Author: Matthew David Segall
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One of the important ideas that Tim and I discussed last night was his threefold differentiation of the inquired (natural science), the speculative (metaphysics), and the prosaic (everyday experience). I agree with him that God should be excluded from the inquired, lest we end up with some kind of unhelpful intelligent design hypothesis. But I…
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To See a World in a Grain of Sand: Whitehead’s Participatory Realism
Craig C. Shelton has written an interesting critique of correspondence theory (The Illusion of Correspondence Theory) that converges somewhat with what I’ve also been calling participatory realism. We share a desire to overcome representationalist accounts of perception and knowledge, but my process-relational approach to participatory realism avoids the transcendental consciousness that Shelton reaches for to…
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Field Notes from a Mass Hallucination: A Process Philosopher Goes Phishing for the World-Soul
I went to my first Phish concert on Saturday night at Dick’s in Denver. I came in peace, was torn to pieces and made whole again once or twice, and by the end concresced into someone new. I also did some anthroposophical research. I should explain. I don’t mean any ordinary sort of research, the…
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A History of Life from Plato and Descartes to Darwin and Lovelock (My Frontiers of Knowledge talk in Aspen, CO)
I was back in Aspen, CO this past weekend for the second annual Frontiers of Knowledge event at Wheeler Opera House. I presented alongside David Peña-Guzman (who you’ll hear in the last few minutes asking me a question about artificial intelligence). All the talks should be available in the coming weeks on the Frontiers of Knowledge…
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This seminar was hosted by Joe Lightfoot here in Chiang Mai. In the talk, I reprised some ideas I shared in a post a few years ago: Plato and Platonism: Dividing the Line and Completing the Circle Plato and Platonism: Dividing the Line and Completing the Circle I approach Plato not just to offer a scholarly treatment…
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Between the Cross and the Bodhi Tree
The audio is available above, but it is poor quality. Thanks to Joe Lightfoot for hosting us! It was a real joy to meet Michel Bauwens in person for the first time at this event. Slightly edited transcript: All right—hello, everyone. I’m going to share something that’s very personal, but also transpersonal. I’ll be talking about the tension between…
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Between Matter and the One: Exploring Plotinus’ Large Logos Model
Max Wade: My dissertation was on Plotinus’ ontology of artifacts, basically looking at Plotinus as a philosopher of technology. It was a fun project. It opens up a lot of interesting questions, and we’ll have a chance to talk about some of that, or just other things in general. Plotinus is my specialty. I’m primarily…
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Why Natural Science Would Be Better Off Without Physicalist Metaphysics
I enjoyed my chat with James Faulk the other day. Here’s the video: I had a mustache for like 5 minutes a few years ago. I have had to accept that online the stache may be restacked forever. Anyway. Here’s a recap of what was basically a long argument about why natural science is not…
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What is the grass?: Response to Arthur Haswell’s Pan-Pathism
When I turn away from world-weariness, the child in me finds room to wonder, What is the grass? Is it the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven? Is it a scented gift designedly dropped by God? Or, is it the beautiful uncut hair of graves? Walt Whitman was a cosmic optimist, but he was not…
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On Genesis: Toward a New Evolutionary Theology
The Rosy Crux The central issue is not simply whether Hegel is right, or whether we can derive a more empirically grounded metaphysics than absolute idealism from Darwin’s humble hypothesis of descent with variation. I agree with Charles Taylor that Hegel’s treatment of historical evolution is “disastrous.” By my lights what we are in urgent need of…
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Raymond Ruyer, or The Embryogenesis of Philosophy (dialogue with Pedro Brea and Jack Bagby)
Transcript: Dialogue on Raymond Ruyer with Jack and Pedro Matt: Well, I had already been reading some Raymond Ruyer—is that how you pronounce it? Jack: Yeah. Matt: Close enough? Okay. I guess it was you, Jack, who first suggested him a while ago because of my interest in Whitehead. I finally got around to it. Maybe a month…
