Hylomorphism and Synchronic Dependency

This essay argues that contemporary interpretations of Aristotelian hylomorphism must overcome a major challenge faced by all theories of downward causation: Jaegwon Kim’s critique that synchronic causation results in vicious circularity. First, I show why Kim’s challenge is relevant for contemporary hylomorphists, such as Helen Steward and Robert Koons, who are respectively committed to Aristotle’s principles of causal pluralism and organic homonymy. Second, I defend a non-emergentist, mereological solution to Kim’s challenge. On my Aristotelian interpretation, the whole itself generates powers on behalf of the basal parts, and therefore confers existential identity to its constituents. Ultimately, synchronous causation need not be viciously circular in the mereological case because such causal dependency is not symmetric; it is this very asymmetry that explains why a concrete whole, the integral substance, is simultaneously not reducible to its basal parts.