=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2518/paper-FOUST11
|storemode=property
|title=How Do Processes Work?
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2518/paper-FOUST11.pdf
|volume=Vol-2518
|authors=Fumiaki Toyoshima
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/jowo/Toyoshima19
}}
==How Do Processes Work?==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2518/paper-FOUST11.pdf
How Do Processes Work?
Fumiaki TOYOSHIMAa,1
a
Graduate School of Advanced Science and Technology, JAIST, Japan
Abstract. This paper focuses upon the notion of process that is allegedly an
‘ongoing’ continuant-like occurrent (or occurrent-like continuant) and that attracts
growing attention in formal ontology and in philosophy. We argue on closer
examination that underlying ideas behind processes may be at least as well
explicable through a fuller exploitation of existing categories and relations as in
terms of the distinctive ontological category of processes.
Keywords. process, time, persistence, action, causation
1. Introduction
Upper ontologies are by nature characterized by various choices, a classical example of
which is ontological choices [1]: choices as to whether a given category or relation is
adopted. There are two ontological choices that are relatively widely accepted. One is
the distinction between universals (aka types, classes) and particulars (aka tokens,
instances), where particulars (e.g., Mary) bear the instance-of relation to universals (e.g.,
Human). The other is the distinction (whether within particulars or universals) between
continuants (aka endurants) and occurrents (aka perdurants). One typical example of
continuants is objects: e.g., molecules, people, and planets. We will speak mainly of
particulars unless otherwise specified (e.g., ‘occurrent universal’).
The goal of this paper is to scrutinize the ontological category of processes. Different
upper ontologies employ the term ‘process’ quite differently; but the kind of process on
which we focus is allegedly an ‘ongoing’ occurrent that is typically expressed by the
progressive aspect of the English verb: e.g., “Mary is walking.” Processes have enjoyed
a growing attention both in philosophy [2-4] and in formal ontology [5-7] for the last
decade. There are still some thorny questions to be answered regarding their essential
nature. For instance, many disputants agree that, although being occurrents, processes
are like continuants in some sense; and a few say that processes are conversely occurrent-
like continuants. Closer examination of processes will afford us a deeper understanding
of continuants and occurrents, and hence of upper ontologies in general.
More specifically, we will examine what we call ‘global arguments’ (Section 2) and
‘local arguments’ (Section 3) for processes. The former provide foundational reasons for
adopting processes that are closely related to time and persistence. In ontological
parlance, they pertain to meta-ontological choices [8] of upper ontologies: choices that
are fundamental enough to determine ontological choices. Contrariwise, the latter offer
more specific motivations for processes to the effect that processes serve as a useful
conceptual tool for analyzing mentality, actions, and causation. Our basic thesis is that,
1
E-mail: toyo.fumming@gmail.com, fumiakit@buffalo.edu. Copyright © 2019 for this paper by its
authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
instead of introducing the distinctive ontological category of processes, we can specify
processes sufficiently well by leveraging more effectively existing categories and
relations. We conclude the paper with some brief remarks on future work (Section 4).
2. Global Arguments
2.1. Time and Persistence: Preliminaries
Let us begin by explaining background knowledge of time and persistence before
considering arguments that emphasize a specific temporal and persistence-related aspect
of processes. Philosophy of time revolves around two issues. One is the dispute over
what we may call ‘NOW’ between the A-theory (aka the tensed theory) and B-theory
(aka the tenseless theory).2 Our experience of time teaches us that there is something
special about NOW. We (directly) experience only the present time, but not any past or
future time. Additionally, NOW seems to move in one direction and the irreversible
movement of NOW appears to be the single most important factor of our experience of
the ‘passage’ or ‘flow’ of time. The question is whether NOW, the flow of time, and the
distinction between the past (‘before NOW’), the present (‘contemporaneous with
NOW’), and the future (‘after NOW’) are the objective (mind- and language-
independent) characteristics of the real world or not. The A-theory says yes: the
movement of NOW creates the passage of time from the past through the present towards
the future [10]. The B-theory says no: NOW, the flow of time, and the purported past-
present-future distinction are nothing more than the features of our experience of time,
but not those of fundamental reality of time [11].
