-
Views
-
Cite
Cite
Karen Bennett, Koslicki on formal proper parts, Analysis, Volume 71, Issue 2, April 2011, Pages 286–290, https://doi.org/10.1093/analys/anr002
Close - Share Icon Share
Extract
What are motorcycles made of? Presumably the answer is something like ‘wheels, pistons, fuel lines …’ or perhaps ‘metal, leather, plastic …’. Whatever precisely the parts of a motorcycle are, surely they are all material.
Kathrin Koslicki disagrees. She has recently argued that ordinary material objects like motorcycles not only have material proper parts, but also have formal proper parts (2008: particularly Ch. 7). On her view, an accurate list of the proper parts of a motorcycle must include something like motorcyclehood in addition to the sorts of things just listed. Although she remains neutral about what exactly such a formal part is (e.g. 175, 254), she is explicit about what it does. The formal part of an object dictates structure; it dictates how the material parts must be arranged. It is ‘a kind of recipe for how to build wholes of that particular kind’ (172). Koslicki claims that this recipe or structure is itself a proper part of every motorcycle. That is what she calls the Neo-Aristotelian Thesis (190).
