Free Process Theory: Towards a Typology of Occurrings (original) (raw)
Related papers
Processes: Analysis and Application of Dynamic Categories
Axiomathes, 2004
Processes constitute the world of human experience-from nature to social reality to cognition itself. However, by and large, the centrality of processes does not appear to be reflected in theoretical descriptions of nature and the human domain. Frequently processes are represented in a reductive fashion-in terms of their results, input-output pairs, or sets of state sequences summarized by linear functions. Disciplines without quantitative, algebraic-geometrical tools make do with metaphorical, haphazard, and highly domain-specific classifications of occurrences. Most remarkable is perhaps the fact that ontologists-with very few exceptions, notably Whitehead-so far have shun away from dynamic entities: they are neither properly investigated nor employed as descriptive primitives. Throughout the history of ontological research, the world of human experience, including experience itself, has been presented as an assembly of 'static' entities: substances, attributes, relations, facts, ideas-and more recently, tropes, temporally relativized property exemplifications, or four-dimensional expanses. But the traditional fixation on the permanent is not a requirement of theory construction per se. This issue of Axiomathes contains the proceedings of an interdisciplinary research meeting (Processes: Analysis and Applications of Dynamic Categories, Sandbjerg Gods, Denmark, June 5-8, 2002) which brought together researchers from widely different fields (formal ontology, cognitive science, linguistics, semiotics, ancient philosophy, ethics, philosophy of music, music theory, theoretical psychology, theoretical biology, philosophy of chemistry, and philosophy of physics) who go against the mainstream in their discipline and focus their work on dynamic aspects. The meeting's main purpose was to discuss extant non-reductive theories of processes, and to identify theoretical motivations for the development of process-based or process-geared theories in different areas of application. In contemporary ontology, A.N. Whitehead's
e paper assumes that to be of interest a process must be understood as physical action that takes place in the world rather than being an idea in the mind. It argues that if an ontology of process is to accommodate actualities, it must be represented in terms of relative probabilities. It is argued that folk physics cannot accommodate this, and so the paper appeals to scientific culture because it is an emergent knowledge of the world derived from action in it. Process is represented as a contradictory probability distribution that does not depend on a spatio-temporal frame. An actuality is a probability density that grounds the values of probabilities to constitute their distributions. Because probability is a conserved value, probability distributions are subject to the constraint of symmetry and must be zero-sum. An actuality is loed-in by other actualities to become a zerosum symmetry of probability values. It is shown that the loing-in of actualities constructs spatiotemporal locality, lends actualities specificity, and makes them a contradiction. Localization is the basis for understanding empirical observation. Because becoming depends on its construction of being, processes exist as trajectories. e historical trajectories of evolution and revolution as well as the non-historical trajectory of strong emergence are how processes are observed to exist.
Though disagreeing on what it is that causes actions – events or agents, event causal and agent causal theories of action causation do agree on which ontological category actions belong to: actions are commonly taken to be events. This orthodoxy has recently been questioned by Helen Steward who claims that actions are processes rather than events. According to Steward, acknowledging the processual nature of actions helps refute event-causal accounts of action causation while avoiding the shortcomings of standard agent-causal accounts. It thus to paves the way for a convincing libertarian defence of free will. My paper assesses these theses. I argue argue that actions are indeed processes but that some even more radical revision of the ontology of agency is needed in order to bring about the progress envisaged by Steward. Only process ontology of both actions and agents will actually successfully remove common obstacles for a convincing libertarian account of free will.
Forms of Emergent Interaction In General Process Theory
Synthese, 2008
General Process Theory (GPT) is a new (non-Whiteheadian) process ontology. According to GPT the domains of scientific inquiry and everyday practice consist of configurations of ‘goings-on’ or ‘dynamics’ that can be technically defined as concrete, dynamic, non-particular individuals called general processes. The paper offers a brief introduction to GPT in order to provide ontological foundations for research programs such as interactivism that centrally rely on the notions of ‘process,’ ‘interaction,’ and ‘emergence.’ I begin with an analysis of our common sense concept of activities, which plays a crucial heuristic role in the development of the notion of a general process. General processes are not individuated in terms of their location but in terms of ‘what they do,’ i.e. in terms of their dynamic relationships in the basic sense of one process being part of another. The formal framework of GPT is thus an extensional mereology, albeit a non-classical theory with a non-transitive part-relation. After a brief sketch of basic notions and strategies of the GPT-framework I show how the latter may be applied to distinguish between causal, mechanistic, functional, self-maintaining, and recursively self-maintaining interactions, all of which involve ‘emergent phenomena’ in various senses of the term.
