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Process, Action, and Experience

Process, Action,
and Experience
edited by
Rowland Stout
1
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
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Contents
List of Contributors vii
Introduction1
Rowland Stout
1. Processes, Activities, and Actions 20
David Charles
2. Processes as Patterns of Occurrence 41
Antony Galton
3. Processes as Continuants and Process as Stuff 58
Thomas Crowther
4. Experience, Process, Continuity, and Boundary 82
Matthew Soteriou
5. Occurrent States 102
Helen Steward
6. What Is a Process? Modes of Occurrence and Forms of
Dynamicity in General Process Theory 120
Johanna Seibt
7. The Process of Inference 149
Christopher Mole
8. The Progress of the Deed 168
Anton Ford
9. Praxeology, Imperatives, and Shifts of View 185
Benj Hellie
10. Ballistic Action 210
Rowland Stout
Index 229
List of Contributors
David Charles, Yale University

Thomas Crowther, University of Warwick
Anton Ford, University of Chicago
Antony Galton, University of Exeter
Benj Hellie, University of Toronto
Christopher Mole, University of British Columbia
Johanna Seibt, Aarhus University
Matthew Soteriou, King’s College London
Helen Steward, University of Leeds
Rowland Stout, University College Dublin
Introduction
Rowland Stout
1. Introduction
There are two ways to think about occurrences: either as ongoing processes or as
completed events. On the one hand, we might think about the ongoing process of my
giving a lecture this morning, say. This is something that was happening for a certain
period of time—my giving the lecture was happening at every moment during that
period. So, describing the ongoing process, we might say that what was happening
at 9.30 this morning (my giving the lecture) had been going on for half an hour
already and was now causing some irritation or amusement in the audience. On the
other hand, we might think about the lecture as a completed event—something that
is extended over a period of time. At no moment during that period can the com-
pleted event be identified. Describing the completed event, we might say that what
happened this morning lasted for an hour, but seemed to several people to have
lasted much longer.
This distinction between ongoing and completed occurrences corresponds with a
distinction in the perspectives we have when thinking about these occurrences.
In describing some occurrence as ongoing we occupy a perspective from within the
happening of that occurrence, whether it be past, present, or future. The occurrence is
present to that perspective, and in occupying it we are thinking about the occurrence,
as it were, from the inside. In describing an occurrence as completed, we are occupying
a temporal perspective outside of the occurrence—a perspective from which the whole
extent of the occurrence can be thought about, but not a perspective to which the
occurrence is itself present.
This distinction in perspectives between describing ongoing processes and describing
completed events is associated with the linguistic distinction of aspect. When we describe
occurrences as ongoing we use the progressive aspect and when we describe them as
completed events we use the perfective aspect.1 Aspect is independent of tense. Just using
1
Some linguists take the imperfective to be the real aspect rather than the progressive, and many of the
philosophers interested in action and aspect take the contrast to be between perfective and imperfective. But
I take it that it is the progressive and not the imperfective we need for this distinction, as the imperfective
2 Rowland Stout
the simple tenses of past, present, and future, we can generate the following propositions,
and the list could be extended to incorporate more complex tenses.
Past progressive: ‘I was delivering a lecture this morning.’
Present progressive: ‘I am delivering a lecture now.’
Future progressive: ‘I will be delivering a lecture tomorrow morning.’
Past perfective: ‘I delivered a lecture this morning.’
Present perfective: ‘I deliver a lecture now.’2
Future perfective: ‘I will deliver a lecture tomorrow morning.’
I have used the words ‘process’ and ‘event’ to mark the distinction I am after. But it is really
the qualifying adjectives ‘ongoing’ and ‘completed’ that are doing the work. While it may
be that the word ‘event’ is usually reserved for completed events, it is by no means the case
that the word ‘process’ is reserved for ongoing processes. As Antony Galton notes in this
volume, it is commonly applied to abstract temporal patterns that are realized in specific
occurrences. We might talk about the process of photosynthesis or the Bessemer Process,
and in so doing we are not describing specific occurrences at all. On the other hand we
might also describe what I was doing this morning by saying that I was in the process of
delivering a lecture. And this may lead to the usage I want, which is to describe the par-
ticular ongoing occurrence that I was engaged in as a process.3
Given that perfectively described completed events cannot be said to be present to an
observer, it follows that a subject’s own immediate conception of what they are doing,
thinking, feeling, and perceiving is only describable progressively—from the ‘process’
point of view. I know what I am doing in a more direct way than the way I know what
I did, and this applies similarly to what I am feeling, thinking, seeing, etc. The subjective
perspective, if it has a special role in understanding a subject’s mental life, is a perspec-
tive on their ongoing mental life—their life as a process. Assuming an objective concep-
tion of the mind must honour this subjective perspective, it looks as though we should
be approaching the philosophy of mind and action by considering ongoing processes.
Despite this, the ‘event’ conception of the things that happen in the mind has
dominated philosophical work in this area throughout the twentieth century. Many of
includes descriptions of habitual behaviour like ‘I go fishing on Sundays.’ There is a sense in which habits
are ongoing, but what I am after here are ways to describe instances of ongoing processes. Comrie (1976)
presents the classic treatment of aspect within linguistics, while Taylor (1986), Mourelatos (1978), and
Galton (1984) are important resources for a philosophical understanding of the distinction.
2
The present perfective (not to be confused with the present perfect) is usually taken to be an empty
category, and certainly this sentence does sound strange—a natural reading of it is as a disguised future
tense sentence, as Galton (1984, section 1.2) argues. But I think there may be contexts for its use as a
present tense sentence. Perhaps, in the course of a lecture, I describe to the students the schedule of lectures
for the term, including the present one. I am describing the present lecture as a completed event, just as
I describe the past and future ones.
3
Using the word ‘process’ to describe occurrences that are treated progressively rather than perfectively
has a philosophical pedigree. See Comrie 1976, 51 and Mourelatos 1978.
introduction 3
the physicalist reductions and identity theories that have characterized this period
deal primarily with mental states rather than mental occurrences. For example, the
Turing machine model that is central to functionalism treats the mind in terms of
states, and the place for mental occurrences is only as state transitions.4 Similarly, psy-
chological cognitivism treats perception in terms of a subject being in experiential or
representational states caused in certain ways by the environment. Token identity the-
ories either identify a person’s state of mind with a particular state of their brain, or
identify completed events within their mind as completed events within their brains.
While there has been much debate about the right way to think about events, there has
been a consensus in these models of the mind that there is no need to consider ongoing
processes to account for the dynamic aspect of our mental lives.
The hypothesis that is being tested in this book is that describing mental occurrences,
such as actions and experiences, as ongoing processes using the progressive aspect can
yield a better philosophical understanding of these occurrences than describing them
as completed events using the perfective aspect. This means that actions are better
understood by considering people doing things than by considering the things people
have done, and that perceptual experience is better understood by talking about
people experiencing things than by talking about the experiences people have had.
Very roughly, the idea is that the standard philosophical accounts that treat actions and
experiences as events and states lose, or at any rate misread, the subjective aspect of these
phenomena, something that can only be captured by thinking of these phenomena
from inside the course of their happening. This is by contrast with a very powerful cur-
rent in the history of analytic philosophy since the start of the early modern era, which
has favoured consideration of the completed event over the ongoing process.
I speculate in Section 2 about why this dominance of the ‘event’ conception might
have happened. The suspicion that this dominance has led the philosophy of mind and
action into a dead end may lead us to rethink much of this philosophy with a ‘process’
conception. In Section 3 I consider some of the ways this new thinking may help,
specifically with how to think about action and experience. And in Section 4 I introduce
some of the ways that the metaphysics of processes has been thought about. All the
authors of this volume have contributed to this rethinking of the philosophy of mind
and action, and in the final section of this introduction I describe some of the questions
that need to be answered if we take the idea seriously, and explain briefly how the chapters
in this book approach these questions.
2. The Philosophical Rise of the Event

An ongoing process manifests itself in a sequence of outcomes over time—a sequence
that satisfies a pattern characteristic of that type of process. So the ongoing process
of my delivering the lecture this morning resulted in a special kind of sequence of
4
See Putnam 1967.
4 Rowland Stout
utterances and interactions with an audience. This sequence of outcomes happened

(perfective). It is a completed event not an ongoing process.5 In general we can say that
an ongoing process results in a completed event—an event consisting of a sequence of
stages satisfying the pattern for that type of process. This sequence, as Newton in par-
ticular discovered, can sometimes be modelled mathematically. Consider the simple
example of a body—say an arrow—moving under its own momentum with no forces
acting on it. (For the sake of the example we are assuming no gravity or air resistance.)
What is happening at any one moment is the ongoing process of the arrow moving
through space. This process has a sequence of outcomes that make up the completed
event of the arrow moving through space. This sequence can be described using the
familiar formula from Newtonian kinetics:
s = p/m . t + s0 (where s is the position vector of the arrow, s0 its initial position vector,
m its mass, t elapsed time, and p a constant vector representing the momentum).
With differential calculus we can apply mathematical measures not just to the sequence
of stages but also to the change within the sequence. The rate of change of position of
the arrow over time (ds/dt) can be calculated as the limit as δt tends to 0 of δs/δt, where
δs is the difference in position of the arrow across a small time interval δt. In this case
it turns out that ds/dt = p/m. While δs/δt is a measure of a feature of a completed
event—a change that happened (perfective)—it seems to be the basis for calculating a
measure—ds/dt—of an ongoing change that was happening (progressive). Working
only from a formula for the sequence of stages, we can say that at time, t, the arrow was
moving (progressive) with velocity p/m.
The moral of the success of Newtonian physics and mathematics might seem to
be that descriptions of completed events—sequences of stages—are all we need for
a scientific account of the occurrences in nature. From these, by applying a bit of
differential calculus, it looks as though we can describe change in nature. These
descriptions can employ the progressive aspect, but such descriptions are grounded
in perfective aspect descriptions. So it seems that the laws of nature apply to com-
pleted events not to ongoing processes, and we can derive our talk of ongoing processes
from them.
The success of another mathematical tool—that of probability theory developed
in the seventeenth century by Pascal, Fermat, Huygens, and Bernouilli, among others—
may also have been influential in establishing the primacy of completed events over
ongoing processes. Probability theory emerged from an attempt to apply mathematics
to gambling, and what you gamble on are outcomes not processes. Starting with the
5
Although it does sound wrong to describe a sequence of stages as happening rather than as having
happened, we can talk of a sequence of stages as unfolding, using the progressive. But I am inclined to conclude
from this not that the sequence of events is best thought of as an ongoing process, but that its unfolding is.
The unfolding of a completed event is an ongoing process. This may seem clearer if one thinks of the spatial
metaphor of unfolding more literally.
introduction 5
principle that equivalent outcomes within a possibility space are assigned equal
probabilities, probability calculus was developed, and following fast on its heels came
frequency analysis and statistics.
Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Enlightenment philosophy was clearly
impressed by the power of the new science. To the extent to which Newtonian physics
and probability theory describe nature, nature contains completed events rather than
ongoing processes. Related to this was the British Empiricists’ conception of perception
in terms of impressions received from the world. Impressions are the outcomes of ongoing
processes (they are impressions not impressings). What we are given in perception
according to this conception are sequences of stages not the ongoing processes
themselves, and to the extent to which our idea of the world must be derived from
experience it follows that the world conceived as such contains event-stages not
ongoing processes.
By the end of the nineteenth century the event was king. The philosophical treatment
of both time and causation worked with the assumption that these concepts had to
be located in a natural world constituted as a succession of events. Both McTaggart’s
A and B series described completed events spread along a temporal dimension. His
was a picture that had no room for ongoing change or flux. Causation, following on
from the work of Hume and Mill, was to be understood as a relation—psychological,
logical, or counterfactual—between events within a succession of events. This picture of
causation had no room for any ongoing causal process of something making something
else happen. Even ethics, certainly as understood by the utilitarians, became focused
on the outcomes rather than the processes leading to these outcomes. It had become
less a matter of living well and more a matter of determining the best outcomes. To the
extent that degree of pleasure was taken to determine the quality of outcomes, there
was still a role for thinking of occurrences progressively, since pleasure is an aspect of
experience as an ongoing process and not as a completed event. But as preference took
over from pleasure in the various sorts of decision theory and social choice theory
that emerged in the twentieth century even this role for thinking in terms of ongoing
processes was lost.
3. The Recognition of the Need for Processes

