Process and Duration

Does a process exist in “duration?” Someone asked this at Matt’s Footnotes to Plato, and I will address the question assuming that “duration” implies “exists as actual.” In hindsight, the inquirer probably has a different notion of duration, but this example is instructive.

While a real systems exists in a duration, it does not exist solely as a duration. Each event is related to its past and future, which are real relations of actuality as well as potentiality (respectively). If “durational” means “actual” or “existent,” then this view would conceive a process as a flat slab of duration and not energetic and temporal. This might be the case in materialism, but does not generalize. A problem is that potentiality requires futural possibility that an actualist view cannot support.

Hopefully this is a helpful example of the repercussions of prior posts.