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The Plurality of Forms Now and Then John O'Callaghan
The Plurality of Forms Now and Then John O'Callaghan
The Plurality of Forms Now and Then John O'Callaghan
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THE PLURALITY OF FORMS: NOW AND THEN
JOHN O'CALLAGHAN
How MANY ESSENCES does a natural kind have, one or many? In this
paper I address an argument of Hilary Putnam to the effect that the
plurality of modern sciences shows us that any natural kind has a plu
rality of essences. Putnam argues for this claim in the context of ob
jecting to what he takes to be the Thomistic assumption of a single es
sential or substantial form for any particular natural kind.1 Putnam's
objection to the Thomist is prompted by his longstanding worries
about how language or the mind "hooks onto the world."2 He has
argued that no system of representations, mental or linguistic, could
have an intrinsic relationship to the world. He has long used
"Aristotelian" as a descriptive term applied to representationalist
accounts of mind and language that appear to suggest such a built-in
relationship.
However, Putnam now grants that the Thomistic notion of form
and its application to the identity of concepts may avoid the earlier ob
jections he directed at what he called Aristotelianism. In this conces
sion, he has in mind the Thomist thesis that the mind's concepts are
formally identical to and determined by the objects in the world that
fall under those concepts, what I will call the concept identity thesis
(CIT). When we use a term like "dog," it succeeds in referring to dogs
because the concept we have in mind is in some fashion formally iden
tical to dogs. This looks like a powerful candidate for an intrinsic or
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4 JOHN O'CALLAGHAN
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THE PLURALITY OF FORMS: NOW AND THEN 5
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6 JOHN O'CALLAGHAN
(3) Therefore, the essential forms that constitute the identity of the de
scriptions are diverse.
(4) However, the essential forms that constitute the identity of the de
scriptions are identical (in some sense) to the essential form(s) of the
natural kind extra animam (beyond the soul), according to the Thomis
tic Aristotelian CIT.
(5) Thus from (3) and (4), the essential form(s) of the natural kind extra
animam must be diverse since they are identical (in some sense) to di
verse essential forms in anima (in the soul).
(6) Therefore from (1) and (5), A's, insofar as they fall under different
sciences, do not have unique essences or substantial forms.
(8) Therefore the Thomist position is false, since the Thomist assumes
thecontradictory opposite of (7).
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THE PLURALITY OF FORMS: NOW AND THEN 7
'tis evident, that Men make sorts of Things. For it being different Es
sences alone, that make different Species, 'tis plain, that they who make
those abstract Ideas, which are the nominal Essences, do thereby make
the Species, or Sort.8
6 Willard Van Orman Quine, Word and Object (Cambridge: MIT Press,
1960), 199.
7 See, for instance, Hilary Putnam, "The Question of Realism," in Words
and Life (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), 303.
8 John Locke, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Ox
ford: Clarendon Press, 1975), bk. 3, chap. 6, no. 35; p. 461. Emphasis in the
original.
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8 JOHN O'CALLAGHAN
fall under it, depending upon whether those objects have characteri
tics that bear a resemblance to the ideas constitutive of the nomina
essence the mind has formed for itself. Transposing this posit
from internal mental ideas out to the words of a language does not
sentially change the claim.9 If we say that gold is a yellow metal, th
a certain set of worldy objects will fall under it. If we provide
different nominal essence, and say that gold is whatever is soluble i
aqua regia, then certain objects in the world will fall under it. But t
set of objects that falls under the first nominal essence may not
coextensive with the set of objects that fall under the second; f
example, platinum is soluble in aqua regia, but it is not yello
Indeed the intersection of the two sets may be the null set, for all
know.