The questionable influence of the philosophical rise of the event on the philosophy of
causation, the philosophy of time, and moral philosophy might in itself motivate a
reconsideration of the metaphysics of occurrences, but in this book we are primarily
concerned with implications for the philosophy of mind and action. The ontological
supremacy of the event was to dominate analytic philosophy of mind in the second
half of the twentieth century. While philosophers generally made no distinction
between events and processes, the occurrences that concerned them look more like
6 Rowland Stout
completed events than ongoing processes. Donald Davidson is often taken to be the
central figure here, arguing in a series of papers collected in his 1980 book that our talk
of causation depends on the existence of a category of particular occurrences he called
events, that actions are events, that there are mental events, and that these mental events
are at the same time physical events. However, although Davidson generally used the
perfective aspect to describe what he was interested in, as David Charles points
out in this volume, he was not thereby excluding ongoing processes. Indeed, one of
his best-known arguments for taking actions to be particular entities—events as he
described them—works better if we are talking about ongoing processes rather than
completed events.
The conditions under which (1) ‘Sebastian strolled through the streets of Bologna at 2am’ is
said to be true must make it clear why it entails (2) ‘Sebastian strolled through the streets of
Bologna.’ If we analyse (1) as ‘There exists an x such that Sebastian strolled x, x took place in the
streets of Bologna and x was going on at 2am’ then the entailment is explained . . . but this
requires events as particulars. (Davidson 1980, 186)
Here, even though Davidson is apparently using the perfective ‘strolled’, he is not really
describing a complete event but instead an ongoing process—something that he
actually describes as ‘going on’. The argument would read better if (1) were ‘Sebastian
was strolling through the streets of Bologna at 2 a.m.’ But even though Davidson’s
conception of an event as a particular identifiable occurrence might well correspond to
that of an ongoing process, he does construe events as causally related to one another
when they instantiate strict general laws, and here he is construing them as completed
events—as the outcomes of ongoing processes.
Even if Davidson can be interpreted as having it both ways with respect to his con-
ception of occurrences as events, there is less ambivalence with other philosophers of
mind and action. Jaegwom Kim exemplifies the conception of mental occurrences as
completed events, where such events belong to the same category as states.
We also speak of mental or physical events, states, and processes and sometimes of facts. A
process can be thought of as a (causally) connected series of events and states; events differ
from states in that they suggest change, whereas states do not. The terms ‘phenomenon’ and
‘occurrence’ can be used to cover both events and states. We often use one or another of
these terms in a broad sense inclusive of the rest . . . Some events are psychological events,
such as pains, beliefs, and onsets of anger, and these are instantiations by persons and other
organisms of mental properties. Some events are physical, such as earthquakes, hiccups
and sneezes, and the firing of a bundle of neurons, and these are instantiations of physical
properties. (Kim 1996, 6)
It is this kind of assimilation that has led philosophy of mind to embrace what Helen
Steward has called the network model of causation—a model in which events and
states (and perhaps even facts) all figure equally as productive causes working together
in grand networks to produce other events and states. Steward not only criticizes this
model as working with an incoherent account of causation as well as an incoherent
introduction 7
notion of token states, but also shows how it is at the heart of functionalism and
various mind-brain token identity theories.6
If we think of perception and action in terms of the network model as interweaved
sequences of stages we are forced to treat them both as kinds of interfaces between
mind and world. The early stages of perception sequences are worldly and the later
stages are mental, and the sequences themselves cross from one to the other. The same
goes for action, just with mind and world reversed. Thus we get the classic causal theories
of action and perception. Such theories involve a kind of mind-world dualism. If it is
possible to divide these interface sequences into mental and physical stages it becomes
impossible to make sense of the idea of the world being given to a subject in experi-
ence. The world is presented to one side of the interface and the subject is given that
presentation on the other side. Agency is on the mental side of the interface, and that
means that agency does not reach out into the world. Both subject and agent are
trapped on one side of the sequence of events.7
These theories that understand perception and action in terms of causes and effects
that are events (‘event-causal’ models) encounter some technical difficulties too that
may be symptomatic of this deeper issue. For example, there is the problem of deviant
(or wayward) causal chains. The right sort of worldly input might cause the right sort
of mental result for a case of perception, yet the sequence as a whole not count as a case
of perception because it causes it in the wrong way. And, similarly, the right sort of
mental input might cause the right sort of worldly output for a case of action, yet the
sequence as a whole not count as action because it causes it in the wrong way.8
There are two further arguments for treating action progressively (as an ongoing
process), which have been highlighted recently in the reappraisal of Anscombe’s work
exemplified in Ford et al. (2014) and in Thompson (2008). The first concerns practical
reason. For Anscombe (1957), what is characteristic of intentional action is that a
certain sense of the question ‘Why?’ has application to it; this sense is one that asks
for reasons that are justifications. This in itself does not mean that intentional actions
should be described progressively, since there is no particular reason to use the pro-
gressive aspect rather than the perfective when describing an action for which you are
demanding an explanation. ‘Why did you make an omelette?’ is as good a demand for a
rationalization as ‘Why are/were you making an omelette?’
But Michael Thompson (2008) has argued that the fundamental form of action
rationalization is one where you explain something you are doing or have done in
6
See Steward 1997, 222.
7
Jennifer Hornsby (1993) provides a good account of the danger of dualism for a standard sort of causal
theory of action, which is particularly interesting for present purposes, as her own shift over the years since
her 1980 book from thinking of action in terms of events to thinking of them more in terms of process has
made much more sharply focused how anti-dualistic her conception is. One influential opponent of causal
theories of perception is McDowell, who takes the dualistic implications of these theories to be the root of
a certain sort of scepticism that must be avoided; see for example McDowell 1982.
8
Davidson (1973) raised this problem for his own version of a causal theory of action, and it has been
a constant issue for causal theories since then (see Stout 2010).
8 Rowland Stout
terms of something else you are doing. For example, we may explain why I broke the
eggs or am breaking eggs by saying that I am making an omelette. He calls this naïve
action explanation.9 But if one is providing a justification and not merely a causal
explanation, one cannot say the following: ‘I broke eggs because I made an omelette’,
although one can say: ‘I broke eggs because I am making an omelette.’ A naïve action
explanation, as opposed to a sophisticated one, describes the action in the explanans as
an ongoing process using the progressive aspect. Thompson’s next move is to reverse
Anscombe’s formula and argue that intentional actions are such as to be described in
answers to demands for rationalizations. So, instead of saying that intentional actions
are those to which a certain sense of the question ‘Why?’ is given application, we should
say that intentional actions are those to which a certain sense of the question ‘How?’ is
given application. Intentional actions are the rationalizers rather than the rationalized.
And, as we have just seen, rationalizers that are actions must be described using the
imperfective aspect. So Thompson has argued that actions must be described as ongoing
processes—from the embedded perspective of the agent—if their relationship with
practical rationality is to be revealed.
The second argument that has emerged recently for treating action progressively
concerns practical self-knowledge. In trying to get more precise about this special
sense of the ‘Why?’ question, Anscombe (1957, 49ff.) comes up with a second way of
characterizing intentional action, which is that an agent knows what they are intentionally
doing directly and without the need for observation. Davidson dismissed this (1971,
50), arguing that someone might intentionally make ten carbon copies while not being
at all sure that that is what they are actually doing unless they check. But Thompson
rejects Davidson’s carbon copy counterexample to Anscombe’s principle of practical
self-knowledge, claiming that it does not represent a normal case of intentional
action.10 If central cases of intentional action do satisfy Anscombe’s principle, and that
principle requires describing action progressively, then the philosophy of action does
after all have to accommodate the conception of action as an ongoing process.
There are other recent developments in the philosophy of mind that suggest we may
need to treat experience and other mental occurrences as ongoing processes. One is
the development of enactivist approaches by philosophers following in the footsteps
of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and J.J. Gibson.11 This approach takes the way someone
engages actively with their environment to determine what we should say about their
mind. Experience is not construed as the passive reception of impressions from the
world, but rather as an active interrogation of the world. The upshot of this process of
active interrogation may be that the person is representing things in a certain way. But
representations do not figure in the process. According to this approach we should
explain the ongoing perceptual processes of listening, watching, touching, exploring,
9
Thompson (2008) claims that rationalizations that mention states of mind—desires and beliefs—are
more sophisticated rationalizations than these naïve ones, and depend on them.
10
See Thompson (2014) and Stout (this volume).
11
See Noë (2004), Merleau-Ponty (2013 [1945]), Gibson (1966).
introduction 9
attending, etc. first, and only then have the basis of an account of the completed events
of hearing something or seeing something.
Another recent development is an interest in the metaphysics of experience, and in
particular in the question of whether experience needs to be thought of as a state, a
process, or an event for there to be anything it is like to have experience. Experience is
often construed in the philosophy of mind as a state—the state of being consciously
aware of something. And it is essential to conscious awareness that what a subject
is aware of must be present to the subject.12 So, we can only ever be in the state of
experiencing something that belongs to a metaphysical category of things that can be
present. For something to be present it must be the sort of thing that can have properties
at the present time, which means it must be the sort of thing that can have properties at a
time rather than timelessly. Numbers, for example, are not the sorts of things that can be
present, and presumably this is why we cannot be consciously aware of them or be in an
experiential state where numbers are the experienced objects. But three-dimensional
objects can be present to a subject, and as such can be objects of a state of awareness.
Arguably, ongoing processes likewise have their properties at a time and may be present
to a subject.13 This means that we can be in the state of being consciously aware of the
ongoing process of an arrow moving through the air, for example.
But are states themselves things that can be present? That depends on how we con-
strue states. Galton in this volume makes a useful distinction between states as things
that may obtain for some time and states as instantaneous instantiations of properties.
If an arrow is on a table, it may continue in that state for some time, and then we can say
that the state itself continues. In this respect it is like an ongoing process. Indeed, we
might think of it as a limiting case of a process—a sort of static process. The state of an
arrow being on a table may be present to a perceiving subject and be the object of a
state of conscious awareness. But now suppose that the arrow in flight passes through
point P at time T. The arrow being at point P at time T is not the sort of state that
obtains for any period of time, and it is not clear that it is the sort of thing that can be
present to a subject. While watching an arrow flying through the air one might be
consciously aware of its passing through point P (this is being aware of an ongoing
process), but perhaps one cannot be aware of its being at point P at time T.
There is a similar difficulty in thinking of completed events as objects of conscious
awareness. The completed event of the passage of the arrow from one place to another
is never present to an observer and so is at no moment the object of an experiential
state of conscious awareness.14 This is true in particular of completed events that
12
This claim must be understood in a certain way that makes sense of the apparent possibility of being
visually aware of long since extinct stars.
13
This conception of a process is controversial and certainly not shared by all the authors in this volume.
See Stout 2016 and Crowther’s chapter in this volume for contrasting views on the matter.
14
Soteriou (2013) resists concluding that we are never in the state of experiencing a succession of
things by devising a new ontological category of ‘occurrent state’, where the state one is in during an
interval depends on the occurrences that occur in that interval. See Steward (present volume) for a
discussion of this.
10 Rowland Stout
are sequences of states, whether the states are themselves continuing things or
instantaneous things. At no time are you aware of the whole sequence. But even
if there is no moment when you are in the state of being consciously aware of the
whole sequence, it may nevertheless be a fact that you have been aware of the whole
sequence—that you experienced it. Matthew Soteriou, in the present volume, provides
the nice example of Glen Gould playing Bach’s Goldberg Variations. At no point is a
performance of a piece of music, understood as a completed whole, present to the
listener. But of course it was experienced, even if it was never the object of a moment
of conscious awareness.
This may support Brian O’Shaughnessy’s (2000) ‘processive’ conception of experience,
according to which experience should not be understood as a state at all. But it should
be observed that the argument as just presented applies only to experience of things
that are not entirely present at one time. O’Shaughnessy himself does not employ
this argument, talking instead of the need for experience, even of static objects, to be
constantly renewed. So, according to his argument, experience cannot occur without
something happening. O’Shaughnessy claims that states may obtain even when nothing
at all is happening. He argues plausibly that experience cannot continue in such a
freeze, and concludes that experience cannot be a state.
O’Shaughnessy does not distinguish between ongoing processes and sequences
of stages. So his processive view of experience is not as such a position that favours
thinking of experience progressively in terms of the category of process rather than
that of event. His point is to reject a conception of experience as a state. Although the
idea has not been explored much in the literature yet, it looks as though thinking of
experience as based on ongoing experiential processes has the advantages of both
the stative and processive views. In particular, the problem of the unity of conscious
experience seems to beset a conception of experience as a sequence of stages, whereas
conceptions of experience either as state or as ongoing process may have less difficulty
with this. If I experience A and then I experience B we may very often be able to say that
I thereby experience A then B, where the temporal succession is within the scope of the
experience and not just a temporal succession of experiences. Michael Tye (2003) has
argued that experience is never to be understood as a succession of experiences; between
the time you wake up and the time you go to sleep you have precisely one experience—
already unified. And even without going this far it is possible to treat experiences as
temporally unified if they are continuing states or ongoing processes.
4. The Metaphysics of Process

