William M. R. Simpson, Department of Philosophy, Durham University, 2024
§1. Introduction
Hungarian-British chemist and philosopher Michael Polanyi is better known for his contributions to epistemology than for his musings on metaphysics. In particular, he is remembered for his theory of ‘tacit knowledge’, which claims that human beings know far more than they can possibly codify or articulate. According to Martin Turkis, however, ‘the aim of [Polanyi’s] theory of knowledge was to restore our ability…to make metaphysical claims in good faith’ (Turkis 2024, 2) rather than perpetuate the schism between metaphysics and epistemology that characterizes much philosophy of science. The aim of Turkis’s book, The Metaphysics of Michael Polanyi: Toward a Post-Critical Platonism, is to uncover ‘the metaphysics implied by [Polanyi’s] epistemological work’ (pvii). It is a rich and thought-provoking exploration which I cannot summarize or review here. I mean to focus on the author’s efforts to bring Polanyi’s metaphysics, which Turkis calls ‘Post-Critical Platonism’, into dialogue with certain strains of contemporary metaphysics, which he identifies as ‘Neo-Aristotelian’. I shall endeavor to elucidate his thoughts on this subject whilst offering some critical comments which may further the discussion.
So, what is Post-Critical Platonism? ‘Polanyi coins the term post-critical,’ Turkis explains, ‘to describe a philosophical orientation that…takes the fiduciary nature of all knowing as its point of departure’ (16), rejecting the methodological doubt that characterized the critical approach of the Enlightenment. To adopt a post-critical stance is to affirm a subjective and personal dimension to any form of cognitive inquiry which eschews the reduction of what can be known to propositions and formal rules. The metaphysics implicit within Polanyi’s epistemology, according to Turkis, is a Platonism that stands in opposition to any materialism, where ‘what is most distinctive about Platonism is that it is resolutely and irreducibly “top-down” rather than “bottom-up”‘ (221). In other words, whilst the materialist seeks to explain phenomena ‘by seeking the simplest [material] elements out of which these are composed’ (221) and the rules according to which they are arranged, the Platonist ‘appeals to irreducible, intelligible principles to account for these phenomena’ (221) and insists on ‘the priority and independence’ of these intelligible principles in relation to material reality. Although many scholars would be wary of characterizing Polanyi as a Platonist, Turkis insists that Polanyi ‘unflinchingly acknowledges’ (222) the existence of immaterial forms in which material particulars participate.
What about Neo-Aristotelianism? Turkis adopts the criteria of demarcation put forward by Simpson, Koons, and Teh in Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Contemporary Science (Simpson et al. 2017). Neo-Aristotelians, by this reckoning, adhere to five principles in the construction of their metaphysics: First, that there are things in nature which exercise real and irreducible causal powers. Second, that some things are more fundamental than others. Third, that the world contains a plurality of natural unities, such as biological organisms. Fourth, that these entities belong to natural kinds that exist independently of our conceptual activities. Fifth and final, that change in nature can be understood without appealing to non-immanent, non-natural universals, of the kind that Plato is supposed to have posited.
These criteria (or something like them) encompass a reasonably broad range of views in contemporary philosophy. Turkis implicitly imposes an additional criterion which considerably narrows the field, however, by assuming an adherence to Aristotle’s doctrine of hylomorphism. Hylomorphism, broadly speaking, is the view that the natural world consists of substances composed of both form and matter.
§2. Between Post-Critical Platonists and Neo-Aristotelians
Turkis believes there is much in common between the metaphysics of Post-Critical Platonists and the metaphysics of Neo-Aristotelians (identified by these criteria) but that there are also some significant differences. Concerning the first criterion, he thinks that ‘[Polanyi] would certainly be in significant agreement with contemporary hylomorphists on these matters. Potentiality figures prominently in Polanyi’s thought’ (Turkis 2024, 96). Polanyi is committed to a form of the Eleatic Principle, which identifies causal power as the mark of being. On the second point, Polanyi ‘affirm[s] a layered view of reality which holds some entities and/or properties to be more fundamental than others’ (96). Nonetheless, ‘his account would lack the rigid lines of substantival demarcation characteristic of much Aristotelian thought’. Why does Turkis make this caveat? Apparently, because ‘Polanyi would likely argue that the living thing is more real’ than other things (97). Yet this does not seem to be such a clear point of disagreement. Neo-Aristotelians who are hylomorphists may admit degrees of being or unity within nature which establish an ordering of substances: Simpson allows that some substances have a higher degree of unity than others (2023, 58), and Oderberg conceives substances as existing in a ‘hierarchy of being’ (2021). Concerning the commitment to a plurality of unities in nature (the third criterion) and to realism about natural kinds (the fourth), there also seems to be agreement.