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A Serpent in the Garden of Clarity: On Whitehead’s Not So Casual Use of “Casual”
In our last Whitehead Research Project editorial board meeting, a very interesting issue came up as the critical edition of Science and the Modern World moves toward publication. It turns out that the position of a single “s” opens a huge can of metaphysical worms. In Science and the Modern World, there is a passage…
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Intelligent Design Meets Process Philosophy: My dialogue with Stephen Meyer
It was rather serendipitous that a media agent representing Stephen Meyer reached out to me several weeks ago, since the Discovery Institute’s work popularizing intelligent design had just been brought up in a comment exchange I was having. The agent shared a link to the new film, The Story of Everything, which is based on Meyer’s book Return of…
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Mind-at-Large: In Dialogue with Iain McGilchrist, Ed Kelly, and Curt Jaimungal
An LLM summary based on the transcript of my panel discussion with Ed Kelly and Iain McGilchrist, moderated by Curt Jaimungal, at last week’s Mind-at-Large conference. Videos of the event will be posted soon! Curt Jaimungal opened by cutting past preliminaries and asking the most basic metaphysical question possible: “What do you all think exists?…
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Human Consciousness in a Cybernetic Age: Or Why Logos is not a Loom
The following is a transcript of my talk last week at our Mind-at-Large Project’s inaugural conference, “A New Dawn.” Video of all the talks, including this one, will be available in a few weeks on the Mind-at-Large website. Buenos días, everyone. I’m here at the Casa Oasis Guest House in Mérida, on the ancestral lands of the…
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My Responses at Mind-at-Large Project’s “A New Dawn” Panel: Personhood, Participation, Imagination, and Mystical Theism
A recap of my remarks on Day 2’s Mind-at-Large Conference Plenary Panel (also featuring Ed Kelly and Iain McGilchrist, moderated by Curt Jaimungal). I repeat the questions when relevant so you will know what Curt asked. 1. Well, I am tempted to take this in a direction that might sound a little idealistic, but when you ask…
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Peeling Back the Veils
LLM transcript of my chat with Seekers Mindtalks. Chapter 1: Exploring Reality and Consciousness [00:00] Raj: What if the way you experience reality isn’t reality itself? What if this constant feeling of disconnect, the low-level anxiety, the sense that something’s missing isn’t modern life, but just a misunderstanding of who you are? In this episode of…
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In Defense of Eternal Objects and God: On What Abides in Whitehead’s Process Philosophy
Was there ever a time before metaphysics? Will there be a time after it? Pre and post, a priori and a posteriori, the here and now and the infinite Beyond: always and everywhere the opposites are meeting and making one another! We can strive to grow out of puerile metaphysics, but the claim to have transcended metaphysics entirely is not…
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Transcending the Culture War by Recovering Participatory Theism (Dialogue with Nathan Hawkins)
Nathan Hawkins and I just finished a podcast recording (above) that I hope will contribute to amplifying the deeper notes that are still just barely audible beneath the surface noise of the culture war. We both agree that dialogue must replace partisan shouting, and that philosophy has an important public role to play in helping to…
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How does it feel to be on your own?: Society and the Modern World – A Whiteheadian Reading of Hartmut Rosa and Charles Taylor
We finished our Hartmut Rosa reading group this morning (recordings are available here). I am grateful for Tripp Fuller’s invitation to study this text. It was my first time reading Rosa, and I found his sociological intervention convergent with many of my own ways of thinking. As I’ll relate below, Tripp and I had no trouble finding…
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Sacred Swimmer
I came to this cityat the edge of the continentas so many dreamers before mefollowing the westward winds of timelike the gold-glinting eyesof greedy men who mistook the ocean’s endless horizonfor a promise made only to them.I was destined by a different orenot yet hardened but still molten to the core,something older than the veinstorn open…