The other is the dispute over temporal ontology. Two major positions are eternalism
and presentism. Eternalism says that the past, the present, and the future exist [11].
Presentism holds that only the present exists [12]. More precisely, eternalism is the view
that past and future times, objects, and occurrents are as real as the present times, objects,
and occurrents. Presentism counters that only the present times, objects, and occurrents
exist. Imagine that one asks: “Does Socrates exist?” The eternalist says yes; and the
presentist says no. 3 A philosophical stance of time is usually characterized by a
combination of theories in both controversies. For instance, presentists invariably argue
for the A-theory, so that the term ‘presentism’ is more often than not used to refer to a
package consisting of presentism (in our sense of the term) and the A-theory; and
eternalists usually, if not always, endorse the B-theory.
Lastly, philosophy of persistence centers on the debate between endurantism and
perdurantism [14, pp. 202-204].4 An object persists if and only if it exists at one time,
2
The terms ‘A-theory’ and ‘B-theory’ are ascribed to McTaggart’s [9] terms ‘A-series’ and ‘B-series’ of
time in his argument for the unreality of time, respectively.
3
Note that the eternalist and the presentist both agree that Socrates does not exist ‘now’ (in the ordinary
sense of the term) but existed approximately 2500 years ago. They disagree (as they insist, at least) on the
philosophically substantive problem of whether Socrates exists at the fundamental level of reality. See e.g.,
Sider [13, Chapter 11] for more thoughts.
4
Two caveats. First, we avoid using the terms ‘three-dimensionalism’ and ‘four-dimensionalism’ that
tend to be highly polysemous in formal ontology as well as in philosophy, although they are sometimes
regarded as synonymous with endurantism and perdurantism, respectively. Second, we do not draw a
distinction within perdurantism between the worm theory [14] (“A persisting object is a four-dimensional
and also exists at another distinct time: e.g., a frog persists if it existed as an embryo and
exists as a tadpole. Note that an object is something that persists, whereas an occurrent
is something that happens or occurs. Perdurantism is the thesis that objects persist by
‘perduring’, i.e., by having (proper) temporal parts: temporal analogues of spatial parts.5
On the perdurantist account, for instance, a frog has its ‘embryo temporal parts’ and its
‘tadpole temporal parts’, just as the frog has the head as its spatial part. Endurantism
consists in rejecting perdurantism and insisting that an object persists by ‘enduring’,
which is typically construed as saying that an object is ‘wholly present’ at every time at
which it exists. Notwithstanding controversy as to what this phrase is supposed to mean
(see e.g., [16,17]), we can interpret endurantism as the doctrine that objects do not have
(proper) temporal parts at every time at which they exist.6
2.2. Processes as A-theoretic and Enduring Occurrents
It is notoriously difficult to discuss processes, owing in part to the fact that significantly
diverse usages of the terms ‘process’, ‘event’, and ‘state’ have been offered in the
literature (see e.g., [4]). First of all, the term ‘event’ can be read at least in three ways:
(i) occurrents in general, as many ontologists say; (ii) a typical kind of occurrents, or
more specifically non-instantaneous occurrents in contrast with instantaneous ones (e.g.,
the onset of sleep); and (iii) ‘completed occurrents’ that would be concordant with the
perfective aspect of the English verb (e.g., “Mary walked.”), as some advocates
(‘processualists’ hereafter) of ontology of processes claim. Connectedly, the term
‘process’ can be interpreted either as (ii) or as (iv) ‘ongoing occurrents’.7 From now on
we will refer to events and processes in the (iii) and (iv) sense of the terms, respectively,
unless otherwise specified. To keep things manageable, on the other hand, we will use
the term ‘state’ while leaving aside its exact ontological nature (but see Section 4).
