Process Ontology

Translanguaging theories emphasize a fluid, dynamic view of language and differ from code-switching/mixing theories by de-centring the analytic focus from the language(s) being used in the interaction to the speakers who are making meaning and constructing original and complex discursive practices. Trans-semiotizing theories further broaden the focus to analyse language as entangled with many other semiotics (e.g. visuals, gestures, bodily movement) in meaning making. In this paper recent developments in trans/languaging and trans-semiotizing theories are discussed in conjunction with fine-grained classroom analyses to illustrate the key role played by trans/languaging and trans-semiotizing practices in the dialogic construal of content meaning in content-based education.

(From "French Ecocriticism", Eds. Finch-Race & Posthumus, 2017)
Over a ten-year period, the experimental filmmaker Jean-Claude Rousseau visited the Fontaine de Vaucluse, a natural spring in southern France. The result of Rous-seau's encounter with these landscapes, La Vallée close (1995), explores three processes of becoming. The first is cosmological: the director films the valley and its spring, bringing to life the landscape with its river, vegetation and grotto. The second is meta-filmic: the film thematises its very singular production process, discreetly showing how images combine without any cuts being made. The third is (auto-)biographical: towards the end of its 143-minute running time we understand that the film is a reflection on Rousseau's childhood , and a semi-fictional chronicle of the break-up of a relationship. This chapter draws on Henri Bergson's commentary on Lucretius' De rerum natura (explicitly featured in the soundtrack to the film), Félix Guattari's late ecosophical writings, and the process-oriented philosophy of Gilbert Simondon, in order to analyse Rousseau's exploration of the relations between ontology, perception and subjectivity. From Simondon's work, the chapter imports the concept of the individu-milieu [the individual as environment]. Simondon's concept helps to explain how worldmaking and filmmaking connect in an individual, bringing it into being, pulling it apart, eventually renewing it. The chapter concludes that the individu-milieu is a thoroughly ecological concept with a relevance for ecocriticism that far exceeds the particular case of La Vallée close. In the Vaucluse region of southern France, a peculiar natural phenomenon has fascinated locals and visitors for centuries. If you walk along the river Sorgue, all the way to the end of the valley, you arrive at the Fontaine de Vaucluse. For most of the year, a small stream runs from this grotto into the river. But every spring, a violent gush of water bursts forth, emptying millions of cubic metres into the river. The amount of water and the specific moment of its release do not correlate in any obvious way with the downpour seen throughout winter. Not surprisingly, a rich tradition of folklore has arisen around the fountain. Holy rituals have been performed, dragons and fairies have been spotted, artists and poets have painted and written (Petrarch; Frédéric Mistral), and scientists have attempted to dispel the myths-sometimes with near-fatal consequences (Jacques-Yves Cousteau and his team).

An increasing number of philosophers of biology are currently advocating process ontology as an ontological framework able to capture the profound dynamicity of biological reality. Living beings are claimed to be processes rather than things or substances. However, due to a lack of reflection on the ontological nature of processes, the implications of this process ontological turn in philosophy of biology are not sufficiently clear. In this chapter I show how Bergson provides helpful conceptual resources for clarifying the notion of process, on which basis then different versions of 'process biology' can be evaluated. I argue that Bergson's analyses of movement and change make a powerful case against the common fourdimensionalist interpretation, according to which organisms would be four-dimensional aggregates of portions of spacetime. If the 'process biologists' are serious about the fundamentally processual constitution of life and living beings, they ought to endorse a notion of process that does not reduce movement and change to static thing-like existents. Bergson's concept of 'duration'-indivisible temporal continuity-can serve as a model.

This chapter is from my book "Kulturelle Komplexität: Gilles Deleuze und die Kulturtheorie der American Studies" (transcript, 2015). Its aim is to delineate and discuss Deleuze's temporal understanding of the constitution of subjectivity, focusing on the three passive syntheses of time introduced in "Difference and Repetition."