Seeing that something has gone wrong with conceptions of action and perception as
causally connected sequences of stages philosophers have responded in a variety of
ways. Gilbert Ryle (1949) and philosophers inspired by Wittgenstein, like Elizabeth
Anscombe (1957), are commonly taken to have rejected the idea that perception and
introduction 11
action are constituted as causal processes at all, and are described as anti-causalist.
In fact, what they were keen to reject was a conception of action and perception as
involving mental or worldly pushes, where the causes are completed events or states
(what became known as ‘Humean causation’). A more Aristotelian conception of caus-
ation involving an agent making things happen by exercising their causal powers or
being affected by the world by the exercise of their power to become sensitive to the
presence of things was not rejected by these so called anti-causalists, though not much
developed in this period. It has been developed since in work like Charles (1984),
Coope (2007), Hyman (2014), and Marmadoro (2014).15
Aristotle’s account allows change to be treated as an ongoing process in the first
instance. The exercise of a capacity (or the actualization of a potentiality) does not
need to be taken as the completed exercise (or actualization) of a potentiality, but can
be taken as the exercise or actualization in process—the exercising. Note the process/
product ambiguity in the English words ‘actualization’ and ‘realization’. Certainly by
insisting on treating action and perception using the progressive we can avoid thinking
of them as sequences of completed stages. This is the point of Michael Thompson’s
(2008) naïve action theory. Thompson is resolutely opposed to ‘ontologizing’ ongoing
processes, however, and resists the assumption that there must be some entity corres-
ponding to our progressive descriptions. Given that our progressive descriptions
do not pick out completed occurrences, he thinks that we should not think of them
as picking out occurrences at all. For Thompson, the source of the dualistic picture
with spirit and nature pushing each other around is the ontologizing of action and
perception.
But there has been a lot of work on the ontology of processes that is more optimistic
about the possibility of developing a satisfying metaphysical account of occurrences as
ongoing processes without risking dualism. The metaphysics corresponding to our use
of the progressive is currently a very lively area of philosophical debate with positions
ranging from the anti-ontological through a ‘stuff ’ conception to various conceptions
that treat ongoing processes as particulars, distinct from and not dependent on com-
pleted events. Alexander Mourelatos (1978) wrote a highly influential paper making
use of the linguistic distinction between progressive (or imperfective as he had it) and
perfective aspects and linking it to the distinction between mass and count nouns.
Ongoing actions were taken to be things one could have more or less of—kinds of stuff
rather than particulars. Whereas material stuff fills space, process stuff fills time.
Complete chunks of it constitute events.
Jennifer Hornsby (2012) and Thomas Crowther (2011 and this volume) have tried
to develop Mourelatos’ conception, while Helen Steward (1997, 2013, 2015), though
starting from Mourelatos, has developed a different conception of processes as particulars
rather than stuffs, and Rowland Stout (1996, 2016) has developed a conception of
15
See also the attempt by Alicia Juarrero (2002) to bring an Aristotelian approach to dynamic systems
analysis.
12 Rowland Stout
ongoing processes as dynamic continuants. It should be observed that there are

two ways to make sense of the idea that there may be more or less of an activity like
talking. If I say that there is more talking than there was yesterday, I might either
mean that there are more people talking or mean that the process of talking has been
going on for longer. Only in the second case does the activity stretch through time.
And only in the first case is the talking a kind of activity that may be said to happen
at a time, and be ongoing. So, just as with individual occurrences, we can make the
distinction within activity stuff between ongoing activity and activity that is extended
in time. Extended activity may be thought of as the stuff of events in some way, but
ongoing activity may not.
5. Outstanding Questions
In this volume David Charles questions a tempting way to think about actions, processes,
and events, that he calls the Philosophical Theory of Events. The Philosophical Theory
of Events accepts Davidson’s claim that we must posit unrepeatable particulars that can
be referred to when talking about actions. And it takes the way we talk about processes—
i.e. as continuing over time while changing and sometimes being interrupted—as
showing that these particulars cannot be processes. However attractive this theory
finds the processive talk, it is stuck with the assumption that completed events are the
only occurrent particulars. Philosophers interested in thinking of action in process
terms (including most of the other authors in this volume) take the view that the only
particulars that can be identified here are events that extend through time with
temporal parts—not things that continue. So they find ways to avoid thinking of action
in terms of continuant process particulars, either by refusing to ontologize processes
altogether, by treating processes as dependent on perdurants of some sort, or by taking
the process to be a mass rather than a particular.
Charles considers and rejects a variety of such positions, including Galton and
Mizugichi’s (2009) proposal that a process as a whole moves forward through time by
having stages located in successive temporal windows. He recommends, with some
appeal to Aristotle, an ontological position that accommodates continuant process
particulars. One and the same process continues through time if it is the realization of
a single capacity under the guidance of a single action plan. Such processes might exist
alongside and independently of events. But Charles also considers the possibility that
events are generated from these processes or perhaps that they are identical to these
processes considered under the perfective aspect.16
Antony Galton is concerned here, as in a series of papers over the last ten years, with
the ontological relationship between processes, events, and states. What all this work
stresses is the multiplicity of ways that the word ‘process’ is generally used. Here the
16
In arguing this way, Charles is one of the very few philosophers who defends a conception of processes
as continuant particulars. But see also Stout (2016).
introduction 13
central idea is to think of a process as an abstract pattern of occurrence—a temporal