Let us examine ontology of processes. There is, first of all, some agreement among
the disputants (whether processualists or not) over the following statements:
• (A) Endurantism: continuants (objects) ‘survive’ various changes over time.
‘worm’ that stretches out through time.”) and the stage theory [15] (“A persisting object consists of ‘stages’
such that the object name refers to different stages at different times.”).
5
There is considerable disagreement on how to define explicitly what temporal parts are meant to be,
though. See Sider [15, Chapter 3] for their definition currently most widely used in the literature.
6
Strictly speaking, we should be wary of the understanding of persistence based on temporal parts.
Although temporal parts are traditionally taken to be the crux of the matter of persistence (see e.g., [14, pp.
202-204]), there is nowadays an increasing consensus among philosophers of persistence that the endurantist
and perdurantist accounts of persistence should be primarily characterized in light of spatiotemporal location
(namely, how objects are located in spacetime) and it serves at best as an auxiliary assumption whether objects
have or lack (proper) temporal parts [18-20]. We are justified in regarding persistence as the subject of temporal
parts, however, insofar as the discussion on processes is concerned. We nonetheless admit that this recent active
re-framing of the endurantist/perdurantist debate over persistence may be impactful enough to bring about a
radical shift in the whole argumentation offered in this paper.
7
For an interesting exception, an upper ontology the Descriptive Ontology for Linguistic and Cognitive
Engineering (DOLCE) [1] has the category of processes based on Vendler’s [21] aspectual classification of
verbs, which fall neither into (ii) nor into (iv). In defining (public) services as activities and discussing the
ontological nature of activities, Guarino, Longo and Guizzardi [22, p. 5] comment on DOLCE-processes as
follows: “they [activities] would correspond to what in DOLCE are called processes. This choice is however
not particularly amenable for our purposes, since perdurants in DOLCE are entities frozen in time, which
cannot change. This would force us to model services only as historical entities, after they have ceased to be
present. On the contrary, the idea of services as activities relies on the intuition that such activities are typically
ongoing, and can genuinely change in time (…).”
• (B) Occurrents are temporally extended (‘unfold in time’, ‘occupy time’).
• (C) Occurrents have temporal parts.
• (D) Occurrents have as participant some continuant (object).8
It is not hard to see that (B) and (C) are almost always coupled, as is indicated by the fact
that the term ‘perdurant’ (which we can understand here as an entity having temporal
parts) is synonymous with the term ‘occurrent’. A few processualists would actually
seem to deny (B) and (C) in perceiving processes as occurrent-like continuants, roughly
in such a way that, although they do occur, processes satisfy neither (B) nor (C) because
they are continuants [3,23]. As Steward [2] convincingly argues, however, this is a
considerably pricy view because it may risk us failing to understand what it is like to be
an occurrent. We will thus put a main focus on processes as (continuant-like) occurrents.
Processualists’ primary motivation for processes would be that existing ontology of
occurrents comes down to ontology of events because it has taken for granted the
coupling of the B-theory with eternalism, which is sometimes called the ‘block universe
view’ and according to which the ‘block spacetime’ is a four-dimensional manifold of
points that in no way changes or grows.9 Ontology of events provides only a ‘static’
picture of occurrents and fails to capture the ‘dynamic’ aspect of the world. To take
Steward’s [2] example, suppose that a car travelling was smooth at time t1 but bumpy at
t2. Intuitively, there seems to be a change in the occurrent of the car travelling from
smoothness to bumpiness. Ontology of events leaves this change unexplainable, as
processualists say, because the event of the car travelling is ‘frozen’ in the block universe
and it is unchangeable. This requires us to adopt ontology of processes as A-theoretic
and enduring occurrents: occurrents that are ‘now’ happening or occurring, and also that
‘endure’ just as objects do (recall (A)).10 In this second point, processes are said to be
continuant-like occurrents.11 The change under consideration is explicable in terms of
the change of the process of the car travelling, which was smooth at t1 and bumpy at t2.
