Historical Materialism

The author would appreciate comments about and criticisms of these papers. Please write Haines Brown at haines@histomat.net.

Process Ontology

This is a rough draft of a paper that will be appear in hard copy in 2014 in Axiomathes, a Springer journal focused on ontology. It is the first of a series of an anticipated three papers. The second, expected to be finished in 2014, employs the ontology of process developed in this paper to analyse the emergence of human species being from the physical and biological domains. The third paper will then look at the stadial evolution of Social Being in terms of socioeconomic formations.

A Critique of Jaegwon Kim's Emergence: Core Ideas and Issues (27 Nov 2010)

The concept of emergence is roughly that wholes can be more than the sum of their parts or that the outcomes of a process is unpredictable terms of its initial state. As Kim shows, it has a chequered history. One could make the case that philosophers turn to it when there is a sense we are trapped within inflexible structures that offer little scope for creativity, originality, or progress. This paper looks at a leading voice in the mind-body debate to illustrate that philosophers who are unable or unwilling to jettison the conceptual framework associated with the situation from which they seek escape are doomed to remain in thrall to it.

Attached is a page of links and citations.