Accidental Forms Research Articles

Thomas Aquinas on Concrete Particulars

There are two competing models for how to understand Aquinas’s hylomorphic theory of material substances: the Simple Model, according to which material substances are composed of prime matter and substantial form, and the Expanded Model, according to which material substances are composed of prime matter, substantial form, and all of their accidental forms. In this paper, I first explain the main differences between these two models and show how they situate Aquinas’s theory of material substances in two different places within the contemporary debate on concrete particulars, highlighting several advantages that Aquinas’s approach has over other varieties of substratum and bundle theory along the way. I then offer some reasons to think that the Expanded Model, as a theory of concrete particulars, is preferable. I argue that the Expanded Model avoids two major concerns for the Simple Model: the problem of extrinsicality, and the problem of too-many-possessors.

Thomas Aquinas on the Metaphysical Structure of Artifacts

Abstract It is now standard to interpret Aquinas as recognizing two main types of material objects: substances and artifacts, where substances are those material objects that result from some particular substantial form inhering in prime matter, and artifacts are those material objects that result from some particular accidental form inhering in one or more material substances. There are two problems with this standard interpretation. First, there are passages in which Aquinas states that accidental forms should be understood not as inhering in substances from the outside, but as entering into their composition so as to be included among their metaphysical parts. Second, there are passages in which Aquinas states that it is impossible for any accidental form to be shared by two or more substances. This article considers what implications these two observations might have for how we understand the metaphysical structure of artifacts in Aquinas’s ontology.

'Place Name' in Post-Independence Odia Poetry

This article presents a discussion of 'Place Name' based poems in post-independence Odia poetry. That is the 'Poetry of Regional Geography', in other words 'Poetry of Place Names'. In all these poems 'Geography' is not only expressed here as a source of natural beauty; History, society, culture, people's life, struggles, revolutions and the new surgeon's public consciousness have emerged in it! In all these poems, in the Geographical field, a kind of eternal approach has gained importance rather than accidental forms. In Geographical Articulations in poetry or literature, the geographical past, significance, present and future orientations as well as cultural and natural aesthetics come significantly into the poetic canvas. However, it is worth noting that based on the convenience of the discussion, it has been divided into different stages and the said article has been moved towards a brief discussion of the special poems written by him in the order of appearance of the poets.

Dietrich of Freiberg’s Theory of Perfectional Forms

Abstract This article investigates the philosophical elaboration of the concept of “perfectional form” (forma perfectionalis) in Dietrich of Freiberg’s works. Although Dietrich draws on the traditional notion of perfection to a certain extent, it appears that in his view, what he calls perfectional forms represent a special type of form distinct from the classical division between substantial and accidental forms. The main part of the article analyzes the different uses of this concept made by Dietrich, from his theory of light to his views on the essence of the intellect. The final part of this study aims to evaluate the influence of Dietrich’s theory on the so-called German Dominican school. It is argued that, while Dietrich’s influence on Nicholas of Strasbourg is possible but cannot be firmly established, his theory was explicitly taken up and extended to a more metaphysical dimension by Berthold of Moosburg.

No Substances in a Substance

In this paper I analyze the most controversial thesis of Aristotelian substantialism, namely, that substances cannot be composed of other substances. I call this position the Mereological Limitation Thesis (MLT). I find MLT valid and defend it. My argument for MLT is a version of the argument from the unicity of substantial form. Every substance can have only one substantial form, thus, if some substances compose the object O, then what binds them is only a set of their accidental forms (relations) and in the result thereof O is not a substance (O is not informed by a substantial form). I argue against the relativization of the substantiality of forms to the level of composition by showing that substantial forms must be absolutely identity-independent. In the last section I specify the ontological status of parts of substances and argue that they are spatially distributed bundles of accidents of a compound substance itself.