pattern specifying a way of filling (or spending) time. Such patterns are realized by
particular tokens which may be conceived of either historically (using the perfective
aspect) or experientially (using the progressive or continuous). The historically conceived
realization of a process pattern is an event. The experientially conceived realization of a
process pattern is a sequence of instantaneous states, although what is experienced
at any one time is just one such state.17
This notion of state is distinguished from another sense of the word where a state is a
static process—an open pattern of no-change. Galton’s picture here is an instance of
what Charles calls the Philosophical Theory of Events. What makes that inevitable is
his starting position of thinking of abstract processes as ways of filling time (as opposed
to thinking of them in an Aristotelian spirit as ways of exercising capacities). This
means that realizations of these patterns must either themselves take up time—be
temporally extended events or sequences of stages—or be instantaneous states.
Thomas Crowther defends a version of the view originating in the work of Mourelatos
that activity/process is the stuff of events. Like Galton (and I think this is common to
the Philosophical Theory of Events generally) he works with the assumption that the
ontology of process is concerned with the way occurrent things occupy periods of
time. This assumption rules out the possibility of continuant processes, since continu-
ants do not occupy time, but endure through time. So Crowther launches an attack on
the arguments in Stout (2016) for thinking of processes as continuants. More generally
he attacks the idea that a process is a particular of any sort. With this in view, he
responds to Helen Steward’s position in which processes are particulars that change
and grow, but are not continuants.
Crowther’s central argument against the idea that processes change over time is
that change itself is a process that must be grounded in the underlying nature of the
substance that is changing. But the substance whose underlying nature is supposed to
ground the changing of a process must be the very substance whose underlying nature
grounds the process itself; there is no other substance in the area. So the change is
attributable to that substance rather than to the process involving that substance.
Crowther argues that when we might be inclined to say that the process of an arrow
moving through the air is changing as the measure of that process—velocity—decreases,
we would be better to say that only the arrow itself is changing—from having one
velocity to having another. This allows him to hold on to the idea that there is no
re-identifiable process particular but only time-occupying process stuff, chunks of
which make up events.
Matthew Soteriou’s contribution to this volume defends a conception of process like
Crowther’s conception, as temporally extended activity stuff, and applies it to experience.
17
In his 2006 he took this experientially conceived realization itself to be a process, something he
suggested was very much akin to a continuant. In the way he now sets up the different categories there is
no room made for such a conception of a continuant process.
14 Rowland Stout
He argues that the experience of something extended over time, like a performance of
Bach’s Goldberg Variations, must itself be extended over time. During intervals of that
time you are experiencing intervals of that performance. So he rejects Michael Tye’s
(2009) ‘one-experience’ conception, according to which a single extended experience
does not have temporal parts that are themselves experiences. Tye concedes that
experiences may have temporal parts, but denies that these are themselves experi-
ences. Soteriou regards this restriction as artificial and unmotivated. ‘The perceptual
accomplishment takes time, because one can only experience the whole performance
by experiencing its successive parts successively.’
But Soteriou accepts that experience should not be construed as consisting of a
succession of particular countable sub-experiences. Instead, a temporally extended
experience consists of successive accumulation of temporally extended experience
conceived of as stuff not as particular entities. Soteriou claims that experience cannot
be broken down into indefinitely small distinct stretches of experience. There are what
he calls ‘experiential minima’ such that there cannot occur experiences briefer than the
extent of these minima and such that what is experienced during part of one experiential
minimum is the same as what is experienced over the whole. But experience is not best
thought of as the succession of discrete experiential minima conceived of as concrete
particulars. Conceding the existence of experiential minima does not commit one to
experiential atomism; and it is the massy conception of experiential process that makes
space for this, according to Soteriou. The point of this talk of experiential minima is
rather to give some content to the idea of the specious present constituting a thickish
boundary between past and future.
Helen Steward’s chapter concerns the metaphysics of conscious experience, and
in particular, Matthew Soteriou’s (2013) claim that conscious experience needs to
be understood by reference to the metaphysical category of occurrent state. Brian
O’Shaughnessy (2000) endorsed William James’ (1890) conception of experience as a
‘stream of consciousness’, and Soteriou seeks to develop a conception of the metaphysics
of experience that respects this idea. He sees the fact that you experience different
stages of a changing scene at the very times that those stages take place in the changing
scene as reason to favour some kind of processive view. But both Soteriou and Steward
also seek to make space for the thought that experiencing something—even something
dynamic—is a state a person is in. My being aware of a bird hopping about on a branch
is a state that obtains for a period of time and is not composed of shorter experience
parts. Soteriou’s solution is to accept that the experience is a state, but to insist that
it is a state that is constitutively bound up with occurrences—events or processes. It
depends on the succession of stages that pass through consciousness, which at the
same time depend for being conscious episodes on the fact that they constitute such a
conscious state. He calls such states, ‘occurrent states’. One thing that distinguishes
them from other sorts of state is that they do not obtain for every moment in the
interval over which they do obtain. This makes them like events, which do not occur at
every moment in the interval over which they occur. Over an interval of time I may be
introduction 15
in the state of being consciously aware of the bird moving from one branch to another,
but at a particular moment, say when the bird is still on the first branch, it is wrong,
according to Soteriou, to say that that state is obtaining.
Steward objects that the notion of an occurrent state does not just sound odd; it
is genuinely contradictory. While she sees no problem at all with the idea of a state
having a mutual dependence with a series of occurrences, she does not accept that this
means the state itself belongs to a special category that has something in common with
the category of occurrents. In particular Steward insists that states obtain during
every moment in the interval across which they obtain. In common with Galton and
Crowther, Steward takes the nature of a process to depend on the way it occupies time.
And, similarly, the nature of a state of being engaged in a process at some time depends
not on what might be identified at that time but on what emerges over a period of time.
She calls this position temporal holism. So I can be in the state of being engaged in
watching a bird hopping from branch to branch in virtue of what happens over a
period of time and still be in that very state at every instant within that period. So
Steward argues that there is no need to elide the categories of process and state to
explain the fact that there is some state and some process involved in experience.
Johanna Seibt attempts a systematic ontological investigation of process. She takes
ontology to be concerned with characterizing the different categories of things that
constitute truth-makers for our ordinary language, and distinguishes this from
metaphysical concerns with the reality or otherwise of members of such categories.
The way to characterize a domain of things with a distinct mode of being or occurrence
is by means of a structure of categorical inferences that operates over that domain.
The inferences should operate across different languages and the data from which one
can establish such a structure of inferences concern the inferential practices of these
different languages.
With this methodological approach to ontology, Seibt has constructed what she calls
General Process Theory, a theory that makes space for non-countable individuals—in
particular, masses, activities (processes), and developments—as well as countable ones.
In total she can distinguish ten categories of such things. For Seibt, activities are like
concrete three-dimensional particulars inasmuch as they endure through recurring—
i.e. at different times the very same entity exists. But she does not treat such recurring
activities as countable particulars. Seibt also distinguishes between different categories
according to their dynamic telic structure. This allows her to distinguish between activities
(goings on) and what she calls developments (comings about)—e.g. between walking
and walking to Aarhus. She takes the former and not the latter to be homomerous—i.e.
such that individual parts of the activity have the same nature as the overall activity.
And she criticizes views of processes as particulars (in particular those of Stout and
Steward) that fail to account for this distinction.
Chris Mole makes a general, historically based case for treating process as more
fundamental philosophically than state in the philosophy of mind. On the one hand
we find philosophers like David Armstrong trying to understand the process of
16 Rowland Stout
erception in terms of the state of knowledge and Donald Davidson trying to u

p nderstand
the process of action in terms of the states of belief and desire. Mole takes the problem
of deviant causal chains to have been fatal to such accounts. On the other hand there
are philosophers from Alexander Bain through to William James and Robert Brandom,
who have prioritized processes, and with more success, according to Mole.
Mole applies this process-first approach to the question of human intelligence.
There is a distinction between thoughts that merely bob up and thoughts that come
from inference, and this distinction cannot be accounted for except by considering the
process of inference itself to be more fundamental in the account than the mental
states of having certain thoughts. As with perception and action, the problem of deviant
causal chains would undermine any attempt to understand inference in terms of causally
related mental states.
Anton Ford is concerned with Michael Thompson’s attempt to improve on Anscombe’s
conception of the relationship between intentional action and practical reasoning.
Ford takes issue with two aspects of Thompson’s account. First, it only acknowledges
part/whole practical reasoning and not species/genus reasoning. For example, if I decide
to eat something I may go on (using practical reason) to choose to eat this apple in
front of me. But the inference from ‘I will eat something’ to ‘I will eat this apple’ is not
reflected in Thompson’s conception of naïve rationalization. It is not much of a ration-
alization to say that I am eating this apple because I am eating something.18
Ford’s second criticism is of Thompson’s claim that every intentional action figures
in the explanans of some naïve rationalization and so that every intentional action has
teleological structure inscribed within it. According to this claim, making an omelette
is an intentional action because I can explain breaking eggs by saying that I am making
an omelette, and breaking eggs is an intentional action because I can explain some part
or phase of my breaking those eggs by saying I am breaking eggs, and so on ad infinitum.
Ford finds it implausible that such chains of rationalization will go on forever and
attributes Thompson’s false confidence that they do to his assimilation of phases and
parts. While it is plausible that every temporal phase of an action has another temporal
phase within it, it is not plausible that every action has another action as part of it.
There must be smallest action parts.
Ford thinks that Thompson was right to identify an action with the rationalizer
rather than the rationalized. But he takes this to correspond to thinking of action
in terms of calculation (or deliberation) rather than in terms of explanation, and it is
this that explains why actions should be described using the imperfective aspect. The
thing that calculation leads from must be present, and so must be described using the
imperfective aspect. For example, ‘I am making an omelette (now or in the future); so
I must break eggs.’
18
Thompson might reply that there is no intentional action picked out by the phrase ‘I am eating something’,
but this would not relieve him of the obligation to make space in his account for this kind of species/genus
practical reasoning.
introduction 17
Benj Hellie takes the response to Thompson’s argument one stage further. He
acknowledges the importance of Thompson’s claim that actions can only be properly
understood from the embedded perspective of the agent. He also acknowledges the
significance of practical rationalization in understanding intentional action. But he
thinks causal explanation is irrelevant to practical rationalization and intentional
action. And he goes further than Ford by also rejecting Thompson’s commitment to
the fundamental nature of naïve rationalization. He denies that the imperfective aspect
is a particularly central way to describe action from the agent’s perspective. And he
also argues that practical rationalizations sometimes have to refer to psychological
states, and even when they don’t, they depend on ones that do.
His proposal is that the linguistic phenomenon revelatory of rationalization is not
explanation involving imperfective descriptions of actions, but rather implication
between imperatives—e.g. ‘Make an omelette! So, break eggs!’ Such implications operate
in the space of practical rationality and are independent of any causal explanatory claim.
Describing someone as acting under an intention is to describe them as having a
commitment to some such abstract implication.
In Chapter 10 Stout investigates the possibility of there being things one has done
which one was at no moment doing. This inverse of the imperfective paradox (where
one may be doing something, yet there never be a time when one has done it—for
example crossing a road but being run over half-way)—is generally not allowed by
philosophers considering the imperfective, including several of the authors in this
volume. Yet, Stout argues that it holds for a wide class of achievements that he calls
‘ballistic’, where the agent controls the onset of a process and then leaves nature to take
its course for the intended goal to be achieved. Examples include killing slugs by laying
down poisoned pellets, hitting the bullseye on a darts board and making ten carbon
copies. The gardener killed the slugs, but, speaking pedantically, there was no moment
when she was killing them—neither when she was spreading pellets nor when they
were eating them and dying in the night.
If this is right then there is something very strange about this class of achievements.
It is a class which is often regarded as quite central in the philosophy of action, but it
can only be accounted for philosophically in terms of what is genuinely the basic
case—that of controlled action. It is noteworthy that it is ballistic actions—like making
ten carbon copies—which are supposed to provided counterexamples to Anscombe’s
principle that what characterizes intentional action is the agent knowing what they are
doing without observation. If we limit intentional action to intentional doings rather
than things intentionally done, then we can rule out such counterexamples. At no point
was the gardener, strictly speaking, in the process of killing slugs. She was just in the
process of making a very good shot at killing slugs and letting nature take its course
after that.
In common with all the other chapters in this volume, this contribution belongs to a
post-Davidsonian wave in the philosophy of mind and action. Inspired by Davidson,
from the late 1960s there was a long and not particularly fruitful debate about the
18 Rowland Stout
metaphysics of events. Given that the category of event was supposed to be central to
the philosophy of mind and action, establishing the metaphysics of events was taken
to be an important task. The question now is whether the category of process might be
much more significant for the philosophy of mind and action. If so, we are faced with
the new question of the metaphysics of process. Some of the authors in this volume
recoil from thinking of the philosophy of mind as involving metaphysics at all, and the
search for naturalistic reductions of the mind in terms of identity theories now seems
to be a discredited philosophical activity. But there remains the task of reconciling
mind and nature. We are sensitive to the way things are out there and we can make the
world respond to our will. Establishing the right categories to make sense of these
causal relationships between ourselves and the world looks like just as important a task
now as it did for Davidson.
References
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Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Coope, U. 2007, ‘Aristotle on Action’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, supplementary
volume, 81, 109–38.
Crowther, T. 2011, ‘The Matter of Events’, Review of Metaphysics, 65, 3–39.
Davidson, D. 1971, ‘Agency’, in R. Binkley, R. Bronaugh, and A. Marras (eds), Agents, Action
and Reason, Oxford: Blackwell, 4–25.
Davidson, D. 1973, ‘Freedom to Act’, in T. Honderich (ed.), Essays on Freedom of Action,
London: Routledge.
Davidson, D. 1980, Essays on Actions and Events, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Harvard University Press.
Galton, A. 1984, The Logic of Aspect, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Galton, A. 2006, ‘On the Process of Coming into Existence’, Monist 89:3, 294–312.
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Perspectives on Objects, Processes and Events’, Applied Ontology 4:2, 71–107.
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Causation, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 161–88.
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1
Processes, Activities, and Actions
David Charles
1. Three Observations
It is often helpful to begin an investigation by assembling reputable opinions. Some are
held by nearly everybody, others only by those who have considered an issue in detail.
A good account should either justify such opinions or show how and why they are
mistaken.
I shall start with three such opinions. Donald Davidson advanced the first in a
number of seminal papers which reignited interest in the ontology of action in the
1970s and 1980s. The others were originally formulated by Aristotle although it has
required work by later philosophers and linguists to recapture their significance.
Davidson noted that ‘our language encourages us in the thought that there are such
things [as events]’ (2001, p. 181, ‘Events as Particulars’). He continued: ‘if we take . . .
grammar literally . . . we are committed to an ontology of events as unrepeatable par-
ticulars (“concrete individuals”)’. One argument for his claim ran as follows:
the conditions under which (1) ‘Sebastian strolled through the streets of Bologna at 2am’ is said
to be true must make it clear why it entails (2) ‘Sebastian strolled through the streets of Bologna’.
If we analyse (1) as ‘There exists an x such that Sebastian strolled x, x took place in the streets
of Bologna and x was going on at 2am’ then the entailment is explained . . . but this requires
events as particulars. (2001, p. 186)
Davidson drew attention to a systematic pattern of inferences, of which that from (1)
to (2) is an example, and suggested that their validity is best represented (as a matter of
logical form) by quantification over events, understood as particulars that occur at
given times. This suggestion led him to argue that particular events are philosophically
important in a wide variety of contexts. However, for present purposes, I shall take as
my first reputable opinion only his initial observation: the validity of the inference
exemplified by the one from (1) to (2) rests on quantification over events.
Davidson, in developing this idea, noted that his theory ‘was silent about processes,
states and attributes if these differ from individual events’ (2001, p. 210, ‘Mental Events’).
PROCESSES, ACTIVITIES, AND ACTIONS 21
He intended, at this point, to leave open several questions about processes: (a) are they
the same as events? And (b) how, if they differ, are they to be analysed? He displayed
considerable caution in discussing the nature of the events his theory required.
Earlier Aristotle had spoken of kinēseis and energeiai, processes and activities.1 In
talking of specifically goal-directed processes, he observed that some continue to their
goal but others are interrupted and fail to do so. He also noted the manner in which we
describe processes as they develop, using terms such as ‘quickly’, ‘slowly’, and ‘at a regu-
lar pace’. Each remark, the second and third reputable opinions to be considered,
requires further comment.2
Imagine that JJ is walking a mile. We can say:
(3) ‘That walk (or JJ’s walk) was interrupted’ and ask
(4) ‘How long will JJ’s walk go on before it is interrupted?’, replying
(5) ‘It could go on quite a long time . . . but it may be over in minutes.’
Indeed, JJ can ask herself—while her walk is going on—‘How long will it last?’ or say
‘This walk will soon be interrupted.’ There is, it seems, a particular ongoing process to
which JJ (and we) can refer and compare with other walks she has undertaken or might
undertake. She might comment:
(6) ‘This present walk—the one I am now engaged in—is going better than the
two I did yesterday’ perhaps adding ‘at least at a comparable stage’.
In a similar vein JJ can ask herself:
(7) ‘How far will I get with this walk? Will it go on longer than the one I did
yesterday? Will it succeed even though that one failed?’
In answer to such questions, she might reply:
(8) ‘The present walk may end at 11am at the fort but—if the path has improved—it
will go on much longer; alternatively it may be cut short and be over in the next two
minutes. I am not sure when or where it will end: it depends on how exhausted I feel,
how strong the river is etc.’
The second reputable opinion is this: we talk of interrupted processes in ways which
appear to refer to particular processes which continue through time.
The third reputable opinion is closely connected with the second. With regard to the
ongoing process in which we are engaged, we can ask:
(9) ‘How is it going?’ or
(10) ‘How will it develop?’
1
For a defence of this translation of ‘kinēseis’ see my 2015.
2
See Aristotle, Physics 199b16f, 255b7f for discussion of cases involving interruption.
22 DAVID CHARLES
In response we may say:

