Hao Pai

De Haan and Dahm (2019, 2020) have recently proposed a "Middle Way" to reconcile the long-standing conflict between Corruptionists and Survivalists in the ancient Thomistic debate over the personhood of the separated soul. While the Middle Way some difficulties of the traditional positions, it relies on the unstable notion of an “incomplete person.” Building on the Middle Way’s insights, this paper proposes a "Mixed View." Based on "Single-Part-Composition", "Composition as Non-Identity", "the Criterion of the Numerical Identity of Substances", and the three criteria of personhood analyzed by De Haan and Dahm (2019, 2020), I argue that the separated soul solely composes a substance that is numerically identical to the pre-mortem substance. This post-mortem substance satisfies the criteria for personhood but no longer under the species of human being, and the soul itself is not a person. The Mixed View preserves personal continuity without attributing personhood (complete or incomplete) to the soul, while also retaining the metaphysical seriousness of death as a substantial change, the abhorrence of death and the necessity of Resurrection.

This paper develops a Minimal Simple Model (MSM) of Aquinas's hylomorphism of material substances. Jeremy W. Skrzypek argues that the Simple Model (SM) faces the problem of extrinsicality and the problem of too-many-possessors, making the Expanded Model preferable. I argue that these objections have force chiefly against a certain strengthened reading of SM, which adds a dual mode of form-possession and treats accidental unities as further possessors. Once these additions are separated from SM’s minimal core, MSM becomes available: a material substance is composed of prime matter and one substantial form, while accidental forms are not its constituents. I then develop a Dependence Account (DA) of accidental form-possession. According to DA, an accidental form is possessed in terms of its existential dependence on that substance whose accident it is. Together, MSM and DA provide a novel defense of SM against Skrzypek’s objections.