This is a three-part series from philosopher Dionysis Christias, distilling his recent book Towards a Hyperstitional Process Nominalism: Outline of a Fractured Immanent Ontology (2025). He advances a conception of ‘fractured immanence’ in which mind and nature are not ontologically distinct regions of being (they are both ways of being processes) yet diverge in the order of understanding, a tension enabling their ongoing self-correcting interplay as concepts without presupposing transcendence or complete mutual transparency. Drawing on Deleuze, Sellars and Peirce, the book replaces substance metaphysics with an anti-representational, univocal process ontology which throws light on core problems in contemporary analytic metaphysics of powers and emergence. Normativity is embedded in this naturalistic process framework by being understood as an emergent intensive regime whose function is hyperstitional: it stabilizes and projects ideal possible worlds expressed by unactualized universals, and performatively makes them actual over time by collectively treating them as real.

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1. The Relation of Mind and World as one of Fractured Immanence

On the one hand, the human mind appears to belong to the world as one natural process among others. On the other hand, thinking seems capable of taking the world itself as its object and of holding itself answerable to how things stand in that world. This dual status gives rise to a fundamental philosophical difficulty. If the mind is simply another item within nature, how can it achieve the kind of normative distance required for rational responsiveness to reality? Yet if it stands wholly apart from nature in order to secure such responsiveness, it becomes difficult to understand how it could be directed toward this particular world – a world that precedes us, sustains us, and continually conditions our bodily and mental existence.

Put differently, what conditions must obtain for a material process occurring within nature to become capable of intentionality, of semantic content, and of rational accountability? One way of conceiving this task is as a transcendental investigation of the features that the (unconditionally existing) natural world must have so as to immanently appear as always already semantically and epistemically correlated to the (conditionally existing) mind.^[1]

Note that this transcendental investigation has metaphysical consequences. For an investigation into the nature of this asymmetrically immanent relation between mind and world has metaphysical presuppositions, raising metaphysical questions and presupposing a certain metaphysical viewpoint regarding the world and our place in it.^[2] I suggest that this asymmetrically immanent relation between mind and world can be illuminated by introducing and developing the concept – and the corresponding metaphysics and epistemology – of fractured immanence.

The immanence of mind and world is therefore constitutively fractured. We are immediately immersed in the world and inseparable from it, yet the very relation that binds us to it remains opaque and demands theoretical mediation. What is closest to us in the order of existence, namely our lived experience of the world, is precisely what proves most difficult to render intelligible. Fractured immanence names precisely this paradox: that what is ontologically nearest to us is epistemically most remote, and that the directness of our belonging to the world is inseparable from the opacity of our understanding of that belonging.

On the metaphysical side, this viewpoint leads to a resolute acceptance of the univocity of being (inspired by Deleuze) and to a process ontology (inspired by Sellars, Peirce and Deleuze), while on the epistemological side, it commits us to a resolute rejection of the myth of the Given (inspired by Sellars). This peculiar kind of immanent relation between mind and world results once we resolutely reject the myth of the Given (Sellars), namely the view that the relation between mind and world is experientially, intuitively, phenomenologically or categorially transparent to the mind. It is precisely because it comes with a resolute rejection of Givenness in all its forms that the mind-world immanence is essentially fractured.

Thus, to conceive immanence without Givenness amounts to realizing that immanence comes in an essentially fractured form. Mind and world stand in a direct unmediated immanent ontological relation whose intelligibility nevertheless presupposes a semantic and epistemic mediation between mind and world: a transposition of mind and world as semantically and epistemically correlated poles of a diachronic self-correcting process that ultimately aims to align our conception of mind and world to mind and world as natural processes, without any guarantees of achieving full transparency or full success. Another way to state this fractured immanent relation between mind and world is to say that it expresses the fact that thought and being are ontologically identical yet asymmetrically so and epistemologically different yet symmetrically so.

In other words, there is both an asymmetric ontological immanence and a symmetric epistemological immanence between mind and world. Being and thinking are ontologically identical, but asymmetrically so: being is unconditional, whereas thinking is conditional upon being. Conversely, being and thinking are epistemologically distinct, yet symmetrically so: being is articulated through modal categories and thought through normative categories, but the latter ‘mirror’ the former insofar as the normative categories of thought, in the context of our descriptive and explanatory practices, track and express the modal structure of the world (Brandom, 2019).