The creation of a process ontology for biology is one of the most ambitious and important projects of current philosophy of biology. Process ontology is usually seen as opposing mechanistic ontology which currently dominates biology. However, the terms 'process' and 'mechanistic' are not always clearly defined in current debates. In this paper I provide a new definition of 'mechanism' and 'mechanistic ontology' based on the most abstract definition of 'machine'—von Foerster's 'non-trivial machine' that is related to Turing machine. I argue that the main methods of modeling used in systems biology rest upon the implicit assumption that organisms abide by the non-trivial or Turing machine logic. By showing that organisms and machines obey two incompatible logics of causality I demonstrate the limits of this assumption. The paper concludes by introducing an organism centered concept of process and arguing that Whitehead's process metaphysics offers a way of understanding organisms as exemplifications of a specific category of process.

I argue in this paper for a critical social ontology, or an approach to theorizing social reality and social institutions that is more than descriptive of social reality, but is also able to provide practical reasoning with an ontological dimension for judgment. At the heart of this idea is a different take on social metaphysics from most standard current accounts in that it begins with empirical, phylogenetic capacities of human beings for social practices (realizing abstract thought in the world) as well as relationality (the need for attachments to others). The combination of these two essential human capacities, what I call the practical-relational nexus, is generative of more complex social reality. The ontogeny of any social reality is the result of the ways that this practical-relational nexus has been organized and shaped by external social structures and systems, themselves the product of certain kinds of social power. I then explore the metaphysics of social power before considering the ways that this approach to social metaphysics can inform practical reasoning with the capacity for social and political criticism.

A critique of ontology which introduces seepage, the process of properties revealing themselves from the matrix forms of an object. What follows is the observation that these properties have their own system of relations, placed in the context of a culture of objects which engages a revealing process. An argument is presented for considering organization as the principle which allows for seepage, understood as an inherently informative and intuitive process where the organization of objects reveals some property and consequently makes us less uncertain about the object. Objects are deposited to be a continual process where the properties represented by the organization of its constituent parts change as they seep beyond its matrix. An object cannot inform us of all of its properties immediately, rather we acquaint ourselves with them as they are brought forth and become enframed as part of how we understand said object.

In recent years, an increasing number of theoretical biologists and philosophers of biology have been opposing reductionist research agendas by appealing to the concept of biological autonomy which draws on the older concept of autopoiesis. In my paper, I
investigate some of the ontological implications of this approach. The emphasis on autonomy and autopoiesis, together with the associated idea of organisational closure, might evoke the impression that organisms are to be categorised ontologically as substances: ontologically independent, well-individuated, discrete particulars. However, I argue that this is mistaken. Autopoiesis and biological autonomy, properly understood, require a rigorous commitment to a process ontological view of life.

In this introduction of the volume "Life and Process. Towards a New Biophilosophy," first I will explain why I believe it is necessary to differentiate between biophilosophy and the philosophy of biology. Second, I will review some of the shortcomings of today's biology and philosophy of biology and demonstrate how a biophilosophy grounded in a process-oriented metaphysics can overcome them. Third, I will provide a summary of Whitehead's process ontology, emphasizing those fundamental ideas from this paradigm that play essential roles in the present book. Finally, I will briefly describe the main ideas presented in subsequent chapters.

Though the realm of biology has long been under the philosophical rule of the mechanistic magisterium, recent years have seen a surprisingly steady rise in the usurping prowess of process ontology. According to its proponents, theoretical advances in the contemporary science of evo-devo have afforded that ontology a particularly powerful claim to the throne: in that increasingly empirically confirmed discipline, emergently autonomous, higher-order entities are the reigning explanantia. If we are to accept the election of evo-devo as our best conceptualisation of the biological realm with metaphysical rigour, must we depose our mechanistic ontology for failing to properly “carve at the joints” of organisms? In this paper, I challenge the legitimacy of that claim: not only can the theoretical benefits offered by a process ontology be had without it, they cannot be sufficiently grounded without the metaphysical underpinning of the very mechanisms which processes purport to replace. The biological realm, I argue, remains one best understood as under the governance of mechanistic principles.