(11) ‘It is going well/smoothly/at an even pace/it is getting quicker/it is slowing
down. It was going well/smoothly/quickly but now it is not going so well/
smoothly etc.’
or
(12) ‘It will, or may, get easier after JJ passes that crag. I am not sure: it depends on
what the ground is like in the valley. If it is wet, it will be a difficult walk. If it has
dried, it will be easier.’
The third reputable opinion is this: we can apply different predicates at different times
to one ongoing walk, talking of it, underivatively, as quick and slow, speeding up and
slowing down, etc.3 One and the same process, it seems, continues, that is endures,
throughout.4
Are these three opinions correct? Are they about the same thing?
One answer runs as follows: they are about the same thing, particular processes.
Consider Sebastian’s strolling on that (now famous!) night in Bologna, the one which
was going on at 2am. This strolling is, it seems, a particular which might have been
interrupted, could have slowed down or speeded up (or both) and which, if all went
well, ended at its intended destination (viz. his favourite late-night bar). Davidson’s
events, so understood, are—at least in many cases—Aristotle’s particular processes:
either ongoing or once ongoing, now past.
I shall try to develop a slightly modified version of this answer in what follows,
suggesting that particular processes (as understood in Sections 2–4) provide the onto-
logical basis for a satisfying account of action and agency (Sections 5–6). My answer,
however, will be rejected by those who prefer a different, philosophically rich, theory of
the nature of events. In Section 2, I shall consider their theory, its motivations, and the
distinctive ways in which it attempts to accommodate these three reputable opinions.
2. The Philosophical Theory of Events

Although Davidson’s discussion of the nature of events was cautious, he did—at differ-
ing times—suggest some possible identity conditions. In his final discussion of this
issue, in reply to Quine, he withdrew his initial proposal that they should be individu-
ated in terms of their causes and effects, remarking that he had become attracted to
Quine’s own suggestion that: events, like physical objects, are identical if they occupy
3
Aristotle, Physics 238a6ff, 228b6ff. Antony Galton has focused on this point in a series of papers. See,
for example, Galton and Mizoguchi (2009).
4
In what follows, I shall use ‘continue’ and ‘endure’ interchangeably when applied to processes and
three-dimensional material objects. For this use, see, for example, Katherine Hawley (2015, section 2).
the same places at the same times.5 However, his discussion of this proposal was brief
and non-committal. Nor did he reconsider the relation between events and processes.
There is no clear indication that he understood the events he had introduced as
instances of (what I shall describe as) the Philosophical Theory of Events.6
The Philosophical Theory of Events (as I define it) consists in the following claims:
[A] Particular events extend through time and can be divided into sub-events.
[B] At any given time during the course of the event, the whole event itself is not
present. It is not, it is said, ‘wholly present’ at each such time. Only sub-events which
are part of the whole event are wholly present at such times.
[C] The whole event is made up of a sequence of sub-events which are spatially
and temporally contiguous and (in some accounts) causally connected.
[D] Events, as understood in [A], [B], and [C], are the only particulars required to
make sense of the three reputable opinions above. No other particulars are present.
[A] and [B], certainly, appear highly plausible. Events, it seems, have temporal
extension but are not present in their entirety at any of the times between their begin-
ning and end. [C] offers a plausible way of thinking about how whole events are consti-
tuted from sub-events. For many, [A]–[C] spell out, and render fully determinate,
Davidson’s talk of events. [D] represents a further claim: the only relevant particulars
in the cases so far described are events (as defined by [A], [B], and [C]). One could, of
course, accept [A]–[C] but reject [D], thinking—in a liberal spirit—that there are par-
ticular processes as well as particular events (defined by [A]–[C]). However, if one
accepts [D], processes (if they occur at all) are either identical with particular events or
not themselves particulars.
The Philosophical Theory of Events (defined by acceptance of [A]–[D]) leads to a
distinctive way of thinking about the three reputable opinions with which we began.
When Sebastian strolled through the streets of Bologna at 2am, there was, no doubt,
an event (Sebastian’s stroll) which occupied an interval of time and was going on at any
moment during that interval. Since the whole of some particular that is a stroll could
not be present at just that moment, ‘going on at 2am’ will also apply to countless other
strolls Sebastian might have been taking at that time. But what do these have in com-
mon? In all of them Sebastian was strolling at 2am. However, while the sentence
‘Sebastian was strolling at 2am’ is a good answer to the question ‘what was going on at
2am?’, it does not refer to any particular event. Indeed, it is completely irrelevant to the
truth of this claim when Sebastian started strolling, where he stopped, etc.7 Something
5
Davidson (2001, p. 309, ‘Reply to Quine on events’). He did, nonetheless, note that events should not
be described as ‘occupying places and times’, but rather as occurring at the same times and places.
6
Similarly, while Elizabeth Anscombe in Intention spoke of intentional actions as events (1957, pp. 24,
29), it is not clear that she was committed to the Philosophical Theory.
7
Jennifer Hornsby (2012) developed this line of argument. The issue was noted by Alexander Mourelatos
(1978, fn. 34).
24 DAVID CHARLES
more, it seems, is required over and above events to make sense of the ontology of (1).
Further, given [D], whatever extra is required cannot be a particular. So, some suggest,
we should think of general (mass-like) processes in addition to individual events.
Processes, so understood, are required by proponents of the Philosophical Theory to
make sense of Davidson’s favoured example.8
Consider the second opinion: JJ is walking a mile but her walk will be, as it turns
out, stopped or interrupted at the half-mile mark. What is going on before she was
stopped? No doubt, JJ will have walked some part of the mile, intended to walk the
rest and not stopped walking. No doubt too, she would have walked the whole mile if
she had not changed her mind and nothing prevented or interrupted her. But what JJ
will not have stopped doing is the walking she is now engaged in. What is important
is that JJ intends to finish this walk, not that she intends to walk the rest of the mile at
some other time (in some other walk). Further, what will be (or might be) inter-
rupted is the walk she is engaged in—which cannot be identical either with the event
of her having walked a mile or with that of her having walked until interrupted. Nor
will it do to say:
(13) JJ has walked part of the mile and there will be an event of her walking a
(whole) mile if all goes well.
We need to capture what JJ is doing now: the ongoing process of walking in which she
is engaged and which will, if all goes well, carry on for a mile.9 However, for advocates
of the Philosophical Theory, her walking cannot—in the light of their commitment to
[D]—be a particular process which continues through time.
Aristotle focused on the manner of JJ’s walk as it unfolds: how it was developing. It
was proceeding skilfully or with difficulty, quickly or slowly. But her proceeding is
identical neither with the event to be completed if all goes well (her walk of a mile) nor
with the event that is so far completed. For the walk could have gone well so far but
soon be about to be abandoned! There is, it seems, something—other than the two
events just mentioned—which continues through time, gaining and losing features as
it goes. Further, despite appearances—given [D]—what is going on is not a particular.
In addressing the third reputable opinion, proponents of the Philosophical Theory are
led to accept, in addition to particular events, processes understood as something gen-
eral (or mass-like): there was, they say, some walking, perhaps some quick and skilful
walking, maybe even some walking with difficulty. But there was no particular process
of walking which continued from (e.g.) 2.30 to 2.45am.
In sum: proponents of the Philosophical Theory of Events add to events (as defined
by [A], [B], and [C]) something else which is not a particular to accommodate the
three reputable opinions mentioned in Section 1. Their view stands in sharp contrast
8
Indeed, they are also required to make sense of ‘John buttered the toast at midnight’ if his buttering
went on for a few seconds each side of midnight.
9
Ursula Coope developed this point with great clarity in a seminar in Oxford in 2014.
with my earlier suggestion that these three reputable opinions, when properly spelled
out, all concern—in the cases discussed—particular processes.
3. Why Accept the Philosophical Theory of Events?

