Thesis advisor: Ronald K. Tacelli / Aquinas’ hylomorphism faces a mind–body problem, similar to that faced by Cartesianism. This claim runs contrary to virtually all contemporary Thomism, according to which Aquinas’ view on the relation between soul and body completely sidesteps any mind–body problem, by having a conceptual frame that is non-mechanistic and non-Cartesian, and by emphasizing the oneness of the human being. Typically, these arguments for Thomas’ hylomorphism omit his view that the human soul is not only the substantial form of the body, but also an efficient cause of bodily motion. In this dissertation, I argue that the human soul’s role as efficient cause is integral to Aquinas’ philosophy of nature and his ethics, so that it should not be omitted by Thomists, and that it cannot be denied without undermining Thomism fatally. Because Thomism must treat the human soul as an efficient cause, it does face a mind–body problem, however. Aquinas, I argue, was aware that his psychology raises such a difficulty, and provides some possible solutions to it, grounded on his doctrine of instrumental causality. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

This thesis develops a disjunctivist approach to action as an alternative to the standard causal theory, or 'causalism'. The standard theory promotes a concept of action as constituted by a bodily event joined to certain mental conditions by a bond of causation. A disjunctivist approach, in contrast, claims that action must be distinguished by more than merely its etiology: action and mere movement are fundamentally different kinds. Recent objections to the causal theory of action are first surveyed, and the common causalist assumption claiming Aristotle as the progenitor of the causal theory is examined and dismissed. More refined interpretations of Aristotle's thought on action yield two different concepts: action as change, and action as a unified psychophysical process. The latter in particular is argued to hold promise as a basis for developing the disjunctivist approach to action. The remainder of the thesis therefore considers a contemporary account of psychophysicality, known as 'embodiment theory' (Hanna and Maiese 2009), with the conclusion that the intelligibility of the account depends on appeal to a recent variant of top-down causation (Steward 2012). The thesis also concludes that consideration of the concept of an animal agent makes it entirely unsurprising that the mental and physical are always found together in voluntary movement, and that the embodiment theory's central notion of ‘property fusion' potentially complements a naturalistic variant of top-down causation in explanations of agency.

The main aim of my work - "Matter and Explanation. On Aristotle's Metaphysics Book Η" - is to show the argumentative unity of Book Η (VIII), which has been usually regarded as a mere collection of appendices to the previous Book Ζ. In my thesis I take on the main suggestion provided by M. Burnyeat in "A Map of Metaphysics Ζ" (2001). According to Burnyeat, Η accomplishes the enquiry of Ζ by developing Ζ17's fresh start into the analysis of sensible substances. Starting from Ζ17, Aristotle regards the notion of substance in its explanatory role as "principle and cause" and, as a consequence, he searches for "the cause by reason of which a certain matter is some definite thing". Burnyeat's suggestion has been so far followed in order to look at Η as at that place where this search is accomplished. Thus, Η would play a didactical-expository role. In my work I aim at showing how in Book Η Aristotle does not confine himself to a mere exposition of the previous outcomes. By contrast, he provides a deep revision of the status of matter's substancehood. Namely of that ontological subject whose organization must be explained. Such a revision concerns those criteria, which in Book Ζ have provided a deflationary reading of the notion of ὕλη. On the contrary, in Η matter is read as subject of physical changes and in its dispositional role within the biological wholes. Such a framework is accomplished in Η6, where Aristotle shows the explanatory primacy of his own hylomorphism over the Platonic Doctrine of Forms.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-05-14T12:11:40Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 826436 bytes, checksum: 8639b71de3887dfd39597dc73cc31adb (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-03-11 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / The analysis of sense-perception is fundamental for understanding Aristotle‟s cognitive proposal as well as for the efficiency of the cognition complex. To understand it, one shall begin by studying the relationship between body and soul as integrated parts of hylomorphic theory constituting concepts matter, form, act and potency. Hylomorphism is a mereological theory: the functioning of the whole is secured by the analog functioning of each of its parts. The sense-perceptive faculty is the first to distinguish an animal. It must be understood according to hylomorphic theory. The sense-perception occurs in act when sense which as potency is able to receive sensitive forms follows the motion of the medium resulting from the act of the perceived. Therefore sense-perception consists in receiving the sensitive form without the matter. Once the process is through, the perceiving becomes equal in form to the perceived. But only the sensitive perception of its proper can be infallible, for it connects perception and perceived in act. Imagination, on the other hand, is a movement which comes from the act of sensitive perception. It is a full complex of operations designed to connect sensations to thoughts. Such positive function is balanced by another, a negative one which sets the conditions and possibilities of truth and falsity. "Passive" and "productive" thoughts act on imagination. While the former absorbs the products of the synthesis between sense-perception and imagination, the latter's goal is to make sure the final product of the cognition displays reality as it is, resulting in a perfect cognitive act. / A análise da senso-percepção é fundamental para a compreensão da proposta cognitiva de Aristóteles, bem como para a eficiência do complexo da cognição. Para compreendê-la é necessário começar pelo estudo da relação entre corpo e alma, integrados nos conceitos constitutivos da teoria hilemórfica, a saber: matéria, forma, ato, potência. Mas o hilemorfismo é uma teoria mereológica: o funcionamento do todo é assegurado pelo funcionamento análogo de cada uma das partes. A faculdade senso-perceptiva é a que primeiro caracteriza o animal e deve ser compreendida segundo a teoria hilemórfica. A senso-percepção ocorre em ato quando o sentido que, enquanto potência, é capaz de receber formas sensíveis é movido conforme o movimento do meio, advindo do ato do percebido. Por isso, a senso-percepção consiste em receber a forma sensível sem a matéria. Ao final desse processo, o percipiente torna-se igual à forma do percebido. Mas apenas a senso-percepção dos próprios pode ser infalível, porque conecta dois atos: da percepção e do percebido. Já a imaginação é um movimento decorrente do ato da percepção sensível. É um complexo de operações cuja função é ligar a sensação ao pensamento. Essa função positiva é compensada por outra, negativa , de estabelecer as condições de possibilidade do engano e da falsidade. Sobre ela incidem os dois pensamentos: passivo e produtivo . Enquanto o primeiro capta os produtos da síntese da senso-percepção e imaginação, ao segundo cabe a função de garantir que o produto final da cognição reproduz a realidade tal como ela é, consumando o ato cognitivo perfeito.

