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| 24397 | Truth is indeterminate in processes like coming to be and passing away |
| Full Idea: Truth-value indeterminacy is implicated no less in coming to be and passing away than it is in the context of situations of future contingency. | |||
| From: Nicholas Rescher (Process Metaphysics [1996], 7.2) | |||
| A reaction: The classic case of truth-value indeterminacy is Aristotle's sea fight tomorrow. Rescher rightly adds the arrival and departure of things, which are always processes rather than abrupt events. When is a foetus a person? When exactly did Pompeii cease? |
| 22626 | Process philosophy insists that processes are not inferior in being to substances |
| Full Idea: Process philosophy diametrically opposes the view that denies processes or downgrades them in the order of being or of understanding by subordinating them to substantial things. | |||
| From: Nicholas Rescher (Process Metaphysics [1996]), quoted by R.D. Ingthorsson - A Powerful Particulars View of Causation 7 | |||
| A reaction: [No page cited - nr start?] Ingthorsson quotes this in order to challenge it, and says that substances are also processes, because change is essential to them. |
| 24385 | Process philosophy is either phenomenological or biological or physical |
| Full Idea: Process philosophy can be phenomenological (as experience and order of cognition), or biological (as fundamental to life and organic existence), or as fundamental to nature and physical existence. | |||
| From: Nicholas Rescher (Process Metaphysics [1996], 01.10) | |||
| A reaction: Rescher says Whitehead combines all three, but he himself opts for the third, which strikes me as much the best version. The others are potentially both dualist and idealist. |
| 24387 | Prefer activity to substance, process to product, change to persistence, novelty to continuity |
| Full Idea: Process metaphysics says understanding the worlds realities call for the prioritisation of activity over substance, process over product, change over persistance, novelty over continuity. It does not deny the reality of the second members of those pairs. | |||
| From: Nicholas Rescher (Process Metaphysics [1996], 2.1) | |||
| A reaction: I presume 'prioritise' means to prefer as a source of good explanations. I see no reason to prefer the fluidities over its stabilities when explaining nature. To explain nature you must put pins in maps, not wave your hands. Explain the processes! |
| 24388 | A process is a coordinated group of changes, linked causally or functionally |
| Full Idea: A processs is a coordinated group of changes in the complexion of reality, an organised family of occurrences that are systematically linked to one another either causally or functionally. | |||
| From: Nicholas Rescher (Process Metaphysics [1996], 2.3) | |||
| A reaction: I appreciate a philosopher who attempts a full definition of their central concept. Some bones to pick over. I'm increasingly drawn to a process philosophy that emphasises functions. We need the origins and the roles of a process. |
| 24389 | Aristotelians say all processes are 'owned', and are thus subordinate to things |
| Full Idea: The medieval Aristotelians espoused the principle of 'Operari sequitur esse'. Operation (process) is subordinate to the being of things; all actually is the activity of substantial things, so that every process is owned. | |||
| From: Nicholas Rescher (Process Metaphysics [1996], 2.5) | |||
| A reaction: The question is where explanations must terminate. He has just distinguished (p.42) between 'owned' and 'unowned' processes. Clearly some processes are not owned by any agency. But can the unowned processes be explained, or must they be primtives? |
| 24390 | The orthodox view sees processes as the manifestations of stable dispositions of things |
| Full Idea: Traditional metaphysics is inclined to view processes (such as a rod's snapping under a strain) as the manifestation of dispositions (fragility) which are themselves rooted in the stable properties of things. | |||
| From: Nicholas Rescher (Process Metaphysics [1996], 2.5) | |||
| A reaction: My preferred approach is to subsume an account of processes within an ontology of primitive powers. Dispositions are more complex and high level than the powers. The heart of the discussion concerns the nature of properties. Rescher seems to agree. |
| 24391 | Processes without entities are possible, but there can't be entities without processes |
| Full Idea: Processes without substantial entities are perfectly feasible in the conceptual order of things, but substantial entities without processes are effectively inconceivable. | |||