Two Arguments in Favour of [D]
Several arguments have been offered in support of the Philosophical Theory of Events.
Two draw on analogies between events and substances.
The first supports [D]. It runs as follows:
[1] ‘I was baking a loaf ’ does not entail that there is a particular loaf I was baking:
I might have failed to produce any loaf.
[2] By analogy: ‘I am performing an act of baking’ should not entail that there is a
particular act that I was performing.10
But why accept this version of the analogy? In the example given, I could ask myself:
‘How is this baking going?’ or ‘Is it going better than the two I did yesterday?’ and could
reply ‘It started badly but is improving as time goes by’ or ‘Who knows! It might even
be successful and produce a prize-winning loaf.’ If it fails, I could say: ‘I was performing
an action of bread-baking but it turned out unsuccessfully: I did not bring it to a satis-
factory conclusion.’ Or, if stopped half way, I could say: ‘That was going really well. Pity
it did not succeed!’
These uses of demonstratives and of ‘it’, coupled with our ability to count (‘This is my
third baking today’), suggest that we are referring to a particular act of baking. We
mark out a separate individual action, different from other actions in which I now
might have been engaging or once was engaged. By contrast, we cannot speak (non-
anaphorically) of the cake I am now making as ‘That cake’ or distinguish it from any
other cake that might result from this act of baking.
It is true that ‘I was a baking a loaf ’ does not entail that there was a particular loaf
I was baking. There was, however, some particular quantity of dough which I was trying
to turn into a loaf: the quantity from which a loaf would be made (if all goes well).
Indeed, one might draw on this observation to develop the analogy differently: just as
this quantity of dough becomes a loaf (if the process of baking is successful), so this
process of baking will become the particular event of baking a loaf (if it is successful).
One will only have a particular loaf or a particular event of baking a loaf if the process
in question is successful. However, before that there is a particular process which—if
successfully completed—will generate the particular event of baking a loaf. Older
writers marked this distinction by referring to the process as the acting (actio), the
resulting event as the act (actum).
10
For this style of argument, see Michael Thompson (2008, pp. 136–7).
26 DAVID CHARLES
There is, of course, a question about the ontological significance of particular actions
referred to in this way.11 Some suggest that even if we do refer to particular actions in
the way indicated, these do not play a central role in, for example, our scheme of action
explanation. I shall consider this issue below. Others, guided by the Philosophical
Theory, understand the analogy differently. In their view, this quantity of dough is the
constitutive matter for the particular loaf that is made: the matter from which that loaf
comes to be and which is present in the finished loaf. By analogy, they will say, the
process should be thought of as the constitutive matter from which the event itself is
formed: as a quantity of baking from which the act (actum) or event (eventum) of bak-
ing is constituted. On their view, any talk of actions (actio) before the act is completed
refers to quantities of baking (or walking), which are not yet particulars (properly
understood). Instead, they are quantities of action-stuff (analogous to quantities of
dough in the case of baking).
This analogy was developed in an important contribution by Alexander Mourelatos.12
He suggested that ongoing processes stand to events in the way that quantities of stuff
stand to complete substances. He presented the analogy as follows:
[1] Walking activity : gold [stuff]
[2] This stretch of walking activity : this quantity/amount of gold [quantities of stuff]
[3] This one mile walk : this golden ring [determinate particulars]
In his account, the completed event (This one mile walk) is like a particular substance
(a ‘this such’ in the Aristotelian language of substances) constituted from a stretch (or
quantity) of walking, when the stretch is completed. Before the walk is completed, he
suggested, there is not a fully determinate particular but only a quantity (or stretch) of
walking. Similarly, before a particular golden ring (or cake) is completed, there is no
fully determinate particular but only a quantity (or amount) of gold (or dough).
On Mourelatos’ account, events are constituted out of processes as golden rings are
constituted from the quantities of gold used to make them. One can refer demonstra-
tively to, and count, particular stretches of walking without making them particulars
in the way in which completed events are fully determinate particulars. His account
offers one way to accommodate several of our reputable opinions without representing
Sebastian’s strolling at 2am in Barcelona as a determinate particular. There will only be
determinate particulars (on this account) once his strolling is over.13
11
Michael Thompson (2008, p. 137, fn 19) raises this issue.
12
Alexander Mourelatos (1978). He, generously, noted several earlier attempts to formulate a view of
this type (fn. 27) by (inter alios) Gabbay and Moravcsik (1973) and Barry Taylor (1977). Taylor’s fine article
repays careful attention.
13
It is a non-trivial task, and one beyond the scope of this chapter, to specify what it is to be a (fully)
determinate particular (of the appropriate type). Aristotle described the latter as a ‘this such’ (for example
this box) and distinguished it from this wood (the particular plank or timber from which this box was
made), describing the latter as ‘indeterminate’: Metaphysics 1049a25–7, b1–3: awaiting determination by
the final form imposed by the carpenter.
All agree that, in the example just mentioned, Sebastian did some strolling, a bit of
strolling, perhaps some amount of strolling. But is our talk of the strolling in which he
was then engaged adequately captured by talk of quantities and stretches of strolling?
There are some reasons to doubt that it is.
First, as already mentioned, while we can talk of Sebastian’s stroll as speeding up and
slowing down, stretches or quantities of strolling are not the right type of thing to
speed up or slow down. At best one sub-stretch (or sub-quantity) may be fast and
another slow. But, so understood, one loses the idea of one act of walking (or strolling)
which continued, speeding up and slowing down, underivatively gaining and losing
properties as it developed. In the latter respect, processes resemble continuing sub-
stances which endure through time, with different properties at different times. If one
accepts—on these grounds—that substances are continuants, one should think of
processes in the same way.
There is a second difference. Particular strollings can be spoken of as interrupted,
stopped before they reach their destination, or as ones which might (or would) have
gone on longer. However, amounts and quantities of walking are not like this. If quan-
tities are individuated by the amount of stuff actually present, a given quantity cannot
have been bigger than it was or extend further than it did. Additions of this type gener-
ate different quantities. A quantity cannot be added to (or reduced) while remaining
the quantity it is. Quantities of stuff are modally and mereologically fragile, while
particular walkings are neither.
There is, it should be noted, an alternative way to think of the dough used to make a
cake. Some have suggested that this is a particular causally cohesive lump of dough
which will, if all goes well, be turned into a cake. Aristotle’s own formulations suggest
that he was, on occasion, happy to talk of particular bits of wood or particular lumps of
clay being used to make particular bits of furniture or particular statues.14 However, if
the analogy is developed in this way, it is consistent with the particular process view.
There will be, to revert to our original example, particular lumps of dough and particu-
lar bakings present before the cake is baked. If processes are analogous to particular
lumps of matter, the case of baking will be understood in a way which supports, rather
than undermines, talk of particular process present before the act (or event) is
completed.
To return to Mourelatos’ analogy between quantities of matter (as standardly under-
stood) and particular processes: there is a further disanalogy to note. Several amounts
of strolling joined together do not make one strolling. What makes something one
strolling is not just contiguous (or causally connected) amounts of strolling. Instead, it
depends on the intention of the stroller. Let us imagine that Sebastian is crossing a
road, engaged in road-crossing. Half way across, he is intercepted and carried back to
his initial starting point, where he needs to decide again what to do. His original plan
(to cross the road in one go) has failed and he needs to form a new intention to cross
14
See Aristotle Metaphysics 1049a24, where he talks of this wood as potentially this box.
28 DAVID CHARLES
the road. Let us imagine that—for a second time—he gets half way across but is once
again stopped and transported back to the beginning. His two half road-crossings do
not make one action. There are, it seems, two distinct actions of road-crossing in this
case. Contrast this with the case where Sebastian gets half way across the road, stops
for a moment (perhaps to allow a car to pass) and then continues to the other side. In
this case, he is, it seems, engaging in the same action throughout, even if the time for
which he stopped is exactly the same as that required to carry him back to his initial
starting point. Perhaps Sebastian is (like Sisyphus in the Greek myth) made more
intent on succeeding by initial failure. If so, his initial failed walk will be a major cause
of his second stretch of road-crossing. But neither temporal contiguity nor causal con-
nection (either by themselves or combined) is sufficient to make Sebastian’s two
stretches of walking into one action. He has engaged in a number of different attempts
to cross the road, not in one road-crossing.15
Why not? When Sebastian arrives at the centre of the road, stops for a moment and
then continues, he is implementing the same action plan throughout. The plan begins
with his checking whether traffic is coming, getting to the middle, and then looking
the other way before embarking on the second leg of his journey. This plan is not
materially affected by a delay in the middle of the road. Indeed, the plan allows for a
break to check that it is safe to proceed. Sebastian’s skill as a road-crosser (in these
circumstances) is manifested in his forming and following through a plan of this type.
He monitors how far he has got in implementing it and guides his subsequent actions
in the light of how far he has succeeded. By contrast, when carried back to his initial
starting point, his original plan was materially affected and he needed to start again,
carrying out for a second time the earlier stages in his plan. These differences underwrite
our differing intuitions: in one case, there was one road-crossing, in the other two, even
if both contain the same amount of temporally contiguous and causally connected
road-crossing. In the first Sebastian was guided throughout by one action plan, in the
second he needed to reformulate his plan and begin again.16
Action plans appear significant for action individuation. Sebastian’s process of
road-crossing, while ongoing, has a definite structure: it is conducted in such a way as
to achieve the relevant goal in a given order. It cannot, while remaining the same process,
be combined with other quantities of ‘road-crossing stuff ’ present to achieve different
15
I am indebted to Erasmus Mayr for discussion of this issue. The cases considered differ from ones in
which Sebastian predicts that he will be carried back and forms the original intention to persist in crossing
the road, even if he meets a string of setbacks. In the latter situation, there is (I am inclined to say) just one
action which continues for a long time, in the face of many difficulties.
16
What counts as ‘materially affected’? Suppose I am crossing the road but stop half way to talk with a
friend for twenty minutes. Isn’t that a different process (or action) from one in which I press on without
stopping? Or does it depend on what my original plan was? If my plan is to arrive at my destination as soon
as possible, this will be undermined by my delay. However, if it is only to arrive by a given time (say within
the hour) it will not be changed by my stopping for a while. I am still acting in a way consistent with my
original plan and do not need to reformulate it. Perhaps the same process continues as long as the original
action plan is not (in some way) significantly reformulated? My aim, in this chapter, is not to resolve these
issues of individuation.
goals. By contrast, the amount of gold used to make a golden ring can be combined
with other quantities of gold to make a bigger ring. We have, it seems, intuitions about
the particularity of ongoing processes which are not mirrored in our thinking of quan-
tities of gold. Of course, when the ring is made or the process completed, we can talk of
the quantity of gold in this ring or of how much walking went into that walk. In doing
so, we use the completed ring or walk to determine the quantity of gold or walking
involved. But the difference is that—while the process is still under way—we have
intuitions about its particularity which are not adequately captured by thinking of
(contiguous or causally connected) quantities of walking.
The relation between this road-crossing and this crossing of the road is, in the
respects just noted, not the same as that between this quantity of gold and this golden
ring. Nor should this surprise us: while we can talk of much (or a lot of) gold and much
(or a lot of) walking, in the former case we have a clear idea of the stuff, gold, which is
extracted and used for different purposes. It is in the hills waiting to be made into rings
or broaches! There is, however, no perceptually manifest quantity of walking or road-
crossing available for use in our attempts to cross roads or walk to the shops. Indeed, in
so far as we understand talk of such a mass (or type of stuff) it is, I suspect, on the basis of
our understanding of what is common to, or abstracted from, particular road-crossings
(or types of road-crossing). Temporal-spatial stuff does not play the same role in the
making of particulars as spatial stuff. The analogy does not do justice to the significant
ontological differences between the two.
4. Why Accept the Philosophical Theory?