According to the standard view of particularity, an entity is a particular just in case it necessarily has a unique spatial location at any time of its existence. That the basic entities of the world we speak about in common sense and science are particular entities in this sense is the thesis of “foundational particularism,” a theoretical intuition that has guided Western ontological research from its beginnings to the present day. The main aim of this paper is to review the notion of particularity and its role in ontology. I proceed in four steps. First, I offer a brief reconstruction of the tasks of ontology as “theory of categorial inference in L”. An ontological theory states which (combinations of) entity types or categories make true L-sentences true; the features of the stipulated categories explain why L-speakers are entitled to draw certain material inferences from the classificatory expressions of L. Second, I draw attention to the fact that since Aristotle this theoretical program typically has been implemented with peculiar restrictions prescribing certain combinations of category features, e.g., the combination of particularity, concreteness, individuality, and subjecthood. I briefly sketch how these restrictions of the “substance paradigm” or “myth of substance” are reinforced by the standard readings of predicate-logical constants, viz. the existential quantifier and the identity sign. Third, I argue that in the context of the substance paradigm foundational particularism is incoherent. I discuss the current standard conceptions of particulars as developed in the debate about individuation (bare particulars, nude particulars, tropes) and show that their main difficulties derive from the traditional restriction that particulars are so also logical subjects and/or individuals. Fourth, to show that the traditional linkages of category features are not conceptual necessities, I sketch the outlines of an ontology (General Process Theory) based on non-particular individuals. For ontologists in computer science working with description logic this monocategoreal ontology based on more or less generic ‘dynamics’ may hold special interest. As General Process Theory documents, ontologists may well abandon the notion of particularity: in common sense and science we do reason about items that have a unique spatial location at any time, but the uniqueness of their location can be taken to be a contingent affair.

According to dispositional realism, or dispositionalism, the entities inhabiting our world possess irreducibly dispositional properties - often called 'powers' - by means of which they are sources of change. Dispositionalism has become increasingly popular among metaphysicians in the last three decades as it offers a realist account of causation and provides novel avenues for understanding modality, laws of nature, agency, free will and other key concepts in metaphysics. At the same time, dispositionalism is receiving growing interest among philosophers of science. This reflects the substantial role scientific findings play in arguments for dispositionalism which, as a metaphysics of science, aims to elucidate the very foundations of science. In this introductory chapter, I give an overview of the state of the debate and explain the twofold aim of the present collection of essays which is (i) to explore the ontological commitments of dispositionalism and (ii) to discuss these against the background of latest scientific research, by bringing together perspectives from both metaphysics and the philosophy of science. I finally provide a summary of this intellectual journey.

Though disagreeing on what it is that causes actions – events or agents, event causal and agent causal theories of action causation do agree on which ontological category actions belong to: actions are commonly taken to be events. This orthodoxy has recently been questioned by Helen Steward who claims that actions are processes rather than events. According to Steward, acknowledging the processual nature of actions helps refute event-causal accounts of action causation while avoiding the shortcomings of standard agent-causal accounts. It thus to paves the way for a convincing libertarian defence of free will.
My paper assesses these theses. I argue argue that actions are indeed processes but that some even more radical revision of the ontology of agency is needed in order to bring about the progress envisaged by Steward. Only process ontology of both actions and agents will actually successfully remove common obstacles for a convincing libertarian account of free will.

Open Access Download: http://fdslive.oup.com/www.oup.com/academic/pdf/openaccess/9780198779636.pdf This collection of essays explores the metaphysical thesis that the living world is not made up of substantial particles or things, as has often been assumed, but is rather constituted by processes. The biological domain is organised as an interdependent hierarchy of processes, which are stabilised and actively maintained at different timescales. Even entities that intuitively appear to be paradigms of things, such as organisms, are actually better understood as processes. Unlike previous attempts to articulate processual views of biology, which have tended to use Alfred North Whitehead’s panpsychist metaphysics as a foundation, this book takes a naturalistic approach to metaphysics. It submits that the main motivations for replacing an ontology of substances with one of processes are to be found in the empirical findings of science. Biology provides compelling reasons for thinking tha...

Stephen Mumford has argued that dispositionalists ought to be endurantists because perdurantism, by breaking down persisting objects in sequences of static discrete existents, is at odds with a powers metaphysics. This has been contested by Neil Williams who offers his own version of 'powerful' perdurance where powers function as links between the temporal parts of persisting objects. Weighing up the arguments given by both sides, I show that the profile of 'powerful' persistence crucially depends on how one conceptualises the processes involved in the manifestation of powers. As this turns out not to be determined per se by subscribing to some view labelled 'powers view', further discussion is needed as to what processes are and to what kind of process theory a powers metaphysics should commit itself in order to be convincing. I defend the claim that dispositionalism is best combined with a version of process ontology that is indeed incompatible with a perdurantist analysis of persistence. However, I argue that this does not imply that dispositionalists ought to be endurantists.

