I recorded this dialogue with Matthew Gray of the Cheltenham and UK Philosophers group a few days ago. A transcript is below.
Introduction and Matt Segall’s Credentials
Matt Gray:
“Hey guys, it’s Matt Gray from Chelam UK Philosophers here, um, just had a fantastic conversation with Matt Segall, the renowned process philosopher, um, he’s a well-decorated, respected academic, um, he’s Associate Professor of Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness at the California Institute of, um, Integral Studies. He’s published three fantastic books: The Reemergence of Schelling: Philosophy in a Time of Emergency in 2014; Physics of the World-Soul: Whitehead’s Adventure in Cosmology in 2021; and Crossing the Threshold: Etheric Imagination in the Post-Kantian Process Philosophy of Schelling and Whitehead—that’s, uh, 2023, which is no longer last year because it’s 2025, so Happy New Year to everybody. Um, thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. We touched on psychedelics, metaphysics, ethics, ecology, cryptocurrency, um, Bitcoin, um, obviously A.N. Whitehead, and the limits of knowledge laid down by Kant—so the sort of Kantian threshold and post-Kantian metaphysics. And, you know, we touched on the work of, sort of, Kastrup, Hoffman, Levin, and Sheldrake. And it was just a, a really, really, really fun conversation. I could, I could just listen to this Matt all day, and, um, yeah, awesome. Hope you enjoy it. Speak soon.”
Gifts From God and Greetings
Matt Gray:
“Hi, Matt.”
Matt Segall:
“Hey, Matt.”
Matt Gray:
“I’m sure you’re probably aware that ‘Matthew’ means, um, ‘gift from Jehovah’ in ancient Hebrew. Um, yes, I’m sure, I’m sure that is, is true for, for, for yourself. Um, all of my friends know this, you know. Um, so I, I thought we could perhaps start—I mean, you’re obviously a renowned, sort of Whiteheadian thinker, you’re, you’re an expert on process philosophy and process theology and so on and so forth, but amongst other things. But could you give us a bit of a kind of informal, you know, introduction to, sort of, where you, where you come from, how you ended up getting that, sort of, philosophical edge that led you, led you into the path of Whitehead and so on? So, so what’s your background?”
Matt Segall:
“Yeah, well, excited to chat with you, Matt. Um, yeah, Whitehead’s definitely become, like, my home base at this point. But, um, I am deeply devoted—you know, it’s not just an interest—it’s a, it’s a real devotion to philosophy as a, a life path. Um, and I’m lucky enough that I get to teach and, uh, do, do research, and that they pay me to do, to do this. Uh, I still have to pinch myself every morning. And, um, you know, just, I’m, I’m so thankful that, uh, you know, that there’s still enough, um, interest and, uh, passion around these ideas, you know, that I get to do this for a living.
“I usually refer back to an experience I had as a seven-year-old, um, to explain how I got onto the philosophical path. Um, I’ll give the short version of the story: basically, I, I realized my mom was going to die, just sort of spontaneously one day. She’s still alive, perfectly healthy at the time, but it was just this realization that eventually she would die. And, um, that really tore me up for a few weeks. I was just crying and worried that I wouldn’t see her again if I went to school. And, um, and that—it lasted a few weeks. And it wasn’t until I considered my death that this sense of, um, dread of my mom dying began to shift. Because when I faced death, uh, directly, as something that I myself would eventually experience, all of a sudden it wasn’t so terrifying, and it became more mysterious. And that contemplation, as a seven-year-old in very simple terms, without any vocabulary or understanding of philosophy, or the history of spirituality and how people have culturally found ways of, you know, dealing with death, um, I, I was hooked, you know, just in that, that, that sense of wonder that contemplating death inspired in me. And, again, I didn’t have the words for it as a seven-year-old. Um, but I was a very curious kid. I loved to watch people and was just a quiet kid, and sensitive to these subtle psychological and social dynamics that I would see going on around me. And I just took a really deep interest in the human condition.
“I had a couple of really influential teachers in high school who exposed me to some, um, ideas. I didn’t really become a reader until maybe junior, but really senior year of high school, uh, and started to become a, a voracious—just have a vicious appetite for, for books, books, and started reading Carl Jung, and Alan Watts, and Frederick Nietzsche—maybe a little too early, didn’t understand what I was reading as an eighteen-year-old, but it, it, it had an attitude about it that I liked. Um, and yeah, it wasn’t, um, [until] I was exposed to Whitehead after high school. Um, I was listening to some lectures by a psychedelic philosopher named Terrence McKenna, uh, uh, who mentioned—he drops Whitehead’s name here and there. Um, Alan Watts also dropped Whitehead’s name in some of the lectures I was listening to from him. But, uh, I was, I was warned not to study Whitehead alone, uh, but to, you know, do it formally in grad school, and got to study with a professor named Eric Weiss, who has since, um, passed on, beginning in 2009—no, 2008, actually. I took my first course with him on Whitehead, and, um, never looked back. I was just hooked. Uh, there’s something about Whitehead’s philosophy that’s so comprehensive and, um, also applicable to so many different domains of experience that, um, I haven’t gotten bored with it all these years later. Um, but, you know, I’m also very interested in the history of philosophy, going back to, um, at least in the West, going back to the Presocratics and Neoplatonists. Um, and I like to study philosophy as an evolution of consciousness, not just as a history of ideas, but, like, um, shifting worldviews, and, like, the very way human beings perceive reality has shifted over the course of millennia. And I think philosophy, the history of philosophy, reflects that and can help us, um, find guidance in the present as we, you know, face a very uncertain future. Um, and so now a lot of my work is, um, yeah, trying to deal with what’s called the metacrisis, um, where socially, ecologically, the human species seems to have reached a, a breaking point, where the old ways of thinking and, and doing and being are no longer adequate to the circumstances we find ourselves in. And we need more than just a new philosophical perspective to deal with this situation, but I think our, our basic attitude and, um, view of what the human being is and our role in the universe needs to change. Right? And, and so there’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg thing with, like, oh, is it the worldview first that needs to change, or is it our institutions? Does this need to be a ground-up political revolution, or do we need to shift individual consciousness first? And I think, you know, all of it at once. Um, and I just happen to be more, uh, perhaps better situated to address the philosophical side of this crisis.”
The Meta Crisis & Whitehead
Matt Gray:
“So, yeah, how well does Whitehead lend himself to, to this crisis, in terms of, you know, his metaphysics? And how, how would they apply to a, sort of, modern problem?”
Matt Segall:
“Yeah, well, in his book, um, his 1925 book Science and the Modern World—which is now a hundred years old—he was already recognizing the way in which this obsolete, already then mechanistic worldview, um, led us to imagine that the natural world around us only had value, uh, if we as human beings attributed value to it. And, um, that’s not only anthropocentric, but even, uh, the type of value that, that human beings attributed to nature is often purely economic. Um, I mean, there were movements already early in, in the twentieth century to, you know, in the US at least, to establish, like, the national parks, and there was this sense, oh, we should protect the wilderness, protect the environment. But, um, even there, the values were aesthetic and very anthropocentric. But for the most part, value in our world, a hundred years ago—and still today, if not more so today—is based on, um, economic, uh, profitability. And Whitehead warned that if we continue to ignore the intrinsic values of the natural world around us, the value that, um, other species have just in and of themselves, without human beings having to place any value upon them, whether economic or aesthetic or any other type of human value…”
Matt Gray (interjecting):
“…of course, we emerge from that world, don’t we? You know, we, we are all that world, as opposed to distinct entities from it, and that has something to do with that shift, has it not?”
Matt Segall:
“Exactly, exactly. And so, rather than thinking that the human being is the sole source of value in the universe, we, from Whitehead’s point of view, need to come to an understanding of our own values as derivative from the cosmos, derivative from the rest of the community of life on Earth. Um, so that we inherit our sense of value from these wider, much more ancient life processes, right? Um, and it’s—so it’s a tremendous decentering of the human being and a, a humbling, but at the same time, an acknowledgement of our power, because we, we can and are destroying, um, the life systems of the planet. And because we’re so alienated from those life systems, we’re only now beginning to wake up to the danger that we’re putting our own species in by undermining the conditions of our own survival. So acknowledging the intrinsic value of the living world was, I think, something that, that, um, very few philosophers were aware of. Whitehead wasn’t the only one back then, um, but he was one of the very prescient, uh, thinkers who was warning about the trajectory we were on. And, um, I think much of what he warned about has come to pass, you know. And on some level, so much has been lost already. It’s not that it’s entirely too late, but, um, there’s so much that we can’t recover that’s already been lost.”
Matt Gray:
“Yeah, I mean, this is fascinating because, you know, it’s quite easy to get lost in the details of metaphysics, but it seems to me that your metaphysics actually have applicability to the real world. Um, because given, you know—I mean, could I just, um, run this past you—so is it because of the process nature of, um, Whitehead, Whitehead’s thinking that it’s sort of less objectified, if you like, so it’s less about counting objects in, in, in the world, and, and so that can ramify in terms of economics and cultural, sort of, attitudes, and so on? Is this the kind of thing we’re talking about?”
