Alanna Goldsmith from Radio 2050 interviewed me last year in the hopes that I might introduce process philosophy to a general audience. You can listen to the episode (interspersed with musical interludes) by following this link: https://radioparadise.com/episode/matt-segall; or read the transcript of my remarks below.
Alanna Goldsmith: Today we’ll be taking a bit of a philosophical journey with none other than Matt Segall. Matt is a transdisciplinary researcher, writer, teacher, but first and foremost he is a philosopher, applying process-relational thought across the natural and social sciences. He also dives deep into the study of consciousness. We’ll be discussing a bit of the basics when it comes to philosophy, some history, and how to become better philosophers ourselves in our day-to-day lives. Let’s dive right in.
Matt Segall: For a lot of people who are unfamiliar with the history of philosophy or the contemporary discipline of philosophy in the context of academia, the word might either sound intimidating or boring, but I would want to approach it as the love of wisdom, which is how you would translate the term from the original Greek philosophy. Philia meaning love, like a kind of friendship type of love and Sophia meaning wisdom. And to think of it as the love of wisdom is, first of all, not to assume that one has wisdom already or that one is wise, right? So the philosopher is not necessarily claiming to be wise. They’re just admitting that they are in love with this possibility of wisdom. Some would even think of wisdom or Sophia as a kind of goddess, if you will. And so the philosopher is on a quest, which is rooted in a desire to learn. And rather than thinking of the practice of philosophy as simply a matter of logical analysis or deductive arguments and syllogisms and so on, I would say, and here I’m following one of my philosophical teachers, not personally, but having studied his works, Alfred North Whitehead, he says philosophy is not about deduction, right? It’s not about just logical arguments. It’s about the search for premises, right? And a premise is not something you can prove. It’s something that needs to be self -evident. And so when we’re searching for premises in order to begin philosophizing, what we’re really hoping to surface are all the things we take for granted. Philosophy can be difficult because it’s attempting to bring thought and self -reflection to what everyone takes for granted as obvious, the sort of things that nobody bothers to mention, everything that gets backgrounded. And so that is a unique kind of difficulty, right? Because what makes it more approachable, perhaps, for people who aren’t trained in philosophy is that you don’t need to have read all the books or be familiar with all the arguments. You just have to pay attention to your experience and use your imagination to make the ordinary seem weird. And if you can make weird what you normally take for granted and talk about it with each other, then you’re doing philosophy, right? So I would want it to be as welcoming and inviting as possible in that sense. You don’t need to know the academic context of philosophy in order to yourself be a philosopher. The first thing to say about how we can be better philosophers is to recognize our own lack of understanding, our own ignorance about the big questions, right? We might be experts quite proficient in various tasks in life, and that’s great. But when we step back and sink into the wonder that arises when we just consider the sheer fact that we or anything at all exists, I think that emotion of wonder that such huge questions can elicit is the place to begin always. Philosophy is not so much about the search for knowledge, right? Knowledge and wisdom are different. And so if you do want to pursue knowledge, I mean, study science, and science is great. Philosophy is asking broader, more existential questions that don’t necessarily have answers. Really, to be a good philosopher, it’s about finding the good questions and pursuing those questions, always maintaining a sense of wonder. And rather than thinking that you could dispel the wonder at the end of your philosophizing, it’s more about bringing some clarity to what it is that you’re wondering about. But the wonder is going to remain no matter how long you philosophize, how long you think about it, right? And so you have to love the questions, and don’t be so attached to finding an answer.
Alanna Goldsmith: I asked Matt if he could identify the moment in which he became a philosopher himself.
Matt Segall: I often go back to my childhood when I was about six or seven years old. I was jumping on the bed, and my mother was in the room with me. She was on the phone with a friend, and it just occurred to me all of a sudden, just kind of out of nowhere, that she was going to die one day, and it really hit me hard. And for a week, I just was fighting off tears. I would go to school and fake a stomach ache just to make sure she was still alive because she’d have to come pick me up, and I only was able to shake myself free of this fear of losing my mother when I realized that I, too, was going to die. And my own death struck me as far more mysterious than my mother’s death. I wasn’t afraid of it. I was curious because it just seemed bizarre to me that my consciousness could just somehow end, which is the default assumption in our contemporary secular context when you die just all goes black, as if you never existed. As a seven -year -old, that didn’t make much sense to me. I would try to remember when I was born. I couldn’t quite do it. I just sort of faded into memories of earlier and earlier stages of life, and it just kind of got blurry. And so it seemed like more of a transition than a sharp beginning, and death struck me as probably it’s going to be somewhat similar, some kind of transition, right? Now I don’t know what happens after we die, but that experience of contemplating my own death as a child is where philosophy started for me, because as Socrates, this famous ancient Greek philosopher in ancient Athens, as he put it before he was executed for corrupting the youth and not believing in the gods of his local city state, he said to his students who were with him in this prison cell that philosophy is learning to die, right? So philosophy is preparation for what every single one of us is going to have to go through. And for me, my path into philosophy is very much rooted in this contemplation of death, which might sound morbid initially, but facing death is also a way to enrich one’s life. You can come to appreciate what it is to be alive by not pretending like death is not there at the end, waiting for all of us. Could happen tomorrow, or could happen in decades from now, but contemplating death I think is one of those sources of wonder that can really motivate a philosophical life.