Is Matter the Same as Its Potency? Some Fourteenth-Century Answers

Abstract Is prime matter the same as its potency (potentia), its readiness to take on the entire gamut of corporeal substantial forms? This question, arising from a passage in Averroes, lies at the core of later medieval hylomorphism and was hotly debated. The present article looks at three answers to the question by figures from the first half of the fourteenth century: Gerald Ot who takes a Scotistic approach to the issue, John of Jandun and Peter Auriol taking an Averroan tack, and John Buridan with a nominalistic outlook. The discussion reveals a diversity of positions on the nature of potency and its relation to actuality, and in the case of Buridan an unusual view at the heart of his matter theory: the direct inherence of accidental forms in prime matter.

Hylomorphism: what’s not to like?

The paper comprises an attempt on the part of the author to understand what hylomorphism is, both in its original Aristotelian guise, and in recent work by philosophers who defend what they call hylomorphism. Two species or strands of hylomorphism are identified and discussed. Universals, essences, and substantial and accidental forms make cameo appearances, and the implications of an Aristotelian ontology of stuffs are explored.

Hylomorphism and the Priority Principle

AbstractAccording to Jeffrey Brower’s hylomorphic account of material substances, prime matter and substantial forms together compose material substances, and material substances and accidental forms together compose accidental unities. In a recent article, Andrew Bailey has argued that Brower’s account has the counter-intuitive implication that no human person is ever the primary possessor, the primary thinker, of her own thoughts. In this paper, I consider various ways in which Brower might reply to this objection. I first consider several “invariant strategies”, solutions that do not require any significant alteration to Brower’s account. I argue that these strategies are unsuccessful. I then introduce two ways of modifying Brower’s hylomorphic account of material substances so as to avoid Bailey’s objection. I argue that these “variant strategies” are successful, but they require that Brower significantly alter one or more of the main features of his account.

Accidental, Assisted, Automated: An Emerging Repertoire of Infant Mobile Media Techniques

Accidental, Assisted, Automated: An Emerging Repertoire of Infant Mobile Media Techniques

¿Cómo podemos tener percepciones más o menos claras de un objeto? Guillermo de Ockham y Walter Chatton sobre la mayor o menor perfección de los actos mentales

En el siglo XIV se propusieron dos teorías principales para explicar el aumento y la reducción de las cualidades, entendidas éstas como formas accidentales. Quienes defendían alguna de estas dos teorías sostenían que una cualidad aumenta o se reduce debido a que se añaden o se substraen partes de sí misma, o bien, que una cualidad aumenta o se reduce debido a que una nueva forma más o menos perfecta sustituye a la forma ya inherente en una cierta substancia. Ockham defendió la primera teoría con respecto a los estados mentales, entendidos como cualidades. Chatton defendió en sus primeros escritos ambas teorías y después sólo defendió la segunda. Las teorías de Ockham y Chatton están basadas en dos perspectivas distintas sobre la naturaleza del cambio o el movimiento. Ambas teorías, además, implican mecanismos distintos para regular la mayor o menor perfección de un estado mental.

Clinical Course Development of the Chagas Heart Disease in a Brazilian Patient: A Case Report

Chagas disease (CD) was firstly discovered by the Brazilian physician Carlos Chagas in 1909. It is an endemic condition caused by a protozoan named Trypanosome cruzi and it is transmitted by the popularly known barber mosquito. The major CD transmission modes to man are blood transfusion or congenital pathways; minor CD transmission modes are organ transplantation, accidental and oral forms. Oral transmission is being considered the main pathway responsible for several outbreaks of CD in Brazil mainly in the Amazon region where 41 cases have been registered in the year of 2011 associated with the acai intake. This epidemiologic cause occurs due to the instalment of the barber in lowland areas where the acai is harvested; this, associated to poor fruit handling and hygiene, the final consumption is ought to be contaminated. The patient in this case study was chosen for the particular reason that this form of Chagas transmission is one of the least prevalent seen worldwide. Our study aimed to show the eight years length clinical course of a patient with Chagas disease