Matt Segall:
“Yeah, well, it’s, you know—he has a different approach to what scientific knowledge would amount to. I think the scientific materialist project was originally rooted in the idea that we could come to have certain knowledge, and as a result of that knowledge, kind of absolute control over, uh, um, natural systems, because if, if the universe is primarily, uh, mechanistic, all we need to do is reverse engineer those mechanisms, understand, um, the mathematical principles that underlie them, and then, um, when we find the right model that we, you know—there was this tendency in, among the scientific, um, materialists and mechanists to equate model and reality. Um, it’s not like the ancients, you know, prior to the Scientific Revolution, the medieval and, and ancient thinkers, uh, you know, like Archimedes, ancient, um, engineer, had a very detailed understanding of mechanism. It’s just that, um, these ancient thinkers never got the strange idea to identify the mechanisms and the models that they could mathematically work out with the way that nature operates, because they understood nature to be alive, um, and even ensouled. And something shifted with, you know, Descartes and Newton, Galileo, and, and the other, sort of, founders of this new scientific materialist approach, um, where all of a sudden, yeah, nature was equated to a machine. And this pursuit of knowledge that would give us a certain degree of prediction and control over nature became the primary, um, drive underlying, motivating science. And Whitehead is shifting our conception of what it would mean to know nature, because, as you’re saying, there’s this, um, process dimension to his understanding of reality. There’s also a relational dimension. So often his metaphysics is called process-relational, uh, metaphysics or ontology, because what there finally are for Whitehead are not bits of matter moving around in empty space that might be geometrically modeled with, uh, absolute precision. Um, you know, there’s, there was this old idea of nature at an instant and simple location, and from Whitehead’s point of view, with quantum theory and with, uh, relativity theory—and then even before that, there was this rise of statistical methods in science where, you know, if you want to understand, um, you know, how gas operates, like, we’re not going to be able to track every individual molecule, but statistically, in large aggregates, we can, you know, get a sense for how gases will behave. And so there’s already an epistemological shift going on. And Whitehead is kind of, um, spelling out the metaphysical consequences of the shifts that already occurred within science in the early twentieth century. And so knowledge becomes less about, um, being absolutely precise and certain, and more about, um, knowing how to enter into relationships with, uh, these processes that we’re embedded within. And, you know, we’re navigating, um, in a Whiteheadian universe, we’re navigating, uh, relationships with living systems that are responsive to our ways of looking at them and our ways of, uh, you know, interacting with them. So that it’s not just dead, inert stuff out there that’s indifferent to how we observe it.”
Matt Gray:
“I mean, this is very obvious to biologists and ethologists who are studying animals. Um, that reminds me of something Rupert Sheldrake kind of mentioned: he said that he wasn’t cool with chopping animals up to try and understand animals. He thought, let’s actually just interact with them and observe them, and so on and so forth. And, um, you know, that’s, that’s quite interesting, isn’t it?”
Matt Segall:
“Totally.”
Matt Gray:
“Rather than using them as an object for, for human advantage, actually respecting what they are and what they represent, and so on. Um, can I just—while I remember—just want to—what, what did, um, Whitehead think about space? Was, I mean, was space a, sort of, was it a given in his system, or is, is it like an emergent property, or what, what did he say about space?”
Alfred North Whitehead on Physics and Cosmology
Matt Segall:
“Well, he said there’s no such thing as empty space, okay? Um, I mean, he fully accepted the relativistic, um, paradigm shift. He had some critiques of, of Einstein—we can get into those details—but in general, the idea of space and time, or space-time, um, not as, like, space doesn’t exist independently of the matter which floats in it. For Whitehead, space is actually a—it’s more like a field of potentiality. It’s, it’s the way in which, um, occasions of experience, in his terms, actual occasions of experience, relate to one another. And so, rather than thinking of space as already existing, and then you have entities that inhabit that space, Whitehead says space emerges from the relationships among actual occasions. And so, it’s a bit of a figure-ground shift. And it’s even more, I would say, it’s even more relativistic than Einstein’s conception, so it doesn’t presuppose some medium through which these entities can relate. It’s, it’s more about just the relationship itself.”
Matt Gray:
“I mean, this reminds me of some of what Chris Fields has been doing on, um, his physics as information processing, because he assumes nothing as well. He just says, look, there are these entities communicating information across boundaries, you know, and, um—just strip it back to the absolute essentials and it doesn’t assume space or time, I don’t think. And so—so sorry to—please do carry on. I mean, also, what did he say about time? That would be good.”
Matt Segall:
“Well, I mean, he’s a process philosopher, and so on the one hand, time is very important and irreducible, but there’s a difference between clock time—that time that we can measure—and lived time, let’s say, or a kind of, uh, creative unfolding. So, you know, in physics, most of the equations of physics and relativity theory and quantum theory, um, the, the direction of time is irrelevant. The, the, the laws of physics work just as well in either direction. And so that’s—only the only approach in physics that, where that, where time as a directional process features would be in thermodynamics, because there’s this movement towards a direction, towards entropy, towards disorder, a movement towards equilibrium. Um, but for the most part, in physics, uh, time is this, is this, um, you know, parameter that can go in either direction, which stands in sharp conflict to our perception of time, our experience of time, which is, um, an irreversible, whole, forward-moving process. Forward in the sense of, you know, the past has already occurred, the future has not yet occurred, and we exist always in this, in Whitehead’s terms, a perpetually perishing present, which is to say, the present doesn’t last, and yet there’s nowhere else we could ever be. But there’s something about the nature of time as creative becoming—so not, not what we can measure in a quantitative way, but this qualitative unfolding of time that Whitehead would call creative advance—that, um, his description of that would be a process that is, um, iterative, meaning there’s a kind of cycling. Um, we’re always in the now, but the now is always incorporating, uh, what has perished, um, and, and repeating everything which has occurred before. But not only is time iterative, in Whitehead’s sense, but it’s cumulative, so that no two moments are ever the same, because they’re going to be incorporating, uh, the just-prior moments. Right? And so, for Whitehead, um, time is this, like, yeah, it’s, it’s a, it’s a cyclical but a cumulative process. And so no two moments, uh, are the same. Every new drop of experience, every new actual occasion of experience, is, is unique in world history. Um, and there’s a, there’s a, a creative unfolding that, for Whitehead, is—it’s going somewhere. It’s not going to, um, climax in some final moment at the end of time. It’s an endless process. Uh, but—”
Matt Gray:
“McKenna talked about the, um—what was it—the, the ‘ideal object’ at the end of time.”
Matt Segall:
“Time-Wave Zero, yeah.”
Matt Gray:
“So—so—so, but not, not the case for Whitehead, though.”
Matt Segall:
“No. And—and it’s interesting because McKenna, in talking about his fractal understanding of time as this time-wave model that he developed, was supposed to end on December 21st, 2012. And Terence McKenna died before he, he could see that his theory was not confirmed. On the other hand, things have gotten really weird since then, so maybe something has shifted. But he used Whitehead in a way that, um, to support his theory that I don’t think is actually, um, a fair reading of Whitehead. Uh, and that’s fine. I mean, McKenna was a creative thinker and appropriated from different, um, philosophies in a way that served his own project, and that’s just what we do as, when we’re creative. Um, but Whitehead doesn’t see an end to time. Um, it’s, it’s—if I could put it this way, time is eternal. Uh, and, and really, his whole understanding of what’s happening in each present moment—he has a word for this called ‘concrescence.’ It’s an intersection where time and eternity meet, right? And so we’re constantly being, in each moment, refreshed by this eternal perspective, um, that Whitehead uses the traditional language of God to refer to this perspective. Um, there’s this eternal, divine envisionment of ideal possibility. And each of our temporal moments, as we, as history unfolds, is given a little injection of this eternal perspective of ideal possibility. And moment by moment, we’re trying to integrate that ideal with the real, which is what has actually happened. And Whitehead will say, like, history is a wreck. Um, but we continue to soldier on. We continue to have hope in a better future because we’re refreshed by this eternal perspective, moment by moment. And that refreshment does—to the extent that there is a creative, um, organizational, uh, unfolding—and when we look at the history of the universe, there’s an astounding amount of order, um, and complexity. And there does seem to be an evolutionary movement towards, um, ever more intense forms of consciousness. And so Whitehead would say, even though history is, uh, a mess, and there’s plenty of chaos and disorder and destruction, there seems to be more of a tilt towards order than towards chaos in the history of our universe.”
Matt Gray:
“Right, okay. So that’s how he understands time, um, more than just clock time, right? It’s a real creative process with—there are qualitative leaps that can occur, moment by moment.”
Matt Gray:
“Right. Just, there’s a couple of questions there. So, number one, probably a quick answer. In the same sense that he felt that time wouldn’t end, um, did he think the universe had no beginning, or was there a beginning?”
Matt Segall:
“No beginning. It literally is, it’s eternal.”
Matt Gray:
“Okay.”