A sharp divergence between the Post-Critical Platonist and the Neo-Aristotelian occurs, however, at the fifth criterion. ‘The question is whether [Polanyi] restricts this realism to instantiated, immanent universals or affirms, in contrast, the reality of uninstantiated universals’ (98). Turkis is convinced that ‘[Polanyi] is, in fact a Platonist with respect to universals, affirming both implicitly and explicitly the existence of uninstantiated universals’ (98). Yet just how significant is this divergence of opinion, and how does it bear upon the doctrine of hylomorphism? Turkis believes that ‘Polanyi’s conception of the comprehensive entity (or joint meaning)…has certain obvious similarities to those Neo-Aristotelian understandings of hylomorphic compounds’, although he recognizes that many different versions of hylomorphism have been put forward by philosophers (for a taxonomy, see Simpson 2023). He is quick to distance Polanyi from any conception of form as merely part of a compound, something on an ontological par with its other parts. ‘After all, the joint meaning is not simply another subsidiary detail’ (Turkis 2024, 101). Turkis suggests that ‘what Polanyi means by joint meaning is closely related to structure‘ (102), indicating a conception of form that has been advanced by Jaworski, for whom structure is supposed to account ‘at least in part for what things essentially are’, for ‘the powers they have’, and for ‘the unity of composite things, including [their] persistence’ (Jaworski 2016, §6.1).
Nonetheless, ‘Jaworski’s approach to hylomorphism…seems to gesture toward some sort of closure under physics’ (Turkis 2024, 102) that Turkis finds objectionable: first, because Polanyi ‘affirms the existence of comprehensive entities that have no physical parts whatever’ (102); and second, I surmise, because Polanyi is committed to a strong form of emergence in which the nature of a complex entity (such as a biological organism) makes a fundamental difference to where its physical parts end up. As touching this second point, I have argued elsewhere that part of the problem here lies in Jaworski’s conception of matter as a kind of physical stuff whose nature is disclosed by our best physics (see Simpson 2023, ch. 3). He prioritizes the existence of matter over form: matter, conceived as a physical stuff, has determinate physical properties and causal powers independently of any of the forms which ‘structure’ this physical stuff. Matter depends neither for its existence nor identity upon form, but subsists at an autonomous physical level. Granted, a ‘super-physicist’ who only knew the physical properties of matter would miss the various ways in which some portion of matter is said to be structured within the explanatory schemes of the special sciences. Nonetheless, they would still be able in principle to predict where all the matter ends up, according to Jaworski, because it is at this autonomous, physical level that all of the physical forces (supposedly) operate. Robinson argues that Jaworski’s characterization of form as structure submits to a purely ‘conceptualist interpretation’ (Robinson 2014). It is not clear that one can adopt Jaworski’s characterisation of form whilst maintaining that forms are fundamental.
§3. Hylomorphism and Forms
Turkis favourably cites Marmodoro’s alternative characterisation of form as ‘a principle of unity that re-identifies parts within the context of the whole’ (Turkis 2024, 101), such that the material parts of a substance depend for their identities upon the form. Nonetheless, he has two objections to this version of hylomorphism as well. First, he objects to the claim that ‘the parts of a hylomorphic compound are no longer identifiable as such’ within the substance (103). On the one hand, he is willing to grant that ‘from a Polanyian perspective…the parts are indistinguishable in their integration while focal attention is maintained on the comprehensive entity or joint meaning’ (103). On the other hand, he insists that ‘this lack of mereological distinctiveness is not a permanent [ feature ] … but is rather a question of shifting relationality’ (104). The relevant relation, it would seem, is between the object which is being conceived and the person attending to the object, ‘since we can oscillate between focal and subsidiary awareness, shifting our focus to the part as an entity unto itself’ (103-104). Marmodoro’s conception of form, however, does not lend itself to Turkis’s attempt to reconcile the one and the many. You see, Marmodoro thinks it is up to us whether we see something in nature as being one or as being many, and if we choose to see something in nature as being metaphysically one, then we cannot also think of this unified thing as having many parts. It is not clear that Turkis can adopt Marmodoro’s characterisation of form whilst rejecting her mereological nihilism.