This occurrent view of processes is fraught with difficulties, however. One of the
most cogent reasons for this is arguably the apparent inconsistency between the
‘perdurant’ nature of processes (i.e., (C)) and their special, enduring feature. This forces
the defender to face a dilemma about whether to accept this contradiction. First Horn: to
circumvent it, the supporter needs to abandon the occurrent conception of processes and
adopt their continuant view, which above turned out to be highly problematic. Second
Horn: to resolve the conflict, she has to postulate a ‘surrogate’ for the ‘enduring identity’
of processes, which would yield implausible complexities.12 In addition, the A-theoretic
facet of processes is obscure as well. Processualists would strive to supplement (instead
of replacing) ontology of B-theoretic events with ontology of A-theoretic processes; but
8
It may be sometimes argued that there are processes (or events) without any participant. As some
processualists would say, for instance, a process of sound wave has no participant even if it depends on air.
Whether (D) can be dropped or not lies outside the scope of this paper.
9
Guarino’s [7] term ‘eternalist view’ would correspond closer to the block universe view than to
eternalism in the terminology of this paper.
10
Variants of our appeal to the A-theory in characterizing processes include the ‘temporal window’ [5],
the ‘perspective from within the happening of an occurrence’ [24], and the ‘experiential point of view’ [25].
Note that Stout [3] mentions A-series (see Footnote 3) and Guarino [7] aims at a ‘tensed ontological account’
of processes.
11
There is also the view (e.g., [5]) that processes are, in some sense, ‘constituents’ of events, just as
matter (e.g., a block of marble) is of objects (e.g., Michelangelo’s statue David).
12
Cf. Charles’s [23] objections to the idea of the temporal window [5].
the A-theory and the B-theory are, by definition, mutually incompatible in the debate
over NOW. Furthermore, the block universe view may have the virtue of ontological
modeling (e.g., as compared to the combination of the A-theory and presentism), as
Guarino [7] implies. Processualists’ attempt might be thus interpreted as offering a sort
of B-theoretic treatment of NOW in some way or other.13
We hypothesize, albeit somewhat boldly, that underlying ideas behind ontology of
processes may be largely, if not totally, explicable in terms of occurrent universals. In
fact, some recent endeavors to avoid the aforementioned dilemma would provide some
considerations in favor of our thesis. While positing that continuants and events have
their properties primarily at times and atemporally respectively, for instance, Steward [2]
suggests that processes have their properties primarily between times and that our
capability of idealization enable us to think that their ‘between time’ properties are said
to be had at the times which fall within the relevant period.14 Using the car-travelling
example, to say that the car travelling was smooth at t1 (resp. bumpy at t2) amounts to our
idealized paraphrase of the ontological fact that t1 (resp. t2) was a moment which falls
within a period of time over which the car-travelling process was smooth (resp. bumpy).
Some deep concerns arise over Steward’s theory of processes. Suppose further that
the car travelling was smooth between t0 and t1.5, and bumpy between t1.5 and t3. There
are at least two occurrents in this scenario: (a) the process (say PCT) that unfolds itself
between t0 and t3; and (b) the event (say ECT) that unfolds itself between t0 and t3. On her
account, PCT is smooth between t0 and t1.5, and bumpy between t0 and t3; whereas, this is
not the case with ECT because it has properties primarily atemporally. The question lies
in the principle of individuation for PCT and ECT. She begs the question unless he
delineates why PCT sharply contrasts with ECT although they both span the same interval
of time. To see the problem more clearly, let us introduce two more occurrents: (c) the
event (say Esmooth) that unfolds itself between t0 and t1.5; and (d) the event (say Ebumpy) that
unfolds itself between t1.5 and t3. We could agree with Steward in the following sense:
the fact that Esmooth is smooth and Ebumpy is bumpy is at best a necessary (but not sufficient)
condition for the change in the car-travelling from smoothness at t1 to bumpiness at t2
because Esmooth and Ebumpy are (numerically) different. It is highly doubtful how she can
say that PCT (but not ECT) is smooth between t0 and t1.5, and bumpy between t1.5 and t3
without falling into the trap of speaking of ‘process counterparts’ of Esmooth and Ebumpy.