Another way to make this point is to say that there are both non-semantic/ontological and semantic/epistemological immediate yet non-transparent mind-world relations that can be illuminated only by understanding their dependence on one another. In Leibnizian terminology, we can say that the mind-world immediacy is distinct yet obscure if it is construed as a semantic-representational relation and it is clear yet confused if it is understood as a non-semantic, non-representational relation (‘resonance’). The latter non-semantic kind of mind-world immediacy operates at a level that, while being in a sense ‘within’ us, is best described as a kind of unconscious experience and thinking (this is why it is ‘distinct in itself’, yet ‘confused’ from the standpoint of conceptual consciousness).

The former semantic mind-world immediacy and coordination can be seen as an evolutionary tool selected and preserved precisely for organizing and making intelligible this distinct-obscure unconscious yet efficacious experience as something (a conceptually articulated content) that can be individually internalized and collectively communicated in a sufficiently reliable manner for enhancing collective survival and well-being. This conceptualized mind-world immediacy thereby turns the ‘obscure’ non-conceptual mind-world relation into something ‘clear’ yet only by sacrificing its ‘distinctness’. This is done by simplifying, contracting, and differentially selecting (simultaneously at several spatiotemporal levels of processing) the amount, variety, source and complexity of information contained in external stimuli for maximizing our allostatic balance.

This process was not evolutionarily selected for its ontological insight into the structure of reality at all spatiotemporal levels. In fact, its relative success for the purposes of survival and reproduction depends on its actively contracting this spatiotemporal, intensive and qualitative complexity of the universe – thus avoiding informational overload and energy expenditure levels that would compromise survival. Yet, it is only by way of the conceptual tools provided by this clear-yet-confused level that we can better understand the non-conceptual immediacy between mind and world. We cannot circumvent the conceptual level of thinking about the world and ourselves – our reason-giving practices that institute the semantic content of perception, thought, and action – and penetrate directly into the non-conceptual mind-world immediacy through some kind of non-conceptual ‘method of intuition’ (à la Bergson or Deleuze).

To believe so would be to flirt with mythical Givenness and would amount to a controversial subordination and relativization of conceptual rationality. Yet this does not leave us imprisoned within the conceptual sphere. The conceptual and categorial tools developed in the course of inquiry and its sophisticated extensions – science and philosophy – ultimately show themselves to be expressions (a subtractive manner of appearance) of a self-fracturing of the non-conceptual level itself which enables it to better regulate itself (see figure 1). The conceptual level thereby vindicates its indispensable role for understanding ourselves-in-the-world without ontologically reifying our conceptual representation of the world. Βy being irreducible to, yet complementary and mutually presupposing of the non-conceptual dimension of the mind-world relation, it thereby expresses the way of being of the mind-world relation as one of fractured immanence.

Figure 1: Two distinguishable yet inseparable mind-world relations: 1) Clear-yet-confused mind-world semantic isomorphism, 2) Distinct-yet-obscure mind-world non-semantic (topological) isomorphism. These different kinds of mind-world isomorphisms stand in a fractured immanent relation in that the semantic mind-world isomorphism is effectively the expression of a self-fracturing of the non-semantic mind-world isomorphism. This self-fracturing is expressed in the manner of monadic world-perspectives.

2. What Immanence becomes after the rejection of Givenness

But how is the above fracture immanent picture of ourselves-in-the-world related to a process ontology, nominalism and hyperstition? How is what I call ‘hyperstitional process nominalism’ a consequence of this fractured immanent view of reality? Let us begin with establishing the connection between fractured immanence and process ontology. The mediating link is the rejection of the myth of the Given, which, as we saw, amounts to a fractured immanent account of reality, and, as we shall see, puts pressure on the substance-property categorial framework, ultimately leading to its aufhebung in favor of a process framework.

An important implication of the rejection of Givenness for ontology is the realization that our whole categorial frame­work in terms of which we find our way around in our everyday lifeworld, built around the category of an object (and, correlatively, of a subject), conceived as a substance with essential modal (causal-dispositional) properties, such as to make individuals belong to certain kinds characteristic of their nature, does not possess an unchallengeable categorial authenticity as a system of classification.

