What does it mean to be? (Why being is a verb, not a noun)
What defines being? Are 'beings' things or processses? More importantly, which definition tells us more about ourselves than any other single word?
Being
A collection of resources on the topic of being
Definition
Learn the definition of being, its etymology, common and essential meanings, along with its philosophical implications.
Core tenets
- Koan 10.1: Principle of existence
- Koan 10.2: Many names, one truth
- Koan 10.3: From dust to galaxies
- Koan 10.4: Towards life
- Koan 10.5: The making of sentience
- Koan 10.6: The genesis of all being
- Koan 10.7: All that is
Articles
On being
A guided tour through the history of ontology—from Parmenides and Heraclitus to Whitehead and Derrida. This article traces philosophy's long journey from static substance to dynamic relation, culminating in a bold new process philosophy: the 'Conference of Difference'.
Graham Harman: a comparative analysis with the CoD
A systematic comparison of Graham Harman's Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) with the (CoD) model. Alexander Stepanov said Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) obscures process behind static objects. Does the same critique apply to Harman's OOO?
Alain Badiou: a CRUP-OMAF case study
CRUP-OMAF assessment of Alain Badiou's ontology: evaluates completeness, robustness, usefulness and potential.
Alain Badiou: a comparative analysis with the CoD
For Badiou, being is non-relational multiplicity. Unity is imposed. Novelty requires a rare, traumatic Event to force a new truth. For the CoD, being IS relational process. One says relation is an effect. The other says relation IS existence.
David Lewis: a CRUP-OMAF case study
CRUP-OMAF assessment of David Lewis's modal realist ontology: evaluates completeness, robustness, usefulness, and transformative potential of its primordial dualism, cosmic ethics, and eschatological resolution.
David Lewis: a comparative analysis with the CoD
David Kellogg Lewis gave us infinite concrete worlds—but are they necessary? This comparative analysis with the CoD ontology argues they're not: the CoD grounds possibility in immediate, conferential relationality—no causally isolated worlds required.
Willard Van Orman Quine: a comparative analysis with the CoD
For Quine, 'To be is to be the value of a bound variable'. But what if existence itself is process before it's phenomenon as object? How does relation precede relata?
Jean-Paul Sartre: a comparative analysis with the CoD
Jean-Paul Sartre vs. the Conference of Difference. New analysis: freedom isn't a burdensome human condition but a specific expression of universal relational binding. A unified ontology dissolves the en-soi/pour-soi gap.
Henri Bergson: a comparative analysis with the CoD
Bergson said clock time hides reality. CoD says it reveals a map for navigating it. Same insight. Different conclusion. New comparison.
Nicolai Hartmann: a CRUP-OMAF case study
CRUP-OMAF assessment of Nicolai Hartmann's ontology: evaluating completeness, robustness, usefulness and potential.
Nicolai Hartmann: a comparative analysis with the CoD
Is reality a dynamic layered structure with discoverable categorical laws (Hartmann) or a pure relational process where structure emerges from relating (CoD)?
Henri Bergson: a CRUP-OMAF case study
CRUP-OMAF assessment of Henri Bergson's ontology: evaluating completeness, robustness, usefulness and potential.
The universe: The perpetual engine of existence.
What if the universe is not a temporary phenomenon, but the perpetual engine of existence?
Alfred North Whitehead: a comparative analysis with the CoD
Both Whitehead's process philosophy and the CoD reject static substances. Both prioritize relation over relata. But only one grounds relationality without teleology, God, or eternal objects.
Martin Heidegger: a CRUP-OMAF case study
CRUP-OMAF assessment of Martin Heidegger's ontology: evaluating completeness, robustness, usefulness and potential.
Friedrich Nietzsche: a comparative analysis with the CoD
Nietzsche reduces all relationality to an expression of a single, monolithic competitive drive. But what if he only had it half right?
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: a comparative analysis with the CoD
Hegel's substance-process teleology transforms the Many into the One, while the CoD's a-teleology 'bears together' that which 'bears apart'.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: a CRUP-OMAF case study
CRUP-OMAF assessment of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's ontology: evaluating completeness, robustness, usefulness and potential.
Immanuel Kant: a comparative analysis with the CoD
Kant forbids cause in the noumenon, then smuggles in 'AFFECTIO' to explain sensation. The CoD needs no smuggled cause—the conference of difference is the causal process of existence.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: a comparative analysis with the CoD
Leibniz's 'Monadology' presents a rational system founded on creation from nothing. But in 'Principles of Nature and Grace' he admits: 'these are matters of faith, not reason'. The emperor has no clothes.
Baruch Spinoza: a comparative analysis with the CoD
Spinoza collapses all of reality into a single Substance—God or Nature—then derives everything else from it with geometric necessity. But for the CoD model, no relata precedes the relation.
René Descartes: a comparative analysis with the CoD
Descartes splits reality into two substances: res cogitans and res extensa—then needs God to glue them back together. For the CoD model, mind and body were never separate.
John Duns Scotus: a CRUP-OMAF case study
CRUP-OMAF assessment of John Duns Scotus's ontology: evaluates completeness, robustness, usefulness and potential.
John Duns Scotus: a comparative analysis with the CoD
For Scotus, God and creatures are the same kind of beings—one infinite, the other finite. For the CoD model of ontology, being (lit. 'action to be'), no matter how similar, differs by definition for every being. For Scotus, being is a noun; for the CoD it's a verb.