This book argues that Sellars’ theory of intentionality can be understood as an advancement of a transcendental philosophical approach. It shows how Sellars develops his theory of intentionality through his engagement with the theoretical philosophy of Immanuel Kant.

The book delivers a provocative reinterpretation of one of the most problematic and controversial concepts of Sellars' philosophy: the picturing-relation. Sellars' theory of intentionality addresses the question of how to reconcile two aspects that seem opposed: the non-relational theory of intellectual and linguistic content and a causal-transcendental theory of representation inspired by the philosophy of the early Wittgenstein. The author explains how both parts cohere in a transcendental account of finite knowledge. He claims that this can only be achieved by reading Sellars as committed to a transcendental methodology inspired by Kant. In a final step, he brings his interpretation to bear on the contemporary metaphilosophical debate on pragmatism and expressivism.

Intentionality in Sellars will be of interest to scholars of Sellars and Kant, as well as researchers working in philosophy of mind, epistemology, and the history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophy.

Are we free in wanting what we want to do? Could we ever have acted differently from how we actually acted? A growing number of scholars and especially philosophers believe the answer to these questions is No. Over the past century, confidence in free will has been decreasing proportionally to the increasing willingness to acknowledge that humans are natural beings. Natural scientists, neuroscientists and metaphysicians are sceptical that free will is anything but a self-misunderstanding based on ignorance of natural facts.
In my talk I want to argue the opposite. Free will scepticism rests upon deeply mistaken metaphysical assumptions about nature, namely on outdated mechanistic views that neglect the fundamentally processual character of those beings whose agency and free will is at stake: living beings. Cutting-edge research especially in systems biology suggests that free will, far from being ruled out by our biological condition, is an integral part of human nature; and not only of the human. Humans, like many other organisms, are, in a sense to be explained further, naturally free. I will demonstrate how empirical insights from biology underpin and radicalise recent endeavours in metaphysics to acknowledge the biological roots of human agency and free will.

Contrary to the frequent assumption of university science teachers that learning is the storage of structural models, this paper argues that learning consists rather in the practical acquisition of contextualised skills. Learning contents consist not of amodal, substantial statements, but are always founded in subjectively lived, sensorimotor stories. This realisation explains the many bottlenecks that can arise when attempting to transmit these stories in the form of structural models. It also suggests a way out of such bottleneck situations using learning conversations of the kind practised in Decoding the Disciplines, which uncover the conceptual stories behind these models. Such conversations translate stories into construction activities that evoke intentionally similar stories in learners.
In this way, Decoding the Disciplines encourages a transition from a substance- to a process-ontology that is the central challenge of our time: expert and student knowledge is not a static structure of facts, but a competence that matures over time.

According to dispositional realism, or dispositionalism, the entities inhabiting our world possess irreducibly dispositional properties – often called ‘powers’ – by means of which they are sources of change. Dispositionalism has become increasingly popular among metaphysicians in the last three decades as it offers a realist account of causation and provides novel avenues for understanding modality, laws of nature, agency, free will and other key concepts in metaphysics. At the same time, it is receiving growing interest among philosophers of science. This reflects the substantial role scientific findings play in arguments for dispositionalism which, as a metaphysics of science, aims to unveil the very foundations of science.
The present collection of essays brings together both strands of interest. It elucidates the ontological profile of dispositionalism by exploring its ontological commitments, and it discusses these from the perspective of the philosophy of science. The essays are written by both proponents of dispositionalism and sceptics so as to initiate an open-minded, constructive dialogue.

This essay elaborates how an imbalanced reciprocity between inhabitants of places of relative safety and places of greater precarity results from pursuing security on the basis of a reactive fear of vulnerability. It analyzes a range of features that shape the complex forms that vulnerability takes with a particular focus on how the constitution of places as rhetorically and corporeally secure or not renders different groups of people secure and/or subject to heightened exposure to harm. This analysis suggests that vulnerability is better conceived as a process than a quality, mediating between conceptions of vulnerability as a universal condition and as a highly specific empirical condition. Finally, by departing from the negative, reactive view of vulnerability that animates the supposition of the boundedness of selves and places, an alternative conception of security that neither equates it with invulnerability nor opposes it to vulnerability can be developed.

