The conceptual work Aristotelian substantial forms were designed to do—grounding identity, change, and natural kinds—is accomplished by modal structuralism and natural kind essentialism (Kripke, Putnam) without the hylomorphic apparatus.
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A philosophical approach that explains what things are by describing their possible relationships and structures rather than their hidden essences.
Natural kind essentialism(as used in philosophy of language and metaphysics)
The view that things like gold or water have a real inner nature (usually their chemical composition) that defines what they fundamentally are.
Putnam, Hilary(as a philosopher cited for natural kind essentialism)
A 20th-century philosopher who developed the idea that the meaning of words like 'water' depends on what water actually is in nature, not just on how it appears to us.
grounding(Drawn from contemporary metaphysics; proposed as potentially applicable to understanding the foundations of legality.)
A metaphysical relation in which some entities or facts are more foundational than others, providing a hierarchical structure of the world.
natural kinds(Water is offered as a paradigm example of a natural kind individuated by microstructure)
Categories of things in nature that share an essential microstructure, used to ground essentialism about species and substances