Date: 4-5 July 2024
Venue: University of Siegen, Campus Unteres Schloss, Hörsaalzentrum US-C (Kölner Str. 41, 57072 Siegen, Ger), Room 101
Powers, Processes and Persistence is the final manifestation of the DFG-Network on Change and Change-Makers (CCM). The goal of CCM was to enable a dialogue about the future of the debate about persistence. In contrast to the standard debate about persistence, where change is simply presupposed, CCM looks closer at how changes come about and how they are mitigated through time. The working hypotheses was that powers are the change makers bringing about change, which unfold as processes over time. These, in turn, are the basis for persistence. Powers, Processes and Persistence is thus not just a random sequence of words, but a blueprint for a deeper understanding of the ontological connections between these three fields. These connections will be illuminated from various sides by contributions from experts of all three fields.
Speakers
Sophie Allen (Keele)
Daniel Deasy (Dublin)
Heather Demarest (Boulder)
Kristina Engelhard (Trier)
Florian Fischer (Siegen)
Dirk Franken (Münster/Mainz)
Rögnvaldur Ingthorsson (Helsinki)
Anne Sophie Meincke (Vienna)
Walter Mesch (Münster)
Ulrich Meyer (Colgate)
Anna-Lisa Nußbaum (Siegen)
John Pemberton (Durham)
Antje Rumberg (Tübingen)
Niko Strobach (Münster)
Federico Viglione (Milano)
If you would like to participate, please send an e-mail to Change and Change-Makers <ccm@uni-siegen.de>.
Organization
Dirk Franken, Florian Fischer
Program
Thursday, July 4, 2024
| 10:00-10:15 | Florian Fischer & Dirk Franken: Introduction |
| 10:15-11:00 | Daniel Deasy: Propositional Temporalism and Change |
| 11:15-12:00 | Federico Viglione: Persisting through the Most Dynamic Time |
| 12:15-13:00 | Ulrich Meyer: Infinitesimal Action |
| 13:00-14:30 | lunch break |
| 14:30-15:15 | Dirk Franken: Existence Originalism, and the Categorical Distinction between Objects, Events, and Processes |
| 15:30-16:15 | Kristina Engelhard: What are potentials? |
| 16:15-17:00 | coffee break |
| 17:00-17:45 | Florian Fischer & Antje Rumberg: The Dynamicity of Powers |
| 18:00-18:45 | Heather Demarest: Potency Best Systems and the Generation of New Powers |
| 19:30- | workshop dinner (for speakers and network members) |
Friday, July 5, 2024
| 10:15-11:00 | John Pemberton: Processes – a natural view |
| 11:15-12:00 | Walter Mesch: Aristotle on the Persistence of Substances. A Reconsideration |
| 12:15-13:00 | Niko Strobach: Is the fact (if any) that time is always passing just the fact that time is topologically non-ending in both directions? |
| 13:00-14:30 | lunch break |
| 14:30-15:15 | Anne Sophie Meincke: Continuant Processes or Processual Continuants? Towards an Analytic Process Metaphysics |
| 15:30-16:15 | Rögnvaldur Ingthorsson: Substances as Enduring Powerful Processes |
| 16:15-17:00 | coffee break |
| 17:00-17:45 | Sophie Allen: Cheer up! It might never happen! |
| 18:00-18:45 | Anna-Lisa Nußbaum: Persistence in the Growing Block Universe |
| 18:45- | closing & informal get-together |
Abstracts (in alphabetical order)
Sophie Allen: Cheer up! It might never happen!
Actualism about modality has always been a hard sell: could everything which is possible be determined by entities in the actual world? The challenge facing the actualist is compounded if she also aims to provide a naturalistic theory in which all actual entities exist in spacetime. The fact that something might never happen appears to make life harder for the actualist, and not better. In this paper, I argue that a naturalistic, powers-based account of modality can account for a surprisingly wide range of unactualised possibilities by relying higher order or iterated powers. I note that the debate about whether powers theory can only provide for nomological, rather than metaphysical, possibility has become confused because of differing conceptions of what nomological possibility involves. Once this is clarified, I argue that the range of possibility offered by powers theory is more closely aligned with metaphysical possibility than is usually thought, a conclusion which will not only cheer up the actualist, but which also makes the use of powers in the metaphysical explanation of persistence and of composition more plausible.
Daniel Deasy: Propositional Temporalism and Change
Frege and Russell both defended the view that the facts do not really change; for instance, Frege writes that ‘complete thoughts’ are ‘true not only today or tomorrow but timelessly’. However, some contemporary philosophers are attracted to the view that the facts really do change, or in other words, that some truths are only temporarily true. But how exactly should we understand the view that the facts really change? Is that view compatible with relativism about the present (the ‘B-theory’)? And, is it compatible with ‘reductionism about tense’? In this paper, I try to address these questions.