Matt Segall:
“And it’s continuous creation. So he’s, you know—Whitehead would—his metaphysics would extend beyond Big Bang theory, this idea that space and time have some origin point. Um, however, he has this idea of what he calls ‘cosmic epochs,’ and that there is this creative plenum. I mean, for him, the ultimate is creativity. Everything comes out of what he calls creativity, which is very difficult to characterize, because there’s nothing that isn’t an expression of creativity. Um, but that would exist, uh, prior to any particular cosmic order emerging. And it could be that there are different cosmic epochs, uh, elsewhere in the multiverse, if you will, you know. And so there are ways of making Whitehead’s metaphysics compatible with a Big Bang theory, but I think his understanding of, um, the deep structure of, of reality would lend itself more to an idea of, like, continuous creation, rather than creation being a, a sort of one-time event. Right. And, I mean, there’s so many options on the table in contemporary physical cosmology now, different models for understanding the origin of the universe. It’s kind of, um, the Wild West right now.”
Matt Gray:
“Yeah.”
Matt Segall:
“And I think Whitehead’s metaphysics can provide us with some scaffolding to begin to make sense of, uh, of the options in a, in a logically coherent and empirically adequate way.”
Matt Gray:
“It’s got to the point where science is making weirder—physics mostly—making weirder claims than, than any mysticism, really, you know, especially physics. Infinite numbers of universes being generated at infinitesimal points in space, you know. It’s just kind of mind-blowingly crazy stuff. Um, so also, I’m, I guess that within—I’ve done a bit of reading, I’m, I’m struggling on with this, and I, I, you know, I know it’s a bit of a cliché, but he is quite hard to, to, to sort of read through. And I think there’s something about the, um, jargon and terminology that he uses, but, um, it is, it is actually workable if you just take the time and put the effort in, take notes, revisit. It does slowly but surely soak in, and I think some of it has, hopefully. But, um, I mean, one of the things I’m getting from it is that he’s not teleophobia—he’s not teleophobic, is he? So he’s perfectly happy to see that there is a creative direction of travel for the cosmos, right?”
Matt Segall:
“Right.”
Matt Gray:
“And, and for me, in some sense, my intuition tells me that that’s kind of obvious, you know, when you look at, sort of, evolution as an obvious example, that there seems to be a direction of travel, as you hinted at earlier—this pursuit of complexity, or as McKenna might say, novelty, you know. So what are your views on this stuff, and, you know, is there, is there a sense in which we can join that journey? Or can, can we resist it? Or, you know, how does it bear on, sort of, personal, uh, decisions and so on and so forth, you know?”
Matt Segall:
“Yeah, I mean, I think there was clearly a lot of teleophobia in the origins of modern science. Um, the medieval world, very influenced by a certain form of theology, um, was, uh, pursuing forms of theological explanation that were kind of, well, overly anthropocentric, so such that the purpose of all these different processes in nature was always to serve the human being because, you know, God put us at the center of creation. And, um, and it was a very naive form of teleology. And the sorts of, uh, purpose, um, that medieval theologians and Scholastics were beginning to imagine as operative in nature were of the sort that you might expect from a, a picture of the divine as a kind of engineer or mechanic, um, imposing purpose or design on the universe from outside the universe. Um, and on some level, even though modern science went to great lengths to deny, um, teleology and focus only on mechanical causes, there’s another sense in which, um, for thinkers like Descartes and Newton, unless they had this kind of theology in the background, where God was imagined as a great engineer and a mathematician, they never would have expected to find mathematical laws in nature. And so there is a real, uh, sense in which there are theological underpinnings or, um, presuppositions that led, at least these early scientists, to search for the intelligibility of nature in mathematical terms. Um, but that, uh, is, I think, a deep conflict in, in, in the scientific, um, worldview—that it comes out of this form of theology, and yet, very quickly, um, you know, as we enter into the nineteenth century, really, all of a sudden, God becomes a hypothesis that scientists no longer want to make reference to, and everything is explained purely in terms of purposeless, um, the, the playing out of mechanical processes that have no underlying purpose. And Whitehead’s trying to bring teleology back into the picture here, but not of the kind, um, that we would describe as design coming from, um, a God who is separate from the world. For Whitehead, teleology is, is immanent. Uh, it’s, um, it, it stems from the desires that individual creatures have to, to, um, intensify their experience, and to forge new relationships to support the intensification of that experience. And so rather than thinking of, say, in the biological realm, uh, in the way that Darwin only allowed—there’s a little bit of teleology in Darwinian biology, which is that organisms want to survive, right? That’s the one little bit of purpose that a mechanistic biologist will allow for, that there’s a survival instinct. Where does that come from? ‘Oh, I don’t know, we’ll just assume that,’ and then we can get, uh, evolution and natural selection going. Whitehead says, if you actually observe life in an unbiased way, whether your own instincts or any other animal or organism, there’s more than just a survival instinct. Organisms want to thrive. There’s, there’s, like, experience is enjoyable. And, you know, Whitehead says, look, if natural selection and this desire to survive is the only thing that counts in biological evolution, why is it that we see, uh, organisms that are more complex and more sensitive, but comparatively deficient in survival power, evolving? Like, the human being is very, uh, fragile in comparison to, uh, bacteria, which are nearly indestructible and have been around for billions of years, and functionally immortal. I mean, they don’t, they don’t sexually reproduce; they just make copies of themselves. Um, it’s a much more efficient form of life. And so, if natural selection and the ability to survive in various environments is what really matters, the peak of life was bacteria. And so why all this extra complexity? Why all of this, why all of this extra sensitivity? I mean, yeah, we can enjoy our experience more, but we also feel a lot more pain and suffering. And so Whitehead thinks there must be another principle at play here, which is that life has this intrinsic desire to enhance its experience, right, to intensify experience. And so that adds another factor. It’s not that Darwin’s process of natural selection is not occurring—it is. And we know that that—”
Matt Gray:
“That applies to the individual organism and their, their lifetime. They pursue more food and more happiness and more contentment, or whatever. So, so why not, sort of, scale that up, you know?”
Matt Segall:
“Yeah, exactly. Um, and it’s not—this isn’t the kind of teleology that determines in advance what types of forms will be realized in the living world or in the universe, right? It’s all—it’s very open-ended. But there is an internal drive to explore that, uh, I think is not factored into the Darwinian understanding of, of evolution, right? And so Whitehead says yes to Darwin, and there’s more going on.”
Matt Gray:
“But do you think that that—actually, looking at some of the cutting-edge science these days, we’re beginning to see a more, um, we, to see more, sort of, teleos, you know, if you consider the work of Mike Levin, for example. I mean, they’re looking at the, you know, extremely basic systems, like things like sorting algorithms, that seem to delay gratification. And, you know, so it seems to be present everywhere. And this leads me to, sort of, a metaphysical question. I mean, are you a panpsychist? And, you know, I’ve heard that there’s a sort of distinction—there’s a sort of object pan- or substance panpsychist, like the likes of Philip Goff, and so on, but you’re more of a, sort of, process panexperientialist. Is that right? Is that fair?”
Matt Segall:
“Yeah, yeah, and I’m happy with the ‘panexperientialist’ label. It, it can sometimes be misleading because there are different forms, different species of panpsychism that are quite different from one another in their implications. But the idea that some degree of experience, um, or mentality, uh, or subjectivity—you know, whichever word you want to use—goes all the way down, I think I would affirm that, Whitehead affirms that, um, and so panpsychism is a fair label. And I usually think of four basic positions in metaphysics that are, um, historically and contemporarily sort of available to us. There’s, uh, materialism, dualism, panpsychism, and idealism. Um, and when I look at contemporary biology—Mike Levin’s a great example of this, but there are others, Dennis Noble, um, you know, I could, I could come up with a long list of biologists who think, um, and philosophers of biology, who think that purpose is a real part of the living world, if, if not the cosmos as a whole. And so there’s a major paradigm shift happening, um, in biology. But the old guard is still, you know, alive and well, and, um, Richard Dawkins is very—yeah, he’s very articulate and still has a 1960s understanding of what is state-of-the-art in biology. And, you know, for him, coming of age, doing his PhD research, and writing his famous books like The Selfish Gene in the ‘60s—late ‘60s, early ‘70s—molecular biology, and this genetic reductionism, was all the rage. But it turns out that that’s a dead end. Um, there’s more than, than genes going on. But, you know—”
Philosophy of Biology – Lamarck, Mike Levin, Denis Noble, Richard Dawkins, Charles Darwin
Matt Segall (continuing):
“I’ve heard Dawkins quite recently give his spin on the whole situation, and he thinks none of the research in the last fifty years changes anything. Even Noble doesn’t—he doesn’t think Noble changed anything, but—”
Matt Gray:
“Lamarck is, sort of, back in the, back in the room now, isn’t it, really?”
Matt Segall:
“Yeah, I think so, but Dawkins will reinterpret everything that’s been found to make it compatible with a gene-centric perspective, which he thinks ultimately is what’s going on. And so, you know, science can become just as much a kind of—certain scientific perspectives can function just as much like religions, uh—”
Matt Gray:
“Yeah.”