Leibniz und Whitehead können als diejenigen Denker genannt werden, die in der abendländischen Ideen-Geschichte weitestgehend die Überzeugung vertraten und beeindruckend vertieften, die belebten und unbelebten Teile der Welt würden aus letzten, nicht teilbaren Entitäten, aus Individuen, bestehen. Die offensichtliche Verwandtschaft zwischen den Systemen beider Denker liegt darin, daß Monaden und 'actual entities' Subjekte und Individuen, d.h. Atome sind, für die es keine unwesentlichen akzidentellen Bestimmungen gibt.
    Es werden zwei zentrale Differenzen, die sich nicht aufeinander zurückführen lassen, unterschieden:
1) Leibniz ist ein Substanzontologe und Whitehead ein Prozeßmetaphysiker. Die Monaten Leibniz's wurden als von Gott geschaffene Substanzen konzipiert, während die 'actual entities' Whitehead's als sich selbst bestimmende Prozesse, für die Gott und die Objekte der Welt nicht determinierend sind. Monaden haben – weil substantiell – nur eine Art der Relationalität zur Welt: Perzeption und Appetit. Die 'actual entities' haben als Subjekte die Relationalität des Erfassens und als Objekte die der perspektivischen Aktualisierung in Raum und Zeit.
2) Die Körper der Monaden und ihre Raum-Zeit sind kontinuierlich, deshalb teilbar und somit phänomenal, denn nur Individuen sind wirklich. Die Aktualisierungen der 'actual entities' und die dazugehörige Raum-Zeit sind real und atomar. Die 'actual entitiy' lebt als Subjekt nur bis zu ihrer Aktualisierung.

Philosophical discussion about the reality of sensory perceptions has been hijacked by two tendencies. First, talk about perception has been largely centered on vision. Second, the realism question is traditionally approached by attaching objects or material structures to matching contents of sensory perceptions. These tendencies have resulted in an argumentative impasse between realists and anti-realists, discussing the reliability of means by which the supposed causal information transfer from object to perceiver takes place. Concerning the nature of sensory experiences and their capacity to provide access to reality, this article challenges the standard categories through which most arguments in this debate have been framed to date. Drawing on the underexplored case of olfaction, I first show how the details of the perception process determine the modalities of sensory experiences. I specifically examine the role of measurement and analyze its influence on the characterization of perceptions in olfaction. My aim is to argue for an understanding of perception through a process view, rather than one pertaining to objects and properties of objects.

This paper aims to motivate a new beginning in metaphysical thinking about persistence by drawing attention to the disappearance of change in current accounts of persistence. I defend the claim that the debate is stuck in a dilemma which results from neglecting the constructive role of change for persistence. Neither of the two main competing views, perdurantism and endurantism, captures the idea of persistence as an identity through time. I identify the fundamental ontological reasons for this, namely the shared commitment to what I call 'thing ontology': an ontology that gives the ontological priority to static things. I conclude by briefly indicating how switching to a process ontological framework that takes process and change to be ontologically primary may allow for overcoming the dilemma of persistence.

In this paper, we present two case studies of first-year, secondary science teachers who participated in an urban teacher residency. We adopt a situated analysis approach,
framed by rhizomatics, a non-linear theory of social activity, to investigate the ways they attempted to enact practices consistent with the inquiry-based, social justice focus of their pre-professional program. Our investigation was guided by the question, “How do two science teachers construct their instructional practices in their first year of teaching?” We argue that the practices that emerged for both teachers were shaped by negotiations between the teacher, her students, and other contextual factors. As such, teaching practices are not a direct product of teacher learning, but are rather co-constituted by multiple elements, and therefore are fundamentally hybrid. Such insights add to the extant body of research on the relationship between teacher learning and practice, and can assist in developing teacher preparation programs that can support the non-linear, multiplicitous, and relational nature of teaching.

