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Single Idea 19480

[filed under theme 7. Existence / B. Change in Existence / 2. Processes ]

Full Idea

Process philosophy is based on the premise that being is dynamic and that the dynamic nature of being should be the primary focus of any comprehensive philosophical account of reality and our place within it.

Gist of Idea

Process philosophy places the dynamic nature of being at the centre of our theories

Source

Johanna Seibt (Process Philosophy [2012], Intro)

Book Ref

'Stanford Online Encyclopaedia of Philosophy', ed/tr. Stanford University [plato.stanford.edu], p.1


A Reaction

Put like that, the chief ancestor of this approach would be Leibniz, even though his central idea concerns substances. Heraclitus is the most famous ancestor of Process Philosophy. Powers are dynamic, but powers of what?


The 21 ideas with the same theme [accepting purposeful sequences of happenings as existents]:

All comings-to-be are passings-away, and vice versa [Aristotle]
An actuality is usually thought to be a process [Aristotle]
In Whitehead 'processes' consist of events beginning and ending [Whitehead, by Simons]
A river is a process, with stages; if we consider it as one thing, we are considering a process [Quine]
Objects and substances are a subcategory of the natural kinds of processes [Ellis]
Process philosophy insists that processes are not inferior in being to substances [Rescher]
Activities have place, rate, duration, entities, properties, modes, direction, polarity, energy and range [Machamer/Darden/Craver]
Four-dimensionalism sees things and processes as belonging in the same category [Sider]
Slow and continuous events (like balding or tree-growth) are called 'processes', not 'events' [Simons]
Maybe processes behave like stuff-nouns, and events like count-nouns [Simons]
Fans of process ontology cheat, since river-stages refer to 'rivers' [Simons]
I don't believe in processes [Simons]
Any process can be described as transfer of measurable information [Ladyman/Ross]
Processes don't begin or end; they just change direction unexpectedly [Williams,NE]
Processes are either strings of short unchanging states, or continuous and unreducible events [Williams,NE]
A process is unified as an expression of a collection of causal powers [Mumford/Anjum]
Process philosophy places the dynamic nature of being at the centre of our theories [Seibt]
Reductionists identify processes by their 'owner', but tornadoes etc. are processes without owners [Seibt]
Traditionally small things add up to processes, but quantum mechanics reverses this [Seibt]
Quantum mechanics deals with processes, rather than with things [Rovelli]
Basic processes are said to be either physical, or organic, or psychological [Ingthorsson]