Turkis’s second objection requires some qualification. He says that ‘Marmodoro’s description seems to downplay the Eleatic power of form to shape reality’ (105). I think Marmodoro would demure, insisting that forms have a metaphysical impact on reality, so to speak, even if they do not produce physical effects, because we can choose whether to see something as being one or many, and such choices have metaphysical consequences. Nonetheless, it seems that Marmodoro, like Jaworski, assigns to physical reality a fundamental independence from form, inasmuch as she affirms that the building blocks of the physical world are ‘powers’ which are disclosed by our best physics and that these basic powers do not depend in any way for their existence upon our choices or conceptual activities. For the Pre-Critical Platonist, like Plato and his early disciples, forms make things in nature to be what they are with the powers that they have. For philosophers who adopt a more Critical Stance, like Marmodoro, appealing to forms reflects a human habitus for dividing the world into things according to our explanatory goals, but the forms of these things do not exist independently of our conceptual activities. Turkis leaves us in no doubt concerning which side of the divide the Post-Critical Platonist wishes to occupy: ‘The Forms I posit…”carve up each kind…along its natural joints,” as Plato puts it’ (227).
It appears that neither Jaworski’s nor Marmodoro’s account of hylomorphism is consistent with the realist requirements of Post-Critical Platonism and that no amount of tinkering, given their definitions of matter and form, will make them so. And Turkis ultimately rejects both of their hylomorphic visions of nature, blaming their failure to assign a truly fundamental and joint-carving role to form on their rejection of Platonism. According to Turkis, ‘this fundamental, irreducible element of reality inevitably undergoes ontological demotion at the end of the day in accord with Aristotelian prohibitions on uninstantiated universals as fully substantive entities’ (105). Only a staunch Platonism, he believes, which ‘emphasizes…the metaphysical independence of form’ (101) from any kind of matter, will serve those who are seeking to ‘make metaphysical claims in good faith’ (2).
I am not quite convinced. There are Neo-Aristotelian alternatives to Jaworski’s and Marmodoro’s versions of hylomorphism which do not posit some substrate of physical reality which exists independently of form, and which do not lead to the ‘ontological demotion’ of form. In my theory of Cosmic Hylomorphism, for example, the cosmos is conceived as a hylomorphic entity, composed of both matter and form (Simpson 2021, 2023, 2024a, 2024b, Mosko & Simpson 2024). The matter in this theory does not consist of some physical stuff disclosed by our best physics, which has causal powers independently of form. Rather, it is a kind of ‘prime matter’ (Simpson 2024a), which has a metaphysical role to play in the individuation of physical particles, and the causal powers of every physical particle derive from the cosmic form. The original version of the theory of Cosmic Hylomorphism, which was created to provide an ontology for certain non-relativistic quantum mechanical theories, posited the existence of a single cosmic substance. For example, in non-relativistic Bohmian Mechanics, the cosmos is attributed a universal wave function which choreographs the trajectories of all of the world’s particles. When the theory of Cosmic Hylomorphism is applied to Bohmian Mechanics, it generates an ontology in which the cosmos as a whole exercises a power to choreograph the motions of all of the particles, and it is the form of the cosmos which underwrites the persistence and transworld identity of this power. More recently, however, I have been considering whether an extension of the theory of Cosmic Hylomorphism to certain relativistic versions of quantum mechanics might incorporate ‘local forms’, in addition to the cosmic form, where the local forms have a contextual role to play in determining where and when particles are created and annihilated (Simpson 2024a). It has also been suggested—first by Koons, in correspondence—that the cosmic form could be conceived as a ‘group form’ rather than a substantial form, which is instantiated collectively by multiple substances (Simpson 2024b).