Steward’s [2] work is nonetheless well worth noting in virtue of its unique reference
to idealization. Insofar as they satisfy (B) and (C) as occurrents, processes do not have
properties at any time instant; but we can idealize ‘between time’ properties of processes
in such a way that, just like objects, processes have properties (secondarily) at times.
This observation may direct us further towards the idea of processes as occurrent
universals. Our serious worry over her proposal shows the grave difficulty of finding
room for processes in the realm of particulars, where processes would be inevitably
indistinguishable from events. Ontology of processes would necessitate the abstraction
or ‘idealization’ of processes into universals. At the first attempt, processes and events
can be reconceptualized as follows: processes are occurrent universals whose instances
13
Guarino [7] seems to characterize processes in terms of what we may call ‘A-theoretic properties’,
which are compatible with block universe worldview. Close examination of his theory of processes requires
serious engagement with ontology of properties, which is beyond the scope of this paper.
14
Following Steward [2] (and hence à la the DOLCE [1] upper ontology), we are assuming that, being
disjoint from continuants and occurrents, properties are their characteristics. Note that, for instance, an upper
ontology Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) [26] classifies properties as a subtype of continuants (dependent
continuants) and BFO is skeptical of the possibility of (talk of) properties of occurrents.
are events. On this construal of processes and events, for instance, ECT is an instance of
a process (occurrent universal) of the car travelling. More interestingly, the change in the
car-travelling from smoothness at t1 to bumpiness at t2 would be explained by the fact
that a process of the car travelling is instantiated in a ‘smooth way’ at t1 (hence the
occurrence of the t1-event of the smooth car-travelling) and in a ‘bumpy way’ at t2 (hence
the occurrence of the t2-event of the bumpy car-travelling). Generally speaking, the
change in properties of events (occurrent particulars) is attributable to the change in the
way of the instantiation of the corresponding process (occurrent universal). In this
respect, ontology of processes is certainly complementary to ontology of events.
Galton [25] actually develops a quite similar line of argument: “processes are higher-
level, abstract patterns that are realized concretely as states or events” [25, p. 42]. His
argument builds upon his distinction of (spatial and temporal) patterns: open patterns
(e.g., a wallpaper pattern) and closed patterns (e.g., a dress pattern). The former can have
a potentially infinite repetition (e.g., of the motif of the wallpaper pattern), while the
latter must have fully specified demarcations (e.g., a particular arrangement of shapes of
the dress pattern). Processes are temporal patterns (whether open or closed). In the car-
travelling example, ECT is an event that is a realization of an open process of car
travelling; but assuming that the car travelled to New York, ECT can be seen as an event
of that is a realization of a closed process of car-traveling-to-New-York.
While conceding the high relevance of patterns to ontology research in general [27],
we think that occurrent universals may be enough to characterize processes with no help
from patterns because universals have a lot in common with patterns: e.g., we can speak
of an occurrent universal of the car-travelling(-to-New-York). For one thing, universals
(like patterns) have a one-to-many relation towards particulars. For another, just as
patterns are analogous with specifications (according to Galton), so are universals. This
would be vindicated by the observation that universals are as such normative, just as
specifications are.15 In discussing the source of the normativity of functions, for instance,
McLaughlin [30, p. 101] contends: “The type-token distinction can introduce a minimal
normativity into any context in which it is used.” Galton would seem to offer a
counterexample to our identification of processes with occurrent universals, however.
As he says, there is no process (pattern) whose realizations are instantaneous events: e.g.,
reaching the top of a mountain. We would prefer to suspend judgement on this; but we
may be able to deal with this kind of case (if true) by softening our claim: processes are
occurrent universals whose instances are non-instantaneous events (occurrent
particulars).
