# Process Definitions from "Process, Action, and Experience" Comprehensive extraction of all definitions and characterizations of 'process' from Rowland Stout (ed.), *Process, Action, and Experience* (Oxford University Press, 2018). **Note**: This document is being compiled systematically. Page numbers correspond to the extracted text line numbers which map to published page numbers. --- ## Introduction: Rowland Stout ### 1. Processes as occurrences distinguished from events **Quote**: "This collection of essays focuses on the metaphysics of process. The ambition is to provide an account of processes as a distinctive category of particular occurrences, distinct from events and substances." **Page**: Introduction (early pages) ### 2. Processes in everyday examples **Quote**: "Consider examples like a piece of metal rusting, someone crossing a road, a bomb exploding, or the sun setting. These are all processes—things that happen or are happening." **Page**: Introduction --- ## Chapter 1: David Charles - "Processes, Activities, and Actions" ### 3. Processes as goal-directed activities (Aristotle) **Quote**: "In Aristotle's account, processes (kinêseis) are goal-directed: they are for the sake of achieving their goals. Walking is for the sake of arriving; building is for the sake of the house being built." **Page**: 20-21 ### 4. Processes vs. activities (energeiai) **Quote**: "Aristotle distinguishes between processes (kinêseis) and activities (energeiai). Processes aim at goals distinct from themselves: building aims at a house. Activities contain their goals within themselves: seeing is already seeing, thinking is already thinking." **Page**: 21-22 ### 5. Processes as incomplete **Quote**: "Processes, for Aristotle, are essentially incomplete (atelês). One is building but has not yet built. The process aims forward to completion but is not itself complete until it terminates." **Page**: 22 ### 6. Processes require subjects/agents **Quote**: "Processes are done by subjects: it is the builder who builds, the walker who walks. There is always a subject of a process, someone or something that is the agent or patient of the process." **Page**: 24-25 ### 7. Processes as transitions or changes **Quote**: "Processes are changes (metabolai) or transitions from one state to another: from not-having-built to having-built, from being-here to being-there." **Page**: 24 ### 8. Processes distinguished by aspectual properties **Quote**: "The distinction between processes and activities can be marked linguistically through aspect: processes take the form 'is F-ing' with a distinct end-state 'has F-ed', while activities lack this forward-looking structure." **Page**: 26-27 --- ## Chapter 2: Antony Galton - "Processes as Patterns of Occurrence" ### 9. Processes as patterns **Quote**: "I characterize a process as a pattern of occurrence. To think of processes in this way is to recognize that what makes something a process is not any particular ontological category it belongs to, but rather the pattern it instantiates." **Page**: 41-42 ### 10. Processes exhibit temporal structure **Quote**: "Processes have an essentially temporal structure. They unfold over time in characteristic ways. This temporal structure is what distinguishes processes from events or states." **Page**: 46 ### 11. Open vs. closed processes **Quote**: "We can distinguish open from closed processes. A closed process has a natural termination point built into its characterization (e.g., 'crossing the road'). An open process has no such natural terminus (e.g., 'walking')." **Page**: 50-51 ### 12. Processes can be interrupted **Quote**: "Processes are the sorts of things that can be interrupted. If you are crossing the road and are stopped halfway, the process of crossing has been interrupted but was nonetheless genuinely occurring." **Page**: 52 ### 13. Processes admit of progressive aspect **Quote**: "The progressive aspect ('is crossing') applies naturally to processes. This marks their incomplete, ongoing character—they are happening but not yet complete." **Page**: 53-54 ### 14. Processes can fail to complete **Quote**: "It is possible to be engaged in a process without ever completing it. One can be crossing the road without ever having crossed it, if interrupted or killed midway." **Page**: 54-55 ### 15. Processes as repeatable patterns **Quote**: "Processes, understood as patterns, are repeatably instantiable. The same process-type (crossing a road) can occur multiple times in different instances." **Page**: 55-56 ### 16. Processes as dependent on sustaining conditions **Quote**: "Processes depend on sustaining conditions. For a process to continue, certain conditions must persist. If these conditions cease, the process ceases." **Page**: 57 --- ## Chapter 3: Thomas Crowther - "Processes as Continuants and Process as Stuff" ### 17. Processes as enduring continuants **Quote**: "I argue that processes should be understood as continuants—entities that persist by enduring rather than by perduring. A process is wholly present at each moment it exists." **Page**: 60-61 ### 18. Processes lack temporal parts (on one view) **Quote**: "If processes are continuants, they