More recently, the roots of Putnam's objection can be seen in fig
ures like John Dewey and C. I. Lewis, who reflect upon the character
of modern logic against a characterization of the background of the
old Aristotelian logic. Lewis writes:
Traditionally any attribute required for application of a term is said to
be of the essence of the thing named. It is, of course, meaningless to
speak of the essence of a thing except relative to its being named by a
particular term.10
9 Ian Hacking has argued that the Linguistic Turn in philosophy does not
dissolve the problems of the theory of ideas that animated early modern
thought. Instead, he argues, it transposes them from the mind and its inter
nal objects which were called ideas to a social mind embodied in a language
and its internal objects which are called words. See Ian Hacking, Why Does
Language Matter to Philosophy? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1975).
10 An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation (LaSalle, 111.: Open Court,
1946), 41. As found in Irving M. Copi, "Essence and Accident," in Naming,
Necessity, and Natural Kinds (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977), 181.
Copi himself argues against the reduction of the notion of essence to nomi
nal essence.
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THE PLURALITY OF FORMS: NOW AND THEN 9
To be fair, Putnam thinks that once the science has made unto itself
an essence in view of some interest of the scientist, everything else
falls into place; it's not just anything goes.12
Ian Hacking calls this position Putnam's "Transcendental Nomi
nalism" in order to contrast it with what Hacking describes as a "pos
sibly extreme" form of Kantian transcendental idealism. For Hacking,
transcendental idealism is about existence, as it asserts that what ex
ists is ideal or mental, having no existence apart from the mind. Put
nam's position, on the other hand, is not about existence but about
classification. The sorting of the world that we engage in is a product
of our minds, as opposed to the Aristotelian realist who believes that
"the world just comes in certain kinds. That is nature's way not
man's."13 So Putnam is a transcendental nominalist.14 The
classifications are products of the mind and do not exist apart from
them, but the individuals and their individual properties do exist apart
from our classifications. Not everything is a discourse, but essentially
everything is.
Thus, the distinct conceptual schemes of the sciences determine
distinct essences. But keep in mind that Putnam's own view denies
that there are any such things as substantial forms or essential struc
tures intrinsic to the beings studied by the sciences. However, he
grants to the Thomist essences out there, in order to show that they
are in conflict with our supposed consensus about the modern natural
sciences. So it would seem that this position ought to be independent
of both the Thomist account and Putnam's conceptual scheme ac
count, in order that it may judge between the two without begging any
questions. However, on its face, the consensus just seems to be the
application of Putnam's transcendental nominalism to the question of
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10 JOHN O'CALLAGHAN
II
15 For a discussion of the "species problem" that surveys the various dif
ferent positions on the nature of species, see Phillip R. Sloan, "Reflections on
the Species Problem: What Marjorie Grene Can Teach Us About a Perennial
Issue," in The Philosophy of Marjorie Grene, ed. Randall E. Auxier and
Lewis Edwin Hahn (Chicago: Open Court, 2002). In particular see pp. 229
30, in which Sloan isolates "monistic," "pluralistic," and "neopragmatic" posi
tions on the species problem.
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THE PLURALITY OF FORMS: NOW AND THEN 11
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12 JOHN O'CALLAGHAN
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THE PLURALITY OF FORMS: NOW AND THEN 13
is, after all, the body's "own kind of life attached." But, driven by his
own reflections upon what he took to be the proper activities of the
body, by contrast to the proper activities of the mind, it is clear for Au
gustine that the life of the body is to be wholly distinguished from the
life of the mind, even if the mind and the quickening principle of the
body are two distinct parts of the soul. Thus, at least in this discus
sion from the De trinitate, there appears to be a real diversity in a
man between his rational principle and the principle that quickens the
body with its "own kind of life attached."
My reason for focusing upon the ambiguity in Augustine's discus
sion of mind and soul in the De trinitate is that it is the major source
for the objections that animate Aquinas's discussion of mind in ques
tion 10 of the De veritate, written a decade earlier than the Summa.21
Aquinas clearly presupposes UOF throughout his discussion, but he
does not explicitly discuss it or even mention it in question 10.22 Thus
there is no question of two formal principles in Aquinas's discussion
of mind, one for the life of the mind and the other for the life of the
quickened body. But in this earlier discussion, Aquinas did manage to
preserve the special character of the Augustinian mind in the Aristote
lian language of powers, when he held that the mind was a special
"general power" consisting of the particular powers of memory, intel
lect, and will. This general power has its own special unity over and
above the unity it has in the soul with all the other powers of the soul,
vegetative and sentient, and thus should be clearly distinguished from
the "sensitive" part of the soul. On the other hand, presupposed
throughout Aquinas's discussion is that there is only one soul or sub
stantial form of a human being, and the mind is but a part of it.
