[MD] A fly in the MOQ ointment

[Horse]

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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-- 

Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an 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