A Further Argument
There is a further argument to consider: if JJ’s road-crossing is a particular which
endures through time, we will have to think of it—like a substance—as being fully (or
wholly) present at each time during her journey. Both will endure through time,
remaining the same while acquiring and losing properties. Indeed, this was the idea
presupposed when we talked of her road-crossing as initially slow and then fast: that of
one thing developing with differing properties as the walk progressed. However, the
whole of JJ’s walk cannot be present at each moment during its duration. There may be
more of it to come. Usually some of it lies in the past. While the whole of a particular
substance (like JJ) can be present at each time JJ exists, the whole of some particular
process cannot be. So, it seems, particular processes do not continue through time.
Unlike (three-dimensional) substances, they do not endure. They are not wholly present
at each time they exist.
Proponents of this argument take a further step: JJ’s particular walk must, they say,
be something other than a continuing process. If it persists through time, it does not
persist as a continuant. Assuming that her action is either a continuant (something
wholly present at each time it exists) or a persisting entity not wholly present at each
30 DAVID CHARLES
time it exists, it must fall into the latter category.17 It belongs to a class of entities which
persist through time by having parts or stages at different times. What is present at
one moment of time is not the whole entity but only some part of it. Whether one
speaks of what is extended as an ‘event’ or a ‘process’, it is not a continuing particular.
The whole event or process of which it is a part is made up of a sequence of sub-events
or processes which are, as in the Philosophical Theory of Events, spatially, temporally,
and (perhaps) causally connected. In this, events resemble four-dimensional spatial
objects which persist through space but are not wholly present at any of the spaces they
occupy. Whether one speaks of what persists as an ‘event’ or a ‘process’, it is not a
continuing particular.
This argument rests on two assumptions, which motivate the Philosophical Theory
of Events:
[1] It is a necessary condition for an entity’s being a continuing (that is an enduring)
particular that it is ‘wholly present’ at each time that it exists.
[2] All the relevant entities are either continuing particulars or else made up of
parts or stages which are wholly present at differing times.
Some, in recent years, have attempted to make room for particular continuing
processes while accepting [1].18 In their view, there are events which persist through
time in the way just suggested but also particular processes which are present in the
world as it exists at a time. Particular processes are located in ‘temporal windows’,
where different windows contain the same process at different stages in its lifetime, not
different temporal parts of some one entity whose extension encompasses each of the
windows. The process, which is wholly present in each window, moves forward
through time, has a history, and undergoes change. The event which persists through
time is the result of a particular continuing process which itself moves forwards in time
from its beginning to its end. (This view, in effect, rejects claim [D] in the Philosophical
Theory of Events.)
While this suggestion is of considerable interest, it encounters various difficulties.
One runs as follows: is the entity captured in the temporal window itself temporally
extended? If it is, it will also—by the same argument—have temporal parts. (I shall call
it the ‘window entity’). If this is correct, the window entity is not something wholly
present throughout the window nor yet something which continues to exist through-
out the entire episode. It too is an entity with temporal parts which together extend
through the window as a whole.
One might address this concern as follows: perhaps the window entity is an extended
simple, something extended in space and time but without proper parts. Such entities
17
I use ‘persist’ as a neutral term. So understood, continuants (endurants) and perdurants both persist.
For this terminology, see Katherine Hawley (2015).
18
Galton and Mizoguchi (2009, pp. 30–1) develop a similar idea, although their terminology is different
as they refer to (what I have described as) extended events as ‘processes’.
are simple with regard to their parts. Within a window: part of the process is at p1 and
at t1, a later part at p2 and t2, but the process itself is not made up of these two parts.
Although there is one process which is partly there and partly here, there is not one
part located at p1 and t1 and another at p2 and t2.19
How to block the inference from the premise that one process is partly here and
partly there to the conclusion that part of it is there and part here? This inference is
hard to resist. It seems innocuously true that the process in question has parts. But if
this is correct, we have not captured a continuant ‘wholly present’ throughout either
the window or the whole process. Further, if it can be resisted, why not say that the
whole process from beginning to end is an extended simple without parts?
The present suggestion is, as I understand it, that:
(i) Events are extended through time and have parts.
(ii) Processes are ‘wholly present’ at each stage.
The difficulty arises because the motivations which support (i) seem to require that
what is present at each stage also has parts. But if it does, the process will not be ‘wholly
present’ at each stage—and we will not have successfully undermined the second argu-
ment for the Philosophical Theory of Events. Indeed, if (ii) cannot be sustained, we
have—in effect—arrived at a version of that theory.
There is a second problem for this suggestion: the window entity is the process
which moves through a series of other windows. But its moving is itself a process.
However, if it moves, there will, it seems, be another window entity which accounts for
its movement. But since that too will move, there must be yet another window entity to
account for its movement . . . and so ad infinitum. One might block this regress by
denying that the window entity itself moves. There is simply a series of such window
entities one after another. However, if the resulting extended entity is made up of
temporally, spatially, and (perhaps) causally contiguous parts, it will be an event of the
type advocated by proponents of the Philosophical Theory. The idea of there being one
process wholly present throughout, speeding up and slowing down as it develops, has
been lost.
To resist this argument one must defend (ii). Proponents of the Philosophical
Theory reject this claim because, in their view, while continuant objects are ‘wholly
present’ throughout their existence, processes are not. As they see it, the latter persist
only by having parts (or stretches) wholly present for some of their duration. Once
this claim is accepted, it seems hard to evade commitment to the Philosophical
Theory of Events.
Talk of what is ‘wholly present’ is not, however, itself wholly clear. John, assuming
him to be a continuant, can—in the intended sense—be wholly present at each
moment he exists, even if at various times he loses a finger, hand, or leg, gets bigger and
smaller, or gains or loses hair. He can, it seems, be ‘wholly present’ while in the process
19
Gonzalo Rodriquez-Pereyra suggested this possibility.
32 DAVID CHARLES
of gaining height or losing his hair, etc. So, what is the intended sense? Since John lives
for several years or decades, his life extends through time. Surely, too, one can see
John himself as extended through time, with temporally specific parts (John at t1,
John at t2 . . .). But, if this is correct, how is John himself ‘wholly present’ at each time
that he exists?
Is there another way to capture the idea of a continuing particular? At each moment
during John’s life, it is true to say that he exists (without qualification).20 It is not just
that part of him exists, as would be the case with an entity which is essentially extended
and composed of temporally specific parts. If John is an enduring particular, he does
not continue to exist in virtue of the existence of a series of temporally specific parts of
him (such as John-at-t1). This is why it is true that John, if he is a continuing particular,
exists at each moment during his life, whatever loss or gain of hair or limbs he may
suffer. The same particular endures and its continued existence is not dependent on
the existence of a series of temporally specific parts of John.
On the present suggestion, John is a continuing particular because he exists without
qualification at each moment he exists. In a similar way, the process of road-crossing
can exist without qualification at each moment that it is ongoing. One can truthfully
say at each such moment: this process exists. Even if part of the process exists at
each such moment, it is not the case that the process itself only partially exists (or
exists-in-part). Like John, the process of road-crossing exists at each such moment
without qualification. Parts of the process exist in virtue of the process itself existing
at that time.
Such processes and events (as understood by the Philosophical Theory) differ.
While part of an event exists at each moment that the event is ongoing, the event itself
only partially exists (exists-in-part) at each such moment. It does not exist without
qualification at each individual moment during its extended existence. Processes, by
contrast, exist without qualification at each moment that they exist.
To see the relevant contrast, consider the first moment of a process. At that time, the
process in question exists without qualification. Whether or not it continues longer is
irrelevant to its unqualified existence at that time. The existence of the event (as under-
stood by the Philosophical Theory) is not determined in this way. If it passes through
further moments, it only partially exists (exists-in-part) at the first moment. In the
limiting case when a perdurant survives only for the first moment, the fact that it does
not survive longer is necessary if it is to exist without qualification at the first moment.
The fact that this is the only moment when it survives is relevant to determining its
unqualified existence at that time. In its case, what happens subsequently is relevant to
whether it exists in an unqualified way at the first moment. For events (as for other
perdurants) what happens at subsequent times is relevant to the way in which they
exist at the first moment. Indeed, this difference suggests a criterion for distinguishing
20
This approach is developed in more detail by Kit Fine (2006).
processes and events at their outset. Processes are enduring particulars, events (as
characterized by the Philosophical Theory) are not: they are perdurants.
Hofweber and Velleman aim to clarify still further the idea of being ‘wholly present’.21
They propose that an enduring particular is ‘wholly present’ at each time that it exists if
and only if what is happening at each such time is by itself sufficient to determine that
it exists.22 In their view, an object endures over an interval if and only if it is wholly
present (in the way just specified) at each moment in that interval. By contrast, perdur-
ing objects exist at each moment in such an interval even though their identity is
not determined at each moment (taken individually). Their identity depends on what
happens at other moments in which they exist. If there were an omniscient knower
who focused only on some one moment, it would know which enduring particulars,
but not which perduring particulars were present.
The Hofweber-Velleman strategy seeks to capture the idea that John exists underiv-
atively (as an enduring particular) at each moment during his life. However, it succeeds
only at a high cost. Some think that it is a necessary feature of John that he was born of
the parents he was actually born of. Others believe that John—to be that very object—
must have passed through a series of stages of development (such as infancy and
adolescence). Someone who looked like John but had been born of different parents or
(even if born of the same parents) had previously been a bird or a horse, would not be
John. If one shares their intuitions, one cannot maintain (at least without further work)
that what happens at each moment of John’s career is sufficient to guarantee his identity
at that time.
Similar problems arise for processes. Is their identity fully determined (for example
in the case of an action) at each time they exist? It appears not. One suggestion,
Aristotelian in spirit, is that the identity of a process, at each such time, is determined
by the capacity then being exercised. On this view, the identity of an action is deter-
mined by the capacity exercised and the intention (or action plan) with which the
agent acts. The action will continue as long as both the capacity realized and the agent’s
action plan remain the same. If so, its identity rests on issues concerning the origin of
the action (which capacity and intention does it spring from?), not solely on what is
happening at each moment at which it exists.
Given these difficulties, it seems preferable to distinguish continuants (that is,
endurants) and perdurants simply on the basis of the earlier idea that the former,
but not the latter, exist without qualification at each moment that they exist. John,
assuming that he is an endurant, can exist without qualification at each moment he
exists, even if he could not have been born of different parents or previously been a bird
or a horse. His mode of existence at each moment differs from that of a perdurant, even
if his identity is dependent on facts about his origin and previous development. On
21
See Hofweber and Velleman (2011).
22
Their proposal might also be seen as an attempt to analyse what it is to exist without qualification.
34 DAVID CHARLES
this criterion, both material objects (such as John) and processes will be continuants,
events perdurants.
Hofweber and Velleman, however, do not distinguish between processes and events,
although they distinguish both from enduring material objects. They write:
our notion of material objects is . . . unlike our notion of events and processes. A process
such as writing a cheque is a temporally extended process, with temporal parts consisting
in the laying down of each successive drop of ink. What there is of this process at a particu-
lar moment—the laying down of a particular drop—is not sufficient to determine that a
cheque is being written, and so it is not sufficient to determine which particular process is
taking place. That particular drop of ink could have been deposited at that moment, just
as it actually was, without other drops’ being deposited at other moments in such a way as
to constitute the same process. Not only, then, is the process not present in its temporal
entirety within the confines of the moment: it is not fully determined by the events of
the moment to be the process that it is. Within the moment, it is not all there and it is not
fully itself. (2011, p. 50)
One may agree that the event of writing the cheque is not fully determined by the
events at each moment of the writing. Which event it is (in line with the Philosophical
Theory of Events) will be determined by what happens at other stages of its develop-
ment. However, the process itself, it seems, exists without qualification at each
moment during its career: it begins, continues, is initially slow and then quick,
speeds up and draws to a close. At each stage, one and the same process continues to
exist provided that what unfolds is the realization of the same capacity and is guided
by the same intention (or action plan). If processes and material objects both exist
without qualification in this way, they will (pace Hofweber and Velleman) resemble
each other and differ from events (as understood in the Philosophical Theory). Under
this criterion, processes and material objects are continuants (enduring particulars),
events perdurants.
One main argument for the Philosophical Theory of Events can be blocked if we
distinguish processes from events in the way suggested. Processes endure through
time, events (as understood by the Philosophical Theory) do not. One process, such as
signing one’s name, may result in differing events, depending on where the process in
question ends. The identity of this process is determined by features such as the inten-
tion and capacity realized, the identity of the relevant event (in part) by where and
when it begins and ends.
It may be helpful, at this point, to recall another aspect of Aristotle’s account. He did
not think that all actions are processes. Some are activities. He noted that while it is not
possible that one has walked from p1 to p2 and still continues with that walk, one can have
seen something and still continue with that seeing. In the cases of process descriptions,
the perfect tense is applicable only when the process has been completed, while, in the
case of activity descriptions, it can be applied even while the activity is still ongoing.23
23
Aristotle, Metaphysics 1048b22ff.
This grammatical distinction was evidence, in his view, of an ontological difference

