Title: Process Philosophy (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Headings: Process Philosophy
Process Philosophy
1. Historical contributions
2. Three tasks of process philosophy
3. Beyond traditional ‘bifurcations’: process-philosophical approaches to old questions
4. Tracking science: new topics for process philosophy
5. Current challenges
6. The ultimate question: is reality directed?
7. Institutionalization
Bibliography
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Acknowledgments

Content: its concern is with the dynamic sense of being as becoming or occurrence, the conditions of spatio-temporal existence, the kinds of dynamic entities, the relationship between mind and world, and the realization of values in action. Some approaches to process philosophy are conceived on the grand scale and offer a full-scope metaphysics in the form of a systematic theory or comprehensive philosophical view. Other approaches, especially more recent ones, take a more modest approach. They pursue the specific problems that the various philosophical disciplines are engaged in while focusing on the dynamic aspects of each sub-domain. Such process ontologies, process ethics, process epistemologies, process theories of mind etc. are contributions to ‘process philosophy’ more broadly conceived as a research paradigm of philosophical inquiry. They share the guiding idea that natural existence consists in modes of becoming and types of occurrences. ‘ Processists’ agree that the world is an assembly of physical, organic, social, and cognitive processes that interact at and across levels of dynamic organization. However, within that broad framework, process philosophers debate about how such a world of processes is to be construed, how it relates to the human mind (which is another process) and how the dynamic nature of reality relates to our scientific theories. In consequence, process philosophers also differ in their view on the role of philosophy itself and in their choice of theoretical style.