Alanna Goldsmith: Next, Matt shares some historic perspective when it comes to philosophy.
Matt Segall: Western philosophy is often thought to begin in ancient Greece, and around the Mediterranean, and process philosophy goes all the way back to the beginning. There’s a philosopher named Heraclitus, who said things like, all things flow. And he said, you can’t step into the same river twice. No, what does that mean? Well, the river is always changing, right? So you step your foot in the first time, and then you step your other foot in, and it’s a different river because the water is flown by. You could even say that you couldn’t step into the same river once, because you yourself are never the same person twice. Process philosophy is this orientation, this approach to the deepest questions we can ask about reality that emphasizes the dynamic nature of reality, that everything is flowing and changing, and that in that context, when we want to claim to know something, the knowledge that we can gain of a world that’s constantly in flux is itself also going to need to be flexible. The dominance strain of philosophy has not had a process orientation in this sense. The important term here is substance. Most philosophies are focused on substance, which you could think of concretely as a kind of hunk of matter that just sits there, and it seems like a rock, for example, will last for millions of years. But even a rock, slowly over the course of thousands of years, gets weathered and starts to break down. Most philosophers for most of Western history have thought of reality as composed of substances, and the process approach is a more organic approach. If people are familiar with Taoism coming out of China, there’s a similar understanding of the ultimate nature of reality as flow. Process philosophy is the Western version of Taoism, you might say, that’s really emphasizing not only flow but interrelationship. Everything and everyone is always passing into and out of one another. It’s a picture of reality that doesn’t necessarily afford clear and distinct and precise knowledge. It forces us to deal with the fact that reality itself is ambiguous. It’s not just that we’re limited in our knowledge of a reality that would be clear and distinct with separate substances. It’s that reality itself is ambiguous. Very different approach to philosophy than what many people might assume, given the dominance of what I’ve been describing as the substance -based approach to philosophy. In the contemporary modern world, there’s a certain kind of natural science that is basically materialistic, that makes physics the foundation of everything else, so that the biological world of living organisms and the psychological and social world of human beings should ultimately all reduce down to physics, where physics is understood as the study of particles, like little substances that bang into each other and we know the laws that determine the motion of those particles, and so everything else must in some way be reducible to that. That idea of the universe never struck me as particularly accurate or helpful, because we as human beings are alive and we experience our own thinking activity, we have feelings and emotions that relate us to other people and to the world, and we’re capable of free action. We have willpower to engage in purposeful projects in the world, and none of that can be explained by reference to the motion of particles. And so process philosophy allows us to approach the study of the ultimate nature of reality in a way that I think does justice to the living world, to the biological world, and to the human world, so that we can take seriously these obvious features of our experience, that we are thinking, feeling, willing beings, and that the organic world, the world of biological organisms, is not accidental or peripheral, that the universe is, in fact, essentially engaged in the generation of living forms. This isn’t to say that physics isn’t relevant or important. Science is not a fairy tale. The physical sciences are not a fairy tale. But from a process point of view, we can reimagine our knowledge of the physical world in such a way that the emergence of life and mind and consciousness are not highly unlikely improbable accidents, but in fact, a natural expression of what the whole universe is about. And so process philosophy allows us to take this sort of lens on our scientific understanding. And it’s an alternative to the sort of reductionistic view of natural science that would kind of force us to give up our concrete experience and say that something else, like particles in motion, is what’s really real.
Alanna Goldsmith: We’ll continue our philosophical discussion with Matt Segall in just a short moment. You’re listening to Radio 2050. Matt Segall joins us on Radio 2050. He’s a transdisciplinary researcher, writer, teacher, and philosopher, applying process rational thought across the natural and social sciences. He also dives deep into the study of consciousness. In our next segment, we discuss the concept of the universe, having consciousness.
