This paper defends a substance-based metaphysics for organisms against three arguments for thinking that we should replace a substantial understanding of living things with a processual one, which are offered by Dan Nicholson and John Dupré in their edited collection, Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). Dupré and Nicholson consider three main empirical motivations for the adoption of a process ontology in biology. These motivations are alleged to stem from facts concerning (i) metabolism; (ii) the life cycles of organisms; and (iii) ecological interdependence. The paper discusses each of the three arguments in turn and concludes that none gives us any compelling reason to abandon the metaphysics of things. At best, they are arguments against a kind of caricature substance metaphysics that ought never to have been in the running in any case. Then, at the end of the paper, it is suggested that there may be more positive arguments for insisting on retaining things in our metaphysics, arguments which, perhaps ironically (given the opposed standpoint of Everything Flows) get their main impetus from the phenomenon of life.

中文翻译：

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物质、代理和过程

本文为有机体的基于物质的形而上学辩护，反对认为我们应该用过程性理解取代对生物的实质性理解的三个论点，这些论点由丹尼科尔森和约翰杜普雷在他们编辑的收藏中提供，一切都在流动：走向生物学的过程哲学（牛津：牛津大学出版社，2018 年）。Dupré 和 Nicholson 考虑了在生物学中采用过程本体的三个主要经验动机。据称这些动机源于有关 (i) 新陈代谢的事实；(ii) 生物的生命周期；(iii) 生态相互依存。论文依次讨论了这三个论点，并得出结论，没有一个论点能给我们任何令人信服的理由来放弃事物的形而上学。充其量，它们是反对一种漫画实体形而上学的论据，这种形而上学在任何情况下都不应该出现。然后，在论文的最后，有人建议可能有更积极的论据来坚持在我们的形而上学中保留事物，这些论据也许具有讽刺意味（鉴于对立的观点一切都在流动) 从生命现象中获得主要动力。