Matt Segall:
“…as, as traditional religions can. And so I think, for Dawkins, um, his scientific perspective is a worldview, and it functions not just as a means of, you know, producing knowledge, but, uh, as a source of meaning, as a source of morality, and, um, yeah, it’s a comprehensive picture.”
Matt Gray:
“It’s a responsibility, right, yeah.”
Matt Segall:
“Yeah, and he’s a brilliant communicator of science, but I think, um, his, his science is out of date, I would say.”
Matt Gray:
“Is there some sort of an awakening going on across science—”
Post-Materialist Awakening?
Matt Gray (continuing):
“…and, you know, there’s a lot more, sort of, um, integrated work, isn’t there, you know, convergences and so on. And that seems to be where the fruit is born. And, um, any, any thoughts, you know? Are we kind of emerging from the materialist paradigm? Is that happening now?”
Matt Segall:
“I see a lot of signs of that, and I think that is happening within the scientific community. It’s happening within academia a little but more slowly in those professional settings. But when I look at the culture at large, um, many, many intelligent people, um, are increasingly skeptical of materialism and more open to panpsychism and idealism. Um, and I think that’s a very positive sign. There are risks that come along with that, um, but there are risks that come along with adopting a materialist worldview as well, as, uh, Rupert Sheldrake’s always saying. It’s probably really bad for our mental health, yeah, to have this materialist outlook—”
Matt Gray:
“Yeah.”
Matt Segall:
“…if you think you’re a mindless automaton, that can’t be good for morale, you know.”
Matt Gray:
“Yeah, yeah.”
Matt Segall:
“And see, how does that, how does that view help anybody?”
Matt Gray:
“Indeed.”
Matt Segall:
“Yeah, um, you know, there are still scientists like, you know, Robert Sapolsky, probably the most famous among them, who will argue for this really hardcore deterministic point of view, and that free, free will, any sort of will or effort, is just an illusion, and, um, we’re the victims of, um, cause and effect understood in a mechanistic way, and the victims of genes. And I think that’s a totally, um, dysfunctional point of view, from my perspective, not only because of its negative moral consequences—there, there is a lot of psychological research that suggests when you tell people that they’re deterministic, that, that determinism is, is a fact right before they take a test and have an opportunity to cheat on that test, if you tell them that they’re free or tell them that they’re determined beforehand, um, those who were told they’re determined are more likely to cheat.”
Matt Gray:
“Is that right? That’s fascinating. Of course, of course, because that absolves them of any guilt, doesn’t it?”
Matt Segall:
“Yeah, and in mental health contexts, you—they’ve done studies about the language that psychiatrists use when they talk about different mental disorders. And if they use more mechanistic language and make the patient feel like, ‘Oh, this is your— it’s determined by your genes, it’s determined by your brain chemistry,’ they tend to be more, uh, to have worse mental health outcomes than if there’s emphasis placed on your own willpower, your own outlook, and changing your own perspective, you know. So how we talk about these things does feed back on, on our experience. And, um, but regardless of that, sort of, the pragmatic consequences of how we think about these things, I think it’s just scientifically shortsighted to say that everything is deterministic and mechanistic. It’s just not working anymore. We’ve actually—”
Matt Gray:
“So, so you could say that actually it’s some sort of, um, awakening, but actually it might just be a pragmatic thing that science is saying, well, actually, these old models don’t work, and, uh, you know, we’re banging our heads against a brick wall here, and so, um—yeah, they had to change. But, um, sorry, do, do go on. That’s fascinating.”
Matt Segall:
“Yeah, well, just to say, like, the, the way that materialism and mechanism had classically been understood, um, by nineteenth-century science, that whole perspective was destroyed by science itself, with the quantum and relativistic revolutions in the early twentieth century. So physics itself has destroyed mechanistic materialism, right? And I think a lot of, um, scientists are still catching up to that. And there’s been a prohibition against metaphysics in academia for a while—it’s, it’s changing now in dramatic ways—but for the better part of the twentieth century, um, philosophers were not really, um, given the opportunity to engage with, uh, quantum physics in a way that would allow us to do the, um, metaphysical deep dive that, you know, would provide an alternative ontology to the old mechanist ontology. Whitehead was one of the few that tried to do that, but he was doing it just at a time, in the 1920s, when philosophy was becoming more analytic, uh, more focused on language, linguistic analysis—”
Matt Gray:
“Positivism, yeah.”
Matt Segall:
“Yeah, exactly. And so these grand metaphysical projects and doing philosophical cosmology just fell out of favor. But again, that’s shifting. I really do feel like there is a shift within academia, within the profession of science, as well as in the broader culture. I, um, I timed going to university—I studied philosophy as a mature student, I was twenty-seven. And, um, I wanted to do my dissertation on Berkeley, Berkeley and idealism, and just—they just said, ‘Don’t be daft. Why would you want to do that? That’s all— all that stuff is solved, you know, it’s, it’s rubbish.’ And, um, you know, they tried to get me to do one on Wittgenstein, his early work—of course. Um, I ended up doing, doing some ethics of euthanasia, which [was a] slightly, slightly dark but difficult topic. But, um, yeah, they didn’t, they didn’t really encourage anything other than, sort of, materialistic or—well, I mean, essentially, logical positivism just wipes any metaphysical speculation off the table, doesn’t it, and says if it can’t be weighed and measured, or it doesn’t have logical synt—consistency, it’s, it’s not worth talking about. Um, so, so, so you’re a Whiteheadian, but that’s not all you are, Matt, is it? I, um—because I, I’ve heard you speak in some detail about Kant, and so I’d like to get into, into the sort of Kantian threshold, the limits of knowledge, and how, how can we have metaphysical knowledge, um, because, I mean, while science is perhaps getting a little bit more amenable to non, sort of, materialist thinking, it still raises questions about the very notion of identity and, and, um, you know, what can we really know when, when we’re arguably trapped inside this, sort of, perceptual bubble? You know, we’re in a theater of perception that’s derived from something, but we—but how do we know what’s out there, and how can we talk about that? Is that a fair question?”
Matt Segall:
“Yeah, no, absolutely. Um, you know, Kant’s critical philosophy really does challenge this old style of metaphysical speculation, where, um, from Kant’s point of view, these dogmatic metaphysicians, as he called them, were making claims about realities that were beyond our experience. Um, you know, from Kant’s point of view, we don’t actually have any experience of the soul as a substantial reality. Uh, in other words, we, we have a psychological experience, you know, we have a sense of being, uh, subjects and so on, but we’re never given experiential, uh, exposure to the idea of the soul as an immortal substance. Like, that’s a theological idea that dogmatic metaphysics, um, just assumed, right, and built expansive worldviews around. And Kant says, you know, we really need to do philosophy in a more scientific way. Let’s be grounded in our experience. But he wanted to justify, you know, necessary and universal knowledge that, in other words, scientific knowledge, but he did so in a way that limited that scientific knowledge to the realm of phenomena, right, to our experience, and what nature is in itself, or what reality is in itself. Kant would just say, ‘We, we don’t know that, and we can’t know that.’ Um, and for Kant, it was good that we couldn’t know that, because he wanted to be able to say that human freedom will always be irreducible to any scientific, mechanistic account of the phenomenal world, of the way that nature appears to us. There will always be something in excess of nature, for Kant, right, which is our own human freedom. So Kant wanted to justify scientific knowledge rigorously, logically, without relying on any metaphysics that would make reference to objects beyond our experience, but he also wanted to do justice to, um, our belief in freedom and morality. Without freedom, for Kant, there’s no morality. Um, and by limiting scientific knowledge—which, for Kant, scientific knowledge meant mechanistic understanding—limiting that to phenomena, Kant could then say, well, behind the scenes, somehow our own freedom as human beings and the mechanism of nature as it appears to us are compatible. You can’t say exactly why, but because science is limited, at least it’s possible that there’s some underlying—magic going on. I mean, he wouldn’t call it magic; he would call it some supersensible substratum that makes freedom and, and the mechanism of nature compatible.”
Matt Gray:
“Just an accident of the time that he was born in, in some sense, that he developed some of these ideas. It was in response to the scientific knowledge of the day. So if he was launched into, into modern times, would, would he have a different view, do you think?”
