Organisms, activity and being: on the substance of process ontology

Austin, Christopher

Abstract

According to contemporary ‘process ontology’, organisms are best conceptualised as spatio-temporally extended entities whose mereological composition is fundamentally contingent and whose essence consists in changeability. In contrast to the Aristotelian precepts of classical ‘substance ontology’, from the four-dimensional perspective of this framework, the identity of an organism is grounded not in certain collections of privileged properties, or features which it could not fail to possess, but in the succession of diachronic relations by which it persists, or ‘perdures’ as one entity over time. In this paper, I offer a novel defence of substance ontology by arguing that the coherency and plausibility of the radical reconceptualisation of organisms proffered by process ontology ultimately depends upon its making use of the ‘substantial’ principles it purports to replace.

Citation

Austin, C. (2020). Organisms, activity and being: on the substance of process ontology. European Journal for Philosophy of Science, 10(2), Article 13. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-020-0278-0

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Feb 4, 2020
• Online Publication Date: Feb 21, 2020
• Publication Date: May 31, 2020
• Deposit Date: Feb 12, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 3, 2020
• Journal: European Journal for Philosophy of Science
• Print ISSN: 1879-4912
• Electronic ISSN: 1879-4920
• Publisher: Springer
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 10
• Issue: 2
• Article Number: 13
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-020-0278-0
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1271280