HumanitiesPhilosophyAnalytic PhilosophyMetaphysicsPhilosophy Of SciencePhilosophy Of PhysicsStates Of MatterConcrete ObjectsSubstance OntologyThree States Of MatterTrope Theory
Matter is conceptualized in three ways—its material composition, its kind, and as a substrate—and the traditional hylomorphic view that each concrete thing is a combination of matter and form is contested. The study argues that each concrete thing should be identified by its own substantial form and that a substance ontology admitting tropes is preferable to both trope‑denying substance ontologies and pure trope ontologies. The authors propose to identify each concrete thing by its own substantial form. Form and matter are relatively independent, form alone provides individuation and identity, and a substance ontology that includes tropes is preferred over trope‑denying or pure trope ontologies.
Three different concepts of matter are identified: matter as what a thing is immediately made of, matter as stuff of a certain kind, and matter in the (dubious) sense of material ‘substratum’. The doctrine of hylomorphism, which regards every individual concrete thing as being ‘combination’ of matter and form, is challenged. Instead it is urged that we do well to identify an individual concrete thing with its own particular ‘substantial form’. The notions of form and matter, far from being correlative, are relatively independent. There is nothing absurd in the notion of form without matter . Matter provides neither a principle of individuation nor a criterion of identity for individual concrete things: their form alone provides both. Finally, a substance ontology which admits also the existence of particular qualities, or tropes, is to be preferred both to a substance ontology which denies the existence of tropes and to a pure trope ontology.