João Pinheiro da Silva

Howard Robinson has criticized the contemporary revival of hylomorphism for, on the one hand, accepting the causal closure of the physical, while, on the other, ascribing a real and irreducible causal role to forms or structures. If the world is causally closed under physics, it makes no sense to postulate a structure that actively affects the distribution and motion of matter. After carefully formulating what I call Robinson’s causal closure argument against hylomorphism, I demonstrate that the argument fails because it presupposes an overly strict conception of causal closure of the microphysical, according to which every physical effect is completely determined by, and has a complete explanation in terms of, bottom-level microphysical entities and their interactions governed by fundamental physical laws. Based on two case studies – one from physics (the Fractional Quantum Hall Effect), the other from microbiology (information control in microorganisms) – I argue that the argument fails, yet a more modest (and scientifically defensible) version of closure remains intact. This version of closure secures that no non-physical forces supplement the inventory of fundamental physics while allowing higher-level constraints to be causally efficacious by constraining which among multiple microphysically compatible possibilities is actualized. This means that a reformulated version of closure, capable of dealing with those cases, is also perfectly compatible with the hylomorphist (or generally anti-reductionist) claim that higher-level structures are causally efficacious and an irreducible part of physical reality.

Friedrich Hayek was a fervent advocate of the methodological specificity of the social sciences. However, given his contact with Karl Popper, several historians and philosophers have characterised his final position as Popperian, that is, a position that would have accepted the unity of the scientific method. A closer look at Hayek's philosophy and Popper's own intellectual course shows that such a thesis is based on some misconceptions that can be overcome by taking the Hayekian concept of 'spontaneous order' as the foundation of a methodology immune to any kind of methodological monism, and focusing on Popper's late works that reveal a loosening of his defense of methodological unity.

O “fenômeno humorístico” deve ser entendido enquanto o exercício do “olhar humorístico”. Este busca uma distância estética que permite a formulação de incongruências num determinado jogo social onde as normas sociais e linguísticas comuns são violadas com o objetivo de produzir o “gosto humorístico”. Ou seja, o “fenômeno humorístico” realiza-se num determinado jogo humorístico que, como tal, requer um terceiro, um interlocutor. A análise ética do presente artigo foca-se nos dois agentes do jogo humorístico através de dois casos: o mau humor, que pode ser manifestado pelo interlocutor; e o humor mau, que pode ser manifestado pelo locutor. Propõe-se que um problema ético ignorado na filosofia do humor diz respeito ao interlocutor moralista que, por não conseguir manter a distância estética necessária ao fenômeno humorístico, tenta categorizá-lo em termos éticos e julgar a atitude moral do locutor. Por outro lado, podemos encontrar um problema simétrico: o locutor que, por não entender as características necessárias ao jogo humorístico, não consegue criar o ambiente necessário para que este ocorra. Estes problemas devem ser entendidos, contudo, na sua complexidade e sem deixar de ter em conta os comummente ignorados aspetos positivos do humor.

Few could have predicted that, of all places, it would be through biology that Aristotle would stage a return. Despite being the last of the sciences to succumb to "mechanization" (even by the early 20th century, many still held to a form of “vitalism”), it seemed undeniable that the advent of the modern evolutionary synthesis, uniting Darwin’s theory of natural selection with Mendelian genetics, had driven the final nail into Aristotle's coffin. Teleological explanations, higher-level causes, and unchanging forms were eclipsed by the central dogma of molecular biology, “DNA makes RNA, and RNA makes protein”, leaving little room for the mystifying language of purpose and finality that had once dominated biological thought. Yet in recent years, the apparent triumph of mechanistic philosophy over Aristotelian metaphysics has begun to falter. A growing number of scholars have revisited the metaphysical underpinnings of biology (and science in general), arguing that teleology and form remain indispensable for a complete understanding of life and its processes. This shift has created an intellectual environment ripe for a Thomistic-Aristotelian (A-T) rapprochement with evolutionary theory – an endeavor that now looks less inhospitable to A-T metaphysicians than it may have seemed throughout the 20th century. Mariusz Tabaczek’s new book, Theistic Evolution: A Contemporary Aristotelian-Thomistic Perspective, aims to do just that.

The aim of this essay is to analyze the treatment of the theory of natural slavery in Francisco de Vitoria’s thought through his reception of Aquinas' treatise on justice and the Aristotelian theory of natural slavery. In order to understand how Vitoria distances himself from Aquinas (by considering the ius gentium as a positive right) I analyze Victoria’s comments on the Summa Theologica. Finally, I consider Question 1 of the relectio De Indis, where Victoria directly criticizes the idea of natural slavery.

Howard Robinson has criticized the contemporary revival of hylomorphism in analytic philosophy for being inconsistent with the causal closure of the physical (CCP) and, by consequence, modern science. This thesis critically evaluates Robinson's criticism. We firstly analyze Robinson’s argument and reinforce it with Jaegwon Kim's causal overdetermination argument. We then turn to CCP itself, settling its exact meaning and highlighting its problems. We argue that CCP’s deferral of the meaning of “physical” to physics renders it false - if applied to present physics – or undetermined – if it refers to future physics. On top of that, a careful look at present physics shows that CCP is not actually given by physics, as its proponents often claim, but rather imposed on it. Having considered the insufficiencies of CCP, we turn to the philosophical framework of hylomorphism, arguing that contemporary structural accounts of hylomorphism are bound fall prey to Robinson’s and Kim’s arguments. As such, one should embrace a more classically-inspired version of transformational hylomorphism according to which the form of substance dynamically re-identifies the material parts of an entity towards the same end as a singular causal system. This account of form provides a cohesive distinction between substances on the one hand and mere heaps or aggregates of matter on the other. This will prove to be particularly advantageous when considering various examples from contemporary biology that defy CCP’s microreductionism in showing the importance and causal relevance of biological higher-level phenomena in shaping its lower-level physical and chemical surrogates. We conclude that CCP’s picture of nature, with its monistic view of causation, is not in line with our best science. Contemporary science, from physics to biology, provides us a picture of nature where there is a constant and dynamic interplay of higher and lower-level phenomena, with both shaping each other in novel and unpredictable ways. Aristotelian hylomorphism, with its pluralistic approach to causation, provides a much stronger metaphysical framework to ground such picture. It grounds both strong emergence and downwards causation in substantial forms and, as such, gives us the tools to understand the processual characters of substances whilst upholding their unity.