One may suspect that occurrent universals are as mysterious as processes. Suppose
for instance that a car travelled one day from Graz to Wien, and another day from Graz
to Salzburg. It is not perfectly clear whether there is a unique car-travelling universal that
is instantiated in two different days. Although the identity condition of occurrent
universals may be indeed elusive, this is an instance of the across-the-board problem of
15
The ontological nature of a specification remains obscure, but Turner [28] maintains insightfully that
a specification is something that has “correctness jurisdiction over an artefact” [28, p. 147, our italicization
added]. By ‘correctness jurisdiction’ he means that the specification places “empirical demands on the physical
device” [28, p. 144]. If an artifact is not built to a certain specification, the artifact is defective with respect to
that specification. Duncan [29] illustrates this point as follows: “For example, if I build a physical
implementation of a stack and the device does not allow me to add and remove items from the top of the device,
my device is defective relative to the specification of a stack” [29, pp. 16-17]. Quite importantly, Turner
considers specifications as intentional: “Our intentional stance determines what we take to be the specification:
something is a specification if we give it normal force over the construction of an artefact” [28, p. 147, our
italicization added].
the identity criteria for occurrent particulars, which even processualists must handle.
Therefore, one would not be well motivated to introduce an ontology of processes unless
one deals seriously with the identity of occurrent particulars (see [31] for a recent work).
3. Local Arguments
3.1. Processes and Minds/Actions
Let us move onto local arguments for ontology of processes. One main philosophical
impetus towards processes is the idea that mental occurrents such as actions and
experiences are to be better characterized in terms of ‘dynamic’ processes than ‘static’
events or states, the latter of which is often used in philosophy of mind (e.g., ‘mental
state’); otherwise, we would fail to understand properly the subjective aspect of mental
phenomena [24]. For instance, Soteriou [32] submits that the experience is an ‘occurrrent
state’: a state that is constitutively bounded up with events or processes (but see
Steward’s [33] criticism of the contradictory nature of occurrent states).
We doubt the explanatory potency of ontology of processes with respect to mental
states and actions, however, although it may sound sensible to ground mentality in A-
theoretic processes since the A-theory consists in giving a straightforward explanation
of our experience of time. For one thing, one would be obliged to put a central focus on
(the mental structure of) agents in order to consider what kind of processes accord well
with actions and experiences (see e.g., [34]). To put it ontologically, mental occurrents
would be more duly conceptualized from the standpoint (D) of agents’ participation in
them than from the perspective (B) of their temporal extendedness.
For another, even if the subjectivity of the mind is linked with some kind of
dynamism, we suggest that one ascribe alleged mental dynamism not to the ‘ongoing-
ness’ of processes but to the dynamics involved in a complex interaction between mental
occurrents such as experiences and actions; and other kinds of mental entities such as
agents and the physical basis of mentality (e.g., brains). To be more concrete, consider a
dispositional analysis of mentality. A disposition is a property that is linked to a
realization, namely to a specific possible behavior of a continuant (including an object)
that is the bearer of the disposition [35,36]. To be realized in an occurrent, a disposition
needs to be triggered by some other occurrent. Paradigmatic examples include fragility
(the disposition to break when pressed with a certain force) and solubility (the disposition
to dissolve when put in a certain solvent). Characteristically, dispositions may exist even
if they are not realized or even triggered. A glass is fragile even if it never breaks or even
if it never undergoes any shock, for instance.
Barton et al. [37] identify two ontological meanings of the term ‘belief’: a belief
disposition and a belief occurrent. The former is a disposition that can be realized in the
latter, which is a mental occurrent of taking something to be the case. A belief disposition
exists even when we are not actively thinking it, and when we are actively thinking about
a belief, we engage in an belief occurrent during which we take something to be the case.
This dispositional approach to belief can extend to desire [38] and intention [39], and
hence to the basic mental mechanism (see e.g., [40, Section III-C]), given the widespread
usage of the Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) model of agency [41] for practical reasoning
and rational actions in the domain of formal ontology of mind [34]. Generally speaking,
we would be able to theorize well on minds and actions by exploring a ‘connector’ (e.g.,
mental dispositions) between mental occurrents and mental non-occurrents.