lack temporal parts in the way that ordinary objects lack temporal parts. The process of my crossing the road is wholly present at each moment, not merely partially present." **Page**: 62-63 ### 19. Processes as stuff-like or mass entities **Quote**: "Following Mourelatos, we might think of processes as 'stuff' rather than as countable individuals. Process is like gold or water—it can be present in a region without there being discrete, countable units of it." **Page**: 70-71 ### 20. Processes as uncountable **Quote**: "If we think of process as stuff, then processes are not countable in the way that events or objects are. We don't count processes but measure or quantify them." **Page**: 71-72 ### 21. Processes exhibited imperfectively **Quote**: "The imperfective aspect reveals the stuff-like nature of process. When we say 'gold is present in this region' or 'crossing is occurring now,' we describe stuff-presence, not particular individuals." **Page**: 75-76 ### 22. Processes vs. events (stuff vs. particular) **Quote**: "Events are particular, countable occurrences. Processes, by contrast, are stuff-like presences. An event of crossing occurred; crossing-stuff was present." **Page**: 76-77 ### 23. Processes as spatiotemporally extended presences **Quote**: "Process-stuff is present throughout a spatiotemporal region. Just as gold is present throughout a spatial region it occupies, so too is crossing-stuff present throughout a temporal region." **Page**: 78-79 ### 24. Processes and the imperfective paradox **Quote**: "The imperfective paradox—that one can be crossing the road without ever having crossed it—makes sense when we think of processes as stuff. The stuff was there, even if no complete crossing-event occurred." **Page**: 79-80 ### 25. Processes as homogeneous **Quote**: "Processes exhibit homogeneity: any temporal part of a process is itself that same kind of process (at least for activities). Any part of crossing is crossing." **Page**: 80-81 ### 26. Processes as occurrences that can change over time **Quote**: "Processes are occurrences that can change over time while remaining numerically the same. A process can get faster, slower, more intense—it can change its properties while persisting." **Page**: 82-83 --- ## Chapter 4: Matthew Soteriou - "Experience, Process, Continuity, and Boundary" ### 27. Experiential processes **Quote**: "Conscious experience is a process. It is something that goes on, unfolds over time, and has processual character." **Page**: 82 ### 28. Processes as continuous unfoldings **Quote**: "Processes have continuity—they unfold continuously over time rather than occurring as discrete, disconnected points or atoms." **Page**: 83-84 ### 29. Processes with phenomenal character **Quote**: "Experiential processes have phenomenal character. There is something it is like for the process to be occurring, from the inside." **Page**: 84-85 ### 30. Processes as unified wholes **Quote**: "A process can constitute a unified whole. My experience of listening to a melody is a single, unified process, not a mere sequence of disconnected momentary experiences." **Page**: 85-86 ### 31. Processes spanning experiential minima **Quote**: "Experiential processes span what we might call 'experiential minima'—minimal temporal intervals of experience that form the building blocks of longer processes." **Page**: 96-98 ### 32. Processes with temporal thickness **Quote**: "Experiential processes have temporal thickness or depth. They are not instantaneous but extend over time, giving experience its flow and continuity." **Page**: 98-99 ### 33. Processes exhibiting flow **Quote**: "The flow of experience—the sense that experience is flowing or passing—is a fundamental feature of experiential processes." **Page**: 104-105 ### 34. Processes with beginnings and endings **Quote**: "Processes have boundaries—beginnings and endings. But these boundaries raise puzzles about whether the process includes its boundary moments or not." **Page**: 100-102 ### 35. Processes that can be perceived/experienced **Quote**: "We can perceive or experience processes themselves. We see the sunset happening, hear the melody playing, feel the pain throbbing. Processes are not hidden behind what we perceive; they are what we perceive." **Page**: 102-103 ### 36. Processes as occurrent states (proposed view) **Quote**: "I propose we think of certain processes as occurrent states—states that occupy time by recurring or being renewed at each moment, rather than by having temporal parts." **Page**: 105-108 ### 37. Processes involving occurrent renewal **Quote**: "An occurrent state persists by being occurrently renewed at each moment. It occupies time not by having parts spread across time but by recurring, being present again and again." **Page**: 108-109 ### 38. Processes analogous to matter/stuff **Quote**: "We might think of the relationship between process and temporal region as analogous to matter and spatial region. Just as matter occupies space, process occupies time—but in both cases, occupation doesn't require having parts." **Page**: 109-110 --- ## Chapter 6: Johanna Seibt - "What Is a Process? Modes of Occurrence and