Heather Demarest: Potency Best Systems and the Generation of New Powers
I examine two extant potency best systems, one by myself (2017) and one by Kimpton-Nye (2018). I argue that neither can account for the possibility of the generation of novel potencies. This points to the need for a new potency best system that makes a crucial distinction between initial distributions of potencies and subsequent distributions of potencies. I articulate and defend such a view.
Kristina Engelhard: What are potentials?
In my talk, I am concerned with the metaphysical issue whether there are distinguishing features of potentials understood as a certain kind of property such as the potential of an acorn to turn into an oak tree or the potential of a girl to become a professional chess player. However, the concept “potential” is a vague concept; this is why in the first part of the talk I analyse it according to Carnap’s method of explication before giving a metaphysical analysis. Many philosophers equate potentials with common dispositions (Vetter 2015) – this is for grounding modality in dispositional properties – sometimes they are determined as higher order dispositions – mainly in the debate in applied ethics on the argument from potential. My theses however are first that there are different models of potentials to be spelled out in a metaphysics of potentials. My second thesis is that all these models have in common that potentials differ from common dispositions; this is evident if the bearer of the property and the manifestation process is taken into account. A potential is a disposition the manifestation of which consists in a transformative change of its bearer. This feature gives rise to questions concerning persistence.
Florian Fischer & Antje Rumberg: The Dynamicity of Powers
Since the rise of neo-Aristotelianism, it is generally believed that powers are dynamic properties. But what exactly makes powers dynamic, and where is the alleged dynamicity to be located? In the relation between the power and its manifestation or in the manifestation itself? While representatives of the former view often allude to the notion of directionality, representatives of the latter view often draw on processes. But this, in itself, just shifts the question. In this talk, we aim to get to the bottom of dynamicity and clarify its interrelation with directionality and processes.
Dirk Franken: Existence Originalism, and the Categorical Distinction between Objects, Events, and Processes
I introduce a new conceptual tool for drawing the distinctions between different categories of concrete entities. What I call essence originalism is true of a kind of entities iff the following holds for any entity of this kind: If t is the first time at which the relevant entity exists, the fact that this entity exists at all is fully determined by things going on at or before t. First, I explain and motivate essence originalism by reference to the category of objects. Then, I try to show that this conceptual tool can also help us to draw the elusive distinction between events and processes. The assumption that essence originalism applies to processes, but not to events, allows us to account for some of the characteristic differences between both kinds of entities without resorting to the implausible assumption that processes lack temporal parts.
Rögnvaldur Ingthorsson: Substances as Enduring Powerful Processes
Substance and process ontologies are assumed to be contrary and incompatible to each other. The former representing reality as “an assembly of static individuals whose dynamic features are either taken to be mere appearances or ontologically secondary and derivative”, the latter insisting on dynamicity as a fundamental characteristic (Seibt 2020). However, the only characterisations of substance that strike me as plausibly static are the now extinct Parmenidean view that everything is one and all diversity and change is illusory, and the static block view depiction of everything made up of temporal parts bearing properties at specific space-time points. The latter view allows diversity/variation across space and through time, but many find it difficult to see that it can accommodate ‘genuine change’, i.e. something remaining numerically the same though variation of properties over time.
Admittedly, dynamic conceptions of substance (e.g. hylomorphism) do not explicitly state that substances are continuously changing, only that they essentially can change, but that arguably means that hylomorphism is compatible with the postulation of continuous change. It has been argued that Aristotle was moving towards a conception of substance as essentially changing entities (Sentesy 2020), but I think it is agreed that no hylomorphic account has so far been developed that explicitly entails that substances continuously change. Nevertheless, if it is assumed that substances not only can change but continuously do so, they would count as processes in so far as these are only understood as entities for which change is essential. Unfortunately, processes are not always characterised in such a minimalist sense, but often in a manner that arguably secures a contrast even to characterisations of substance as continuously changing. I have here in mind the stage view of process, which Rescher sketches in the form of six characteristics: processes are homeomerous entities constituted by a series of temporally ordered stages, each of which goes through becoming, are ontologically distinct and yet causally and generically linked (Rescher 2000: 5–6).
In this talk I will, first, give an outline of which conceptions of substance vs. process are genuinely incompatible even given the minimalist sense of ‘process’. Second, argue that of the six criteria Rescher mentions, only the distinctness of stages is incompatible with a conception of substance. Third, argue that the distinctness of stages entails several very unpalatable consequences: (i) the traditional conception of change—one and the same thing having different properties at different times—does not apply to processes; they either change, like perduring entities, by different stages having different properties, or by every part going through absolute becoming, (ii) there can be no efficient causation only correlation of stages undergoing absolute becoming, and (iii) there can be no generic link of any familiar kind; distinctness rules out any common element between stages. In other words, the stage view makes substance and process ontologies genuinely incompatible, but on the cost of a highly problematic conception of process. Fourth, I will argue that my powerful particulars view of causation (Ingthorsson 2021) may offer a way to develop an hylomorphism that explicitly characterises substances as continuously changing.
