Anna Marmodoro

Composition models of the incarnation: unity and unifying relations

In this paper we investigate composition models of incarnation, according to which Christ is a compound of qualitatively and numerically different constituents. We focus on three-part models, according to which Christ is composed of a divine mind, a human mind, and a human body. We consider four possible relational structures that the three components could form. We argue that a ‘hierarchy of natures’ model, in which the human mind and body are united to each other in the normal way, and in which they are jointly related to the divine mind by the relation of co-action, is the most metaphysically plausible model. Finally, we consider the problem of how Christ can be a single person even when his components may be considered persons. We argue that an Aristotelian metaphysics, according to which identity is a matter of function, offers a plausible solution: Christs components may acquire a radically new identity through being parts of the whole, which enables them to be reidentified as parts, not persons.

Aquinas on Forms, Substances and Artifacts

Thomas Aquinas sees a sharp metaphysical distinction between artifacts and substances, but does not offer any explicit account of it. We argue that for Aquinas the contribution that an artisan makes to the generation of an artifact compromises the causal responsibility of the form of that artifact for what the artifact is; hence it compromises the metaphysical unity of the artifact to that of an accidental unity. By contrast, the metaphysical unity of a substance is achieved by a process of generation whereby the substantial form is solely responsible for what each part and the whole of a substance are. This, we submit, is where the metaphysical difference between artifacts and substances lies for Aquinas. Here we offer on behalf of Aquinas a novel account of the causal process of generation of substances, in terms of descending forms , and we bring out its explanatory merits by contrasting it to other existing accounts in the literature.

Potentiality in Aristotle’s Metaphysics

This chapter introduces a novel interpretation of Aristotle’s metaphysics of powers, drawing on various of his works, and putting it in dialogue with alternatives in contemporary metaphysics, thus assessing its relative strengths. The chapter argues that Aristotle held what is currently known as a “pure” power ontology, with no categorical properties at the fundamental level and no categorical base to the fundamental powers. In Aristotle’s system, there are no relations relating a power with its manifestation, or with its manifestation partners. Power for Aristotle are relatives, that is, monadic properties of a special kind, whose nature is discussed in the chapter. Their manifestation is governed by conditional necessity. Instances of physical powers are for Aristotle all there is at the foundations of reality.

Powers, abilities and skills in early modern philosophy

ABSTRACT This introduction presents a brief overview of the concept of ‘mental power’ in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and focuses on the issue of how a sample of influential thinkers of that period conceptualized the human agent’s mental abilities and skills as governing perception, action and moral behaviour. This leads to innovative accounts which partially ground, in a broad sense, modern psychology. The representative thinkers included in this special issue are: Descartes, Cudworth, Locke, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hume and Kant.

Anaxagoras’s Qualitative Gunk

Are there atoms in the constitution of things? Or is everything made of atomless ‘gunk’ whose proper parts have proper parts? Anaxagoras (fifth-century BC) is the first gunk lover in the history of metaphysics. For him gunk is not only a theoretical possibility that cannot be ruled out in principle (as it is for modern gunk lovers). Rather, it is a view that follows cogently from his metaphysical analysis of the physical world of our experience. What is distinctive about Anaxagoras’s take on gunk is not only what motives the view, but also the particular type of gunk that he develops. It is qualitative gunk, rather than material gunk. Anaxagoras’s ontology was developed before matter was ‘invented’. It includes quality tropes only; they are gunky. The resulting metaphysical view – a world of qualitative gunk – is new, in the sense of being hitherto unexplored; and yet, it is derived from Anaxagoras’s writings. Drawing on Anaxagoras’s insights, this paper offers a sketch of what qualitative gunk ontology looks like; it explores what motives it; and it highlights the differences of qualitative gunk from material gunk.

Causing Health and Disease: Medical Powers in Classical and Late Antiquity

This special issue of the British Journal for the History of Philosophy is devoted to the investigation of how thinkers of classical and late antiquity conceptualized the relation of cause and effect in the special domain of medicine – hence in connection with health and illness, diseases and cures. The modern reader might be surprised to learn that medical practice was tightly interwoven with philosophical speculation in antiquity. Yet there is a wealth of philosophical thinking to be recovered from ancient medical texts which by and large have so far been left ‘on the margins’ of mainstream research in the history of philosophy. The essays included in this special issue showcase cutting-edge research on some of the most prominent issues that the ancient thinkers-cum-doctors were investigating during the period from the Pre-Socratics to Neoplatonism. Inevitably this can only be a ‘gappy’ selection of topics across a broad temporal spectrum. The goal of this special issue is not to be comprehensive, but rather to engage the reader in exploring further this fascinating avenue of research in the history of philosophy. What is health? Is it best conceived as a stable or a constantly changing equilibrium? An equilibrium of what? How is health achieved? How is health preserved? What affects it? What is the relation between physical and mental health? Which external factors (such as climate or food) or habits (such as taking a stroll after a meal) make a causal difference to the state of the diseased patient, and how? Are such causal factors also constitutive of health? How is the doctor to go about discovering the causes of illness? How is illness manifested? What is there to learn about its status from the ways it is manifested? How do animals cause their offspring to come to be? What ‘goes wrong’ if anything in the causal chain leads to the procreation of deformities rather than well-formed individuals? These are some of the questions to which the doctors-cum-philosophers in antiquity were pioneering answers. Central to their thinking is the concept of causality. The ancient authors under consideration here implicitly assume that causation is the ‘operation’ of causal powers (dunameis). Such causal powers are the so-called opposites of the Ionian tradition: the dry and the wet, the hot and the cold, etc. They operate according to the causal principle that

Does the inherence heuristic take us to psychological essentialism

We argue that the claim that essence-based causal explanations emerge, hydra-like, from an inherence heuristic is incomplete. No plausible mechanism for the transition from concrete properties, or cues, to essences is provided. Moreover, the fundamental shotgun and storytelling mechanisms of the inherence heuristic are not clearly enough specified to distinguish them, developmentally, from associative or causal networks.

Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671, by Robert Pasnau: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, pp. xiv+ 796,£ 80 (hardback)

In his original and stimulating book, Pasnau advances the thesis that there is a common body of ideas about substance that is uniquely distinctive of a four-century period never looked at as a whol...