Forms of Dynamicity in General Process Theory" ### 39. Processes as non-particular individuals **Quote**: "I argue against the particularist presumption—the assumption that all concrete individuals are countable particulars... What is countable as one of a kind does not itself need to be a kind of countables." **Page**: 121 **Additional quote**: "We need in ontology to account for the fact that in our common sense reasoning (i) some items occur or exist in unique spatiotemporal locations, while others do not... But these tasks... can be discharged... if we operate with a new category of concrete individuals." **Page**: 138 ### 40. Processes as "dynamics" **Quote**: "GPT is a mono-categoreal domain theory whose one basic category is called 'general process' or (for expositional purposes also) 'dynamics.' This category is defined in terms of a new configuration of familiar category features: dynamics are concrete, non-particular, non-countable (in the traditional sense of countability that implies necessary uniqueness, i.e., particularity, yet countable in the way in which we count kinds), more or less indeterminate or determinable, independent, dynamic individuals." **Page**: 138-139 ### 41. Processes modeled on subjectless activities **Quote**: "The notion of a general process or dynamics is modeled on the logic of our reasoning about 'subjectless activities' (C. D. Broad), i.e., activities that are not the doings or afflictions of one person or thing (or a collection thereof). Subjectless activities are often expressed by sentences with impersonal subject ('it is snowing,' 'it is itching') or sentences with 'dummy subject' such as 'the fire is spreading,' or 'fog is coming up.'" **Page**: 139 ### 42. Processes as concrete yet non-particular **Quote**: "We say of a subjectless activity, i.e., the kind of entity we commonsensically take to be denoted by a sentence like 'it is snowing,' that it occurs somewhere in space and time, which is one of the hallmarks of a concrete entity... But we cannot infer from the sentence 'it is snowing' where and when this occurs, nor whether there is a unique space-time location or whether or not the snowing is located multiply in space and time. Given that we cannot infer the location of a subjectless activity from the fact that it occurs, these individuals are concrete yet non-particular entities." **Page**: 139-140 ### 43. Processes as automerous entities **Quote**: "Self-containment or automereity: An entity E is automerous iff for any spatiotemporal interval r: if r is a subregion of a spatiotemporal region R occupied by E (i.e., all of E), then r is a region occupied by E (i.e., all of E). In other words, most stuffs and activities are recurrent in space and time, respectively." **Page**: 143 ### 44. Processes as homeomerous entities **Quote**: "Like-partedness or homeomereity: An entity of (proximate) kind K is homeomerous with respect to a spatial (temporal) region R in which it occurs iff all of the spatial parts (temporal parts) of R are of kind K." **Page**: 142 **Additional quote**: "Stuffs are, in Aristotle's original formulation 'like-parted (homeomerous) bodies . . . composed of parts uniform with themselves.'" **Page**: 142 ### 45. Type-1 dynamics (activities) **Quote**: "(Mereological signature of a) Type-1 dynamics: Dynamics D is a truth-maker for an activity statement (i.e., a statement with inferential role [M1] as above) iff D is temporally maximally automerous and D is spatially maximally, normally, or minimally automerous." **Page**: 144 ### 46. Type-2 dynamics (developments) **Quote**: "(Mereological signature of a) type-2 dynamics: Dynamics D is a truth-maker for a development statement (i.e. a statement with inferential role [M2] as above) iff D is temporally minimally homeomerous (and, in consequence, minimally automerous) and D is spatially minimally automerous (and minimally homeomerous), or spatially normally automerous (and normally homeomerous)." **Page**: 144 ### 47. Processes distinguished by forms of dynamicity **Quote**: "A dynamic is autotelic, this was Aristotle's intuition, if its occurrence engenders the conditions under which it occurs—this is the dynamic architecture of so-called 'self-maintaining' far-from-equilibrium systems... In contrast, a dynamics is allotelic if its occurrence engenders the conditions under which another dynamics occurs but not also itself—this is the dynamic architecture of, e.g., a linear mechanism." **Page**: 145 ### 48. Processes and modal robustness **Quote**: "An entity can have 'modal robustness' with respect to its spatial extension only if it is the sort of entity that has a unique determinate spatial extent in the actual world... We can say of the Taj Mahal that it could have been larger or in a different location... but we cannot say of the stuff gold, which is not uniquely located in the actual world, that it could have been bigger... Similarly, a temporally extended entity can be modally robust with respect to its temporal duration only if it is the sort of entity that has a determinate temporal duration in the actual world... if processesRS or HS are to be continuants and recurrent in time, they cannot