Matt Segall:
“Oh, I mean, undoubtedly. I—hard to say what Kant would make of modern science, but, um, and the contemporary situation. But yeah, he was very adept at, um, Newtonian physics. He understood the math, he was an astronomer before he, you know, got into developing this transcendental approach to philosophy. But it was also the criticisms of, um, rationalism, and the criticisms of the idea that, um, we could have scientific knowledge of something like causality that, that came from empiricists like David Hume, that—as Kant said—awoke him from his dogmatic slumber. And so he needed to come up with new justifications for, um, causality, because, from Hume’s point of view—right, famously—we, we don’t, um, perceive necessary connection between events. We assume them. We assume these connections as a, as a result of habit and custom. Um, and so, you know, Kant had to do all of these gymnastics, the quite brilliant gymnastics, to show how, okay, maybe causality isn’t something we perceive, but it’s an—it’s a, it’s a category in terms of which we have to interpret our experience. So he, you know, he, he’s able to respond to Hume and avoid the more radical implications of Hume’s skepticism, um, but he has to sacrifice a lot to do that, which is, like I was describing earlier, science is no longer telling us what nature is in itself; it’s only telling us how nature appears to our kind of mind. And so, you know, I, I really do take Kant’s criticism of traditional metaphysics, dogmatic metaphysics, seriously. And so how do we do metaphysics after Kant? Well, I would say it has to be experientially grounded. Um, we can’t be making reference to, um, that which is, by definition, beyond our experience. And so our categories and our concepts must be adequate—not only adequate to what we experience, but I would say the whole purpose of philosophy takes on, for me, a pragmatic orientation, which is to say, we only know—and this is coming out of William James and Charles Sanders Peirce, who are all important influences on Whitehead—we only know what a concept means, ultimately, um, because of our awareness of its consequences for our experience. How does thinking in this way change my experience? How does it change what I can perceive? How does it change what I can do, what I imagine I can do, and so what I can then do? Um, and so I think there’s a, there’s more, more to experience than Kant thought. For Kant, you know, the forms of intuition of space and time were fixed in this Euclidian way. Um, he acknowledged the role of imagination as quite powerful, interestingly, in the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason. He kind of tones down the role that imagination plays a little bit, because I think he was a little uncomfortable, uh, with the implications there. But one of the implications, I think, is when we recognize the imaginative ground of our experience, um, the structure of our experience is actually far more malleable. And through creative philosophical efforts, coming up with new concepts—as Whitehead does, which is what makes him difficult to read initially, because he’s really reinventing, um, not only a new language, but a new categorial scheme, as he calls it, a new set of concepts through which to interpret—not only interpret, but transform our experience, right? And so when we approach experience not as something fixed and already preformed, but as something more malleable and open to experimental, uh, transformation, then all of a sudden, we can engage metaphysics in a more experimental way, grounded in experience, rather than always claiming, as it had before Kant, um, to know things beyond experience. All we have is experience, right? Um, but philosophy can allow us to, uh, to transform that experience.”
Metaphysics, Self-Transformation, and Free Will – William James
Matt Gray:
“Yeah, and we can literally change our minds, we can change the nature of the incoming experience according to some of that, uh, sort of altered frame of reference. Can you, can you think of any, sort of, examples of that? I mean, I suppose, perhaps you could talk about maybe the, sort of, practice of meditation, or, or the way you respond to the world, you know. Could you give me some, sort of, examples of that, some concrete—”
Matt Segall:
“I mean, one of the powerful examples that comes to mind immediately is William James in his battle with depression. He was really exploring these ideas of determinism and, and free will. And, you know, in his book, The Will to Believe, he describes his own realization, upon recovering from depression, that, um, this idea of freedom is, uh—how to describe this—it, it has—whether or not we think freedom or determinism is, is real has real consequences for our mental health, right? And so when he would—he would be asked, if we were to ask William James, um, ‘Are we free, or are we determined?’ He would say, ‘Well, if you believe that you’re free, then you’re free—or you have at least some willpower to change your circumstances. If you believe that there, there’s no freedom, then you’re, you’re determined,’ right? And he, he realized that his own depression was only alleviated by his shift in, in belief that, ‘I’m going to take this idea of freedom seriously and thereby become free.’”
Matt Gray:
“He literally invented a new world in which he was free, in some sense, and experience is that malleable. I suppose another example might be your metaphysics would have some impact on how you respond to death, for example. So if you’re utterly convinced that, say, something like idealism is, is the case, then, um, you know, you’re going to say consciousness is fundamental, and, you know, these bodies are, sort of, representations of, of some mentation, right, and, and so the death of the physical body is not, you know—that can’t kill consciousness, right? It’s a, a completely different, sort of, category. Um, yeah, and so, yeah, I mean, you know, again, it’s, um, I sometimes have to fight a bit of a battle with, with friends of mine about the relevance of philosophy in, in the modern world, and it’s, it’s because of things like this that I, that I think it is absolutely relevant, you know, and, you know, just setting aside the ethics and, and everything else. Um, so I was going to ask, so what are your views on death? And, you know, because we touched on this earlier, and it must, it tells us something about the nature of reality, doesn’t it, um, that it doesn’t necessarily care so much for the, the woes of the individual, and—or maybe it does, you know, maybe there’s some necessity to having anxiety to perpetuate the species, and so on and so forth. Part of this grand foliation, but it does seem a bit mean, doesn’t it, you know, to, to, to, to give these entities all this uncertainty about it as well? Um, why, why would that, you know, any, any thoughts on this, anyway?”
Death and Transhumanism
Matt Segall:
“Yeah, I mean, no, there’s so much to say about death and the way that human culture is so profoundly shaped by our response to death, and different cultures have different responses to it. And I think so much of what drives contemporary consumerist culture is a kind of denial of death. Um, we want—and expect that, uh, or many people expect that technology and medical advances will eventually allow us to defeat death. There’s a whole transhumanist movement that refers to people who find death to be something essential to life that we have to accept. They call us—I count myself among those people—they call us ‘deathists,’ because for them, for these transhumanists, death is just a disease that we should cure. Um—”
Matt Gray:
“A medical—it’s a medical problem, kind of thing.”
Matt Segall:
“It’s—yeah, it’s a medical problem. It’s, it’s, it’s a limitation that increasing knowledge can eliminate. Um, but I don’t think they’ve really thought through what a human being who lives forever, what, what a life that’s indefinite, where we’re functionally immortal, what that would really be like, and how much, actually, of the deepest meaning that we find in our lives comes from its finitude. And is it, is it, is it really possible to, to, to love someone if there’s no risk of losing them, or if that time that we have together on this earth is, is indefinitely prolonged? I mean, I think it really does start to change the deep existential structure of human existence when we consider eliminating death somehow. Um, I think there are a lot of other ways that that sort of transhumanist project can go wrong, but I, I also think, um, if we were to want to develop, say, a more, um, ecological approach to, to ethics—um, environmental ethics is a big field in, in philosophy, um, because we need to reimagine our relationship to the natural world—one of the ways I’ve been sort of exploring, um, another possibility for developing an ecological ethics would be to consider reincarnation, um, and to do so in, in a, you know, more or less naturalistic way, just to relate to the whole history of life on Earth, all of the species which have existed, and the lineages that we as human beings are, um, born out of, of, uh, we are the reincarnation of this continuous stream of, um, successful organisms. I mean, ninety-nine percent of all the species who ever have existed have gone extinct. But, um, for those organisms that are alive today, we inherit, uh, the achievements of billions of years of evolutionary struggle and, and joy, I think. Um, and so, in a real evolutionary sense, um, reincarnation is real, right?”
Matt Gray:
“Yeah, um, kind of eating itself as well, it’s like a big restaurant, isn’t it, we, we consume—you know, that, that seems to be almost foundational, with, you know, eating seems to be, you know, we, we imbibe some of the external world into ourselves and then put some of our own self out into the external world. And that—these are the sorts of things that you can’t—once, say, they’re undeniable in some sense. The idea of the continuation of generations and, um, continuous journey towards—yeah, and—”
Matt Segall:
“But to feel, to feel okay with that, I think—”
Matt Gray:
“Yeah, seeing that you’re—it’s not all about you, or, or about one, it’s about the, the grand foliation, if you can call it that.”
Matt Gray:
“Yeah.”
Matt Segall:
“No, I like that term. Um, but we need a shift in human identity that allows us to, to not just, um, consider as an idea that we are related to the rest of life on this planet—I mean, most educated people accept this idea of a common ancestor of all of life—but if we can go beyond just the idea of it to really feel that, and to identify with life as a whole, um, I think, and also to consider, you know, this reincarnational perspective, not just as a way of relating to the past, to the history of life, but think about the future in some way. The damage we do today, it’s not just going to affect other people or other beings. Like, who we really are, our true identity, like, is continuous with this stream of life. We will be here in the future to suffer the consequences of what we’re doing today, right? And so this broadened sense of identity that I think comes in, comes along with considering, uh, a more or less naturalistic understanding of reincarnation, could be really fruitful, uh, for helping us to avert, you know, catastrophe, ecologically speaking. And so, in terms of relating to death, it’s like it doesn’t make death any more, um, difficult, on some level. Like, we give up a lot when we die, but I don’t think we give up everything. Like, this body, everything we’ve tended to identify with while alive in this body, will, will perish—I’m pretty sure of that. But I think that there’s this underlying continuity that will continue. And I don’t have any scientific proof of that. Obviously, these—I’m, I’m building analogies, um, and, you know, looking at, say, the way in which it’s very odd that we don’t fully consider this, but, like, we’re awake for two-thirds of the day, and then for a third of the twenty-four-hour cycle, we’re asleep, our bodies are just vegetating there in bed, and, um, then we wake up in the morning and continue on with just—and there’s this, this gap every day in our lives, in our stream of consciousness, and we just sort of accept that as normal. But if you really consider it, why wouldn’t we want to imagine some analogy here? Just as the life-death cycle occurs every twenty-four hours—or the, sorry, the sleep-awake cycle occurs every twenty-four hours—maybe there’s a similar life-death cycle which occurs, you know, across, uh, lifetimes, right, and it’s just that we wake up as someone new, in—instead of as the same person with that sense of continuity. But from Whitehead’s point of view, we’re new every moment, you know, there’s a death-rebirth process happening moment by moment by moment. And—”
Matt Gray:
“You can almost feel that sometimes. Like, sometimes I almost get a sort of insight, think, actually, you know, I’ve changed, I’m changed by a certain piece of music or a film or an experience or a conversation. You, you come away a changed person, you can actually sense it. And I wanted to ask you something, another metaphysical question: is everything alive? Is there anything that is not involved in the sort of, the, the dance of, of life? Because, I mean, just, just a daft, um, sort of example, you could imagine a planet with no kind of organic material on it, right, um, but it’s still milling about in some sense. You know, it may have a, um, predisposition towards complexity or something like that that will eventually produce these—I mean, I, I suppose what I’m saying is that there is no problem of abiogenesis, because it seems to me that there’s a continuity, as you mentioned, all the way down. Um, so it’s—it feels that the whole cosmos is involved in this, um, unfolding, right. So, in that sense, given that we’re continuous with the rest of it, then the whole thing’s alive, in my, in my humble opinion. I’m just wondering what your view is on that.”