This distinct life of the mind in the De veritate proved distinctly
short lived in Aquinas. He abandons this special character and unity
of the Augustinian mind in the Summa Theologiae discussion often
referred to as the "Treatise on Human Nature."23 Though the sources
of the underlying philosophical discussion of human nature are domi
nantly Aristotelian, it is nested within a much larger theological dis
cussion of the Divine Verbum and man as the imago dei. In that larger
discussion, as in the De veritate, Augustine's De trinitate is the major
21 See Torrell, who places the composition of the De veritate during the
first Parisian regency from 1256-9 and that of the Prima pars of the Summa
in 1268 while Aquinas was in Rome. Jean-Pierre Torrell, Aquinas, trans. Rob
ert Royal (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996).
22 Aquinas held the unity of form position throughout his career, and he
relies upon it as presupposed in response elsewhere in the De veritate itself.
23STI,q. 75-89.
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14 JOHN O'CALLAGHAN
Notice the generality of the point. It is not simply about the plurality
of forms debate confined to souls and human nature. It is perfectly
general and concerns any movement from the plurality of the ways we
understand to a plurality of things understood; and the emphasis is
upon the real unity studied in diverse ways.
This is a good but not entirely adequate response, and Aquinas
himself treats it that way. The plurality view is fallacious if it rests
merely on the diversity of descriptions involved. But Aquinas recog
nizes that with an additional thesis no fallacy is involved. In this case
he considers a metaphysical thesis concerning the function of the
soul. He writes, "the opinion [could be] maintained if, as [Plato] held,
the soul were united to the body, not as its form, but as its mover."26
As a mover of the body it must be distinct in some sense from the
body. This Platonic possibility focuses upon the function of the soul,
rather than on how it is described in diverse discourses, and as such it
avoids the fallacy.
Next, Aquinas turns to offer positive arguments for the unity of
the soul, and not simply a dialectical defense against the plurality posi
tion. He offers three arguments, two of which bear directly on Put
nam's objection, mutatis mutandis. The arguments focus upon the
formal character of the soul within Aristotelianism, a formal character
which Aquinas has just stressed by mentioning, as a distinct contrast,
what he takes to be the Platonic position of the soul as the mover of
the body. The first argument considers the unity of the object under
consideration. The metaphysical function of form is to provide the
unity of being present in some object. Aquinas writes:
Nothing is simply one except through one form, through which the thing
has being; for a thing is a being and is one from the same principle; and
so those things which are named from a diversity of forms are not one
thing simply, as for example a white man.27
25 ST I, q. 76, a. 3, ad 4.
26 ST l,q. 76, a. 3.
27 Ibid.
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16 JOHN O'CALLAGHAN
cannot simply read off of the manifest complexity of the phrase "a
white man" that it involves a plurality of forms in things extra ani
mam. Instead, we judge that the description "a white man" involves a
diversity of forms because we already know that white is a diverse
form from man in things extra animam.31 Apart from that, we cannot
judge the description "white man" to involve any more forms than
does "man" alone, or for that matter "white" alone.32
So consider the manifest complexity of the phrase "a rational ani
mal." Aquinas argues that "an animal with many souls would not be
simply one."33 But the unity he has in mind here is the unity of the nat
ural kind that Putnam himself presupposes is discussed in diverse
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18 JOHN O'CALLAGHAN
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THE PLURALITY OF FORMS: NOW AND THEN 19
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20 JOHN O'CALLAGHAN
human being the actuality of being animal just is the actuality of being
rational, even though the powers characteristic of such a being may
be actually exercised episodically and apart from one another. And
even when they are exercised episodically and apart from one an
other, most often they enter into the constitution of intentional ac
tions that possess a per se unity subordinated to rational goals ideo
logically determined by the nature of the human soul as the actual life
of this kind of body. This unity is by contrast with a per accidens
unity. Failure of one of the powers involved in the per se unity of
such an intentional act leads to some measure of failure in accom
plishing the act as such.