Indeed, we have good reasons to believe that the object-property categorial framework, including its semantic representationalist picture of the world in which the normative order of asserting propositional contents through the use of singular terms, predicates and universally quantified subjunctively robust conditionals mirrors the modal structure of the world, by representing the latter as a realm of causal facts about the properties of objects, is ultimately explanatorily inadequate. And, as we shall see, the reasons for thinking that the process framework is explanatorily preferable to the substance framework arise out of an immanent critique of the latter, in which the substance framework proves to be explanatorily inadequate by its own standards. Roughly, we can discern at least three kinds of systemic anomalies of the substance framework that point toward its own overcoming by a process framework.

One indication that the substance ontology is incomplete lies in its inability to capture the singular mode of existence of individuals. Because it privileges essential properties that determine membership in general kinds, it has difficulty accounting for what makes this individual the particular individual it is, rather than merely an instance of a type. In traditional terminology, it can account only for the quidditas, the ‘whatness’ (‘general essence’) of individuals, and not for their haecceity or their ‘this­ness’ (‘singular essence’). In fact, it can account for the singular mode of existence of individuals only by recourse to their accidental properties and not on the basis of essential ones, since the latter only characterize the general kinds to which many individuals belong.

Moreover, the genesis and disappearance of powers of an object under certain circumstances cannot be understood solely by appealing to already constituted substances. Explaining why a thing acquires or loses a disposition requires reference to the concrete intrinsic processes through which the object itself is transformed (Russell, 1927; Sellars, 1957). And since the causal dispositions of objects are constitutive of the object’s identity, we can independently explain the former only by abandoning the category of object (conceived as substance).

Finally, substance ontology struggles to provide an intrinsic account of qualitative experience. Sensory and affective episodes are typically treated as powers or capacities belonging to independently constituted substances (subjects or objects) rather than as occurrent processes in their own right. This becomes especially problematic in cases of hallucination and illusion. Here the substance framework lacks the conceptual resources to describe the positive character of illusory or hallucinatory experience itself. One is forced to admit that there is a phenomenally present element common to veridical and non-veridical experience, while remaining unable to specify its ontological status. For example, in the event of an occurrence of a non-veridical experience of a pink ice cube in front of one (or a vivid dream thereof), the substance framework (what we might call the ‘descriptive ontology of everyday life’) cannot determine what this experience is beyond conceding that ‘somehow, in something analogous to physical space, there is actually something that is a cube of pink’ (Sellars, 1977).

The result is an explanatory gap concerning the intrinsic character of experiential occurrences, a gap that points toward the need for a categorial framework capable of accommodating occurrent qualitative processes that are neither simply dispositional properties of external objects nor merely states inhering in a subject. What appears to be a common theme to all the above kinds of criticism against the explanatory adequacy of the substance-property framework is that its basic categories are tailored to account for the individual substances of the framework on the basis of dispositional properties, causal powers or mental capacities that do not do justice to the occurrently existing, intrinsically characterized and dynamically evolving character of the spatiotemporal unfolding of the individual in question (be it a sensory-affective experience or a non-experiential inorganic spatiotemporal unfolding). But to do justice to these features of the unfolding of individuals, and thus of their very haecceity, we must also challenge several other fundamental structural categories of the framework: Its reliance on kinds which express the nature of individuals based on their iffy properties (capacities, causal dispositions), its understanding of fundamental modal categories (possibility, necessity), its sharp categorial distinctions between correlated yet incommensurable ontological realms (mental vs physical, subject(ive) vs object(ive), real vs illusory) etc.

The process-based categorial framework is precisely what emerges out of an immanent critique of the substance (object-property) framework. The latter raises explanatory demands it is in no position to answer: What is the categorial basis of dispositional properties of objects? What is the character of sensory qualia when the latter do not correspond to external objects, properties, and do not unfold in public space and time? It is as if our epistemic practices raise problems, i.e. legitimate explanatory (grounding) demands – about accounting for the haecceity, the ‘singular essence’ or intrinsic character of individual beings – that our proposed ‘solutions’, namely the categories of the substance framework, are in no position to answer (and indeed, are obliged to cover over by considering these problems as ultimately unintelligible). Moreover, the process framework explains why the substance framework appears to have real worldly purchase. From its standpoint, the categories of the substance framework are evolutionarily and culturally selected due to their ability to abstract, stabilize and make salient those features of individual processual becomings that facilitate collective coordination.