Matt Segall: Typically, when natural scientists study the universe, they background the fact that they are conscious, intelligent beings, and describe the universe as a totally, fundamentally unconscious and unintelligent process or collection of particles, as it were. And so we end up in a situation with this kind of scientific materialism, one way to describe it, where the universe that is described is one wherein the emergence of a conscious scientist capable of describing it as such is impossible, or at least vanishingly unlikely. From my point of view, we’re beginning the wrong way around when we do it like that. We have to acknowledge that the universe did give rise to conscious, intelligent beings capable of doing science, capable of understanding, to some degree, what’s going on here. And so that should be a given. The universe led to beings capable of science. And so what does that tell us about the nature of the universe? I think it tells us something really important, that the place of consciousness in the cosmos is quite central. And I wouldn’t want to say that that somehow the universe is inside of our consciousness, or that the physical world described by natural science is not real out there, kind of independent of my mind or your mind. But there’s a way in which consciousness emerges out of the universe just as naturally as apples grow on apple trees, and that there’s continuity here. And rather than having a picture of the universe where consciousness gets added on later as a kind of afterthought, I think we have to imagine the universe in a more integral way such that we would expect to find conscious, intelligent beings emerging within it, either on Earth or in other planets. And I think it’s unfortunate that the dominant picture of the universe that’s popularized by many scientists is one wherein we’re told that human beings don’t matter, that we’re not, in some way, an exemplification of something that’s embedded deeper in the dynamics of cosmic evolution and the emergence of more complex forms of physical activity. So we’re physical beings, but we’re also conscious. And I think that tells us something about what physical activity really is. And so when we think about the place of consciousness in the universe, from my perspective, it suggests that matter, whatever else it is, has this interior dimension to it from the very get -go. As matter continues to complexify over the course of billions of years, that interior dimension grows richer and more intense. And in the course of biological evolution and cultural evolution, this inner dimension complexifies and becomes enriched. And it’s true that human beings may be on the far end of this long process of intensification of this interior dimension of matter, but it was never fully absent. There’s a very difficult problem in philosophy called the hard problem of consciousness, which is basically if we assume that matter does not have this interior dimension, how do we explain our own consciousness? At what point did it arise? How can a complicated arrangement of matter and chemistry and electricity in the brain somehow give rise to an interior dimension that was never there before? And some would say that this isn’t just a hard problem. It’s an impossible problem. And the only solution to it would be to reimagine what we mean by matter and to recognize that it always had an interior dimension. This is the way I would think about the place of consciousness in the universe. It’s not something extraneous or extra added at the end of an evolutionary process. It’s something that’s intrinsic, that’s there from the beginning that grows more intense over time.
Alanna Goldsmith: Matt shares a unique perspective when it comes to human creativity. You’re listening to Radio 2050.
Matt Segall: The usual connotation with words like creativity and imagination is a kind of psychological one. We think of human creativity, the creativity of a genius, whether an artist or a scientist. But what I’m trying to suggest here is that creativity is truly cosmic and that human creativity, human imagination are expressions of something far more ancient and far deeper than just a human being. We are expressions of it. And creative artists know this, right? Sometimes whether we’re experiencing writer’s block or we’re staring at the blank canvas, you kind of have to wait for the muses to strike. And that’s an indication, I would say, that creativity doesn’t belong to us. It’s not a tool that we can wield like a hammer to build what we want. It’s something that we’re immersed within, that has its own timing, and we can cultivate a relationship with it. One way of thinking of the relationship between creativity and imagination is to recognize that there are kind of like different levels of imagination. In philosophy, there’s a distinction sometimes made between the reproductive imagination and the productive imagination. Or you could think of the creative imagination. A reproductive imagination is sort of what allows us, based on our experience of red stop signs and elephants in our reproductive imagination, to separate the redness from the stop sign and attach it to the elephant and imagine a red elephant, right? To use a silly simple example. And so that’s the kind of imagination that’s not creative in the sense that it’s more about rearranging aspects of things we’ve already experienced. Whereas the creative imagination is this deeper dimension where something totally new can come forth that we’ve never experienced before. It’s arising out of the very ground of our own being and the very ground of the cosmos itself. And it’s out of that creative imagination that not only novel works of art or scientific discoveries would come, but again, I think if we understand the universe itself as an expression of this creative imagination, then we can think of new species emerging out of this creativity. We can think of at the scale of the whole universe, there was a time when the universe was all hydrogen atoms and a few helium atoms, you know, 12 billion years ago, say. And at that point, stars were a figment of these hydrogen atoms imaginations, if I can put it that way. And when stars emerged, there was something totally new in the history of the universe. Where did they come from? And so thinking in these terms of the cosmic power of creativity or creative imagination, I think has relevance and application far beyond just the ways in which human beings engage in them. But through our own imaginations, we can contact these cosmic dimensions. Imagination isn’t just a human faculty, I would say, that instead at the very ground of all reality, of everything physical, of everything mental, there’s this activity that I could only call creativity. It’s the creativity out of which everything arises. And the human imagination is our portal into that cosmic creativity, while the scientist would want to look at that cosmic creativity in terms of the quantum vacuum or, you know, the Big Bang or there are different ideas scientifically about how to understand that from out of which everything comes. the religiously minded person looks at that cosmic creativity and sees God, sees the divine. And these are different ways of talking about something ineffable. But that core is where we are led when we cultivate this power of imagination in ourselves. And so it’s important to point out that when I refer to imagination in my book, I don’t just mean our capacity for make -believe or fantasy. Imagination can go off in that direction, but I think imagination can also connect us to the creative core of reality itself. People shouldn’t just hear imagination and think, oh, you mean make -believe. No, I mean that out of which reality is constantly pouring forth, right? And so this is where the process philosophy becomes relevant again, rather than thinking that the universe is just made of particles that obey fixed laws. The question for a process philosopher is, well, where did the particles come from? Where did the laws come from? And the best way of knowing I think we have to try to get at questions like that is imagination. And so imagination can be a way of knowing both in science and in religion. It can give us access to not simple facts or logical principles or anything, but to images, to feelings, to intuitions, to a kind of participatory knowing where we are partaking in that which we are trying to understand because we are of it. So yeah, imagination’s not just about make -believe. Imagination is what makes us, it’s what makes the world.