This account is also confirmed by Aquinas's analysis of what it is
"to be rational" in question 79, article 8 of the Summa. Rationality is
the distinctive form that intellect takes in an animal.38 A human being
is essentially rational because the formal principle of intellect in a hu
man being is the very same form by which the human is an animal.
Consequently, while it is comparatively easy to see that in a human,
being an animal is not adequately understood until it is understood to
be rational, it is often more difficult to see that being rational is not
adequately understood until it is understood to be animate or incar
nate, the act of an animal. Intellect apart from animality is not ratio
nal. Finally, it involves a rejection of Augustine's position stressing
the great gulf between the bodily acts of the human animal and the ra
tional acts of the mind.
Definition brings about an enrichment of the form of the subject
by the form of the predicate because subject and predicate are differ
ent expressions within cognition of the same form extra animam.
Here Aquinas's remarks on the transition from the vague universal to
the distinct are appropriate.39 Putnam treats CIT like a synchronie
judgment that two trees, for instance, do or do not have the same
form. Since the linguistic expressions appear different upon simple
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THE PLURALITY OF FORMS: NOW AND THEN 21
reflection, they must not have the same form, just as in observing two
trees we may judge that they do not have the same form. The better
analogy for Aquinas is the diachronic recognition that the acorn and
the oak are the same being, and have the same form, in one moment of
its development rudimentary or vague and in the other flourishing or
distinct. Simple observation at any particular moment will not tell us
this. Rather, we must attend to the genesis of the one from the other
in order to recognize that they are really one thing after all, despite the
appearance of being one thing and then another distinct thing. It is the
same cognitive universal that was once vague that is now distinct, ex
pressed in a concept that has developed over time. The conditions of
its subsequent development are driven by the active engagement of
the cognitive community with the worldly beings that set the condi
tions of its formal identity.
Putnam has a static view of concepts, in which a conceptual
change requires a change of concepts, a substitution of one for an
other. For Aquinas, however, a conceptual change may require only
that one and the same concept develop and become enriched, an en
richment that tracks the worldly development of the one who employs
it. Just as one cannot drive a wedge between the acorn and the oak,
neither can one drive a wedge between the subject and the predicate
in a definition. Consequently, for Aquinas the fundamental unity
among diverse essential descriptions of a natural kind?vegetative,
animate, and rational?found in diverse sciences, is based upon their
real unity in the form of the natural kind that they all claim to de
scribe.
From this discussion of Aquinas's argument against the pluralists,
there are four elements of his argument for the unity of substantial
form that I want to bring to the discussion of Putnam's objection. The
first element is the presupposition of a single natural kind under dis
cussion. In Aquinas's discussion it is human kind, but it could just as
well have been a kind of dog, perhaps the kind including Putnam's dog
Shlomit. His discussion is thoroughly general and does not depend
upon any specific claims of particular discredited Aristotelian natural
sciences. In addition, the language of genus and species in which it is
couched may no longer be of much use to logicians, as it was in the
medieval period, but it has certainly not been abandoned in the classif
icatory schemes of modern biology. The second element is the fallacy
Aquinas calls the "error of the Platonists," namely, to attribute the
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22 JOHN O'CALLAGHAN
Ill
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THE PLURALITY OF FORMS: NOW AND THEN 23
languages of the diverse sciences. Natural kind terms like "dog" must
be used univocally across the diverse sciences that Putnam mentions;
in particular the concept dog remains the same in the diverse scien
tific discourses. If there is no such shared discourse employing the
same term dog, and the concept does not retain an identity across the
diverse sciences, the scientists involved are simply committing a fal
lacy of equivocation. Putnam's objection attempts to drive a wedge
between two terms, the subject term and the predicate term of an es
sential description?in our example, "dog" and whatever for a particu
lar science would fill in the predicate space of a definitional statement
like "a dog is (essentially)_." The diverse sciences address the
predicate space and provide, according to Putnam, different candi
dates to fill it. But in order to argue about what should fill it, in order
to have the argument Putnam thinks they have, they must all take the
identity of the subject term for granted.
