Category: Alfred North Whitehead
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Polycomputing and Process Philosophy
Tim and I were at it again this afternoon. I begin by introducing some ideas from this preprint by Joshua Bongard and Michael Levin: “There’s Plenty of Room Right Here: Biological Systems as Evolved, Overloaded, Multi-scale Machines.” Here are some of the ideas we discussed in this video:
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Alfred North Whitehead: Ideas and Influence
Below is an article I’ve just finished that will eventually be translated into German and published in The Whitehead Handbook (Verlag).
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Generalizing the Function: Process Ontology and Free Energy
Summary by ChatGPT4 based on the YouTube transcript: This conversation between Tim and Matt revolves around their philosophical exploration of process philosophy, the Free Energy Principle, and Simondon’s philosophy of individuation, with a particular focus on how these philosophical frameworks intersect with personal health experiences and broader biological and environmental contexts. The discussion starts with…
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Schelling and the Return of Organic Science
Below is a video (talk, then Q&A) and transcript of my talk yesterday for the Scientific and Medical Network. I’m hoping to be able to share the video at a later date. … David Lorimer: This evening, we are looking forward to Matt Segall’s talk about Schelling and the return of organic science. There has been significant…
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Open and Relational Christianity
Jonathan Foster invited me on his podcast today. Below is a rough transcript of our conversation. … Jonathan Foster Listeners of podcasts and watchers of YouTube’s people out in the internet. Thanks so much for hanging out with us today. We are continuing what I’m calling season eight, where we’re talking about open and relational theology, and…
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“In Defense of Truth as Participation,” my McGilchrist Conference Presentation
First, here’s a clip of Iain McGilchrist’s impromptu remarks on the opening night of our “Metaphysics and the Matter With Things” conference (which happened to be Good Friday). Next, my welcome and opening comments about the conference (partial transcript to follow): Welcome to CIIS. I’m Matt Segall. I’m an associate professor here in the Philosophy,…
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Jim Rutt Show on the Metaphysics of the Origin of Life
Here’s a link to Episode 232 of the Jim Rutt Show, wherein I join Jim to discuss the metaphysical presuppositions and cosmological implications of the Hot Spring Hypothesis of the origin of life. You can find a PDF of the chapter that Jim and I are discussing here: “The Cosmological Context of the Origin of Life: Process…
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Whitehead’s Panprehensionism: A Feeling For Reality (Dialogue with Tim Jackson)
Video timestamps are available on YouTube. Below is Claude 3 Opus’ summary of the transcript (with a few edits by me): In this detailed conversation, Matt, a philosopher, and Tim, a biologist, delve into various philosophical topics related to perception, consciousness, and the nature of reality, with a particular focus on the ideas of Alfred…
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The Future Impact of Artificial Intelligence
On Wednesday evening (March 13) at Grace Cathedral, was in dialogue with the Rt. Rev. Dr. Marc Handley Andrus, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of California; Brian Behlendorf, CTO of Open Wallet Foundation; and Zann Gill, author, former research scientist on collaborative intelligence at NASA, and a founder of Generative AI Lab & Library in an effort to explore the future impact…
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Descendental Philosophy and the Confrontation with Nihilism (dialogue with Roman Campolo)
Roman has been reading my book Crossing the Threshold. In this dialogue, we explore Whitehead’s mathematical imagination, theory of perception, and attempt to overcome the nihilism that Nietzsche marked out as a pathological transition stage. Watch on YouTube for timestamps. ChatGPT summary: 📘 Perception and Reality: Perception is not merely passive reception through the senses but…
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Plato and Platonism: Dividing the Line and Completing the Cirlce
To listen to the live recording from which this transcript was produced, visit: https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1OwxWYrEnznGQ?s=20 I’m driving home from a talk that AE Robbert just gave at The Alembic in Berkeley. Adam’s a good friend of mine, and he’s finishing up a dissertation on the role of askēsisor training/exercise/practice in philosophy. He’s reading a lot of Pierre Hadot, and thinking about…
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Fantasy, Science, and Beauty in an Evolving Universe (dialogue with Tim Jackson)
Tim and I continued our dialogue about the Free Energy Principle and Whitehead’s cosmology. I began by recounting a short video of Karl Friston saying all human perception is fantasy. From there we discussed FEP’s instrumentalism, the Peirce-James pragmatist difference, and explored the implications of evolution as a general principle extending beyond just biology. We also…
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Agency and Perception in Whitehead and the Free Energy Principle (dialogue with Tim Jackson)
Tim and I continue to explore how Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism might intersect with contemporary scientific theories, especially the Free Energy Principle (FEP). The FEP suggests that organisms strive to minimize the surprise of sensory inputs by adjusting their internal models of the world, which resonates in some ways with Whitehead’s account of perception as…
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Processing Process Ontology (dialogue with Bonnitta Roy and Gregg Henriques)
Bonnie, Gregg, and I met to discuss the interplay between process philosophy and UTOK. We begin by unpacking the status of metaphysics vis à vis science in order to head off some common misconceptions. I make the point that physics has been without a widely accepted metaphysical underpinning since the quantum and relativistic revolutions of the early 20th century. Physics…
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Whitehead and the Free Energy Principle: The Physics and Metaphysics of Information (dialogue with Tim Jackson)
Tim Jackson and I met for another thought jam to explore the interplay between contemporary physics, information theory, biology, and Whitehead’s process philosophy. We got into the ontology of abstraction and in the end found ourselves ruminating on the nature of reality in an increasingly technologically mediated world. Our conversation unveiled a shared concern: as…
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Artificial Intelligence, Moral Imagination, and Spiritual Evolution (dialogue with Roman Campolo)
Roman and I had another wide-ranging dialogue. Topics traversed include:
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Dying to be Born (Dialogue with Roman Campolo)
Roman and I sat down for another dialogue. Topics discussed this time include: anatman, evil, relevant novelty, death, the ontological argument for the existence of God and its discontents, and other such matters.
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Renewing Philosophy (Dialogue with Tim Adalin)
Tim Adalin hosted me on his Voicecraft podcast to discuss process philosophy and its applications. The conversation opened with an exploration of the relationship between philosophy, the elite, and democracy (particularly its susceptibility to tyranny and the importance of wise leadership over populism). I emphasized the role of education in a democratic society, proposing a culture…
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Space, Time, and Religion in the Making (dialogue with Roman Campolo)
Roman and I had another dialogue session to discuss Alfred North Whitehead’s book Religion in the Making (1926). This book lays out Whitehead’s understanding of the evolution of religious consciousness through the phases of emotion, ritual, belief, and rationalization. We touched on the significance of play behavior in animals and human beings, the transition from…
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God and Nature in Schelling and Whitehead (Dialogue with Rahul Sam)
I had a great time speaking with Rahul over the weekend. He’d been reading my book on Schelling and Whitehead, so we mostly discussed the philosophy of nature and process theology. I began by discussing death and human destiny in the long term, emphasizing the existential quandary that humans face as animals aware of our…
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The Art and Science of Improvisation: Dialogue with Merlin Sheldrake and Tim Jackson
I recently had a fascinating conversation with mycologist Merlin Sheldrake and evolutionary toxinologist Tim Jackson. Our discussion revolved around the themes of improvisation, the nature of life, and the interplay between order and chaos in both biology and philosophy. Merlin shared his insights on improvisation in the context of jazz music, which led us to…
Footnotes2Plato 