Process Ontology and Dissolution of Traditional Metaphysical Problems

This paper presents a process-based ontological framework that dissolves traditional metaphysical problems by rejecting substance ontology in favor of process primacy. Starting from the single axiom that physical reality exists, the framework develops eight ontological commitments defining reality as causally organized, temporally extended processes that exhibit multiple irreducible aspectual types depending on scale and epistemic access mode. The framework introduces aspectual realization as the relationship between higher-level types (biological, cognitive, phenomenological, mathematical) and physical processes, avoiding both reductionism and dualism. Five architectural criteria establish necessary and sufficient conditions for phenomenology, eliminating panpsychism while grounding consciousness in observable structure. The framework reformulates consciousness, self, free will, mental causation, and mathematical reality as aspectual phenomena rather than substance-based entities, demonstrating that classic problems (mind-body interaction, the hard problem of consciousness, free will paradoxes, epiphenomenalism) arise from category errors rather than genuine metaphysical gaps. By replacing intractable metaphysical questions with empirically tractable questions about process architecture, scale-relative patterns, and aspectual mappings, the framework provides clear interfaces for artificial intelligence, ethics, psychology, and identity research. The result is a unified ontology that preserves the reality of consciousness, agency, and mathematics while eliminating metaphysical pseudo-problems generated by substance assumptions.