Thus, from an evolutionary process standpoint, the categories of the substance framework are to be conceived as special cases with restricted validity (practically optimal under certain evolutionary and cultural contexts and circumstances) of processual categories, in a roughly analogous sense in which the laws and principles of Newtonian physics are special cases of their Einsteinian counterpart (Christias, 2018).

3. Process Ontology, Nominalism and Emergence

Let us now briefly examine the specifics of a process ontology that attempts to provide successor counterpart categories to the substance framework at work in the context of everyday lifeworld. As we shall see, a process ontology that rejects (i.e. does not view as rock-bottom) the categorial distinction between substances (objects or subjects) and properties, is committed to a version of nominalism (though not necessarily to a nominalism as traditionally conceived).

The substance framework is a tightly interconnected inferential nexus in which the basic substances are particular objects (or subjects) with causal-dispositional properties, standing in relations of material incompatibility and consequence. These properties express capacities, abilities and dispositions of objects/subjects and are such as to make the objects/subjects that have them belong to certain kinds, characteristic of their nature: Thus, Plato, a particular object-substance, being a human being, can run, think, and sleep, while gold, being a metal, is a good conductor of heat and electricity. This expresses the central role in ordinary discourse of conceiving things as substances (objects or subjects) which are identified as belonging to kinds, where this identification immediately licenses inferences concerning its causal, dispositional, and more generally modal properties (Sellars, 1949b).

As is evident from the above, the categorial difference between the process and the substance framework does not merely come down to the fact that in the latter processes and events are derivative from the fundamental category of substance undergoing change whereas in the former substantial objects are abstractions of more fundamental relatively stable processes.

The difference is far more pervasive: If the basic particulars of the framework are absolute – i.e. subjectless and objectless – processes, then just as the category of substance (object or subject) would accordingly be derivative, a shorthand comprised of a multiplicity of relatively stable particular processes, so would be the substance’s causal-dispositional properties, their standing in relations of material incompatibility and consequence, the kind to which a substance belongs, the general nature that this kind expresses through which we can understand the substance’s regular behavior and its deviance from normalcy, etc. The difference between the substance and process framework extends even to the very form in which we describe a worldly situation: In the process framework there would be no facts, since facts are precisely states of affairs with objects (particulars), properties and relations (universals) as constituents.

And since properties would not be conceived as abstract universals exemplified by objects as particulars (the whole substance-property structure would be reconceived in processual verb-adverb terms), the process framework would be an essentially nominalistic one.

We see here the intimate – indeed internal – relation of process metaphysics and nominalism: Abandoning substances as ontological primitives undermines the very framework within which universals were originally introduced. In process metaphysics beings are not conceived as particulars (substances) opposed to universals (properties, relations). At the more fundamental level of the process framework, we must change our perspective and see qualitied properties not as universals but as themselves entirely particularized.

In this case we are more dealing with an individual that is its own genus, unfolding its ‘singular essence’, as opposed to its being determined by a hierarchical determinable-determinate structure. Moreover, a process language would have to abandon the metaphysical grammar that privileges subjects bearing properties. The basic semantic unit would no longer be a thing together with its attributes, but an occurring together with its manner of occurring. For instance, instead of saying ‘the sea is blue’, one might describe the situation as a particular ‘bluely sea-ing’, thereby shifting the explanatory burden from substances and their properties to modes of occurring.

In this regard, the process language or the naming function is not performed by objects or subjects conceived as substances but by particularized subjectless and objectless properties (a particular ‘redding’, a particular ‘sea-ing’), with the objects or subjects being modes (adverbial modifications) of properties, rather than vice versa (as is the case in the substance-property framework). In general, the naming function in the process framework is performed by happenings, doings, or acts of unfolding in certain ways (Sellars, 1981). Ultimately, processes can be understood as determinate ways in which spatiotemporal becoming takes place. Their identity does not lie in underlying bearers of properties but in the qualitative manner of their unfolding (Seibt, 2016).

