Okay, my topic is form matter composition.

That was the topic I was given, and that's the topic I'm going to try to address.

I will sometimes refer to form matter composition as hyalomorphic composition.

And as I indicate on the handout, I take this to be the special

sort of relation that matter and form bare to the compounds of which they are apart. There's

lots of questions we could ask about form matter or hylomorphic composition, like how we'd

understand this thing. What sort of relation is this? I've suggested it's a special

sort of part-hole relation, but how exactly is it like or unlike other park-hole or myriological

relations? Another question we might ask is what sorts of things can exhibit form matter

composition? Is it a type of composition that only applies to corporeal beings,

or can it somehow be extended? Does it have some sort of application, even if limited, to the

incorporeal world? Finally, we can ask a kind of existential question. Why think there is any form

matter composition? That is to say, why think there are any

objects composed of matter and form, much less the particular ones that Aquinas thinks there are?

My plan is to motivate and explain, or to try to motivate and explain, Aquinas' answers to

these questions, and to do so in a way that highlights

their philosophical significance, especially from the perspective of debates in contemporary

analytic metaphysics.

I'm not going to spend much time talking about the debates themselves.

Fortunately, Professor Gorman has identified some of the ones I'll be touching on, but I do

want to try to explain Aquinas'

views in a way that makes it easy to see their connection, or at least facilitates

...