Matt Segall:
“I agree. I, I think life is a matter of degrees, and there’s, there’s no zero point. Um, you know, but a lot depends on how we define life. And the thing is, we have one example of life on this planet, we have some evidence there may have been life on Mars, and maybe on other planets in our solar system, um, but as many astrobiologists will point out, because we only have one example of life, we don’t really know if the sort of carbon-based substrate that we’re used to is the only way that, um, the type of chemical complexity we associate with biological organisms can, can do the thing. Like, it could be that there are many other chemical pathways to life, and we don’t really know what we mean by life here, again, defined in terms of biological organisms, until we have another example of it. Um—There could be a very different form of life, say, in the clouds of Venus. Um, that—”
Matt Gray:
“there could be life here that, that we just can’t perceive. Donald Hoffman points out quite, um, you know, well that, um, you know, we don’t—well, he thinks he’s shown mathematically that we, we don’t receive any true information about the external world. Um, so, you know, and we literally just refine our behaviors and so on based on what’s beneficial to us in terms of eating and reproducing and so on. So, you know, there could be a whole host of things going on right now that we’re—”
Abiogenesis. Is Everything Alive? Collective Intelligence.
Matt Gray (continuing):
“And, I mean, one of the other, um, things that comes to mind is this idea of the collective intelligence. And, again, something that Levin talks about extensively is that we’re not really a single being in the sense that we’re a—what do you call it—a community of, um, of, what’s the term that you use—?”
Matt Segall:
“A ‘society.’”
Matt Gray:
“That’s it, that’s right. Yeah, and in some sense, you know, the human body is, is made up of these different, sort of, entities. The kidney probably doesn’t know that it’s part of some larger system, in the same way that an ant might not know it’s part of, you know, what its colony’s objectives are. But yet, there is this overarching teleos of these, these organizations. And so, um, I’ve forgotten where I’m going with this, actually. But, um—”
Matt Segall:
“All intelligence is collective intelligence, I say.”
Matt Gray:
“Right, yeah.”
Matt Segall:
“Yeah. Um, which is something that Michael Levin is constantly harping on. And, um, you know, there’s, there’s this approach in cognitive science that’s called ‘extended cognition,’ where, you know, instead of thinking of, um, just individual brains as the locus of cognitive activity, uh, we could study intelligence—it’s better to study intelligence and cognition in a more socially extended way. So that, like, um, you know, you could use a military example, like, like a battleship, uh, which is composed of however many hundreds of, of sailors, is, is itself, um, a cognitive system of some kind that can only perform the tasks of information processing and interpretation that it does as a result of the relationships among all of those human beings and the tools and technologies and instruments that they’re using. And so, like, the intelligence doesn’t belong to any individual.”
Matt Gray:
“Right, sports teams, in a way, in a similar fashion, could you, I think that’s what I was just—just trying to get to, this idea that there could be a sort of meta-intelligence of which we are a part. Because if we’re composed of these individual components, why suppose that we’re—that it stops here, do you see what I mean? What do you think? And is that testable? I mean, I wonder whether that’s actually potentially testable if you could observe collective action that could not be attributed to the, the kind of, the amalgam of all of their individual goals, and it’s, it’s—could be shown that there’s some other force involved, maybe, I don’t know. Total speculation there. But with any thoughts?”
Matt Segall:
“Well, I think Levin is showing how cellular collectives can achieve feats of, um, cognitive prowess that no individual cell could do on its own, and that there is definitely something that emerges, um, at the level of whole tissues and organ systems and the organism as a whole, um, that none of the individual cells seem to know about as, as separate entities, but that is achieved at this meta-level. And why wouldn’t we continue that analogy up the scale, um, and consider the Earth, or Gaia, as this kind of, uh, collective mind that we, as individuals, usually, at least, are not consciously aware of participating in. But, um, the Earth as a whole—this Gaian consciousness—could be conscious of, of us all, not just humans, perhaps, but all living beings in a way that we can only dimly imagine, or perhaps in some special states, altered states of, of consciousness, we can participate in that to some degree, and, you know, merge with the Gaian mind for a time. Um, but I think there’s every reason to, to take these analogies seriously. Why wouldn’t nature work similarly at different scales? Um, I think the burden of proof would be on those who would deny that, um, because it’s, it’s like, it’s very easy for the materialist to say, ‘Oh, well, we know consciousness is produced by the neurons in the brain.’ Do we? I’ve never heard of a mechanism that could explain how neural activity and neurochemistry, again imagined in a mechanistic way, could give rise to this totally other domain called consciousness. Like, I, I’ve never even seen a hypothesis that could account for that type of transition. Right? And so, why do we assume that brains produce consciousness, and that there couldn’t be some higher-level consciousness where each of us is like the neuron in this larger brain, you know? So I think, I think we should take these analogies seriously.”
Matt Gray:
“Yeah. In terms of this larger brain, um, we could—we could put the word ‘God’ in there, could we? I mean, what are your views on God? Is there some sort of cosmic intelligence of which we’re a part, and perhaps it feels us, you know, in the way that we perhaps feel an itch on our foot or something like that, you know, or, or, or it could be phenomenally conscious of everything that we’re doing. Any thoughts on this stuff, and, and how some of Whiteheadian thinking, or your thinking, perhaps, plays into mysticism and, and spirituality?”
God and Cosmic Intelligence, Olaf Stapledon
Matt Segall:
“Yeah, I think it’s natural to move in that direction when you begin to consider a panpsychist metaphysics. Um, you know, William James wrote a book called A Pluralistic Universe, where he’s drawing on a, a German scientist and, and philosopher named Gustav Fechner, and Fechner was a panpsychist who, uh, had a, a sense that we are, as human beings, um, enveloped within, uh, ever-widening circles of consciousness larger than ourselves. And so there’s the Earth consciousness, and then maybe there’s the consciousness associated with the sun and the solar system as a whole, the whole galaxy—”
Matt Gray:
“I mean, that reminds me of Olaf Stapledon. Have you heard of Olaf Stapledon?”
Matt Segall:
“Oh, sure, yeah. Star Maker, is that—”
Matt Gray:
“Yeah, yeah. Star Maker and The First and Last Men—massive fan—but that seemed to be the sort of thing he was talking about, that sort of up—eventually gets to the Godhead and understands what’s going on, you know, trying out—
Matt Segall:
“I think, I think he read Whitehead too, actually.”
Matt Gray:
“Right, that doesn’t surprise me, actually. Um, but, uh, yeah, he’s—what a profound thinker, what a be—what a beautiful book as well. Yeah, sorry, do, do continue. Just reminded me there.”
Matt Segall:
“And so it’s a view of the divine that I think would be, again, less about, um, a God that would be placed outside the universe. Um, and this is less monotheistic, in a way, because there’s more, um, of a sort of—it’s like concentric circles, right? And so there are, um, there’s this term ‘holarchy.’ I’m not sure if you’re familiar with it, that comes out of Arthur Koestler’s work—”
Matt Gray:
“Yeah.”
Matt Segall:
“…the, the idea of a ‘holon’ is like a whole/part. You can’t—it’s not just a particle, it’s not just a whole, because the thing about the way our, our universe is organized is it’s like, um, our bodies are a whole, but they’re made of cells, which themselves have a kind of wholeness. And so it’s like nested wholes all the way up and all the way down. And you could, instead of describing the universe as a hierarchy, you could describe it as a holarchy. But it seems like we’re nested within these layers of consciousness that go all the way up and all the way down, and there’s an increasing intensity and, um, depth of consciousness, you know, as you, as you go up. But it seems like the human might be perched at a particularly, um, um, important middle place within this whole, you know, expanse, because, like, it’s very easy—and probably seems to me correct—to say that, like, a cell in our kidney doesn’t know it’s part of a human body, it’s just doing its kidney thing. But human beings, we’re at least capable of becoming aware of the fact that, wow, I’m made of cells that each seem to have their own experience, and I’m myself a cell in this larger Gaian organism, and the solar system—so we seem aware of the, these layers to some degree, in a way that I don’t know that other organisms are, you know. And so there’s a new, kind of, important role for the human being, even after we get over the anthropocentrism that led to the ecological crisis, um, and the appropriation of all value and purpose for just the human being. We need to get over that. But there might be a new, kind of, important role for the human being when we inhabit a living universe, where, you know, as the Buddhists would say, being human is a very auspicious occasion because we have this cosmic perspective, um, that might not be available to, to other creatures.”