This has pivotal consequences for how processes relate to space and time. Processes are differing qualitative ways of spatiotemporal occurring. They are not ‘in’ space and enduring ‘through’ time, as are the objects of the substance framework where space and time are antecedently understood frames or containers filled by independently understood objects. In this sense, processes are essentially monadic and ‘perspectival’ in a quasi-Leibnizian sense. By being differing ways of spatiotemporal unfolding, processes constitute their own perspectival and intrinsically differing spatiotemporal microcosm.^[3] Of course, this does not mean that processual monads are sealed off from one another and cannot communicate or influence one another in any way. It just means that whatever relations exist between monadic processes will be reconceived in terms of overlapping and interpenetration of differing intrinsic processual characters and the ensuing qualitative fitting of these intrinsic characters into the perspectival structure of the monadic process to which they belong as ingredients.^[4]

In this connection, it must be stressed that in the process framework efficient causation is radically reconceptualized: instead of understanding efficient causation in terms of a local interaction between self-standing objects, in a process framework such interactions would be understood as wavelike ripples in the texture of spacetime (with ordinary objects reconceptualized as processual modes of the unfolding of spacetime) while efficient causation would be reconceived in terms of patterns of interference in the unfoldings of these processual modes (Heil, 2021).

Moreover, the relation between the processes that would be the counterparts of the occurrence of ‘causes’ and of the occurrence of ‘effects’ within a substance framework should not be conceived on the model of a prior and separately identifiable cause externally related to its subsequent effect. This, among other things, presupposes the existence of a homogeneous metrical spacetime contin­uum as a neutral stage-setting within which objects are individuated and identified by their essential properties (causal powers). In the process framework, objects are four-dimensional spatiotemporal ‘worms’ (Sellars, 1962), and their causal powers are themselves ways of qualitative differ­entiation of these unfolding processual worms. And this means that the actualization of an object’s ‘causal powers’ through its ‘interaction’ with the causal powers of other objects is to be reconceived in a process framework in terms of qualitative ‘disturbances’ and ‘alterations’ of the very spatiotemporal unfolding of the process that is the counterpart of this object.^[5]

Also, importantly, the above dynamic conception of spacetime makes intelligible the emergence of radically novel objects, properties, kinds, forms, capacities, and indeed of novel categories of being, in a resolutely immanent manner. If we see space and time not as an inert, neutral and metricized stage-setting inhabiting objects, but as non-metric, polarized and dynamically evolving modes of being internal to the very being and individuation of particular objects (properties, kinds, forms, capacities) themselves, the emergence of the latter ceases to be a mysterious outcome of transcendent top-down causation.

Under this light, the dynamicity of spacetime itself, expressed in its various modes of topological alteration (folding, contraction, relaxation, slowing down or speeding up of the ‘timing’ or ‘rhythm’ of a spatiotemporal developmental process), can account for novelty and emergence both synchronically and diachronically without any need for violating conservation laws of physics or for positing events that break the course of nature, inducing to it external, transcendent determinations. Thus, we come to see that immanence is not only compatible with emergence but internally related to it at least to the extent to which we see why and how discontinuous actual structures can be understood as the outcome of the continuous variation of intensive morphogenetic factors (neoteny^[6] is a pertinent example of this kind of immanent emergence).

From this point of view, which radically rejects what I call ‘the cooking model of emergence’^[7], we can account for the radical discontinuity introduced by emergent properties in actuality by appeal to immanent causes in the form of continuous topological deformations whose (discontinuous) outcomes are processes with a novel intrinsic character the ‘parts’ of which are not conceived as building blocks arranged or mixed in a certain manner. Instead, they can best be conceived as same-level aspects or a process, or as its spatiotemporally heterogeneous yet organizationally coupled co-ingredients (i.e. its sub- or supra-processes co-existing and co-evolving at multiple spatiotemporal scales in a multidimensional phase space). Importantly, the ingredients or aspects of a process are not independently individuated parts out of which the whole is materially composed or constructed.

And if the ‘parts’ in question are understood as aspects or ingredients of processes in the sense defined above, then talk of top-down or bottom-up causation ceases to make clear ontological sense, and different spatiotemporal dimensions and levels of organization, with their constraint dynamics and interpenetrating patterns of interference, can now themselves be seen as aspects or ingredients of the unfolding of a process.

