Hylomorphic Emergence

Abstract Physicalists and dualists share a common understanding of the natural world: the physical universe, they say, is a vast sea of matter and energy that can be in principle described by our best physics. Both are committed to denying that physical materials can combine to form emergent individuals—composite individuals with powers distinct from those of the physical materials composing them. Emergentists disagree, which commits them to a composition operation different from the fusion operation of standard mereology, which latter implies that the behaviour of composite individuals can be exhaustively explained in terms of the behaviour of their parts. According to emergentists, composite individuals have powers different from any of the powers of their material parts taken either individually or in combination. A composition operation of the required sort can be found in Aristotle’s hylomorphism, which claims that individuals are composed of physical materials with a form. A form is not an agent in its own right, distinct from the individual whose form it is; a form is, rather, that individual’s ongoing act of regulating, constraining, and configuring the materials that compose it. Opponents of hylomorphism have argued that because of its commitment to strong supervenience relations the theory faces problems with downward causation. In this chapter it is argued that these arguments are mistaken. Some trade on misunderstandings about supervenience and causal closure; others commit the fallacy of begging the question insofar as they depend on assumptions about the nature of causation that hylomorphism rejects.