Matt Gray:
“See, we’re talking about us being at sort of, like, a midpoint somewhere between, you know, we got sort of partly divine, perhaps, and sort of part beast, and part angel, you, you could say, right? Is that the kind of thing?”
Matt Segall:
“Yeah, and it’s a very ancient perspective, you know, the, the human being as a microcosm, um, but also the human being being very much in the middle of things. Um, you know, from, like, Dante’s perspective, like, the Earth, uh, is right between heaven and hell, um, but it’s, it’s quite striking the way that modern cosmology and our capacity to measure the very small and the very large—we also seem to be right at the center of things. And you, you might say, ‘Well, how could we not feel like we’re at the center, because we can only see so far in either direction?’ Um, but it seems like there are real limits here, it’s not just the limits of our ability to see, but that, you know, the, the capacity for energy, as we know it, to organize itself, hits a bottom floor. Uh, and similarly, when we look out at the cosmic, um, uh, the edge of the cosmos and the microwave background radiation, it seems like the, the scale, the powers, uh, the logarithmic, um, scales here, have us at the center. And so science, contemporary cosmology, has kind of rediscovered this, this ancient understanding of the human being, um, being a, a fulcrum point, uh, kind of meeting place between, yeah, the angelic and the animal, um, which gives us a unique vantage point that, you know, makes us interesting, um, even to, say, the angels, or, say, even to the higher consciousnesses, that there’s something unique about the human being that they’re very interested in. Um, and you see this coming through in, in, like, um, I don’t know if you’re a Lord of the Rings fan—”
Matt Gray:
“Massive, massive Lord of the Rings fan.”
Matt Segall:
“So, the elves are very interested in human beings because we die—”
Matt Gray:
“Right.”
Matt Segall:
“…right? And they’re kind of envious of this, yeah, because—and I think, again, it speaks to the importance of, of death, that we, we shouldn’t rush to eliminate death when it might be the most important thing about us. Um, and instead of just imagining it as an end and a horrible thing that we would want to avoid at all costs, it could be that, um, death is the very source of, of the most profound meaning that, that we have access to, you know.”
Matt Gray:
“Yeah, it’s funny, I did have, I did have some possible pushback on that. I was just wondering, there may be some advantages with people being, say, longer-lived—not necessarily immortal, but longer-lived to give you more time to, sort of, figure out what’s going on and how to conduct yourself, you know—”
Matt Segall:
“Well—”
Matt Gray:
“—but, but—”
Matt Segall:
“—but if reincarnation is a thing, then we, we will have another chance.”
Matt Gray:
“Indeed, indeed, because nothing’s wasted. I mean, that’s what I like about that vision, that reincarnation model you, you offered up, is that nothing’s wasted, everything is significant, you know, and that, that’s—so, so, so suffering, um, you know, feelings of inadequacy, all this depression, all that has a, has a, a function in this, in this view, I think. Um, what I wanted to ask you—I wanted to just, um, because I’m conscious of time, um, I wanted to just get your views on psychedelics. I mean, there’s a couple of, um, burning questions. I mean, first of all, I think they have profound implications for consciousness, because, you know, some of the studies that Bernardo Kastrup has popularized—he’s shown that there’s certain, sort of, states in DMT where brain activity goes down almost to zero, so you’ve got a, you know, a brain not doing anything, and people having the most profound experience they, they could possibly have. Um, is it a glimpse into the, to the trans—you know, is it a glimpse into a higher consciousness of some sort? There’s people that have repeated, um, sort of experiences on DMT that are consistent across different individuals. They’re doing these, kind of, um, you know, they’re putting people on drips now and having these longer-term—I think it’s, it’s happening in Britain somewhere, I can’t remember the university. Um, what are your thoughts on this stuff, and, and then why does nature produce these chemicals or these compounds that, that give us these insights? I mean, McKenna obviously talked about having conversations with a great other, you know, you, sort of, go into that space and ask them metaphysical questions, and so on. Any thoughts on this before I babble on all night about it?”
Psychedelics and Consciousness – McKenna, Aldous Huxley
Matt Segall:
“Well, I mean, on that, the last point—why should these, um, chemicals, so-called—they’re called secondary metabolites, in, in the sense that, um, mushrooms, say, psilocybin mushrooms, this psilocybe genus, produces these chemicals as a secondary metabolite in the sense that they’re not a primary part of the metabolic process that the mushroom—”
Matt Gray:
“They don’t have to do it.”
Matt Segall:
“no, it’s for us—”
Matt Gray:
“—that’s fascinating, yeah.”
Matt Segall:
“And so it’s a means of communicating, um, that an ecosystem has to communicate between organisms. These secondary metabolites—and they’re all psychoactive in various ways. The, the traditional psychedelic compounds are especially potent, um, to mammals, it seems, but there are other animals that know to find these mushrooms, and they have their experience, uh, or, or, you know, other psychedelic, uh, plants. And so human beings aren’t the only ones that like to alter their consciousness. Um, but, like, why these secondary metabolites exist, it seems to have a lot to do with, or everything to do with, this, um, evolutionary history and the ways that tens of millions of years ago, um, insects were interacting with plants, and our own nervous systems and neurochemistry is intimately related to the neurochemistry of insects. Um, and these molecules evolved over the course of millions of years of interaction between insects and plants, and then eventually more complex animals and plants, um, as a way of, I think, of the ecosystem as a whole—you could say Gaia’s mind—of regulating itself. Um—”
Matt Gray:
“That’s amazing. The fact you can show that these species could manage without this additional functionality, but yet they, they do it anyway, as, say, because it’s perhaps part of some broader requirement for communication within the, the ground, within the Gaia, you know, that’s, that’s amazing.”
Matt Segall:
“Yeah, and there’s, there’s dimethyltryptamine everywhere. It’s in grass. It’s, it’s not in tremendously high concentrations, but you could theoretically—as far as I’m not a chemist—but I’ve heard you can, if you get enough grass and know the chemical process to distill it, there’s enough DMT in there, in grass clippings that you could, you know. So, um, you know, the psychedelic renaissance that’s going on is, I think, exciting. I remember being in college and learning about the 1960s and the first, sort of, psychedelic revolution, in, uh, in, in the West, um, and really thinking, like, gosh, um, it’s too bad that didn’t succeed, and, you know, maybe all we need to do is spike the water with LSD and all the politicians would suddenly realize their mistakes. And, but, yeah, I’m, I’m less, um, I’m less naive about the potential here. It’s not automatic. The thing about these psychedelics, um, they have—”
Matt Gray:
“They can have bad trips. People could have bad trips. It would make them worse.”
Matt Segall:
“Yeah, exactly, you, you know, they can be used to treat PTSD, and they can cause new trauma if, if not done in a, in a safe and enriching, um, environment and context. And so, um, they’re not a silver bullet. They’re—I like—one of my teachers, um, Stanislav Grof, described psychedelics as ‘non-specific amplifiers.’”
Matt Gray:
“Okay.”
Matt Segall:
“Non-specific amplifiers of our existing, you know, the terms that Tim Leary and Richard Alpert used were ‘set and setting.’ So our mindset and our cultural environment, and then the very physical environment that we’re in while we’re tripping, has a huge influence on what we experience. Um—”
Matt Gray:
“Yeah, I mean, McKenna used to go into a dark room, didn’t, didn’t he, do five dried grams—”
Matt Segall:
“Yeah. And he’s like, ‘Don’t even do it with other people. That brings culture into the room, and if you really want to go, you know, deeper than our cultural conditioning, you need to be alone when you do these things,’ and—which, you know, raises questions about the research settings, where it’s very much a mental health framework, um, where these are being explored right now, um—Which is fine. I think there’s lots of application there. But the experience you have in a clinical setting, you, you know, a hospital room, or, you know, a square room, and they try to make it look nice, but you’ve got two therapists hovering over you. You’re in bed, you’ve got ear, earphones on, and they’re, they’ve chosen the soundtrack of usually classical music or whatever. It’s very, um—personally, I would feel quite anxious in that environment.”
Matt Gray:
“Yeah.”
Matt Segall:
“Um, and much more comfortable either by myself or with some friends, like, at the beach or in the woods. Um, but from a clinical point of view, that’s not safe. But—”
Matt Gray:
“And, you know, there’s a—I, I’d say the clinical setting is not safe, not—”
Matt Segall:
“That’s right. Um—”
Matt Gray:
“—that’s right.”
