Hylomorphic Soul-Body Relations: Materialism, Dualism, Sui Generis?

In applying his general hylomorphism to soul-body relations, Aristotle contends that the following general analogy obtains:

soul : body : : form : matter : : Hermes-shape : bronze

If the soul bears the same relation to the body which the shape of a statue bears to its material basis, then we should expect some general features to be common to both; and we should be able to draw some immediate consequences regarding the relationship between soul and body. To begin, some questions about the unity of soul and body, an issue of concern to substance dualists and materialists alike, receive a ready response. Materialists hold that all mental states are also physical states; substance dualists deny this, because they hold that the soul is a subject of mental states which can exist alone, when separated from the body. In a certain way, the questions which give rise to this dispute simply fall by the wayside. If we do not think there is an interesting or important question concerning whether the Hermes-shape and its material basis are one, we should not suppose there is a special or pressing question about whether the soul and body are one. So Aristotle contends: “It is not necessary to ask whether soul and body are one, just as it is not necessary to ask whether the wax and its shape are one, nor generally whether the matter of each thing and that of which it is the matter are one. For even if one and being are spoken of in several ways, what is properly so spoken of is the actuality” (De Anima ii 1, 412b6–9). Aristotle does not here eschew questions concerning the unity of soul and body as meaningless; rather, he seems, in a deflationary vein, to suggest that they are readily answered or somehow unimportant. If we do not spend time worrying about whether the wax of a candle and its shape are one, then we should not exercise ourselves over the question of whether the soul and body are one. The effect, then, is to fit soul-body relations into a larger hylomorphic pattern of explanation in terms of which questions of unity do not normally arise.
It should be emphasized, however, that Aristotle does not here decide the question by insisting that the soul and body are identical, or even that they are one in some weaker sense; indeed, this is something he evidently denies (De Anima ii 1, 412a17; ii 2, 414a1–20). Instead, just as one might well insist that the wax of a candle and its shape are distinct, on the grounds that the wax could easily exist when the particular shape is no more, or, less obviously, that the particular shape could survive the replenishment of its material basis, so one might equally deny that the soul and body are identical. In a fairly direct way, though, the question of whether soul and body are one loses its force when it is allowed that it contains no implications beyond those we establish for any other hylomorphic compound, including houses and other ordinary artifacts.
One way of appreciating this is to consider a second general moral Aristotle derives from hylomorphism. This concerns the question of the separability of the soul from the body, a possibility embraced by substance dualists from the time of Plato onward. Aristotle’s hylomorphism commends the following attitude: if we do not think that the Hermes-shape persists after the bronze is melted and recast, we should not think that the soul survives the demise of the body. So, Aristotle claims, “It is not unclear that the soul – or certain parts of it, if it naturally has parts – is not separable from the body” (De Anima ii 1, 413a3–5). So, unless we are prepared to treat forms in general as capable of existing without their material bases, we should not be inclined to treat souls as exceptional cases. Hylomorphism, by itself, gives us no reason to treat souls as separable from bodies, even if we think of them as distinct from their material bases. At the same time, Aristotle does not appear to think that his hylomorphism somehow refutes all possible forms of dualism. For he appends to his denial of the soul’s separability the observation that some parts of the soul may in the end be separable after all, since they are not the actualities of any part of the body (De Anima ii 1, 413a6–7). Aristotle here prefigures his complex attitude toward mind (nous), a faculty he repeatedly describes as exceptional among capacities of the soul.
Still, in general, the soul is the form of the body in much the same way the form of a house structures the bricks and mortar from which it is built. When the bricks and mortar realize a certain shape, they manifest the function definitive of houses, namely that of providing shelter. Thus, the presence of the form makes those bricks and that mortar a house, as opposed, e.g., to a wall or an oven. As we have seen, Aristotle will say that the bricks and mortar, as matter, are potentially a house, until they realize the form appropriate to houses, in which case the form and matter together make an actual house. So, in Aristotle’s terms, the form is the actuality of the house, since its presence explains why this particular quantity of matter comes to be a house as opposed to some other kind of artifact.
In the same way, then, the presence of the soul explains why this matter is the matter of a human being, as opposed to some other kind of thing. Now, this way of looking at soul-body relations as a special case of form-matter relations treats reference to the soul as an integral part of any complete explanation of a living being, of any kind. To this degree, Aristotle thinks that Plato and other dualists are right to stress the importance of the soul in explanations of living beings. At the same time, he sees their commitment to the separability of the soul from the body as unjustified merely by appeal to formal causation: he will allow that the soul is distinct from the body, and is indeed the actuality of the body, but he sees that these concessions by themselves provide no grounds for supposing that the soul can exist without the body. His hylomorphism, then, embraces neither reductive materialism nor Platonic dualism. Instead, it seeks to steer a middle course between these alternatives by pointing out, implicitly, and rightly, that these are not exhaustive options.
Further Discussion of Hylomorphism:

اقتباس :: Supplement: A Fundamental Problem about Hylomorphism
Supplement: A Question about the Metaphysics of Souls

Hylomorphic Soul-Body Relations: Materialism, Dualism, Sui Generis?

Hylomorphic Soul-Body Relations: Materialism, Dualism, Sui Generis? :: تعاليق

Hylomorphic Soul-Body Relations: Materialism, Dualism, Sui Generis?