What Is a Process? Modes of Occurrence and Forms of Dynamicity in General Process Theory

Abstract

This chapter suggests that contemporary research in process ontology can be sorted into two varieties. The radical strategy, implemented in General Process Theory, takes our reasoning of processes to motivate a comprehensive rejection of a network of traditional presumptions in ontology (“substance paradigm”). More recent work on processes displays a more conservative approach where the traditional research paradigm is not replaced but expanded. One pivotal disagreement between the radical and conservative strategy is, it is suggested, the traditional tenet that all concrete individuals must be particulars. With focus on recent work by Stout and Steward the chapter argues that convincing arguments for the individuality of processes are undermined by the fact that such process individuals are conceived of as particulars. Such approaches are focused on the distinction between processes and “events” but fail to acknowledge an important distinction among processes that is an integral part of the data for process ontology.