Making Objects and Events: A Hylomorphic Theory of Artifacts, Actions, and Organisms

ISBN-13: 9780198858034 / Angielski / Miękka / 2020 / 288 str.

Simon J. Evnine (University of Miami)

Opis

Simon J. Evnine explores the view (which he calls amorphic hylomorphism) that some objects have matter from which they are distinct but that this distinctness is not due to the existence of anything like a form. He draws on Aristotle's insight that such objects must be understood in terms of an account that links what they are essentially with how they come to exist and what their functions are (the coincidence of formal, final, and efficient causes). Artifacts are the most prominent kind of objects where these three features coincide, and Evnine develops a detailed account of the existence and identity conditions of artifacts, and the origins of their functions, in terms of how they come into existence. This process is, in general terms, that they are made out of their initial matter by an agent acting with the intention to make an object of the given kind. Evnine extends the account to organisms, where evolution accomplishes what is effected by intentional making in the case of artifacts, and to actions, which are seen as artifactual events.

Recenzje

A novel and interesting metaphysics of material objects, one that makes an account of artifact objects such that artifact identity is grounded in the original act of making such objects central to the theory. Evnine's book deserves a wide readership. Although it is primarily a work of analytic metaphysics, it touches on topics of interest to, or has interesting implications for, philosophers working in aesthetics, the philosophy of language, the philosophy of biology, political philosophy, philosophical theology, and the philosophy of action. . . . delightful reading.

O autorze

Simon J. Evnine studied philosophy as a graduate student in the UK (at Bedford College London and University College London) and the USA (at UCLA). After teaching for five years in the California State system, he came to the University of Miami. He has worked in a variety of areas and has previously published books on Donald Davidson on the relations between rationality and the self.