Alanna Goldsmith: I think we can safely assume that all professions come with some challenges. I asked Matt if he struggles with any aspects of being a philosophy professor in today’s day and age.
Matt Segall: I would first say I don’t think of being a professor as a particularly hard job. I love what I do and I feel extremely grateful and lucky that I get paid to do what I love because I know that’s not true for a lot of people. But as an educator, there are many challenges. I mean, one is that in the context of the United States, higher education is very expensive and we don’t have this sort of public commitment to higher education that would allow those who are interested and qualified to pursue it without going into debt very often. And so that weighs on me. I would very much like to see a society wherein education is considered to be a lifelong pursuit. It’s not something you just do when you’re a kid. It’s not something that’s merely to prepare you for a job. It’s the very essence of what it means to be a human being is to pursue learning. And I think if we had a society with that type of a core value, a lot of other things would fall into place as well. But the difficulty as an educator right now has to do with the uncertainty of the future. Universities ideally should be places where we imagine the future. But because the world around us has become just so fraught with social and ecological challenges, it’s very difficult to avoid getting sort of mired in critique. Very often university professors are engaged in and train their students to be engaged in just endless criticism of the current state of affairs. And there’s something to that that’s important. But who’s imagining the future? We can tear down existing structures as much as we want, but that’s easy in some sense. Building an alternative is difficult. And so in that context, I kind of have to swim upstream in the opposite direction to many other academics in an attempt to find sources of realistic hope and to encourage my students to engage in the imaginative exercise of designing better futures. Look at the systems as they currently exist, understand why they fail, and come up with an alternative. And it’s difficult because there’s really a deficiency of hope. And the future seems increasingly bleak in the imaginations of more and more of my students. And I can’t deny that for myself, it’s difficult to see future trajectories that are not terrifying, given where things stand now. But as an educator who really does believe in the mission of the university to imagine the future, I’m committed to that project. And just keeping in mind that history has always been full of surprises. And the good news is nobody can predict what’s going to happen. The future is open -ended, nothing is determined, nothing is locked into place. We will be surprised. The only thing I know for sure is that we will be surprised by the future. And so given that we can’t be certain about where things are headed, there is room for hope. I try to challenge my students to lean into, and it’s an experimental process, but lean into the imagination of alternatives. And don’t just get stuck on critiquing the existing systems. Don’t underestimate the power of your own thinking, of your own imagination, of your own consciousness Because not only can you transform yourself But if you engage in the philosophical project, which is a life project, right to To fall in love with wisdom and to cultivate this emotion of wonder In yourself. The fact is it’s contagious You will affect others around you Some may be really closed off and find your constant questioning annoying. I mean Athens put Socrates to death because he wouldn’t stop asking annoying questions And so I’m not saying everyone will catch the bug But I think wonder is contagious and if this world needs anything right now it’s that emotion of openness and curiosity to what we don’t know there’s a lot of Certainty and doom and gloom and I think the antidote to it is not just baseless Optimism but a sense of curiosity and wonder and so don’t underestimate The impact that you can have just by insisting upon that curiosity and that wonder it is infectious and it will open up what may seem like a world that’s closing down and that’s One of the most powerful ways that anybody can affect change is just by their attitude towards wonder towards the unknown
Alanna Goldsmith: What a beautiful philosophical journey this hour has been with Matt Segall. If you’d like to learn more about his work, do check out Radio2050.com. We’ve got links there. If you enjoyed this episode, do consider sharing with your family and friends. We very much appreciate it. Radio 2050 is a production of Radio Paradise. You can find Radio Paradise and all of our eclectic, human -curated playlists, a perfect soundtrack for your life at RadioParadise.com, as well as in the app stores. I’ve been your host, Alanna Goldsmith, and on behalf of our production staff, thank you for listening.
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