Anne Sophie Meincke: Continuant Processes or Processual Continuants? Towards an Analytic Process Metaphysics
According to a widely accepted view, entities may be either so-called continuants, i.e., three-dimensional entities, such as substances or objects, or so-called occurrents, i.e., four-dimensional entities, such as events and processes. This consensus is currently being challenged as part of ongoing ventures to distinguish processes as an ontological category in its own right from events. Processes, it is claimed, bear characteristics that set them apart from events, and these characteristics either make processes qualify as continuants, as notably Rowland Stout has argued, or at least make processes very much like continuants, which is Helen Steward’s more moderate view. In my paper, I review the arguments put forward by Stout and Steward for their respective positions and argue that there are good reasons to think that processes indeed are continuants rather than merely resembling them, but that this is not enough. Instead, the same reasons that lead us to accept continuant processes ought also to convince us that there are no non-occurrent continuants in addition to occurrent ones. All existing concrete continuants are processual continuants.
Walter Mesch: Aristotle on the Persistence of Substances. A Reconsideration
According to Aristotle, the persistence of substances is their most distinctive characteristic. As he puts it in the Categories, neither numerically one and the same colour can be white and black nor numerically one and the same action good or bad. An individual substance, however, can receive contraries without perishing or disappearing itself. How this is possible, is left unexplained in the Categories. Aristotle here simply points to the example of a human being which at one time is white and at another black, at one time warm and at another cold or at one time good and at another bad, and seems to regard these changes as obvious cases of alteration. Scholars agree that Aristotle´s explanation presupposes his hylomorphic model developed in the Physics and that this model is crucial for his treatment of substances in the Metaphysics, but disagree on how it should be understood concerning persistence. In my paper, I want to reconsider the controversial topic.
Ulrich Meyer: Infinitesimal Action
This paper makes a case for infinitesimal action, in which the state of the world at a single time or at a single point imposes necessary constraints on what is happening in its infinitesimal neighborhood, but not on what is happening at a finite temporal or spatial distance.
Anna-Lisa Nußbaum: Persistence in the Growing Block Universe
The debate on the temporal persistence of entities has not yet been thoroughly explored with concrete connections to a novel approach to the Growing Block Theory (GBT), introduced by Correia & Rosenkranz in 2018. Their specific understanding of the nature of the blocks’ Growing impacts the compatibility of GBT with common persistence theories such as Endurantism and Perdurantism. This may result in Endurantists being forced to accept the strong ontological claim that moments in time are themselves entities (times as sets of facts or sui generis entities). Perdurantists, on the other hand, seem to be better represented in GBT compared to other accounts of time metaphysics and do not have to accept such an ontological claim. Instead, they can remain open about the nature of moments. Furthermore they have the ability to claim that all temporal parts of a perduring object exist now and that the object is, therefore, wholly existent now, even though more parts are yet to come into existence. This is a stance that Eternalism would never have allowed them to claim, giving Perdurantism a head start in upcoming debates that factor in GBT in it’s new form.
John Pemberton: Processes – a natural view
All of the (non-elementary) processes that we find throughout the sciences and everyday may be understood as (roughly) the acting together of parts surviving through time. This view fits with the mechanist positions (such as that of Nancy Cartwright and I) which increasingly dominates the philosophy of science. I illustrate with examples, and outline the intimate relationship implied between process and commonsense things (e.g. artefacts, bundles, organisms). I explore the ontology implied by this view, showing ways in which it is distinctive and attractive.
Niko Strobach: Is the fact (if any) that time is always passing just the fact that time is topologically non-ending in both directions?
This talk is a follow-up to Martin Lipman’s talk on the passage of time in Milano. It is meant as a friendly challenge to friends of dynamicity. The idea is to find a tense-logical formula, D, which looks about as dynamic as such a language is able to express. Moreover, the language of the formula will be hybrid logic which, at least according to its inventor Arthur Prior, has a particulal affinity to the A-theory of time, which might, in turn, be thought to be particularly close to dynamicity. D means, roughly: It was i-ing, it is k-ing, it will be j-ing, and i-ing, k-ing and j-ing are not the same. It will be shown, however, that D is equivalent to the postulate of non-ending time in both directions, which does not seem to have anything dynamic about it. Both formulas are mode true by the same models. Do they nevertheless express different facts? If so, these facts will have to differ hyperintensionally. But how so, precisely?
Federico Vigilone: Persisting through the Most Dynamic Time
Philosophers of time usually distinguish between static and dynamic theories of temporal reality. However, it is not yet well understood why some theories should be described as dynamic, as opposed to static (Tallant & Ingram 2023, 207). Furthermore, it remains an open question whether some theories are more dynamic than others, and if so, why. In this talk, I argue that dynamicity comes in degrees: the more variation in metrical properties related to reality’s boundaries a theory allows, the more dynamic it is. Given this, I argue the most dynamic theory of time possible should not assume temporal atomism–i.e., that time is composed of (either extended or durationless) temporal atoms. In the final part of the talk, I consider the relevance of the rejection of temporal atomism for Lewis’ problem of temporary intrinsics, outlining what it could mean to persist through the most dynamic time.