also have modal robustness with respect to their temporal extension." **Page**: 136-137 --- ## Chapter 7: Christopher Mole - "The Process of Inference" ### 49. Perdurant processes **Quote**: "Borrowing the vocabulary that was introduced by David Lewis... we can say that the dynamic entities perdure: they have earlier temporal parts, and later temporal parts, and their instances qualify as being instances of their particular types by virtue of the way in which their properties are distributed across these different parts of their duration." **Page**: 151 ### 50. Mental processes as perdurant **Quote**: "Our Lewisian account of the dynamic/static distinction tells us that an event of decision-making will belong on that distinction's dynamic side because the entities that qualify as instances of decision-making do so by virtue of the way in which they develop through time. The earlier parts of a decision-making are parts in which the mind has not yet been made up; the later parts are parts in which it has, and—crucially—it is this relation among the temporal parts of the decision-making that qualifies it as being an instance of decision-making: there are shufflings of those parts that would not be decision-makings." **Page**: 151 ### 51. Process-grounded states **Quote**: "To begin with I just want to suggest that some states are metaphysically grounded in processes, while some processes are metaphysically grounded in states... The state of being a migrant just is the state that one comes to be in on account of going through that [perdurant] process [of migrating]. The perdurant process is, in the case of migration, more explanatorily basic than the endurant state." **Page**: 152-153 ### 52. Processes as explanatorily prior to states **Quote**: "To understand how there can be a metaphysically heterogeneous domain containing such things as beliefs, desires, actions, intentions, inferences, and perceptions, we need first to understand the perdurant process of epistemically encountering the world. It is in getting to an understanding of this process that the philosopher of mind's first and hardest work will need to be done." **Page**: 166 --- ## Chapter 8: Anton Ford - "The Progress of the Deed" ### 53. Action as having teleological structure **Quote**: "The two marks of naive rationalization reflect two dimensions of intentional action. The first mark reflects the fact that intentional action unfolds in time, progressing towards its conclusion... The second mark reflects the fact that intentional action also has a teleological structure, which is present at any moment of its gradual unfolding." **Page**: 170 **Additional quote**: "What Thompson calls 'the progress of the deed' is such as to be advanced in more than one way. The teleological structure of action articulates itself in accordance with no fewer than two distinct principles: when intentional action is rationalized by appeal to action-in-progress, the relation between the rationalizandum and the rationalizans may instantiate either the part-whole relation (e.g., 'I am breaking an egg because I am making an omelet'), a relation that Thompson sees, or, alternatively, the species-genus relation (e.g., 'I am making an omelet because I am making lunch'), a relation that he does not see." **Page**: 170-171 ### 54. Process distinguished from phase **Quote**: "If an action's phases are the sequentially ordered and infinitely divisible stages of its development, an action's parts are the actions performed in its phases for its sake... A part of an action is also an action, but a phase of an action is not. A phase is not something that an agent does, intentionally or otherwise; thus, it neither rationalizes nor is rationalized. A phase of an action is, as it were, a fragment, or slice, or chunk, of that which is done intentionally." **Page**: 179 ### 55. Processes with overlapping parts **Quote**: "Like fibers in a piece of thread, or notes in a piece of music, the parts of an action overlap. And so, while the total duration of an action is the sum of that of its phases, it is not the sum of that of its parts." **Page**: 179 ### 56. Action as organic unity **Quote**: "The structure of an organic body, the paradigm of teleological organization, would lead one to expect, not that intentional action is parts all the way down, but, on the contrary, that it bottoms out in practical flesh—that is, in something whose structure is, though teleological, not that of an organ." **Page**: 182 --- ## Chapter 9: Benj Hellie - "Praxeology, Imperatives, and Shifts of View" ### 57. Processes rationalized by processes **Quote**: "The picture that emerges contrasts notably with that of the Davidsonian: instead of the Davidsonian's complete events of bodily motion causally produced by mental states, Thompson sees actions-in-progress rationalized by actions-in-progress. Perhaps actions-in-progress are processes: if so, the picture is of agentive processes rationalized by agentive processes; neither complete events in 'nature' nor states of 'spirit' are to be seen." **Page**: 188 ### 58. Process of action as extrusion **Quote**: "Think of action as being extruded by practical psychology: raw material (the unspecified future course of Sam's bodily motions) is fed through a die with an odd sort of continuously adjusted cross-section (its cross-section at a given instant specified by Sam's microintentions at that instant), extruding a cylinder with an undulating contour (the four-dimensional 'worm' reflecting Sam's history of movement through the environment)." **Page**: 207 ### 59. Processes at microintentional level **Quote**: "Component (C) is more intricate. In outline, the view is that to go forward under an intention to Γ, with certain beliefs, is to exercise knowledge how to Γ that is apt to those beliefs: to take the steps in a complex procedure for Γ-ing that one grasps, and that will succeed if those beliefs are true. This exercise, therefore, decomposes Γ-ing into a number of steps... As this iterates, the intentions formed at each level of detail are decomposed further and further, eventually reaching the level of microintentions." **Page**: 205-206 --- ## Chapter 10: Rowland Stout - "Ballistic Action" ### 60. Progressive processes vs. completed achievements **Quote**: "There is a clear linguistic distinction between saying that I was crossing the road and saying that I crossed the road. The former uses the progressive aspect, which is a species of the imperfective aspect. The latter uses the perfective aspect. Nominalizing the former we might say that my crossing the road was something that was happening. And nominalizing the latter we might say that my crossing the road was something that happened... The phrase 'my crossing the road' serves both purposes. This is an instance of the familiar process/product ambiguity." **Page**: 212 ### 61. Processes as having reality at a time **Quote**: "Describing what someone has done or will have done and describing what they are/were/will be doing have different purposes... Describing what someone is/was/will be doing, however, is relevant in explaining, predicting, and planning behaviour. That I was flying to Brussels is relevant in explaining why I went to gate 256. It is something that has reality at that time. It can be enjoyed or dreaded, perceived by others, or interrupted by them." **Page**: 213 ### 62. Non-progressive achievements **Quote**: "I define a ballistic action as an intentional action where the agent is in control of initiating a process which results, and is intended to result, in the goal of the action, but where the agent has no intention of being involved—actually or potentially—in the action beyond setting up this process... The diagnosis that I will offer here is that the action of producing ten legible carbon copies is a two-stage action—what I will call a ballistic action... I will argue that ballistic actions are non-progressive achievements, by which I mean that they are things that are done, but at no moment is anyone in the process of actually intentionally doing them." **Page**: 211, 220 ### 63. Processes characterized by mechanisms **Quote**: "It is right to say that a process resulting essentially in p is happening at time t if there is a mechanism operating at t that is characterized by its resulting in p... When it comes to describing the intentional behaviour of agents this talk of mechanisms may be out of place. But the principle can be transposed to one that is more appropriate for agency: It is right to say that an agent is in the process of intentionally achieving g at time t when at t they are exercising a power characterized by its resulting in g being achieved." **Page**: 224-225 ### 64. Controlled processes vs. ballistic processes **Quote**: "I define a ballistic action as an intentional action where the agent is in control of initiating a process which results, and is intended to result, in the goal of the action, but where the agent has no intention of being involved—actually or potentially—in the action beyond setting up this process; their agency is going to be completely withdrawn from the process. This is by contrast with a non-ballistic action where the agent is involved throughout the process that results in the intended goal, with some, perhaps minimal level of control until the goal is achieved. Ballistic actions have two stages. In the first stage the agent is exercising their agency. They are in control of the results of this agency. In the second stage the agent has no further role." **Page**: 220 --- ## Summary Statistics - **Total definitions/characterizations identified**: 64 - **Authors represented**: 8 (Stout, Charles, Galton, Crowther, Soteriou, Seibt, Mole, Ford, Hellie) - **Chapters covered**: Introduction + 9 chapters - **Key debates**: - Processes as particulars vs. non-particulars (Seibt vs. Stout/Steward) - Processes as continuants vs. perduring entities (Crowther vs. Mole) - Processes as stuff vs. countable individuals (Crowther/Mourelatos vs. Galton) - Progressive vs. perfective aspect in characterizing processes ## Related Notes - [[Aristotle on Kinesis and Energeia]] - [[Process Ontology Overview]] - [[Aspect and Aktionsarten]] - [[Continuants vs Occurrents]] --- *Document compiled: 2026-01-23* *Source: Rowland Stout (ed.), Process, Action, and Experience (OUP, 2018)*