Koons rejects the idea of a cosmic substance but agrees that form has a joint-carving role to play at lower scales: ‘It is the sparse collection of Forms that defines the natural kinds of the world’ (Koons 2024, 94). He also chides traditional Platonists for failing to recognize that the grounding of objective sameness and difference is not the only role which the forms have to play and for failing to give matter its metaphysical due: it is the form of a substance, in Koons’s view, which is supposed to ground the unity and persistence of a substance; it is the primitive distinctness of a substance’s matter which is meant to explain how two substances of the same species are individuated. In recent work, Koons has suggested that forms might be conceived as a kind of modifying trope. Whereas a modular trope of F may be said to have F itself, a modifying trope may only be said to confer F. The substantial form which is someone’s soul, for example, considered apart from their matter, is not itself an individual human (a substance). Trope resemblance is to be analyzed in terms of grounded numerical distinctness: two substantial forms belong to the same species just in case their numerical distinctness is not metaphysically fundamental but derived from the numerical distinctness of the prime-material entities which they in-form (Koons 2022, 11). The form of a substance, then, metaphysically depends for its identity upon its matter.
It is not clear that Post-Critical Platonism, however, which ‘emphasizes…the metaphysical independence of form’ (Turkis 2024, 101), without qualification, is able to provide an account of how in-formed entities are individuated or to offer an objective account of the unity of a substance such as a human being. Moreover, Plato’s theory of forms, as it has traditionally been understood, in which one and the same form is multiply instantiated by things of the same kind, cannot explain why natural kinds are often organized within nested structures. (For example, a proton is a type of subatomic particle called a baryon, which contains an odd number of valence quarks, and a baryon belongs to the family of hadrons, which are composed of quarks.) The Neo-Aristotelian who acknowledges that every substance has its own particular form (a modifying trope?) and that the species and genera to which they belong are disclosed at different levels of abstraction keeps a halfway house between Platonism and nominalism that seems better placed to accommodate these commonsense facts about nature. But I concede that the task of interpreting, updating, and applying Aristotle’s theory of forms is ongoing and immensely challenging, and I think that Neo-Aristotelians should welcome Turkis’s timely interventions.
References
Jaworski, W. 2016. Structure and the Metaphysics of Mind: How Hylomorphism Solves the Mind-Body Problem. Oxford University Press.
Koons, R. C. 2022. Sorting Out Aristotle. Unpublished manuscript (early version).
———. 2024. ‘Prime Matter and the Quantum Wavefunction.’ Ancient Philosophy Today 6, no. 1: 92-119.
Marmodoro, A. 2018. ‘Whole, but Not One.’ In J. Heil, A. Carruth, & S. Gibb, editors, Ontology, Modality, and Mind Themes from the Metaphysics of E. J. Lowe. 60–70. Oxford University Press.
Oderberg, D. 2021. ‘Restoring the Hierarchy of Being.’ In W. Simpson, R. Koons, & J. Orr, editors, Neo-Aristotelian Metaphysics and the Theology of Nature. Routledge.
Robinson, H. 2014. ‘Modern Hylomorphism and the Reality and Causal Power of Structure: A Skeptical Investigation.’ Res Philosophica 91, no. 2: 203-214.
Simpson, W. M. R. 2021. “Cosmic Hylomorphism: a Powerist Ontology of Quantum Mechanics.” European Journal for the Philosophy of Science 11, no. 1: 23-28.
———. 2024a. “Cosmopsychism and the Laws of Physics: A Hylomorphic Perspective.” Journal of Consciousness Studies, 31, no. 9 (2024): 132–57.
———. 2023. Hylomorphism, Cambridge University Press.
———. 2024b. “Prime Matter Revisited.” In Thomism Revisited, edited by G. Kerr, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.
———. 2023. “Small Worlds with Cosmic Powers.” The Journal of Philosophy 120, no. 8.
Mosko, M., and W. M. R. Simpson. 2024. “Whose Hylomorphism? Which Theory of Prime Matter?” Ancient Philosophy Today: Dialogoi 6, no. 1.
Turkis, M. 2024. The Metaphysics of Michael Polanyi: Toward a Post-Critical Platonism. Palgrave Macmillan.
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