Exploring the Complex Relationship Between Powers and Processes in Living Systems

John Dupré (Exeter) gives a talk for the Power Structuralism in Ancient Ontologies podcast series Abstract: This talk will explore the implications for a metaphysics of powers of the replacement of a substance ontology with a process ontology. I take a process to be an entity that must be active in some way to exist and I argue that processes are more fundamental than things: things are temporary and partial stabilisations in a flux of process. Can the activities that sustain processes be understood as the exercise of powers? Can the interactions between processes be treated similarly as the exercises of powers by processes?