On Being

Article 1 of a 10-part series dedicated to ontology.

Caption: An AI created murmuration of starlings arcs low over the water, forming a shape that echoes the outline of a bird—natural, fluid and transforming—against the soft light of a fading day.

Introduction

What is being? We often treat being as a static noun—a substance. But what if this foundational assumption is fundamentally wrong?

Ontology, the philosophical 'account of being', has grappled with this question for millennia. From the ancient Greeks to postmodern thinkers, the landscape is rich with theories, yet a unifying framework often remains trapped in the language of substances and static states. This article introduces a fresh perspective, one where being is a verb—a process.

When we enquire into being as a process, we are in effect enquiring as to the condition of being—quite literally existence itself. Crucially, this condition i.e. 'process of declaring together' is best analogized as a conference of difference, a 'condition of bearing together', transforming the 'condition of bearing apart'. In short, the conference of difference (CoD) is the process primative of existence itself.

But before we get ahead of ourselves, it's important to acknowledge all of those who helped lead us to this insight.

The Historical Drive Toward Relational Being

The philosophical quest to understand being is not a scattered collection of isolated theories, but a coherent, centuries-long dialogue. We can trace a clear path through this history, one that reveals a gradual but decisive shift from seeing being as a static substance to understanding it as a dynamic relation. This journey brings us to the very threshold of the conference of difference.

The Ancient Dialogue: Substance vs. Flux

The earliest Western debates established the fundamental tension. On one side stood Parmenides, for whom true Being was one, unchanging, and indivisible. Change and difference were illusions of the senses.^[1] This was the case for being as a perfect, static noun. Against this, Heraclitus argued that reality is pure flux—a 'fire' kindling and extinguishing in measures. His famous dictum, 'opposition brings concord', positioned strife and tension as the very engine of existence, an early intuition of relational dynamics.^[2]

Crucially, Eastern traditions avoided this dichotomy altogether. Daoism understood reality through the unnameable, dynamic process of the Dao, where all things arise from the relational interaction of Yin and Yang.^[3] Similarly, in Buddhism, the core doctrine of Pratītyasamutpāda (Dependent Origination) posits that nothing possesses independent existence; all phenomena exist only in dependence upon other phenomena.^[4] This is a profound ancient precursor to the concept of a conference of difference, defining things not by a static essence but by their ever-changing web of relations.

The Age of Substance and Its Discontents

Aristotle engineered a monumental shift that would dominate Western thought for two millennia, anchoring being in ousia (substance)—the individual entity, like a man or a horse, with its essential properties.^[5] This substance ontology was powerfully intuitive but carried a fundamental weakness: it struggled to adequately explain change, relation, and consciousness. The Medieval synthesis, exemplified by Aquinas, further entrenched this framework within a divinely ordered hierarchy, distinguishing between a thing's essence and its existence.^[6]

The Modern turn began by magnifying these very problems. Descartes' cogito ergo sum grounded being in thinking substance, but in doing so, he created a radical dualism between mind and extended matter. The infamous 'mind-body problem' is a direct consequence of defining being as two isolated, incompatible substances.^[7] Kant then performed a crucial pivot. By arguing we can never know the noumenon (the thing-in-itself) but only the phenomenon (the world as it appears through our mental categories), he made relation to the knower fundamental to reality-as-we-know-it.^[8] This was a monumental step toward the conference of difference, yet it maintained an unbridgeable gap between the world and our experience of it.

The Relational Rebellion

The 20th century saw a full-scale rebellion against the paradigm of substance. In Process Philosophy, Alfred North Whitehead argued that reality is composed not of enduring things, but of events and processes. His concept of 'prehensions'—the way each event grasps and internalizes its relations to all other events—made relationality the very fabric of being. For Whitehead, being was unequivocally becoming.^[9]

This relational theme was radicalized by Postmodern thinkers. Derrida, with his concept of différance (both differing and deferring), and Deleuze, with his philosophy of multiplicities and difference-in-itself, deconstructed the very idea of a stable, self-identical being. They provided the 'difference' half of our equation with immense sophistication; yet their emphasis on deconstruction often leaned toward skepticism, stopping short of offering a constructive, unified metaphysics.

If this long journey seems to have brought us to a fork in the road—between static objects and unspeakable fluxes—you have perceived the central problem perfectly. The entire history of ontology can be read as a slow turning from the noun of 'substance' to the verb of 'relation'.