Thesis advisor: Jeffrey Bloechl / According to Catholic social doctrine, there are two principles which serve as foundational pillars of social thought and action: the dignity of human being and the primacy of the common good. Each human person has unique and endless worth in the eye of God, since “God created each human person in His image, in the image of God he created humankind, male and female. He created them” (Genesis, 1: 27). God creates all things and wanted them to participate in His glory and happiness (well-being). Thus, by their nature, all human beings want to be happy. To reach happiness is “something final and self-sufficient and the end of our actions” (NE 1097b20), but we should not forget that by nature man is a part of the greater order. How can one defend both the dignity of the human person and the primacy of the common good? To defend the dignity of human person the first question must be answered what is meant a human person, since the ways in which we understand ourselves as persons have direct effects on the ways in which we organize ourselves collectively in the political communities. To answer what is a human person we will understand how Maritain makes the distinction between individual and person, and what it is that constitutes a human person. It leads to understand the whole human being, soul and body, is a person. Man is as a part of the greater order. According to Aristotle and followed by Aquinas, every creature is only a part of the whole perfection of the universe, just as one instrument in an orchestra is a part of the whole perfection of the harmony. “Society is a whole composed of persons is to say that society is a whole composed of wholes” (Evans and Ward, The Social and Political Philosophy of Jacques Maritain, p. 85). Because the relationship between the common good and the dignity of the human person is the relationship of our dignity of finality and our dignity of nature. We distinguish between the human acts and the acts of human being in order to understand the notion of Aquinas’s the human act. Then, we will understand why Maritain defends natural law as an antidote for a secular society and present crisis of pluralist society. According to Maritain, the deepest result of the crisis from the modern to the present time is man’s natural community in the natural law and his innate ordination to the transcendent as the source of ultimate value have been casted into doubt. Thus, the only appropriate way to reconcile the common good and my good is to turn God into my private good as a kind of a good infinitely shareable, as if there were commensurability between my finite and infinite goodness. To make this reconciliation into the present age, “you must love your neighbor as, like yourselves,” ordered to a common good. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

Cette thèse vise à mener une étude détaillée sur la manière dont les penseurs du XIIIème siècle ont appréhendé et utilisé le fameux dictum d’Aristote du De anima II : « l’âme est l’acte premier du corps organique qui est potentiellement en vie » En effet, nous examinons les modalités philosophiques qui ont poussé Bonaventure et Thomas d’Aquin à proposer chacun une lecture originale de ce passage tout en admettant tous les deux que l’âme humaine et le corps ne sont pas à prendre comme deux substances distinctes, mais comme deux parties qui constituent l’essence d’une personne humaine. Nous tentons ainsi de décrire, dans leur processus d’élaboration et de mise en œuvre, ces théories qui visent à nous démontrer l’unité naturelle de l’être humain, ce qui constitue au final des solutions aux problèmes issus de la « two substances view », c'est-à-dire celui du dualisme des substances. / The objective of this thesis is to understand how 13th century thinkers have adopted the famous dictum of Aristotle's De anima II that “the soul is the first act of the organic body potentially having life”. In this perspective, this thesis examines the way in which Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas, each with his own creativity, elaborated to establish the unity of human being that consist in their claim that the human soul and body are not two distinct substances, but two essential parts of the human nature or a human person. In so doing, this thesis analyses the concepts like “substance”, “hoc aliquid”, “intellective soul” “intellect” etc and their meaning in respective contexts where Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas give us relevant solutions that can deal with problems arising from the "two substances view", or substance dualism.