Epidemiology of School-Related Injuries in Belgium. A Better Knowledge for a Better Prevention

The landmark Convention on the Rights of the Child states that children around the World have right to safe environment. In Belgium, as in many countries, children spend, on average, 4.5 weekdays at school, during nearly 8 hours per day. Studies have shown that, the risk of school-related injury exceeds the risk during leisure time. Literature reports that school accidents account for 10 to 30% of all accidents among pupils. Despite that, few papers treat of the school-related injuries. Consequently, based on 1540 accidents forms from an insurance company, injury places, mechanisms involved, body parts injured and nature of injuries were described. Head injuries, upper and lower limbs injuries were investigated in more details. Pearson’s chi-square test was used to assess the relationships between the variables and multivariate logistic regression models were used to study the three specific types of injuries cited above. Gender ratio (M/F) was equal to 1.6 with 25.9% of children under 6 years, 29.4% of 6 - 9 years, 26.9% of 10 - 12 years and 17.8% from 13 years or more. The major places of injuries were the playground (56.9%) and the physical education (19.7%). Falls were observed in 52.1% of cases and contacts were reported in 24.3%. The head injuries account for 40.6%, the upper limbs for 32.0% and the lower limbs injuries for 20.2%. The bruises and the scratches were observed in 23.8% and the wounds in 21.5%. Fractures were reported in 16.1%. In conclusion, having a routine access to the data from the insurance companies could be an important source of information for an injury surveillance system in which the school injuries will be included. Taking into account this data will require an awareness of all the concerned persons about the relevance of such a system and a harmonization of the accidental forms.

A Possible Trace of Oresme’s Condicio-Theory of Accidents in an Anonymous Commentary on Aristotle’s Meteorology

AbstractIn his commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, Nicole Oresme (c. 1320-1382) propounds a very specific theory of the ontological status of accidents. Characteristic of Oresme’s view on accidents is that he does not consider them accidental forms, but only so-called condiciones or modi of the substance. Unlike the term “modus”, the term “condicio” seems to be very characteristic of Oresme’s own terminology. Up to now it has been unknown whether Oresme exerted any influence with his condicio-theory of accidents. This paper presents an anonymous 14th-century commentary on Aristotle’s Meteorology (Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 4375, ff. 19r-46v), in two Questions of which the term “condicio” occurs in an ontological context. Moreover, the text shows further striking coincidences with known works by Oresme, and this makes an influence by Oresme appear all the more probable.

Relevance and prosody

Prosodic elements such as stress and intonation are generally seen as providing both ‘natural’ and properly linguistic input to utterance comprehension. They contribute not only to overt communication but to more covert or accidental forms of information transmission. They typically create impressions, convey information about emotions or attitudes, or alter the salience of linguistically-possible interpretations rather than conveying distinct propositions or concepts in their own right. These aspects of communication present a challenge to pragmatic theory: how should they be described and explained? This paper is an attempt to explore how the wealth of insights provided by the literature on the interpretation of prosody might be integrated into the relevance-theoretic framework (Sperber and Wilson, 1986/1995; Blakemore, 2002; Carston, 2002). We will focus on four main issues. First, how should the communication of emotions, attitudes and impressions be analysed? Second, how might prosodic elements function as ‘natural’ communicative devices? Third, what (if anything) do prosodic elements encode? Fourth, what light can the study of prosody shed on the place of pragmatics in the architecture of the mind? In each case, we hope to show that the study of prosody and the study of pragmatics can interact in ways that benefit both disciplines.

