# Continuants and occurrents **Abstract:** Commonsense ontology contains both continuants and occurrents, but are continuants necessary? I argue that they are neither occurrents nor easily replaceable by them. The worst problem for continuants is the question in virtue of what a given continuant exists at a given time. For such truthmakers we must have recourse to occurrents, those vital to the continuant at that time. Continuants are, like abstract objects, invariants under equivalences over occurrents. But they are not abstract, and their being invariants enables us to infer both their lack of temporal parts and that non-invariant predications about them must be relativized to times. [E]ndurance is the property of finding its pattern reproduced in the temporal parts of the total event. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, 189. I T he Duality. There is a puzzling duality at the heart of our conception of the world which calls out for metaphysical clarification. It is the duality between things like ourselves, other organisms and bodies on the one hand, and the events and processes that befall them and in which they are involved on the other. This duality is at least as important as that between particular and universal, though it has been much less prominent in the history of philosophy. As a duality among the particular things of the world, it must be of interest even to a nominalist. In this paper I shall give what I think is a novel account of the relationship between these two categories of particular, which **Authors:** [[Simons]]