"The safest general characterization of the philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato." —Alfred North Whitehead
Idealism and panpsychism seem to me to make easy friends in the debate against materialism. They both affirm that consciousness or experience or mind in some generic sense are intrinsic to Nature. There are important differences between idealism and panpsychism, of course, and there are a variety of ways one can be an idealist or [...]
William James (from "A World of Pure Experience," Part 2, p. 568): “With this we have the outlines of a philosophy of pure experience before us. At the outset of my essay, I called it a mosaic philosophy. In actual mosaics the pieces are held together by their bedding, for which bedding the Substances, transcendental Egos, or Absolutes of [...]
As best I understand it, in Part IV of Process & Reality, Whitehead attempted to account for how geometrical measurement of the physical world is possible without any empirical presuppositions. He was worried that physics had not yet fully accounted for its own experimental practices and so searched for a presuppositionless mathematical starting point for [...]
https://youtu.be/FF6V78LNiLI Sean Kelly and I delivered this a few weeks ago at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, CA at our philosophy program's annual retreat.
https://youtu.be/GY2vDesht8o I read Whitehead's first lecture at Harvard, delivered in September 1924, which focuses on the metaphysical possibility of modern natural science. This lecture was just published in Process Studies 48.2. Here's a link to the interview of Lynn Margulis I mention at the beginning.
https://youtu.be/8mElV2qmye8 a poem I wrote at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, CA on Oct 29, 2019 I don’t know whether I am a poet pretending to philosophize, or a philosopher who happens to rhyme. I am hungry for wisdom’s teaching. Feed me philosophy. These thoughts do not take place inside my head. I feel [...]