[pt] Partindo da relação entre Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) e Franz Brentano (1838-1911), respectivamente aluno e professor durante o intervalo que se estendeu de 1874 a 1876, o presente trabalho trata dos possíveis frutos teóricos decorrentes deste encontro, visíveis na obra posterior do inventor da psicanálise. A articulação conceitual se constrói por meio dos conceitos freudianos de concomitância dependente, representação e pulsão, não se limitando à obra pessoal do filósofo, mas procurando abarcar, sempre que possível, o contato com toda uma tradição filosófica, por sua vez permitido pelos ensinamentos do neoescolástico. / [en] From the relationship between Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and Franz Brentano (1838-1917), respectively student and professor during the interval that extended from 1874 to 1876, the present work deals with the possible theoretical fruits resulting from this encounter, visible in the later work of the inventor of psychoanalysis. The conceptual articulation is constructed through the Freudian concepts of dependent concomitance, representation and drive, not limiting itself to the personal work of the philosopher, but seeking to cover, whenever possible, the contact with an entire philosophical tradition, in turn allowed by the teachings of the neo-scholastic.

Les lecteurs du traité De l’âme d’Aristote pensent souvent que la véritable contribution du Stagirite en ce domaine consiste dans l’application de l’hylémorphisme à la relation de l’âme et du corps. Le rôle que jouent les notions de puissance et de réalisation dans la psychologie aristotélicienne est relativement négligé au profit de celui des notions de matière et de forme.L’objectif de cette étude est de mesurer les contributions respectives des deux couples conceptuels fondamentaux de l’ontologie aristotélicienne à l’étude de l’être animé. Quelles sont la portée et les limites de l’hylémorphisme psychologique ? Quel rôle joue la distinction des niveaux de puissance et de réalisation dans le DA et dans d’autres traités consacrés à l’être animé ? Par quels moyens conceptuels Aristote parvient-il à définir l’âme, à résoudre les problèmes de la relation de l’âme et du corps, à unifier ses recherches psychologiques et zoologiques ? A travers l’examen de ces questions, cette étude cherche à préciser la place qu’occupe le notion de « réalisation première » dans l’étude aristotélicienne de l’âme et de l’être animé. / Readers of Aristotle’s De anima often hold that the tenor of his account consists in the application of hylomorphism to soul-body relations. The part played by potentiality and actuality in Aristotle’s psychology has been somewhat overlooked while hylomorphic analyses prevail in the literature. The objective of our study is to assess the respective contributions of these two basic Aristotelian ontological couples to the study of animate beings. What are the scope and limitations of psychological hylomorphism? What role does the distinction between different levels of potentiality and actuality play in the DA and in the other treaties that deal with animate beings? What are the conceptual means that enable Aristotle to define the soul, to disentangle problems relative to soul-body relations and to bring together his psychological doctrine with his zoological research? Through an examination of these questions, the present study seeks to spell out how the so-called “first realization” fits in with the Aristotelian study of the soul and the animate.

This thesis is focused on the material known as the Mesolithic portable art. Earlier research have interpreted the material as representative art relating to ideology, mythology, prestige, ritual practices,and tribalism. Such interpretations are based on theoretical frameworks that build on hylomorphism and Cartesian metaphysics. By a change of theoretical framework, to a new animistic perspective based on a combination of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s rhizome theory, Tim Ingold’s meshwork and Giordano Bruno’s theory of bonds in general, followed by the use of ChantalConneller’s method rhizomatic chaîne opératoire, I conclude that the motifs on the tools and pendants are communications to the animated subjects that make up and inhabit the environment. Furthermore, I conclude that the binary positions of function and ritual cannot be applied when studying the formgenerating process of this material, as the tools and pendants along with their applied motifs are a result of what is in between these binary positions.

The following text constitutes an attempt to present the French philosopher Gilbert Simondon's genetic ontology through an account of his reconfiguration of the problem of individuation in his doctoral thesis from 1958, L'individuation à la lumière des notions de forme, information, potentiel, métastabilité. The intention is to show how Simondon through this reconfiguration of a classical philosophical problem – in which concepts and schemas from contemporary physics and technology is utilised in a critique of the bi-polar hylomorphic schema as its traditional, substantialistic solution – becomes able to articulate an anti-substantialistic and anti-reductionistic ontogenesis as first philosophy. A systematic philosophical conception that according to Simondon precedes every critical investigation of the subject as well as every scientific ontology – not by establishing a pre-critical position, but by exceeding Kant's critical position: that is, through a displacement toward a conception of the transcendental conditions for the genesis of being and thought as real conditions, rather than conditions of mere possibility. A displacement that in turn appears to respond to the question that frames this basic account of important concepts and schemas in Simondon, namely: in what sense and to what extent is it necessary for philosophical thought to be thought and developed in relation to other forms of thought?