Editing Hylomorphism (section)

=== Living bodies ===
Some scholars have pointed out a problem facing Aristotle's theory of soul-body hylomorphism.<ref>Shields, ''Aristotle'' 290-93</ref> According to Aristotle, a living thing's matter is its body, which needs a soul in order to be alive. Similarly, a bronze sphere's matter is bronze, which needs roundness in order to be a sphere. Now, bronze remains the same bronze after ceasing to be a sphere. Therefore, it seems that a body should remain the same body after death.<ref>Shields, ''Aristotle'' 291</ref> However, Aristotle implies that a body is no longer the same body after death.<ref>''On the Soul'' 412b19-24</ref> Moreover, Aristotle says that a body that has lost its soul is no longer potentially alive.<ref>412b15</ref> But if a living thing's matter is its body, then that body should be potentially alive by definition.

One approach to resolving this problem<ref>Shields, ''Aristotle'' 293</ref> relies on the fact that a living body is constantly replacing old matter with new. A five-year-old body consists of different matter than does the same person's seventy-year-old body. If the five-year-old body and the seventy-year-old body consist of different matter, then what makes them the same body? The answer is presumably the soul. Because the five-year-old and the seventy-year-old bodies share a soul—that is, the person's life—we can identify them both as the body. Apart from the soul, we cannot identify what collection of matter is the body. Therefore, a person's body is no longer that person's body after it dies.

Another approach to resolving the problem<ref>Shields, "A Fundamental Problem"</ref> relies on a distinction between "proximate" and "non-proximate" matter. When Aristotle says that the body is matter for a living thing, he may be using the word "body" to refer to the matter that makes up the fully organized body, rather than the fully organized body itself. Unlike the fully organized body, this "body" remains the same thing even after death. In contrast, when he says that the body is no longer the same after its death, he is using the word "body" to refer to the fully organized body.