We are thus left with the unresolved, synthetic challenge: How do we honor the stability and individuality of the Aristotelian substance, the dynamic becoming of Heraclitus and Whitehead, and the rigorous difference of the postmoderns, without falling into their respective traps of isolation, vagueness, or pure skepticism? The historical drive has delivered us to this precise question, for which the classical frameworks, on their own, provide no complete answer.

Towards A New Understanding of Being

Synthesizing insights from this long tradition, we arrive at a new understanding which highlights the condition of being as a Conference of Difference (CoD). In this context, existence is not a solitary state but a continuous bearing together of what would otherwise be bearing apart. An elementary particle is an inferred condition: 'process of declaring together', a CoD of field and excitation; a solar system is a stabilized condition: 'process of declaring together', a CoD of gravitational collapse and orbital velocity; a thought is a dynamic condition: 'process of declaring together', a CoD of chemical signals and electrical impulses across a neural network.

This view is inherently relational. Nothing exists in isolation; the condition of being is always co-constituted through its relations. It echoes Heraclitus’ flux, Hegel’s dialectic, and Whitehead’s process, but synthesizes them into a single, unified principle. The same pattern recurs at every scale, from quantum fields to conscious beings. This makes genesis an ongoing process, not a one-time event. Creation is the continuous unfolding of reality through the activity of difference bearing together in conference.^[10]

This is not merely philosophical speculation. The 'action to be' finds empirical validation across the sciences. Physics reveals that fundamental particles are not tiny billiard balls but dynamic excitations of relational fields. Chemistry demonstrates that identity and property emerge entirely from the bonding and transformation of different elements. Biology shows that life is the sustained metabolic action of maintaining complexity through constant exchange with the environment. In each case, being is verified as a verb—the active participation in a conference of difference.

The Experience of Being: Time, Intelligence, and the Navigable Present

If this seems abstract, consider your own immediate experience. All being: 'action to be' manifests in the conference of difference we perceive as the present. The past and future are not territories we can visit; they are maps constructed within the ongoing conference of difference we call 'now'.^[11]

This leads to a profound implication: spatio-temporality are not fundamental containers. They are navigational constructs generated by the conference of difference itself in sentient beings. Spatiality provides the construct of 'where', that relative sense of location that allows a being to map the arrangement of a perceived conference of difference. Temporality provides the construct of 'when' that relative sense of duration that allows a being to sequence past conferences of difference and anticipate future ones.

Together, they form the cognitive coordinate system we conceive as the 'navigable present'. This is the very condition that enables intelligence—the 'condition of choosing between' one being: 'action to be' over another. Intelligence, then, is the capacity to use these spatio-temporal constructs to steer the ongoing conference of difference. The 'past' is a reconstructed conference of difference; the 'future' is a prognosticated one. Both are formulated in the conference of difference we perceive as 'now'.

Therefore, we do not exist in time and space. Rather, our conference of difference generates the perception of time and space as the perceptual values through which existence becomes meaningful and navigable.

Convergence & Divergence

This framework finds significant convergence with classical thought. It embraces Heraclitus by making tension and harmony central to being. It resonates with Hegel’s dialectical process, which mirrors the bearing together of difference into new syntheses. It aligns with Whitehead’s core premise that process and relation are foundational. It even finds harmony with Eastern traditions like Daoism and Budhism, where both express the natural, relational order of all things.

However, it also diverges from key classical positions. It explicitly rejects the Parmenidean ideal of a static, undifferentiated unity and the Cartesian substance dualism that splits mind from matter. It challenges reductionism by insisting that emergence through relation produces genuinely novel realities. It differs from Kant by blurring the sharp noumenon-phenomenon divide—both are seen as different modes or resolutions of the conference of difference. Finally, it moves beyond postmodern deconstruction by offering a constructive, non-skeptical metaphysics grounded in a positive account of relational existence.

Take-away

The philosophical insight here is profound: being is not a what but a how. It is a continuous, relational process—the conference of difference. This framework does not discard the past but builds upon it, bridging ancient wisdom and modern science to offer a coherent ontology for the 21st century.

The human relevance is immediate and deep. We are not isolated selves but active participants in the conference of difference. Understanding this transforms our sense of responsibility, connection and meaning. To be fully human is to bear together our differences with awareness and grace, recognizing that our every action to be ripples through the relational whole.

The final thought is an invitation. The Gospel of Being asks us to see existence not as a problem to be solved, but as a conversation to be joined—an ongoing, dynamic conference of difference which we all perceive as right here, right now.^[12]

The Gospel of Being

by John Mackay

A rigorous yet readable exploration of how existence functions—and how that relates to you.

Discover the book