Thomas Aquinas: a CRUP-OMAF case study
CRUP-OMAF assessment of Thomas Aquinas's ontology: evaluates completeness, robustness, usefulness and potential.
What is the purpose of existence? A unified philosophy
Rethinking reality — from quantum systems to how we govern the planet
Thomas Aquinas: a comparative analysis with the CoD
A comparative analysis of Thomas Aquinas's ontology and the Conference of Difference (CoD), focusing on primacy, manner, and unity/multiplicity.
Psyche domain: Sentience and interiority.
The structure of mind is inherently relational; it exists not as a static thing, but as the process of integrating difference.
Social domain: Language and institutions.
The social domain is the realm where the Conference of Difference functions to facilitate knowing along with the responsibility that arises from it.
Theistic Vedanta: a comparative analysis with the CoD
Theistic Vedanta says: the many are real, but only in the One. The CoD says: the One is the conference of the many. One grounds unity as a prior substance. The other grounds unity as an ongoing process. Which ontology lets you watch unity happen in real time?
Physical domain: the bare conference of difference.
How existence emerges not from substance but from relation, not from things but from the conference of differences interacting with other conferences of differences.
Theistic Vedanta: a CRUP-OMAF case study
CRUP-OMAF assessment of Theistic Vedanta's ontology: evaluates completeness, robustness, usefulness and potential.
Avicenism: a CRUP-OMAF case study
CRUP-OMAF assessment of the ontology of Avicennism: evaluates completeness, robustness, usefulness and potential.
Avicennism: a comparative analysis with the CoD
Ibn/Pura Sina's 'Flying Man' knows he exists without senses, without a body. But does existence need a transcendent Necessary Existent? In this analysis we compare Avicennism against the CoD model of ontology.
Advaita Vedanta: a comparative analysis with the CoD
Advaita Vedanta says the world is illusion. The CoD says the world is a 'conference of difference'. One negates the many. The other grounds unity 'in' the relationship of the many. Which ontology cancels less of your lived experience?
Threshold: Seven short stories on AI.
Seven short stories on AI.
Samkhya: a comparative analysis with the CoD
Samkhya splits reality in two: consciousness over here, matter over there. Forever separate. Never touching. Clean. Elegant. But unable to explain how they interact. Samkhya's metaphor tells us that the blind carrier and lame guide only work together. But what if this dependency was one process mistaken as two?
Advaita Vedanta: a CRUP-OMAF case study
CRUP-OMAF assessment of Advaita Vedanta's ontology: evaluates completeness, robustness, usefulness and potential.
Plotinus: a comparative analysis with the CoD
Plotinus saw unity as the source—a perfect One from which multiplicity flows downward as a kind of falling away. But what if unity isn’t the origin, but the achievement? What if multiplicity isn’t a fall, but the very condition for unity to emerge? This comparative analysis inverts the Neoplatonic hierarchy.
Vaisesika: a comparative analysis with the CoD
A comparative analysis of Vaiśeṣika's atomistic categorical ontology against the Conference of Difference (CoD) process-primacy model, revealing a fundamental divergence on substance versus process as the primitive of existence.
Vaisesika: a CRUP-OMAF case study
CRUP-OMAF assessment of the ontology of Vaisesika: evaluates completeness, robustness, usefulness and potential.
Classical Theism: a comparative analysis with the CoD
If relationship is the 'primitive' of existence, what does that mean for how we understand God, creation, or even ethics? A thought-provoking read.
Aristotle: a comparative analysis with the CoD
Aristotle founded Western metaphysics on the concept of substance: reality is made of individual things that exist first and only later enter into relationships. But what if Aristotle had it back to front? This assessment suggests that what we perceive as substance is actually a stable pattern of activity.
Plato: a comparative analysis with the CoD
What can a modern process ontology tell us that Plato's perfect Forms cannot? Is the world of change just a shadow of a higher reality, or is it the primary expression of existence itself? My latest article explores this through the lens of the Conference of Difference (CoD) model.
Parmenides: a comparative analysis with the CoD
Why does the ontology of Parmenides dismiss the entire world of change as an illusion and is it necessary?
Daoism: a comparative analysis with the CoD
What if the Daoism is mistaken? What if the world of distinct things and constant change is not a fallen state but the engine of reality itself.
Heraclitus: a comparative analysis with the CoD
Heraclitus said you can't step in the same river twice, anchoring the flow of all things in a hidden unifying hand called the Logos. The CoD model asks whether the Logos is needed?
Early Buddhism: a comparative analysis with the CoD
Where does the self end and existence begin? A deep comparative analysis of ontology, impermanence, and the nature of being.
Jainism: a comparative analysis with the CoD
Jainism vs. Modern Process Ontology: When do metaphysical assumptions become a liability?
Zoroastrianism: a comparative analysis with the CoD
What if evil isn't a primordial spirit, but a breakdown within the conference of difference? This week we compare Zoroastrianism with the CoD model of ontology.
On the soul: the impressions we weave and leave.
The impression we weave and leave behind
The ballerina and the photon
How our language betrays the fluid heart of quantum mechanics.
Ideology
When the map obscures the territory.
Who am I?
The self as a conference of difference perceived as now.
The architecture of possibility
How a forgotten framework resolves our oldest debate.
Persistence and identity
Beyond parts and wholes.
The basis of existence
Is existence grounded in substance or process?
Beyond Deleuze
How the conference of difference completes Deleuze's ontology.
Being vs. becoming
Is existence defined by substance or process?
Descartes - on God's existence
Was Descartes confirming or challenging God's existence.