“The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”
–Alfred North Whitehead
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The Nature of Consciousness and What To Do About It (Dialogue with Jack Bagby)
In this dialogue, Jack and I explore the nature of consciousness. I suggested at the get go that conscious thought is a process of “becoming other,” an ongoing participatory transformation with reality rather than a separate substance or quality somehow realized inside the head. I opened with a couple of lighthearted but probing questions to Read more
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Good Science, Bad Philosophy: Predictive Processing as Reheated Kantianism
Below I am sharing some open-ended reflections on the turf war between enactivist cognitive science, predictive processing approaches, and Whiteheadian cosmology. … Predictive Processing (PP) approaches (including Active Inference, the Free Energy Principle, etc.) are fantastic models that will surely continue to find important applications not only in cognitive neuroscience and developmental psychology, but in Read more
Alfred North Whitehead, Andy Clark, autopoiesis, Darwin, Descartes, Evan Thompson, Extended Mind, Francisco Varela, Hume, imagination, Kant, Modern Philosophy, reason, Romantic Philosophy
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Discussing Whitehead with Jeffrey Mishlove on “New Thinking Allowed”
It was a real pleasure to join host Jeffrey Mishlove on his show, New Thinking Allowed. He invited me on to discuss (surprise, surprise) the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century. We explored Whitehead’s historical context, his engagement with contemporaries like Bertrand Russell, F.H. Bradley, and Ludwig Read more
Alfred North Whitehead, Coleridge, Goethe, Hegel, imagination, Kant, Modern Philosophy, reason, Religion, Romantic Philosophy, Rudolf Steiner, Schelling, William James, Wittgenstein
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Christianity Beyond Itself (Dialogue with Jacob Kishere)
Transcript by ChatGPT: Host (Jacob Kishere): All right, welcome to Sense Space. Really, really happy to be joined today by Matthew Segall. Matthew has been connecting with a number of my friends and sister projects in the Lial web, like Cadell Last’s Philosophy Portal, Tim Adalin’s Voicecraft, John Vervaeke, and Brandon Graham Dempsey. He’s really shown up for Read more
Alfred North Whitehead, Carl Jung, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, politics, reason, Religion, Rudolf Steiner
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Whitehead’s Philosophy of Science
According to Susanne Langer, who was one of Whitehead’s students at Radcliff in the 1920s, every great philosophical scheme “must, in its original form, be regarded as a myth[1], which sets forth freshly and naively some new point of view [and] reveals new opportunities for rational construction” (The Practice of Philosophy, p. 178). Whitehead understood Read more
Albert Einstein, Alfred North Whitehead, Ernst Cassirer, Evan Thompson, Henri Bergson, imagination, Modern Philosophy, Plato
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Reflections on the Whitehead Centennial at Emerson Hall
My trip to Harvard gave me occasion to reflect not only on Whitehead’s legacy, but on his resonances with Emerson and their shared vision of philosophical education. It was raining Thursday afternoon when I arrived in Cambridge. My room at The Friendly Inn was a few blocks from Harvard Yard, and with the rain slowed Read more
Alfred North Whitehead, Catherine Keller, imagination, Modern Philosophy, Philip Clayton, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Ralph Waldo Emerson, reason, Religion, Romantic Philosophy, William James, Wittgenstein
“In one sense philosophy does nothing. It merely satisfies the entirely impractical craving to probe and adjust ideas which have been found adequate each in its special sphere of use. In the same way the ocean tides do nothing. Twice daily they beat upon the cliffs of continents and then retire. But have patience and look deeper; and you find that in the end whole continents of thought have been submerged by philosophic tides, and have been rebuilt in the depths awaiting emergence. The fate of humanity depends upon the ultimate continental faith by which it shapes its action, and this faith is in the end shaped by philosophy.”
—Alfred North Whitehead
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