If this is correct, the emergence of novel organization in nature is not correctly described as the emergence of novel objects or properties in addition to the interactive dynamic arrangements of the propertied parts, where the whole exerts a kind of downward top-down causation directed from wholes to parts. Instead, the emergence of novel organization involves the emergence of a non-mereologically structured novel process conceived as the topological knot of organizational couplings situated at different spatiotemporal dimensions and levels. And this is not perspicuously described as an emergence of a higher-order whole over and above its lower-level parts.

Thus, the process framework enables us to conceive of a robust non-mereological emergence: The ontological reality and efficacy of robustly emergent properties and of the related enabling and constitutive constraints (Juarrero, 2023), can be accounted for (pace Juarrero) without putting them in a mereological straitjacket and thus without positing causal downward or upward paths, causally interacting levels and hierarchies.

The process framework also offers a radical reconceptualization of our ‘iffy’ concepts of possibility, power, disposition, capacity, tendency etc. It articulates a very different, dynamic-cum-evolutionary, image of possibility or power that rejects the traditional one in which everything that is real must also be possible, where possible contents differ from actual ones only in modal status, while being identical in their essence, and where capacities, abilities and dispositions are conceived as static atemporal general essences exemplified in particular things. From a process standpoint, each throw of the ‘cosmic dice’ is at once a repetition and variation upon the past.

The past is ‘repeated’, ‘inherited’ and in this sense retained and entrenched in each present moment while at the same time the ‘rules’, the very field of possibilities that can be actualized, are constantly (even if minimally) changing. This makes the world both a source of constant novelty and constraint upon what actually exists: Specifically, the past history of the world, in the form of differing sedimented and entrenched constraints informationally contained in actual beings, differentiates the attractors and thus the possibility space in which the latter are embedded. These monadic possibility spaces and the likelihood of their being expressed in actuality are not defined or explained in terms of static forms or essences but are themselves under constant -even if usually minimal and imperceptible- change and evolution.

At the same time, their constant reproduction as information-containing dynamic regimes through repetition from each past to each present moment confers long-term processual stability to the extent to which in the long run the features and dynamics that support resilient-cum-evolvable structures gradually become entrenched.^[8]

Another important feature of the process framework is its radical reconceptualization of the fundamental epistemic categories and distinctions of the substance framework. The distinction between objective and subjective, real and illusory, or normal and abnormal experiences, would turn out to be derivative (i.e. non-essential) in a process framework. Since these subjective, illusory or abnormal states involve the occurrence of experiential processes, they are ontologically on a par with objective, non-illusory and normal ones.

They are all equally real, though the latter might well be far more invariant under certain perspectival transformations (and this is what objectivity really comes down to). Of course, this is consistent with also holding that these categorial distinctions serve important normative purposes; for instance, they can be considered as fundamental skeletal coordination principles that facilitate reliable collective coping within a volatile environment.

The above features distinguish the process framework as I understand it from neo-Aristotelian or neo-Hegelian versions of process philosophy (Pippin, 2019; Brandom, 2019), since both these views reject the ontological priority and parity of processes and subordinate the processual dimension of basic particulars to the category of object (or subject) construed as a propertied substance. The view developed here (inspired by Peirce, Sellars and Deleuze) is closer to the family of more radical process views such as Leibniz’s, Bergson’s or Whitehead’s.

One might wonder whether a process view of the world (or of thought and language), insofar as it is more illuminating or adequate than traditional substance metaphysics, thereby overcomes the fractured immanent relation between mind and world (section 1, figure 1). The answer is both yes and no. Yes, in the sense that the process view of the world would make salient the non-iffy occurrently existing, intrinsically characterized and dynamically evolving character of the spatiotemporal unfolding of individuals, thereby drawing our attention to each individual’s actual causal history for understanding the character and unique particularity of each individual (its haecceity).

Such a shift would involve a profound transformation not only in our worldview but also in our practical attitudes towards beings: a focus on their unique historically unfolded particularity, rather than on their subsumption in universals such as kinds or genera (general essences). But the answer is also no: The complexity and qualitative particularity of the world’s dynamic unfolding would not be Given (‘clear and distinct’) in all its exhaustive detail to a mind that possesses a process worldview and a process language.

