Abstract

This chapter takes up the question of how hylomorphists should conceive of the relations between a matter–form compound, its matter, and its form. It responds to the challenge issued to hylomorphists by the Grounding Problem, which asks what (if anything) explains the apparent differences between an object and its matter. Chapter 4 argues that hylomorphists should opt for a “robust” construal of form according to which forms do not simultaneously bear the same relation to a matter–form compound (essentially) and to the matter composing it (accidentally). Armed with this conception of forms, the differences between numerically distinct spatiotemporally coincident objects can then be explained by appeal to a non-modal conception of essence and a mereological approach to the relation between a matter–form compound, its matter, and its form.