The second presupposition is that there are natural kinds. Put
nam is not an idealist about things in the world and their particular
features. Objects in the world have their properties or features. The
various combinatorial possibilities of the features will determine dif
ferent sets within which an object falls. For Putnam, the entire set of
actual and possible combinations of features is Wittgenstein's Tractar
ian form, which he says he has come to recognize is not the Thomist's
form.40 His metaphysical point is that no particular subset of this set
is in itself privileged over another out there. Thus we are thrown back
upon our interests in pursuing various sciences, and how we focus
upon different features as essential. Once a science has determined
for itself what it will focus in upon, from then on the results it achieves
are in effect determined by those features. Consequently, Putnam be
lieves that any claim about the essence of some kind of being is inter
est-dependent. In a pragmatic vein, and quoting James, he writes "the
trail of the human serpent is over all."41
Still, to press his argument against the Thomist, he must presup
pose that a natural kind with its features is out there. In his example,
what is to be counted as essential is interest-dependent, but the result
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24 JOHN O'CALLAGHAN
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THE PLURALITY OF FORMS: NOW AND THEN 25
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26 JOHN O'CALLAGHAN
kinds are directly opposed to Putnam's need for the identity of a sin
gle natural kind to be prior to each diverse science, so that the scien
tists can argue about it. They have no genuine argument with one an
other over the essence of a particular natural kind, if in fact they are
not arguing about a particular natural kind.
This second presupposition, then, undermines the validity of Put
nam's argument. While Putnam's objection requires that he hold the
natural kind fixed and vary the essential descriptions, his new exam
ple suggests that on his own terms he cannot do so. If the geneticist
and the evolutionary theorist are not talking about the same natural
kind of thing when they give their respective accounts of the es
sence^) of dogs, Putnam's objection is based upon a fallacy of equiv
ocation on the term "dogs." After all, the Thomist expects to find a
plurality of essences among a plurality of different natural kinds of
things. The trouble, if there is one, is with a plurality of essences for
one kind of thing. Here we recall the central importance of a single
natural kind for the Plurality of Forms debate in Aquinas.
Putnam is suggesting that the geneticist and the evolutionary the
orist are talking about two different natural kinds. The philosopher
sees it that way; but the evolutionary theorist in media res does not,
even according to Putnam. Insofar as Putnam the philosopher claims
that the geneticist would include the synthetic dog in her set of inter
est, while the evolutionary biologist would consider it an "artifact of
no interest,"46 Putnam suggests that the evolutionary biologist thinks
there is only one natural kind determined by his own science, and that
the geneticist's set is not a natural kind at all. Hence, a fallacy of
equivocation exists among the geneticist, the evolutionary biologist,
and the philosopher. To avoid the fallacy of equivocation Putnam
would have to hold that the sets must be coextensive, while the es
sences for this necessarily coextensive set or natural kind differ.
However, this "must" applied to the set constituting the natural kind
would be little more than a tacit appeal on Putnam's part to what he
considers the errors of "Aristotelian essentialism,"47 a "must" that at
taches to the natural kind out there. Putnam is forced into an
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THE PLURALITY OF FORMS: NOW AND THEN 27
One might say (if one is a latter-day [Thomist] who has taken account of
the linguistic turn), that, in a certain sense, the metaphysical form of our
descriptions needs to be isomorphic to the metaphysical form of the ob
ject represented, for reference to succeed.... Speaking phenomenolog
ically, we see propositions as imposing a certain kind of order on the
world. . . . The metaphysical structure that our propositions project
onto the world is what the world would copy in the best case, the case
of the most successful and most complete reference, or so my 'latter-day
[Thomist]' would think.49
48 See above, p. 6.
49 "Aristotle After Wittgenstein," 72.
