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Form and Origin
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
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Regarding the identity of artifacts in time, four positions may be discerned: first, the view reducing the continuing identity of an object to the continuing identity of its parts; second, the more generally accepted position that spatiotemporal continuity under a kind is necessary; third, the claim that while continuity is not a necessary condition, the sameness of parts and the sameness of form are sufficient together; and fourth, the suggestion that continuity of form is a sufficient and non-defeasible condition for reidentifying artifacts. Others such as Scaltsas believe that the different conditions claimed to be sufficient by the views mentioned are, in fact, only criteria of identity applicable in different circumstances, and that no sharply defined hierarchy can be said to hold between them.
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References
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7 Of course, the form of organisms is more ‘dynamic’ than that of artifacts, and requiring sameness of form-token for the M-identity of organisms would be undesirably restrictive. What is needed there as a condition would seem to be the continuity of form-token, which will not exclude even ‘drastic’ metamorphoses.
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12 The origin of this subdivision to Aristotle's ‘form’ is the distinction made by alFarabi between essence and existence, later developed by Ibn Sina, before it was adopted by Franciscan thinkers such as Henry of Ghent and Scotus. Ibn Sina seems basically to have attempted to account for the difference between the concept (in the divine mind) and its instatiation as a contingent being.