Matt Segall:
“I mean, that’s, that’s a whole interesting conversation. I mean, not to—I think most therapists are, are honest, professional people who uphold ethical boundaries, but, yeah, you know, even without psychedelics involved, many therapists end up having inappropriate relationships with their clients. And when you throw psychedelics into the mix, the transference is much more intense. And so there are risks of, you know, being in that clinical environment that are non-negligible. Um, but just the anxiety produced by being watched by these professional psychologists hovering over you, you know, with their clip pads, taking notes—like, I just, when you’re in a psychedelic state, that’s like, I get alien abduction vibes, you know? It’s the last thing you’d want, isn’t it?”
Matt Gray:
“Yeah.”
Matt Segall:
“Um, but—”
Matt Gray:
“But, but Matt, Matt, do you think these, these entities that people encounter on DMT—I mean, I’ve not done DMT myself, um, but are they encountering agencies, other agents?”
Matt Segall:
“I think, um, I do think that we have to—I, I have had experiences of what I can only refer to as non-physical entities or agencies. Um, and it’s very convincing, and I, I have enough, you know, ability to take a skeptical stance even on my own experience, to say, of course, there are many possible explanations for this, like, the brain might be hardwired to, you know, attribute agency—”
Matt Gray:
“Yeah, seeing faces, for example, and, and—”
Matt Segall:
“—seeing faces, yeah, yeah. Um, but on the other hand, some of the most powerful and transformative experiences of my life have been a result of encountering beings in a psychedelic state that, um, have a message, you know, and have something to convey. And I think, um, this is not—this is not unusual in the history of, uh, our species. Um, you know, now we—this—if you’re embedded in the psychedelic counterculture, you might call them self-transforming machine elves, like McKenna. A lot of people are having what they describe as extraterrestrial encounters with, with aliens, or—but if you go back a few hundred years, people talked about angels and demons, and, um—”
Matt Gray:
“That reminds me of the UFO phenomenon as well, because they—they seem to have the, the things that people report seeing have moved with technology, haven’t they? So a similar kind of pattern there as well, perhaps.”
Matt Segall:
“Exactly. Um, and I think, uh, you know, you asked about space earlier, and, um, I think psychedelics open up this possibility that we can begin to explore inner space in a, in a way that would allow us to appreciate how vast that domain is. It might even—it might even be vaster than what we think of as the external, um, cosmos. And it could be that, um, all of intelligent life in the cosmos is interconnected somewhat, like, interdimensionally, or, as you could say, through this inner space of consciousness. And the best hope we have for contacting alien intelligence is not to imagine we might travel through physical space to other solar systems. I mean, it just takes so damn long, and, um, that might be impractical even with more advanced technology. But maybe, again, it might be a, might be a technology of some sort that Gaia has generated to, to enable this broader—”
Matt Gray:
“Right, communication, yeah.”
Matt Segall:
“—communication. Yeah, very speculative, but I think, um, there’s—we haven’t really—we’ve just only just begun, as, with a modern scientific attitude, exploring these inner domains. And I think we have a lot to learn from indigenous traditions that have been doing this for thousands of years. Um, but I, yeah, I do think these entities are real in some sense, um, and, you know, the fact that brain activity diminishes even while the intensity of what the person is experiencing goes through the roof suggests to us that, um, yeah, the brain, the nervous system, is kind of a filter, and it’s actually not in the business of producing consciousness, but inhibiting consciousness, um, stepping it down to a level that we can manage. And when we take a psychedelic, it just blows the lid off—Aldous Huxley, but he’s really getting it from the French philosopher Henri Bergson—this idea of the brain as a kind of reducing valve, and psychedelics open the valve and allow mind at large to flood in. Um, I think that’s what the evidence would suggest the more appropriate model is for understanding the mind-brain relationship. Mind and consciousness are more like this field that we tune into, that the nervous system is a kind of antenna or receiver, rather than a local producer of consciousness. And it, you, we wouldn’t come to that perspective unless we had been exposed to psychedelics and been able to experiment with these things. So they’re tremendously valuable research tools, and I, I really advocate for thinking beyond just the medical model for their application. I, I am quite adamant that all adults should be able to, uh, legally use the classical psychedelics. They’re way less dangerous than sugar and alcohol and tobacco and, um, and many pharmaceutical drugs. Um—The only reason they are outlawed—there’s cultural and moral reasons, rooted in a kind of panic or religious history that, you know, originally led to these things being made illegal, I think, and the political implications in the ‘60s that, you know, the—it was political revolutionaries who were using these things a lot, though strangely, I think there’s an argument to be made that psychedelics depoliticized the more radical political movements in the ‘60s—”
Matt Gray:
“Could be.”
Matt Segall:
“…because people did turn inward, instead of trying to change institutions. So there’s a critique there, implicit, maybe, in, in at least the, um, historical, um, effects of psychedelics. Uh, I think there are ways that they could be politically revolutionary, but they—at least in the ‘60s—were critiqued a lot for depoliticizing people. Um, but yeah, it’s a very promising area of research, and I think as a philosopher, I find psychedelics to be quite powerful instruments for metaphysical exploration.”
Matt Gray:
“Yeah.”
Matt Segall:
“Yeah.”
Crypto and Bitcoin
Matt Gray:
“This might seem a little bit left field, but, um, do you, do you think cryptocurrency has anything to do with this, sort of, you know, this, this idea, movement towards decentralization of power, and, sort of, more kind of organic system, in terms of organic economies, and so on? Do you think crypto’s got anything to do with that, possibly? Well, particularly Bitcoin, you know, set aside the altcoins, but Bitcoin, you know, this, this idea that it’s, it’s something you can actually own that, that can’t be meddled with by the banks or governments, and so on. So is that part of this journey, this awakening?”
Matt Segall:
“It might be. I think we have to find ways of, um, mining and maintaining the blockchain that isn’t so resource-intensive, but there are, there are avenues for doing that that are, that are promising. But, um, I think as a way of decentralizing economic power, um, taking some of the, uh, power away from centralized banks, um, I think that’s a very promising avenue. Um, it’s such a complicated subject. I think this idea of, like, a trust-free economy, like you don’t need to trust people to follow through with their transactions and stuff because the algorithm will do it, um, you know, I know, you know, Bitcoin doesn’t have smart contracts, but, like, something like Ethereum, where you can just automate something that you would need a team of lawyers to do normally, in terms of what’s, when it aspects—clauses of a contract are activated by this or that change in the market or whatever, that can all be, um, built into the blockchain in a way. And so you don’t need to trust people to do what they say they’re going to do. It’s—as soon as you agree to the contract, that’s what’s going to happen. But, like, I just feel like I’m not opposed to using technologies to make our economy, um, function in a more transparent and distributed way, but at the same time, should we celebrate the idea that we don’t need to trust each other anymore? Like, I feel like that’s a bit, it’s a bit antisocial. Um, and I, I think blockchain technology can play an important role in helping us reimagine money, um, but Bitcoin is weird because it’s not really functioning as a currency. It’s too valuable to function as a currency, um, and so the original, I think, um, point of it has been lost, and it’s become more like an investment. And where this is leading, I’m not sure. But it could be that it’s not Bitcoin that ends up being the platform, um, but the basic idea of blockchain and of, like, a world computer, and, you know, massively distributing, um, the ledger to increase the transparency of economic transactions, I think these are all positive things. Um, it would be great if we could, uh, you know, in the US, when we vote, when we have our elections, um, we’re using paper ballots, and people say, oh, that’s safer, but it’s still so easily manipulated. And if we could just get this on the blockchain, and people could vote on their phones or whatever, it’d be so much—I mean, I think we’d increase voter participation. And I, I feel like there’s so many applications for the blockchain technology. It goes far beyond just Bitcoin or Ethereum or a particular, um—”
Matt Gray:
“Sure.”
Matt Segall:
“—applications. Right? So, yeah, I think it’s a promising development that I’m curious to see unfold.”
Matt Gray:
“That’s really interesting, what you said there. It’s kind of—it’s emerged from the fact that we have problems trusting each other, right? So it’s emerged as a kind of, of response to that. But yes, it does take away that choice of being a good person, doesn’t it? So it takes away the opportunity to do the right thing, in some sense. That’s quite interesting. Um, just conscious of time here, Matt, um, I think you’ve got a few minutes left, so just to say thanks so much for coming to talk to me. Um, you make philosophy cool. Um, you’re one of a bunch of guys that do that. I have you in there with Kastrup and, you know, Philip Goff. You’re making it accessible. You speak calmly, clearly, and intelligently on these topics, and it’s—it’s just a massive pleasure and privilege to have you. So thank you.”
Matt Segall:
“Yeah, no, it’s been fun, Matt. You ask great questions, and, uh, yeah, hope it’s valuable for your, your listeners.”
Matt Gray:
“Thank you very much. It’s been wonderful. Um, hopefully we speak again sometime.”
Matt Segall:
“I’d like that.”
Matt Gray:
“Cheers, Matt. Take care.”
Matt Segall:
“All right, happy New Year.”
Matt Gray:
“And to you.”
End of complete transcript.
Footnotes2Plato 
What do you think?