What are persons and how do they exist? The predominant answer to this question in Western metaphysics is that persons, human and others, are, and exist as, substances, i.e., ontologically independent, well-demarcated things defined by an immutable (usually mental) essence. Change, on this view, is not essential for a person's identity; it is in fact more likely to be detrimental to it. In this chapter I want to suggest an alternative view of human persons which is motivated by an appreciation of their biological nature. Organisms, human and non-human, are dynamical systems that for their existence and persistence depend on an ongoing interaction with the environment in which they are embedded. Taking seriously this most fundamental human condition leads to recognising human persons as processes, i.e., as entities for the identity of which change is essential. It also implies a holistic view of the human mind.

Animalism, by holding that human persons, ontologically, are organisms with purely biological identity conditions, fails to capture 'what matters' about personal identity-the ethical dimensions, which appear to be linked to psychology. Here I show that this drawback originates from subjectivity being excluded from the concept of an organism; an exclusion facilitated by the idea that an organism is a substance or thing. In response I propose a processual animalism according to which organisms are interactively self-stabilising processes and thereby exhibit varying degrees of subjectivity. An organism, I argue, is the process of establishing and maintaining a self/non-self-distinction through the interactive construction of boundaries. As the Cartesian-style dichotomy between biology and psychology dissolves, ontology and ethics of personal identity unite in biological subjects.

This chapter will work with deleuzeguattarian theories, posthuman and new materialisms to examine how subjectivity becomes an entangled open-ended set of relations in ‘process ontology’ (Braidotti, 2006: 199). Gathering empirical materials
from texts, images and early childhood education, we will attempt to sense their complex ebb and flow that resists an always-already for-ness of the research process that modulates our experiencing of the young child in the posthuman early years. As
researchers, we will try to rethink data as words but also as images, movements, politics, molecules, affect, noise, haecceity and pollution, documenting our thoughts, preoccupations, transgressions, detours and distractions in the hope of rethinking our research as movements, openings, new improvisations.

The concept of levels of organization, despite its widespread scientific currency, has recently been criticized by a number of philosophers of science. This paper diagnoses the main source of problems facing theories of levels. On this basis, the problems with the usual criteria for distinguishing levels are evaluated: compositional relations, organizational types, and spatial scales. Drawing on some work on hierarchies in ecology, I argue in favor of an alternative conception of levels defined by the criterion of rates or time scales of processes.

RESUMO: No final da década de 1950, Merleau-Ponty desloca seu foco de investigação da fenomenologia à ontologia. Tal transição envolve a articulação de seus estudos prévios acerca da percepção e da corporeidade com os desdobramentos filosóficos dos postulados da física e da biologia da primeira metade do século. A partir de uma reformulação do conceito de natureza, fomentada não só pelas ciências supracitadas como pela metafísica de Whitehead, Merleau-Ponty propõe a admissão da natureza como um fluxo de expressividade temporal autoprodutora de sentido, incorporando ao âmago do ser a temporalidade e a negatividade antes exclusivas ao para-si. A carne de Merleau-Ponty, como veremos, está em harmonia com a noção de processo de Whitehead, apontando assim um certo hilozoísmo pré-socrático na ontologia de ambos. Dito isso, o objetivo do artigo consiste em examinar a ontologia indireta de Merleau-Ponty, indicando sua convergência com a filosofia de Whitehead para, finalmente, introduzirmos uma crítica incipiente a partir da obra de Francisco Varela. Defende-se aqui que o conceito de autopoiesis pode indicar uma alternativa à noção merleau-pontiana de natureza.

ABSTRACT: In the late 1950's, Merleau-Ponty shifted his research focus from phenomenology to ontology. Such a transition involves the articulation of his previous studies of perception and corporeity with the philosophical unfolding of the postulates of physics and biology from the first half of the century. By reformulating the concept of nature, fostered not only by the sciences mentioned above but also by Whitehead's metaphysics, Merleau-Ponty proposes the admission of nature as a temporal flux of self-producing meaningful expressiveness, incorporating temporality and negativity into the core of being, something that before was exclusive of the being-for-itself. Merleau-Ponty's flesh, as we shall see, is in harmony with Whitehead's notion of process, pointing to a certain pre-socratic hylozoism in the ontology of both. That being said, the purpose of the paper is to examine Merleau-Ponty's indirect ontology, indicating its convergence with Whitehead's philosophy, so we can finally introduce an incipient critique based on the work of Francisco Varela. It is argued here that the concept of autopoiesis may indicate an alternative to Merleau-Ponty's notion of nature.

