Without a plurality of forms, the metaphysical status of the corpse and the living body cannot be coherently distinguished.

To Scotus and many of his fellow Franciscans it therefore seemed obvious that we need to posit a plurality of substantial forms to avoid these metaphysical incongruities. One standard form of such pluralism postulated a “form of the body” (forma corporeitatis) that makes a given parcel of matter to be a definite, unique, individual organism, and the “animating form” or soul, which makes that body alive. At death, the animating soul ceases to vivify the body, but numerically the same body remains