Attending to Medicaid

[P]layers line up in a long line and hold hands. The player at the front of the line is the ‘head’ and the player at the end of the line is the ‘tail’.… The game begins when the head begins to run wildly in any direction, making sharp turns and quick double-backs.… The force created by the twists and turns will often send the tail of the whip flying.… It may be best for the tail to hold on with both hands to keep from flying off the end. Sometimes, however, the tail will go flying no matter how hard they hold on ... Be prepared to get dirty if you play this game!--"Crack the Whip: Party Game CentralIf the evolution of American health policy (in both its purposeful and its accidental forms) is compared to the children’s game of Crack the Whip, then there is no question that the Medicaid program is the tail of the line. When those at the head of the line (e.g., employer-based insurance, Medicare, managed care plans, and pharmaceutical companies) start to move. Medicaid receives whatever shocks and unintended consequences result, and when the line “begins to run wildly in any direction,” it receives them faster and harder than the players at the center.Shocks also come from other sources. When the economy slumps, an epidemic arises, or a path in another part of the system becomes a cul-de-sac, new twists and turns occur, with Medicaid absorbing much of the change.

Buridan on Singular Concepts

For Buridan, when I say that Aristotle is a man, both the words 'Aristotle' and 'man' in my utterance correspond to mental terms or concepts, i.e., acts of understanding, which are directed at or take as their objects things in the external world.1 A person's concepts, Buridan holds, are accidental forms existing as singularly in his or her soul as does the color of a wall. But though a concept may exist thus determinately in one's mind, that does not prevent it from being universal in signifying and representing, i.e., from being an act of understanding through which one is able to understand not just one thing only but many things similarly and indifferently.2 'Man' corresponds to

Godfrey of Fontaines on Intension and Remission of Accidental Forms

GODFREY OF FONTAINES ON INTENSION AND REMISSION OF ACCIDENTAL FORMS Godfrey of Fontaines functioned as a Master in the Theology Faculty at Paris from 1285 until ca. 1303 or 1304.* For him as for many of his contemporaries, the apparent change in intensity of certain accidental forms—qualities such as whiteness or heat or even charity in the soul—posed interesting philosophical questions.2 The issue was frequently raised as to how such qualities could undergo some variation in degree whether by increasing (intension or intensification ) or by decreasing (remission) and still retain their identity. Godfrey and his associates would not allow for intension and remission of substantial forms since this would, in their opinion, entail loss of essential identity on the part of the changing substance. Aristotle's remark that forms may be likened to numbers served as a controlling principle here.3 But thirteenth-century Masters devoted considerable attention to this problem with respect to various kinds of qualities. Often such reflections would occur within a theological discussion concerning the possibility of intension or remission of charity within the human soul. Attempted resolution of this admittedly theological problem would frequently lead to examination of the broader philosophical issues involved in intension and remission of qualities as such. Godfrey himself devoted two extended treatments to this topic, one in his Quodlibet 2, q. 10 of 1286, and another in his Disputed Question 18 which, though more difficult to date precisely, seems to 1 On Godfrey's life and works see Wippel, 7"Ae Metaphysical Thought of Godfrey of Fontaines: A Study in Late Thirteenth-Century Philosophy (Washington, D.C. 1981), "Introduction," pp. xv-xxiv. For more general studies of Scholastic theories on intension and remission of forms see P. Duhem, Etudes sur Léonard de Vinci, Ser. 3 (Paris, 1955), pp. 314-46; and especially, A. Maier, Zwei Grundprobleme der scholastischen Naturphilosophie: Das Problem der intensiven Grösse, Die Impetustheorie, 2nd ed. (Rome, 1951), pp. 16-109. * See Maier's introductory remarks, op. cit., pp. 3-5. * See Metaphysics VIII, c. 3 (1043b 36-10443 11). Godfrey of Fontaines on Intension and Remission of Accidental Forms 317 be somewhat later.4 Today, however, one encounters certain difficulties when one attempts to determine Godfrey's personal position with respect to this problem. His two accounts differ in certain details, and one wonders if and to what extent they are consistent with one another. Moreover, the text of Disputed Question 18 as it survives in manuscript appears to be incomplete. This is unfortunate since the full text would surely give a clearer impression as to his thinking on this matter. Finally, a strange theory of intension and remission of forms has been ascribed to him by Walter Burley, Duns Scotus, and other later medieval thinkers. But no one has yet, to my knowledge, found this view explicitly defended in Godfrey's surviving texts. Given these problems, it will be my purpose in the present study to set forth in some detail Godfrey's position as it appears in the two sources mentioned above, to compare these two presentations with one another, and then to attempt to determine whether there is any foundation in his writings for the view attributed to him by Burley and others. In order to establish the proximate context for Godfrey's discussion of this, some background will first be provided. I A. Maier has provided a helpful survey of earlier and of medieval discussions of this issue which need not be reduplicated here. But for our immediate purposes, a few points already made by Maier should be recalled. First of all, as she explains, chapter 8 of Aristotle's Categories was a key text for subsequent consideration of this issue. While the Stagirite does not there offer a metaphysical account of intension and remission of forms, he does raise what was later to become a central issue for medieval thinkers: What is the true subject of such intension or remission? Does it take place in the form or quality itself, 4 On the date of Quodlibet 2 see P. Glorieux, La Littérature quodlibétique de 1260 à 1320, Vol. 1 (Le Saulchoir, Kain, 1925), pp. 150, 152...