Classifying Processes and Basic Formal Ontology
Unlike what is the case for physical entities and other types of continuants, few process ontologies exist. This is not only because processes received less attention in the research community, but also because classifying them is challenging. Moreover, upper level categories or classification criteria to help in modelling and integrating lower level process ontologies have thus far not been developed or widely adopted. This paper proposes a basis for further classifying processes in the Basic Formal Ontology. The work is inspired by the aspectual characteristics of verbs such as homeomericity, cumulativity, telicity, atomicity, instantaneity and durativity. But whereas these characteristics have been proposed by linguists and philosophers of language from a linguistic perspective with a focus on how matters are described, our focus is on what is the case in reality thus providing an ontological perspective. This was achieved by first investigating the applicability of these characteristics to the top-level processes in the Gene Ontology, and then, where possible, deriving from the linguistic perspective relationships that are faithful to the ontological principles adhered to by the Basic Formal Ontology.
Process-based entities are relational structures. From Whitehead to Structuralism [Pre-print]
Manuscrito Int. Fil., 2021
The aim of this work is to argue for the idea that processes and process-based entities are to be modelled as relational structures. Relational structures are genuine structures, namely entities not committed to the existence of basic objects. My argument moves from the analysis of Whitehead's original insight about process-based entities that, despite some residual of substance metaphysics, has the merit of grounding the intrinsic dynamism of reality on the holistic and relational characters of process-based entities. The current model of process ontology requires genuine emergence and this, in turn, requires organizations, i.e., emergence in organizations. Another view about processes rely on a structural specification of processes. I suggest that the two views can be made compatible by the help of a specific sort of structures, namely relational structures. The appeal to the mathematical theory of genuine structures, category theory, reveals the formal plausibility of this convergence. According to this formal approach, genuine structures are essentially dynamic entities for they are relational, namely, as well as organizations, they are not existentially committed to particulars.
Non-Transitive Parthood, Leveled Mereology, and the Representation of Emergent Parts of Processes
Grazer Philosophische Studien 91 (2015), 165-190
Processes have mereological structure, just like things and stuff s, but part-whole relations for processes have not received much attention in the literature so far. As I explain in the fi rst part of this paper, the main reason for this curious neglect is that extant classical and non-classical mereologies have hidden built-in restrictions on the type of entities that can stand in the part-relations formalized by these mereologies; processes and other non-particular individuals do not fulfi ll the given restrictions. In a second step I introduce a non-classical mereological system (LEM) which is free of these restrictions and operates with a nontransitive ‘is-part’ relation, capturing the most general sense of mereological association: ‘belongs-with.’ In a third step I discuss to what extent LEM can be used to formally represent our qualitative reasoning about processes.
The paper argues that actions should be thought of as processes and not events. A number of reasons are offered for thinking that the things that it is most plausible to suppose we are trying to cotton on to with the generic talk of ‘actions’ in which philosophy indulges cannot be events. A framework for thinking about the event-process distinction which can help us understand how we ought to think about the ontology of processes we need instead is then developed, building on some excellent work already done by philosophers working at the intersection of philosophy and linguistics.
The Ontology of States, Processes, and Events
2012
This paper presents a new view of the relationship between states, processes and events. Instead of trying to treat them as entities all on a similar footing, as most previous authors have done, we regard processes as abstract patterns of behaviour which may be realised in concrete form as actually occurring states or events. Processes are divided into two broad types, called continuables and repeatables, and various mappings between and within these categories are considered. The theory presented here is consistent with recent theorising about processes in ontology and computer science while being sensitive to the insights from the work of philosophers and linguists over many years.
Processes and events as rigid embodiments
Synthese, 2023
Monists and pluralists disagree concerning how many ordinary objects there are in a single situation. For instance, pluralists argue that a statue and the clay it is made of have different properties, and thereby are different. The standard monist's response is to hold that there is just a single object, and that, under the description "being a statue", this object is, e.g., aesthetically valuable, and that, under the description "being a piece of clay", it is not aesthetically valuable. However, Fine provided an ontological reading of the expression "an object under a description": the theory of rigid embodiments. The debate between monists and pluralists reduplicates in the domain of ordinary occurrences, like walks and conferences. Specifically, they disagree whether an occurrence in progress (also called "process") like John's walk that is happening at t n is identical to some completed occurrence (also called "event") like John's walk that happened between, e.g., t 1 and t n. Under the adoption of the pluralist's position, the article aims to provide a novel theory of ordinary occurrences that develops the ontological reading of "under a description" to account for occurrences in progress and completed occurrences. As a first result, we formulate a theory according to which both occurrences in progress and completed occurrences are rigid embodiments. As a second result, we argue that the suggested theory is explanatorily powerful to the extent it solves two puzzles that we call "the Puzzle from the Completion of a Process" and "the Metaphysicalcum-Semantical Puzzle".