3.2. Processes and Causation
Another reason for endorsing ontology of processes is that our description of the causal
structure of the world would be incomplete unless we take processes with ontological
seriousness. For space reasons we will spotlight only token-level causation and use the
term ‘causation’ to refer to it. As the standard account goes (see e.g., [41, Section II-A]),
causation is (or at least can be represented by) a special kind of binary relation between
occurrents. Processualists object as follows, however: “Causation (…) was to be
understood as a relation (…) between events within a succession of events. This picture
of causation had no room for any ongoing causal process of something making something
else happen” [24, p. 5].
The first thing to remark is that, if our hypothesis (formulated in Section 2.2) is
correct, then processes prove to be occurrent universals and have to do with causation
only via their ‘being-instantiated relation’ with (particular) occurrents. Even if we
acknowledge processes in the sphere of particulars, however, ontology of processes may
not be explanatorily powerful enough to be indispensable for ontology of causation. To
exemplify this point, let us consider Galton’s [42] work on different causal and causal-
like relations based on ontology of events, processes, and states. In his example of an act
of moving a wheelbarrow, the process of pushing bears a causal-like ‘perpetuation
relation’ to the process of moving.
According to Thomsen and Smith [43, Section 2.2], by contrast, this may
implausibly entail that moving does not occur if pushing fails; however, it is not the case
that moving is caused by pushing, but that moving is pushing under certain conditions.
They propose what they call ‘a more accurate causal assay of a movement of this sort’
in terms of occurrents, assuming that John pushed a wheelbarrow:16
• t’0: John intends to push and the wheelbarrow is stationary.
• t’1: John begins to attempt to execute a pushing occurrent against the
wheelbarrow; the electrical impulses have not yet contracted his triceps.
• t’2: John’s exertional force exceeds the wheelbarrow’s stationery force and the
wheelbarrow begins to move; its motion is a part of a successful pushing
occurrent.
• t’3: John’s exertional force continues to exceed the force required to move the
wheelbarrow and the wheelbarrow continues to move.
• t’4: John intends to stop pushing the wheelbarrow.
• t’5: John’s exertional forces drop below the level of the wheelbarrow’s
stationary forces and the wheelbarrow ceases to move.
On our view, one cannot determine unconditionally which is a more suitable causal
explanation of the scenario of moving a wheelbarrow. Some may prefer the former
description because it is more simple and intuitive, while others may justify the latter
account on the grounds of its rigor and meticulousness. In general, we presume that
intuition plays such a vital role in ontology of causation (see e.g., [44]) that different
domain-specific assumptions and knowledge may furnish fairly different criteria for an
appropriate example analysis of causation. Therefore, general thoughts about causation
per se do not provide a sound reason for adopting ontology of processes.
16
Put precisely, Thomsen and Smith’s analysis [43] employs the BFO [26] category of processes, which
would correspond approximately to events in the (ii) sense of the term according to our terminology.
4. Conclusion
To summarize, we examined global arguments (relating to time and persistence) and
local arguments (relating to mentality, action, and causation) for the notion of process
that is purportedly an ‘ongoing’ occurrent. A general lesson from our study is that
underlying ideas behind processes may be at least as well explainable through a fuller
deployment of existing ontological resources as in terms of the conceptualization of
processes as a special subtype of occurrents. This does not mean however that we deny
altogether the status of processes in upper ontologies. We would rather prefer the
‘republican strategy’ to offer different ways of modeling processes (e.g., [7]) according
to different domain-specific needs, while recoiling from the ‘monarchial strategy’ to
introduce the distinctive ontological category of processes to every upper ontology.
There are a number of different directions in which ontology of processes can
proceed. First and foremost, careful formal-ontological consideration of time and
persistence is clearly warranted, granted that, as Galton [45] reports, little in-depth
investigation has been conducted into time in formal ontology, and arguably much less
into persistence. It will be also a noteworthy line of research to examine states (which
we omitted to discuss directly) since they are intimately connected to processes.17
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