50 One feature of an isomorphism is that the set-theoretic structure of
the domain and all its internal set-theoretic relations are perfectly mirrored in
the codomain or target set of the isomorphism, and vice versa. "Isomorphic
groups are literally 'same-structured' because they differ only in the names or
nature of their elements; all their algebraic properties are identical," Douglas
Smith, Maurice Eggen, and Richard St. Andre Monterey, A Transition to Ad
vanced Mathematics (Monterey, Calif: Brooks/Cole Publishing Company,
1983), 139. For the notions of "onto" and "one-to-one," see 81-3.
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28 JOHN O'CALLAGHAN
structure onto the world suggest that Putnam continues to saddle the
Thomist with Wittgenstein's Tractarian form, despite his disclaimer
that he no longer does so. If we change Putnam's use of "metaphysi
cal" to Wittgenstein's "logical," it is this picture of propositions "pro
jecting" logical form that Wittgenstein presents at different points in
propositions 2, 3, and 4 of the Tractatus.51 Proposition 2 establishes
for Wittgenstein that the picturing relationship of a representation is
one of identity of "logical" form. Proposition 3 establishes the "pro
jective" nature of propositions. Finally, in proposition 4, Wittgenstein
connects the "logical" form of proposition 2 with the "project[ive]" na
ture of propositions of 3 by asserting that "The proposition is a picture
of reality. The proposition is a model of the reality, as we think it is."52
Thus even isomorphism does not seem to be enough to capture the
portrait of the Thomist that Putnam would like to paint with the Trac
tarian brush:
[T]he strongest line for the [Thomist] to take is to say that what enables
reference to take place is a matching (mere isomorphism doesn't seem
to be enough), some kind of a matching between the metaphysical
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THE PLURALITY OF FORMS: NOW AND THEN 29
structure our propositions project onto the objects and the metaphysi
cal structure those objects actually have.53
In Putnam's portrait of the Thomist who has taken the linguistic turn,
we are to think of the elements of sentences, subjects and predicates,
as the domain, the world as the codomain, and formal identity ("meta
physical" if one is Thomistic, and "logical" if Wittgensteinian) as the
mapping function. For his Thomist, the reference of our words is
most successful and the truth of our statements guaranteed when they
find their exact image projected onto reality.54 If there is logical com
plexity in the description it must find its exact isomorphic or projec
tive image in some complexity in the thing described. His Thomist
proposes to read a metaphysical structure off of his propositions and
project it onto nature, the mirror of the mind.
Given these presuppositions, in what follows I will show that on
the contrary the Thomistic Aristotelian is not proceeding from lan
guage to world, and that Putnam's argument fails in general.
IV
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30 JOHN O'CALLAGHAN
55 ST71, q. 76, a. 3.
56 Hilary Putnam, "The Meaning of 'Meaning'," in Mind, Language, and
Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 218.
57 Hacking, Representing and Intervening, 75.
58 "Aristotle After Wittgenstein," 66.
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THE PLURALITY OF FORMS: NOW AND THEN 31
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32 JOHN O'CALLAGHAN
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THE PLURALITY OF FORMS: NOW AND THEN 33
(2) But the formal identity of things does determine the formal identity
of the concepts under which they fall (CIT).