This article reconstructs the pragmatist approach to social philosophy. It focuses on George Herbert Mead's and John Dewey's ideas in social ontology, philosophy of social science and social theory as well as on Dewey's later more emphatic conception of social philosophy as a new "first philosophy." Three characteristics of pragmatist social philosophy are emphasized: Its processual conception of the social, its insistence on the naturalness of social phenomena and its entanglement with a naturalist metaphysics. The combination of these three aspects lead to a conception of philosophical social criticism, which aligns pragmatism with other emancipatory social philosophies such as Frankfurt school critical theory and Marxism.

In organizational theories inspired by process ontologies of Spinoza, Bergson, or Deleuze, an organization only seems to be the effect of ontological forces and therefore exist only retroacti vely and derivatively. Simply put, process ontologies tend to overemphasize the virtual, active ontological forces of becoming in organizations. These assumptions cause the negative and reactive understanding of organizational processes: organizations oppress, restrict, adjust, and regulate becoming. In this perspective, organizations are defective, inadequate, and politically reactionary. They are the negative antitype of the positive, productive, and creative ontological forces. In this article, I situate the problem of organizations and becoming using the concept of "virtualization." For Deleuze, actualization is the expression of the virtual, resulting in the actual state of affairs, but once the state of affairs is actualized, there is a modulation or recipro cal folding, which affects the virtual; I suggest calling this "virtualization." Thus, each actualiza tion in the social dimension-each founding of an organization-modulates the ontological conditions of future organizational events. This means that Deleuze provides not only a theory of organizational becoming but also a theory of virtualization-or the modulation of becoming-of organizations. The concept of virtualization is illustrated by drawing on organizational case studies, which have implications for the understanding of virtualization. Virtualization is a process of patterning, a (de)potentialization, but also a de-and reterritorialization. Primarily understood as virtualization, organization is a meta-stable process.

Unlike what is the case for physical entities and other types of continuants, few process ontologies exist. This is not only because processes received less attention in the research community, but also because classifying them is challenging. Moreover, upper level categories or classification criteria to help in modelling and integrating lower level process ontologies have thus far not been developed or widely adopted. This paper proposes a basis for further classifying processes in the Basic Formal Ontology. The work is inspired by the aspectual characteristics of verbs such as homeomericity, cumulativity, telicity, atomicity, instantaneity and durativity. But whereas these characteristics have been proposed by linguists and philosophers of language from a linguistic perspective with a focus on how matters are described, our focus is on what is the case in reality thus providing an ontological perspective. This was achieved by first investigating the applicability of these characteristics to the top-level processes in the Gene Ontology, and then, where possible, deriving from the linguistic perspective relationships that are faithful to the ontological principles adhered to by the Basic Formal Ontology.

How is it possible that we stay the same over time even though we continuously change? Looking at the analytic debate on personal identity, we will find, very generally, three types of answers: 1) Staying the same while changing is possible, but we are not properly the same then, only more or less. Identity becomes replaced with similarity. 2) Staying the same while changing is possible, but we do not properly change after all; deep down we are unchanging. 3) Staying the same while changing is not possible. Personal identity – identity of a person through time – is an illusion. In my paper, I shall show that all three of these answers are not convincing and have to be rejected. I shall defend the thesis that the difficulties analytic metaphysics has with making sense of personal identity ultimately stem from the idea that a person is some kind of thing, or a conglomerate of things, and that we can leave these difficulties behind if we think of a person as a process instead.
The idea that persons are processes is not new; it has been suggested some time ago, in particular by philosophers who nowadays have become regarded as ‘continental’. However, the idea has not yet sufficiently been linked to the more recent ‘analytic’ debate on personal identity, not least because of the difference of schools. Against this background, the paper can be seen as an attempt to merge the ‘analytic’ and the ‘continental’ debate on personal identity by using process ontology as a unifying key. More ambitiously, given that the benefit to be gained from process ontology is as little restricted to the problem of personal identity as is the tendency in analytic metaphysics towards what I call ‘thing ontology’, the discussion presented is an exercise in reconciling ‘analytic’ and ‘continental’ philosophy as such, with personal identity serving as a test case.