Presumably, a process view of the world would be neither clear-yet-confused (everyday lifeworld level) nor distinct-yet-obscure (monadic process world in all its qualitative complexity), but rather clear-yet-obscure. That is, while the process worldview would make salient the dynamic character of the individuals and of the relations which account for their unique particularity, if it were to be of any practical use and interest it would still have to informationally compress certain aspects of the spatiotemporal, intensive and qualitative complexity (‘distinctness’) of the universe so as to make them salient to our semantic reason-giving practices. In this sense, process ontology does not abolish fractured immanence but relocates it and illuminates its nature.

REFERENCES & NOTES

1. This is an adapted essay based on themes developed in Hyperstitional Process Nominalism: Outline of a Fractured Immanent Ontology (Palgrave, 2025).

2. By ‘unconditional existence’ I mean a manner of existence that is self-sufficient, that does not itself depend on something other than itself for its existence, while ‘conditional existence’ is a way of existence which is not self-sufficient and depends on something other than itself for its existence.

3. In my view, no philosophical viewpoint can consistently avoid any reference to a view of the world and our place in it. Through transcendental reflection, we can certainly avoid dogmatism and the reification of our parochial means of representing the world into features of the world itself, but we cannot do this without minimally sketching a way of understanding the world and our place in it – which is to say, a metaphysical view.

4. This entails that there is no one single objective (clock) time, but a multiplicity of asynchronous ontological spatiotemporal perspectives constituted by beings in their monadic becoming. This is in line with Einstein’s theory of relativity according to which there is no absolute contemporaneity in the world (Whitehead, 1978).

5. This view is fully compatible with there being irreducible, irreplaceable relational truths. It’s just that the truth-makers for these truths could well turn out to be nonrelational ways the world is (Heil 2021: 85).

6. If we want to retain the language of ’cause’ and ‘effect’ to describe these patterns of qualitative spatiotemporal alterations between interfering processual fields, we can do so only be radically dynamicizing the cause-effect relation, conceiving it as not in terms of an antecedently existing possibility or power in the cause waiting to be expressed in the effect, but as a progressively unfolding differentiation between what is expressed (cause) and the expression (effect), which constantly changes (even if minimally) the very spatiotemporal qualitative space which occurrently expresses what we ordinarily call ‘the object’s power to affect and to be affected’.

7. Neoteny is a radical way of generating evolutionary novelty through shifts in relative timing of developmental ‘programming’. Neoteny is the slowing or delaying of body development, compared to non-human primates, resulting in features such as a large head, a flat face, and relatively short arms. This slowing down process has been proposed as a crucial mechanism that contributed to the rise of many human-specific features, including an increase in brain size and the emergence of human-specific cognitive traits. Simondon (2020) widens the application of these neotenic processes to explain the emergence not only of animal species but of different stratifications of being itself (organic out of the inorganic, animal sentience out of plant non-sentient sensitivity, sapience out of sentience). This is not, of course, to say that we have an even remotely adequate understanding of the specifics of the transformational processes out of which whole new categories of being emerged. This is a matter of scientific inquiry and philosophy can go only so far as to sketch the most general categories that might liberate science from problematic background presuppositions that block the road to inquiry or delay it by diverging it to dead ends or unnecessary detours.

8. According to the ‘cooking model’ there are two basic ways of understanding emergence and novelty: A) Novel properties are combinations of already existing properties, the emergent element consisting in the novel mixture produced as a new whole or unity out of these properties, where the latter are now conceived as differently organized parts of this new whole. B) Novel properties are completely new externally added features over and above those already existing properties, in which case the new emergent whole does not have these (however ‘differently organized’) properties preceding its existence as proper parts and neither do these latter properties have any intelligible relation or connection to the emergent ones beyond being their antecedent causal conditions of emergence.

Option (b) is meant to capture in imagistic terms the view that emergent wholes operate as sui generis top-down efficient causes, while option (a) captures the intuition that they arise by altering the organization of their parts. This simplistic picture in which existing and emergent properties are understood on the model of distinct ingredients of a cooking recipe the implementation of which produces novel outcomes by mixing already existing ingredients or by externally adding new ones constitutes a common background presupposition of both physicalist and panpsychist positions, that make them blind to the possibility of accounting for the radical discontinuity introduced by emergent properties in actuality by appeal to immanent as opposed to transcendent causes, continuous deformations as opposed to discontinuous ruptures (Christias 2025: 121-156).

Photo: Darya Zyurkalova (modified) / CC BY 4.0.