Hi Marsha (again!)
Perhaps this resonates more for you? See Factor 1 about half-way down
From http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/process-philosophy/
Process Philosophy
/First published Tue Apr 2, 2002; substantive revision Wed Jan 9, 2008/
/First published Tue 2 Apr, 2002/
The philosophy of process is a venture in metaphysics, the general
theory of reality. Its concern is with what exists in the world and with
the terms of reference in which this reality is to be understood and
explained. The task of metaphysics is, after all, to provide a cogent
and plausible account of the nature of reality at the broadest, most
synoptic and comprehensive level. And it is to this mission of enabling
us to characterize, describe, clarify and explain the most general
features of the real that process philosophy addresses itself in its own
characteristic way. The guiding idea of its approach is that natural
existence consists in and is best understood in terms of /processes/
rather than /things/ --- of modes of change rather than fixed
stabilities. For processists, change of every sort --- physical,
organic, psychological --- is the pervasive and predominant feature of
the real.
Process philosophy diametrically opposes the view --- as old as
Parmenides and Zeno and the Atomists of Pre-Socratic Greece --- that
denies processes or downgrades them in the order of being or of
understanding by subordinating them to substantial things. By contrast,
process philosophy pivots on the thesis that the processual nature of
existence is a fundamental fact with which any adequate metaphysic must
come to terms.
Process philosophy puts processes at the forefront of philosophical and
specifically of ontological concern. Process should here be construed in
pretty much the usual way --- as /a sequentially structured sequence of
successive stages or phases/. Three factors accordingly come to the fore:
1. That a process is a complex --- a unity of distinct stages or
phases. A process is always a matter of now this, now that.
2. That this complex has a certain temporal coherence and unity, and
that processes accordingly have an ineliminably temporal dimension.
3. That a process has a structure, a formal generic format in virtue
of which every concrete process is equipped with a shape or format.
From the time of Aristotle, Western metaphysics has had a marked bias
in favor of /things/ or /substances/. However, another variant line of
thought was also current from the earliest times onward. After all, the
concentration on perduring physical /things/ as existents in nature
slights the equally good claims of another ontological category, namely
processes, events, occurrences --- items better indicated by verbs than
nouns. And, clearly, storms and heat-waves are every bit as real as dogs
and oranges.
What is characteristically definitive of /process/ philosophizing as a
distinctive sector of philosophical tradition is not simply the
commonplace recognition of natural process as the active initiator of
what exists in nature, but an insistence on seeing process as
constituting an essential aspect of everything that exists --- a
commitment to the fundamentally processual nature of the real. For the
process philosopher is, effectively by definition, one who holds that
what exists in nature is not just originated and sustained by processes
but is in fact ongoingly and inexorably /characterized/ by them. On such
a view, process is both pervasive in nature and fundamental for its
understanding.
Horse
On 30/03/2010 11:49, MarshaV wrote:
On Mar 30, 2010, at 6:29 AM, Horse wrote:
Process metaphysics
Greetings Horse,
Since you brought it up, would you explain and give examples of process
metaphysics. Not what it might be, but what it is...
Marsha
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attractive and well preserved body, but to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, wine
in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO HOO what
a ride!"... Hunter S Thompson
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