The Review of Metaphysics

This paper responds to an argument of Hilary Putnam to the effect that the plurality of modern sciences shows us that any natural kind has a plurality of essences.  In the past, he has argued that no system of representations, mental or linguistic, could have an intrinsic relationship to the world.  Though he has granted that the Thomistic notion of form and its application to the identity of concepts may avoid these earlier objections, he has maintained that the advance of the sciences has shown us that there are too many substantial forms in any particular kind of thing to provide the unity of conceptual identity required by the Thomist’s account.  Given the resemblance of Putnam’s position to the “pluralists” against whom Aquinas argued in the Summa Theologiae a consideration of Aquinas arguments is undertaken.  Following this, the paper examines a particular case of recent scientific practice, in order to suggest whose position, Putnam’s or the Thomist’s, more adequately captures the practice of the natural sciences of today, and their bearing upon the metaphysical question of the nature of essence in natural kinds.  The paper concludes that the Thomist position on the unity of form or essence, with qualifications made about distinct conceptual approaches to some object of investigation, and the use of analogy in sorting through these distinct approaches, is better capable of accounting for the actual goals and practices of scientific understanding as we see it practiced today than is Putnam’s transcendental nominalism and neopragmatism.

Gordon P. Barnes has recently argued that presence by power is inadequate as an explanation of the way elements are present in complex bodies, and that it would be better to explain the elements’ presence by claiming that simpler substances—carbon atoms, for example—are actually and substantially present in living things.  In order to address his arguments, this paper begins by briefly presenting St. Thomas’s understanding of presence by power, and then argues that Barnes’s proposal—that there is a multiplicity of substantial forms in one matter—is unsatisfactory.  First, the paper explains why the scientific facts do not require a plurality of substantial forms. Second, it shows how Barnes’s theory does not adequately explain living things. Third, it argues against Barnes’s claim that St. Thomas’s explanation is insufficient because it denies "the universal causality of nature."

This paper considers the issue of cryopreservation and the definition of death from an Aristotelian-Thomistic perspective.  A central conceptual focus throughout this discussion is the purportedly irreversible nature of death and the criteria by which a human body is considered to be informed by a rational soul.  It concludes that a cryopreserved corpse fails to have “life potentially in it” sufficient to satisfy Aristotle’s definition of ensoulment.  Therefore, if the possibility that such a corpse may be successfully preserved and resuscitated comes to fruition, one would have to conclude that the person’s rational soul, which had separated from its body at death, has literally reanimated its resuscitated body. Obviously, this conclusion has theological implications that go beyond the scope of this discussion if we regard bodily resuscitation in this manner as a form of technologically induced resurrection.  Another apparent implication of the paper’s argument is that, in a limited sense, death loses its irreversible nature.

The concern of this paper is to relate the moral philosophy of Hutcheson with a traditional point of view, according to which moral philosophy depends on natural theology.  The analysis of this relationship is important because it is a crucial feature of the Hutchesonian moral philosophy.  However, this theological outlook does not entirely match his empirical moral epistemology, and this inconsistency allowed David Hume and Adam Smith to throw aside the theological foundation, taking from Hutcheson only the empirical aspects of his epistemology.  The intention of this paper is to explain why this theological outlook cannot match a moral epistemology which lacks a metaphysical foundation.

This paper presents a reflection upon Plato’s good that surpasses even being.  It looks for parallels between Western and Asian sources and examines aspects of Pierce and Whitehead’s  philosophy in some detail.  Ultimately, it attempts to vindicate metaphysics from accusations of death.