Human persons exist longer than a single moment in time; they persist through time. However, so far it has not been possible to make this natural and widespread assumption metaphysically comprehensible. The philosophical debate on personal identity is rather stuck in a dilemma: reductionist theories explain personal identity away, while non-reductionist theories fail to give any informative account at all. This chapter argues that this dilemma emerges from an underlying commitment, shared by both sides of in the debate, to an ontology which that gives the priority to static unchanging things. The claim defended here is that the dilemma of personal identity can be overcome if we acknowledge the biological nature of human persons and switch to a process-ontological framework that takes process and change to be ontologically primary. Human persons are biological higher-order processes, rather than things, and their identity conditions can be scientifically investigated.

In contemporary ontology we can found two trends that could help us to understand the mystery of Eucharist: the so called “relational ontology” (RO) and the “gunk ontology” , which I have tried to develop as a Gunk Infinitive Ontology (GIO) . In the paper I outline how these two views could be used in the field of philosophical theology, developing the idea that the World is made of the substance of God  but that its gunky nature allows us to say that omnipresence can be plausibly understood in terms of infinites, since infinities can come in different densities. According to GIO every particle in the universe “is everything” (because everything is in everything) and “is God”, even if God doesn’t coincide with the World, due to the different densities. The World is the “body of God” but is not God. Moreover, God can be “especially present”, in different densities, in different places.
What about “real presence”? The fact that God is omnipresent and especially present, causes that “real presence” needs to be something different and specific, needs some more assumptions. In the Eucharist God is truly present in that part of Himself which is in perfect union with the human nature (corporeal and spiritual) of Christ. Hence, it is first necessary to establish how the nature of God (in the person of the Logos) can be present completely and especially in the nature of Christ. Secondly, how the body of Jesus is really present in the Eucharist.
As I have shown in my previous research , GIO is a form of RO, and a “relational” conception of the Eucharist can help us to explain this mystery. In a gunk-relational ontology, every substance is the results of its relations, and the relations is the results of the gunky fundamental reality. This means that, in some way, the liturgical celebration of the Last Supper creates a new relational situation for the bread: it is (spiritually) “consecrated” by the liturgical formula and (physically) “broken\share” in the community. The substance of the bread, therefore, which is also its relations, profoundly changes its nature (even if not in its external manifestations) because of those two simultaneous and necessary liturgical acts. GIO can help us explain better this mystery.

"Apakah Covid-19 benar-benar ada?" merupakan suatu pertanyaan yang kita temui begitu sering, baik tersirat maupun tersurat, baik diucapkan atau tidak diucapkan, oleh siapa saja, baik yang kita kenal atau tidak kenal. Pertanyaan semacam ini, ketika kita temui dalam keseharian, umumnya memiliki makna yang sama seperti pertanyaan lain, seperti "Apakah hari ini ada tugas atau tidak?" "Apakah hari ini ada uang untuk beli makan?" dan seterusnya. Karena wataknya yang global, Covid-19 bisa dikatakan sebagai sejenis lingua franca baru yang menyatukan setiap orang di dunia. Siapa yang tidak mengetahui makna dari pernyataan seseorang bahwa "Covid-19 sedang mewabah", siapa yang tidak merasakan horror yang dibawa dan dilekatkan kepada suatu 'entitas' aneh ini, terutama di awal masa pandemik di mana nama Covid digaungkan di media dan kebijakan-kebijakan politis dibuat berdasarkan suatu peristiwa besar bernama 'Pandemi Covid-19'?

What are persons and how do they exist? The predominant answer to this question given by Western metaphysics is that persons, human and others, are and exist as substances, i.e., as some sort of discrete particular whose identity is determined by a certain set of intrinsic essential characteristics.
In my talk I want to suggest an alternative view which is motivated by metaphysical considerations about persistence as well as by recent insights from systems biology and the theory of cognition derived from it (‘enactivism’). If we take seriously that at least human persons are living dynamical systems, embedded in a natural environment and for their existence at a time as well as through time dependent on an interaction with that environment, we are led to recognise them as organised and stabilised higher-order processes rather than as substances in the traditional sense.