Cover -- Half-Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Preface and Acknowledgements -- 1 Processes and Entities -- 1.1 Change and stability -- 1.2 The need for a new metaphysics -- 1.3 An overview of this project -- 1.4 A terminological difficulty -- 2 The Metaphysics of Particular Entities -- 2.1 The reification of being and the unreality of change -- 2.2 The invention of the timeless -- 2.3 Entity as the primary category -- 2.4 Entities as countable particulars -- 2.5 The invention of material -- 2.6 Explaining change

2.7 The disintegration of the Aristotelian explanatory model -- 2.8 Descartes' metaphysical dichotomy -- 2.9 Locke, Newton and the 'corpuscular philosophy' -- 2.10 The rise of physicalist metaphysics -- 3 Conceptual Shifts in Physics -- 3.1 The invention of physical science -- 3.2 The fate of 'matter' -- 3.3 The superseding of Newtonian physics -- 3.4 Reconceptualizing 'particles' -- 3.5 'Particles' and quantum fields -- 3.6 Conceptualizing quantum phenomena -- 3.7 Realist interpretations of QFT -- 3.8 Metaphysical implications

4 The Category of Generic Processes -- 4.1 Processes, stuffs, and particulars -- 4.2 Generic and specific processes -- 4.3 Identifying categories -- 4.4 The logic of process-descriptions -- 4.5 Processes, entities, and their parts -- 4.6 Re-categorizing countables -- 4.7 The 'part-of' relation -- 4.8 Processes and series of events -- 4.9 Whitehead's process metaphysics -- 5 Identity Through Change -- 5.1 Identity and discernible difference -- 5.2 Identity as continuity of temporal parts -- 5.3 Change in four-dimensional entities -- 5.4 Common assumptions

5.5 Heraclitus' insight -- 5.6 Change in enduring entities -- 5.7 Sameness across different times -- 5.8 The types of generic process -- 6 A Metaphysical Taxonomy of Emergent Entities -- 6.1 Processes and their organizations -- 6.2 Persistence and stability -- 6.3 Entities as cohesive organizations of processes -- 6.4 Energy wells -- 6.5 Far-from-equilibrium stability -- 6.6 Self-maintenant systems -- 6.7 Recursively self-maintenant systems -- 6.8 The status of the concept of recursive self-maintenance

7 An Evolutionary Taxonomy of Types of Action and Life -- 7.1 Agency and causation -- 7.2 Goal-directedness -- 7.3 Serving a function -- 7.4 Liability to error -- 7.5 Minimal action -- 7.6 Selective action -- 7.7 Error detection -- 7.8 Flexible learners -- 7.9 Self-reflective persons -- 7.10 Social institutions and groups -- 7.11 Conclusion -- 8 The Concept of Emergence -- 8.1 Clarifying the issues -- 8.2 'Emergence bases' and open systems -- 8.3 A definition of emergence -- 8.4 Emergence and non-linearity -- 8.5 Self-organization -- 8.6 Emergence and reduction

8.7 Emergence and the causal exclusion argument

Everything in the Universe has emerged, in some sense, since the Big Bang. But the concept of emergence is problematic and controversial. The Metaphysics of Emergence contends that the contemporary philosophical debates are vitiated by the persistence of the traditional assumption that what primarily exists are particular entities: things. Instead it presents a sustained argument for recognizing generic processes as primary. This radical alternative finds support from interpreting the sub-atomic 'particles' of contemporary physics as nodes in a

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