Steward, HC (2013) Processes, Continuants and Individuals. Mind: a quarterly review of philosophy, 122 (487). pp. 781-812. ISSN 0026-4423
Abstract
The paper considers and opposes the view which has been argued for by a number of philosophers that processes are best thought of as continuants, to be differentiated from events mainly by way of the fact that the latter, but not the former, are entities with temporal parts. The motivation for the investigation, though, is not so much the defeat of what is, in any case, a rather implausible claim, as the vindication of some of the ideas and intuitions that the claim is made in order to defend – and the grounding of those ideas and intuitions in a more plausible metaphysics than is provided by the continuant view. It is argued that in addition to a distinction between events (conceived of as count-quantified) and processes (conceived of as mass-quantified) there is room and need for a third category, that of the individual process, which can be illuminatingly compared with the idea of a substance. Individual processes indeed share important metaphysical features with substantial continuants, but they do not lack temporal parts. Instead, it is argued that individual processes share with substantial continuants an important property I call modal robustness in virtue of form. The paper explains what this property is, and further suggests that the category of individual process, thus understood, might be of considerable value to the philosophy of action.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science (Leeds) > School of Philosophy (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 11 Jul 2013 11:06 |
Last Modified: | 25 Feb 2016 13:32 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/mind/fzt080 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Oxford University Press |
Identification Number: | 10.1093/mind/fzt080 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:75947 |