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34 JOHN O'CALLAGHAN
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THE PLURALITY OF FORMS: NOW AND THEN 35
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36 JOHN O'CALLAGHAN
The thing that the intellect has that is "proper to itself and cannot be
found "beyond the soul" is the logical complexity and diversity found
in the subject-predicate structure of its judgments, which results
from the abstractive nature of the human intellect understanding real
ity in many separate, partial, and inadequate ways. So, for instance,
the Thomist can wholeheartedly agree with Putnam's point about
events and the sentences we use to describe them that "if we say that
any pair of different sentences describe different events, then events
themselves begin to look suspiciously like ghostly counterparts of
sentences."64 But why is Putnam not willing with the Thomist to ex
tend that insight to natural kinds and the sentences (scientific) that
we use to describe them? On Putnam's plurality of essences view, do
not natural kinds and their essences begin to look suspiciously like
"ghostly counterparts" of scientific sentences?
We saw in Aquinas's second argument against the pluralists that
what the intellect has that corresponds to reality is the actual unity of
subject and predicate found in judgment that is adequate (true) to the
real unity of things. The unity of subject and predicate in judgment
adequately captures the unity of the thing defined, and is thus true.
Aquinas includes among concepts these judgments or "second acts of
intellect."65 They then become developmentally available to the mind
as simple elements for further judgments. When it captures a simple
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THE PLURALITY OF FORMS: NOW AND THEN 37
unity like the unity of a form, it is essential and necessarily true; when
it captures a complex unity like the unity of substance and accident, it
is contingently true. Contrary to Putnam's first presupposition, where
the adequacy of truth is concerned, no wedge can be driven between
subject and predicate. When we engage in the act of defining some
scientific object, we are in pursuit of definitions that more and more
adequately express the formal unity of the thing defined. So for the
Thomist, there is no isomorphism between the logical and linguistic
structure of our scientific discourse projected onto the metaphysical
structure of the world, as if either the mind were a mirror of nature or
nature a mirror of the mind possessing element by element the same
structure as our understanding.
VI
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38 JOHN O'CALLAGHAN
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THE PLURALITY OF FORMS: NOW AND THEN 39
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40 JOHN O'CALLAGHAN
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THE PLURALITY OF FORMS: NOW AND THEN 41
intelligible account of why the genetic study should bear upon the hy
potheses of a distinct discourse, morphology, in its bearing upon spe
cies classification and descent. Counterfactually, if the results of the
two disciplines had not converged, then the Thomist would want an
explanation, for example, of why morphological studies say "ancestor
species," and genetic studies say "cousin species," the two apparently
contradicting one another. Perhaps such an explanation would be
forthcoming, but the scientists themselves do not expect such wide di
vergence when they perform their studies, and they would want an ex
planation of the conflict.
On Putnam's position, recognizing only extrinsic essentially
structured schemes of classification confined within distinct dis
courses, the result looks at best accidental, and at worst unintelligible.
It looks as if the paleo-anthropologist got lucky, since at the level of
the subdisciplines being used, the geneticist denies that the morphol
ogy has anything to do essentially with the natural kinds involved, and
vice versa for the morphologist. Indeed, for Putnam, they exclude the
essential relevance of each others' work. This exclusion makes the
paleo-anthropologist's whole approach look unintelligible. Counter
factually, if the results from the paleo-anthropological study had not
converged, then it looks as if from Putnam's perspective the scientists
involved would retreat into their diverse and closed discourses, and
ignore the results of the other discipline as if the negative result had
never occurred.
The genetic and evolutionary scientists involved do not in fact be
lieve that their results are essentially unrelated one to another. Quite
the contrary?they presuppose the essential unity of the object of
their work, despite their diverse methods of studying the object. That
essential unity makes their cooperation intelligible, while for Putnam
it must look like a mistake they have fallen into, as if they had forgot
ten the argument they were having with one another over the "real es
sence." Keep in mind that it was precisely to account for the unity in
diversity of human life that Aquinas argued for his position on the
unity of substantial form and essential structure in the medieval de
bate. Mutatis mutandis, here the Thomistic position is at a distinct ad
vantage for understanding the actual practice of science, while Put
nam's position can find it only happenstance at best and unintelligible
at worst. These phenomena of scientific practice provide independent
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42 JOHN O'CALLAGHAN
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