The Inherence Pattern and Descartes' Ideas

The Inherence Pattern and Descartes' Ideas THOMAS M. LENNON THAT DESCARTES' PHILOSOPHYRETAINEDmany and fundamental elements from the Aristotelian-scholastie tradition, long an exegetical commonplace, is a view which has recently been widely questioned. My belief is that certainly a crucial part of this tradition, viz. what has been called "the inherence pattern," persists in Descartes. Here I wish to show that an important consistency in Descartes' generally ambiguous discussion of ideas can be found in terms of this pattern, to which Descartes--in spite of his rejection of the details of its scholastic version due both to problems about relativity of sense perception and to certain modifications he thought were dictated by his new physics--nonetheless adheres. Unfortunately, what has been meant by "the inherence pattern" has not always been made clear. I shall begin, then, by spelling out its basic features (the natural introduction to which will be via a discussion of substance) as well as the peculiar twist given them by Descartes. I. Of the several invariant features of substance as conceived in the inherence pattern, the following are the two most important. First, substances are individuals. This means that substance is an ontological kind whose function it is to individuate: that in virtue of which things (which may be qualitatively identical) are numerically distinct is a multiplicity of substances. Two dogs which, let us say, have all their non-relational properties in common, are two and not one because they are in this sense different substances. Also, substances are independent in a way in which qualities are not" substances can, ceteris paribus, exist without this or that quality, but all qualities must be qualities o[ some substance. The same brown dog can become white, but there is no brownness apart from brown things. According to the dictum laid down by Aristotle (versus separated universals) and subscribed to by all in the substance tradition, all qualities must be supported by, i.e. must inhere in, some substance. Thi's is the cash value of Descartes' head-on definition of substance as that which needs nothing other than itself in order to exist.1 As Descartes points out, this definition for him literally applies only to God; yet it distinguishes substance from quality in the sense that as opposed to qualities, substance needs only divine concurrence in order to exist. Second, substances are natured. This means that the kind of quality a substance can have is determ!ned by the kind of thing it is, or, what amounts to the same, the difference between 1 Principles, L li. The Philosophical Works o[ Descartes, Elizabeth S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross trans. (Cambridge University Press, 1931-1934), I, 239. [431 44 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY substances is not a bare, numerical difference. Aristotle reflects this conception of substance with his doctrine of substantial forms, in terms of which, ultimately, he grounds the distinction between essential and accidental predication. Of this, more shortly; first something must be said of the tie of predication between a substance and its qualities. If the individual is analysed in terms of an ontological kind other than that of its qualities, e.g. if the individual is something more than a collection of some or all of its qualities, then the tie between it and its qualifies must be sui generis. Yet in the case of the inherence pattern, the occurrence of the tie-cure-quality is at least in part a function of the individual insofar as it is natured. In Categories,2 individuals (primary substances) are held to be the ultimate subjects of predication as being neither "present in" nor "predictable of" anything else. The individual itself, however, is a composite of matter and (substantial) form, the latter making the individual the kind of thing it is, and specifying the accidental forms it can exemplify. (Intuitively, we can think of a substantial form as a determinable specifying a range of determinates.) Thus the tie is a tie not merely between a quality and an individual, but between a quality and an individual of a certain kind. The question then arises concerning the connexion between (primary) matter and substantial form. If Owens'3 reading of...

