The Ontology of States, Processes, and Events

Antony Galton

In Mitsuhiro Okada and Barry Smith (editors), Interdisciplinary Ontology, Vol. 5, Proceedings of the Fifth Interdisciplinary Ontology Meeting, February 23rd-24th 2012, Tokyo. Keio University, Open Research Centre for Logic and Formal Ontology, pages 35-45.
ISBN 978-4-904239-05-6

Abstract

This paper presents a new view of the relationship between states, processes and events. Instead of trying to treat them as entities all on a similar footing, as most previous authors have done, we regard processes as abstract patterns of behaviour which may be realised in concrete form as actually occurring states or events. Processes are divided into two broad types, called continuables and repeatables, and various mappings between and within these categories are considered. The theory presented here is consistent with recent theorising about processes in ontology and computer science while being sensitive to the insights from the work of philosophers and linguists over many years.

Full text (Preprint)
Slides from the conference presentation


Antony Galton
Last modified: Fri Apr 20 16:56:51 BST 2012