between processes and activities (Metaphysics 1048a28). On this basis, he described
ongoing processes as incomplete actions, ongoing activities as complete actions.
Aristotle sometimes formulated his distinction by saying that activities can be com-
plete at a moment (‘in the now’) while processes cannot.24 However, this notion of
completeness must be distinct from that required for a process to be present. Activities
can achieve their goal and continue thereafter as the same activity. Processes, by con-
trast, can only achieve their goal when they are completed. However, as already noted,
processes can exist without qualification without being completed. Perhaps activities
are completed whenever they exist. But both, unlike events, exist in an unqualified way
while they are still under way.25
While the distinction between processes and events may rest on some more funda-
mental difference between their essential properties, enough has been said to differentiate
them, while seeing both as continuing (that is, enduring) particulars.
Our next task is to consider the importance of this conclusion for the study of action:
are particular actions processes or events? Do we need both to make sense of our talk
of agency? Are both equally important? Or is one more basic than the other?
5. Processes: Their Importance for Agency (1)

There are several reasons for thinking that processes and activities, understood as con-
tinuing particulars, are important for our understanding of agency. While I shall focus
on processes, my remarks also apply to activities.
Processes are referred to in a certain type of action explanation.26 Consider a few
questions and answers:
[Q] Why are you putting the kettle on?
[A] Because I am making some tea.
[Q] Why are you going to the shops?
[A] Because I am preparing to make supper.
These answers indicate the process of which putting on the kettle or going to the shops
is a stage. This form of explanation presents one sub-process as part of a larger process,
now ongoing. The longer process is cited to explain a number of features of what I am
currently doing. That I am making some tea explains why I am putting on the kettle
prior to infusing the tea leaves with boiling water, etc. That is, my being engaged in
making tea explains why I act in the order I do and gives a unity to the ordered actions
(or sub-processes) that I do. Further, my currently being engaged in making some tea
explains why I act in certain ways when problems arise. In the absence of appropriate
24
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1174b9ff.
25
Alexander Mourelatos (1993, pp. 386–7) calls attention to the relevant distinctions.
26
Michael Thompson (2008, pp. 128ff.) draws attention to this form of explanation.
36 DAVID CHARLES
tea, I may go to the shops or try to borrow some from my neighbour. It is because I am
engaged in this process, that when difficulties arise I act in these ways. Finally, my
being engaged in making some tea explains why certain actions are counted as failures
or mistakes: if I add the boiling water to coffee beans rather than tea leaves, I will not
succeed in the process I am undertaking.
Why is this type of explanation significant? Its importance lies, in part, in the role it
ascribes to an agent’s knowledge of what one is doing. In the case just described, it con-
sists in one’s grasp of one’s goal, one’s skill in acting to achieve it as well as in one’s aware-
ness that one is acting in the way required to do so. This type of knowledge explains the
way in which I now act and how (and why) I will modify my action if problems arise.
Skilled action unfolds in a knowledgeable manner. If what I am now doing is susceptible
to modification and guidance in this way, it must be a particular process. Indeed, con-
tinuing processes are, it seems, required properly to understand skilled action. Events
(as characterized by the Philosophical Theory) cannot capture an agent’s skilled engage-
ment in the ongoing particular action which he (or she) is trying to complete success-
fully. What is directly directed and may be modified in this way is, it appears, the process
in which the agent is engaged, not the event which results from it.
Agents standardly know which action they are engaged in doing. What I know can-
not be the total sequence of events. I do not know, while I am making tea, that it will be
a success. All I know is that I am doing something which—if all goes well—will result
in success: the ongoing process in which I am currently engaged. Nor is what I know
simply what I have done so far—perhaps together with what I intend to do. I can know
both of these even when I have stopped making tea, provided that I retain the intention
to complete the task in the distant future.
Elizabeth Anscombe drew attention to this aspect of agent’s knowledge. In her dis-
cussion of intentional actions, which she introduced as a sub-class of events (1957,
p. 24), she wrote:
I do what happens . . . when the description of what happens is the very same thing which I should
say I was doing, there is no distinction between my doing it and the thing’s happening . . . But
everyone who heard this formula found it extremely paradoxical and obscure. (pp. 52–3)
While her intuition was sound, her interlocutors’ difficulty is not hard to understand.
If they interpreted her mention of ‘what happens’ as referring to an event (as under-
stood in the Philosophical Theory), they must have suspected that Anscombe was
confusing acting with something that happens as a result of action: the event the agent
brings about. Further, they may have feared that, in identifying what happens (the
result) with the agent’s doing it, she was losing sight of the significance she had rightly
accorded to an agent’s knowledge of what he (or she) is engaged in doing. However,
Anscombe’s remark about ‘what happens’ is more charitably understood as referring
to processes. So interpreted, she is pointing out (correctly) that, in this case, there is no
distinction between our acting and the process that unfolds. They are, as she suggests,
the very same thing.
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Process, Action, and Experience

List of Contributors vii

David Charles, Yale University

2. The Philosophical Rise of the Event

utterances and interactions with an audience. This sequence of outcomes happened

3. The Recognition of the Need for Processes

4. The Metaphysics of Process

ongoing processes as dynamic continuants. It should be observed that there are

central idea is to think of a process as an abstract pattern of occurrence—a temporal

­ erception in terms of the state of knowledge and Donald Davidson trying to u

Merleau-Ponty, M. 1945, reprinted in 2013, tr. D. Landes, Phenomenology of Perception,

PROCESSES, ACTIVITIES, AND ACTIONS 21

In response we may say:

2. The Philosophical Theory of Events

PROCESSES, ACTIVITIES, AND ACTIONS 23

PROCESSES, ACTIVITIES, AND ACTIONS 25

3. Why Accept the Philosophical Theory of Events?

PROCESSES, ACTIVITIES, AND ACTIONS 27

PROCESSES, ACTIVITIES, AND ACTIONS 29

4. Why Accept the Philosophical Theory?

PROCESSES, ACTIVITIES, AND ACTIONS 31

PROCESSES, ACTIVITIES, AND ACTIONS 33

PROCESSES, ACTIVITIES, AND ACTIONS 35

This grammatical distinction was evidence, in his view, of an ontological difference

5. Processes: Their Importance for Agency (1)

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List of Contributors vii

erception in terms of the state of knowledge and Donald Davidson trying to u