| From: Nicholas Rescher (Process Metaphysics [1996], 2.5) | |||
| A reaction: Hard to disagree with this well-made argument in favour of processes as more basic. Russell observed that nothing seems to count as an object in the centre of the sun. Physics reveals a rock to be a flurry of minute activity. |
| 24395 | Processes instantiate and transmit patterns, though these are not predictable |
| Full Idea: Process philosophy insists that processes themselves both instantiate and transmit structural patterns. …That is denied is the exclusive prevalence of inevitable preestablished patterns that make prediction unfailingly possible. | |||
| From: Nicholas Rescher (Process Metaphysics [1996], 3.2) | |||
| A reaction: I include this because it offers a link to the idea of mathematics (in Resnik's phrase) as 'the science of patterns'. What then links the enduring nature of mathematics to unpredictable patterns is functions, which are multiply realisable. |
| 24394 | Maybe physical objects are stability-waves in a sea of processes |
| Full Idea: Process metaphysics stresses the need to regard physical things - material objects - as being no more than stability-waves in a sea of process. | |||
| From: Nicholas Rescher (Process Metaphysics [1996], 3.1) | |||
| A reaction: Invites the obvious question (for physicists, not me) of why they are stable. Standing waves are a familiar phenomenon in physics. So I'm (merely?) a stability-wave. |
| 24386 | Processes and events like storms are just as real as things like dogs |
| Full Idea: The concentration on perduring physical things as existents in nature slights the equal claims of another ontological category, namely processes, activities, events, occurrences - items better indicated by verbs than nouns. Storms are as real as dogs. | |||
| From: Nicholas Rescher (Process Metaphysics [1996], 2.1) | |||
| A reaction: The obvous response is that all of those entities are necessarily composed of things. But things exist at an instant, but his examples all need duration. His view needs the addition that the small things that compose them are themselves processes. |
| 24393 | The world contains many 'things' which are not substances |
| Full Idea: The world is full of 'things' that it does not make sense to count as substances; for example: rumours, heatwaves, songs, headaches. | |||
| From: Nicholas Rescher (Process Metaphysics [1996], 3.1) | |||
| A reaction: Rescher, of course, prefers to think of them as 'processes'. The word 'process' strikes me as over-emphasising where it is going, at the expense of what it is. Songs and headaches are vivid in the moment, with their duration simply an extra feature. |
| 24398 | A key form of knowing-how is knowing how to obtain and apply knowing-that |
| Full Idea: One of the most significant and characteristic kinds of know-how is the knowledge of how to operate at the level of theory - how to conure with theoretical knowledge-that over the range from obtaining it to using and conveying it. | |||
| From: Nicholas Rescher (Process Metaphysics [1996], 7.4) | |||
| A reaction: A nice point (made by a pragmatist) that propositional and procedural knowledge are not sharply distinct. Knowing-how is not only a fully rational process, but it is continuously needed in abstract thinking and practical reason. |
| 24392 | Primary properties describe what it is; secondary properties underlie the impact and responses |
| Full Idea: Primary properties describe the substance as it is in and by itself; secondary properties underlie the impact of substances upon others and the responses they invoke from them. | |||
| From: Nicholas Rescher (Process Metaphysics [1996], 2.6) | |||
| A reaction: A good summary of secondary qualities. If we are to explain the secondary 'impact' (though not the response), then we must use the primary to explain the secondary. |
| 24396 | What has value for humans is quite separate from any ideas of endurance and permanency |
| Full Idea: It is simply inappropriate of human most concerns, always and everywhere, that 'it just won't matter in a hundred years hence'. For one must not confuse value with permanency, importance with endurance. What matters is the overall scheme of things. | |||
| From: Nicholas Rescher (Process Metaphysics [1996], 6.5) | |||
| A reaction: Even Platonic ideals would cease to matter, by that reckoning, if there were no longer any creatures, such as humans, to take an interest in them. It is total nihilism to reject key values now on the grounds that some key moment will pass. Saving a life. |