On Carving Non-Traditional Ivory Sculpture

Ivory sculptures differ considerably from those made in other materials. For one thing, most ivory sculptors have clung to traditional figurative subjects treated in a representational way. It has even been suggested, with some plausibility, that because ivory is basically an organic material, it will never lend itself to abstract or non-figurative works. For a long time-since the 'thirties in fact-sculptors who wanted to carve ivory and yet claim modernity sought recourse to the accidental cracks and fissures that appear in the surface of some tusks. They stopped carving the inside of the tusk and concentrated on the outside. Black spots and 'shakes' in a tusk's crust, which would have been sawn away by the old style ivory carver, now became the point d'appui for a whole series of forms. The greatest exploiter of these 'accidental forms' in ivory is undoubtedly Jan Holschuh. Like most nontraditional ivory sculptors, he is a German, working in Erbach. Although he is still alive and very influential, I cannot help feeling that much of the impetus of his approach has now worn itself out. For one thing, because most elephant tusks present a fairly unified exterior with few cracks and blemishes, Holschuh has had to resort to mammoth tusks, which provide all the cracks and fissures he wants, but are in such bad condition otherwise that it is almost as though a painter had deliberately opted to paint on mouldy canvases, full of holes. For another, because Holschuh is necessarily concerned with the accidents which have happened to the outside of the tusk, he does not go far enough into the ivory to suit my taste. It is as though someone had picked up a packet of modelling clay, with the intention of making a figure from it and then decided to do something with the wrapper. If we are to abandon 'accidentalism' as I think we must, what avenues remain to the modern ivory sculptor? There is no reason why ivory carving should not use non-figurative subject matter. Indeed, Michel Belloncle recently suggested that it was only by having recourse to abstract art that the Dieppe school, once so famous but now reduced to two carvers, could manage to keep going. It is very curious that abstract art has, hitherto, appeared much more frequently in the work of unsophisticated indigenes such as the Central Eskimo, than among Western sculptors. A lot of

The Problem of Time: an Historical and Critical Study

TIME, which is considered as a necessary element of history, nay, as the very substance of history itself, has now found its own historian. In his lucid and useful book on “The Problem of Time”, Prof. Gunn guides us through the slippery paths and thorny places of the mono-dimensional field of time, where the pilgrim meets many extraordinary characters. From the conflicting views of the ever-changing Heraclitus and the immutable Parmenides, to the logical acrobatics of Zeno and the majestic disquisitions of Plato and Aristotle, down to the qualitative meditations of Plotinus, he lands in the medieval conceptions of time. He is shown how Augustine turns from metaphysics to psychology and substitutes discussions on memory and anticipation for past and future; and why Aquinas emphasises the Boetian doctrine of aevum as a mean between time and eternity. Then he discovers that the scientific revival of the Renaissance has raised both space and time from being accidental forms or minor entities to the rank of supreme or fundamental realities of the physical world. Here Galileo, Barrow, and Newton, who gave such an importance to time in the mathematical and scientific description of the world, tower over Descartes and Spinoza, who failed to appreciate the full value of time. But soon he assists in the gigantic onslaught against Newton's theory of absolute time perpetrated with psychological and metaphysical weapons by Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, and crowned by the mathematico-philosophical criticisms of Leibniz, who proposes as an alternative his relational theory of time. The Problem of Time: an Historical and Critical Study. Prof. J. Alexander Gunn. Pp. 460. (London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., 1929.) 16s. net.