. One alternative way to think about this issue, which has recently come to the fore in the metaphysical debates, is along the lines of Aristotle's Hylomorphism, a view that takes structure and organization to play a pivotal metaphysical role. The aim of this conference is to discuss the assumptions of Hylomorphism, and how it bears on reductionism in relation to special sciences (such as chemistry and biology) and in the philosophy of mind.
Read more on Aristotle's Hylomorphism: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/form-matter/
00:00 Talk
1:01:07 Q&A
#philosophy #aristotle #metaphysics #mind
