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

Evnine, Simon J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0198858035 ISBN 13: 9780198858034

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2020

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

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.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0198858035
• ISBN 13: 9780198858034
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288