Webinar Oct. 7, 2020

Johanna Seibt, Aarhus University           

GPT is a mono-categoreal process ontology, with non-transitive part-relation as the  basic relationship among the basic entity called “general process”. General processes are concrete, yet indeterminate (general), dynamic individuals.  While according to the GPT the world is a field of interconnected processes, it is possible to define different types of dynamic continuity within this field of goings-on.  Some of these types of dynamic continuity engender transtemporal sameness, others engender transtemporal difference (change), with different forms of ‘additivity’  or “aggregativity” (Wimsatt) patterns resulting in ‘constructive’ and ‘destructive’ alterations.  I discuss whether the current taxonomical framework of GPT can  present at least  criteria (necessary conditions) for at least some of those types of dynamic continuity that figure in biological “mechanisms”.