Rognvaldur Ingthorsson

In this paper, I argue that attempts in the philosophy of biology to show that organisms are processes rather than substances fail. Despite what process ontologists have said, I argue that substance ontology is perfectly able to accommodate the dynamic nature of organisms, their ecological dependence, and their vague boundaries, and that their criticisms are not directed at substance ontology simpliciter, but only at specific (perhaps untenable) characterisations of substances. The paper ends by considering what a processual philosophy of biology that is radically in conflict with an ontology of substances might look like.

Despite the fact that the concept of categoricity is ubiquitous in contemporary metaphysics, it is hard to find a suitable characterization of categoricity. I hold that the absence of such a characterization is responsible for much confusion and debate regarding categorical properties and their relationship to dispositions. With this in the background, this paper aims to make clear the intuitive ground for our concept of categoricity by taking cues from Locke's view of the distinction between primary and secondary qualities. The key thesis, which I call “the BIC proposal,” is that in case of paradigmatically categorical properties Q, the conscious content of our mental image of x's instantiating Q includes that x exhibits a certain distinctive manifestation actually or occurrently in the sense explained below. I believe that this is a promising formulation of the popular thought that x's instantiating a categorical property concerns what x actually or occurrently is like or does without any external stimuli. It is thus hoped to improve our understanding of categoricity and pave the way for more informed discussions about topics surrounding categorical properties.

It is often argued that constitution and causation are different kinds of dependence relations. Some have argued for a distinction between constitutive explanation of causal capacities that explain what a system would do in specific situations from causal or etiological explanations that explain why an event such as a change in the property of a system happened. In what follows we argue against the claim that causation and constitution are always distinct metaphysical relations. This paper develops a temporal account of constitution. We call this species of constitution, diachronic constitution. We show how diachronic constitution is a consequence of a common type of causation in the empirical sciences: continuous reciprocal causation, a variety of causal production instantiated in complex dynamical systems. Hence, this paper seeks to establish that constitution does not only resemble causation in certain respects. We argue for the stronger claim that constitution can be analysed in terms of causation understood as production of change. Temporalizing the constitution relation is neither as remarkable nor as problematic as it might initially seem. The idea of diachronic constitution will appear almost inevitable in the context of complex dynamical systems, given local interactions between microscale and macroscale states in such systems.