Author: Matthew David Segall
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Science and the Soul of the World: Participatory Knowing in Goethe and Whitehead
a talk delivered for the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program at CIIS.edu on Friday, January 29th, 2021.
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Planetarity: On Human Futures
Had the pleasure of dialoguing with my good friends Adam Robbert and Jesse Estrin once again (prior session from May 2018). Inspired in part by this Palladium interview with Benjamin Bratton.
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Stream on Capitol Insurrection
Just finished this live stream with Jeremy Johnson and Ryan Nakade. We discussed what to call the events earlier this week (“sedition,” “domestic terrorism”?), and the ways that eco-social reality has now merged with the electronic media environment.
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“How does matter give rise to consciousness?” (response to Sam Harris)
Harris seems to presuppose the old Cartesian framework, with consciousness being that which is indubitable and which can in no way be reduced to matter. I wonder, though, what concept of matter Harris is working with here? That “matter” is a concept should go without saying, since on his Cartesian view of consciousness, we are…
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A review of Michael Hogue’s “American Immanence: Democracy for an Uncertain World” (2018)
MICHAEL S. HOGUE, American Immanence: Democracy for An Uncertain World. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018: 238 pages. [Reviewed by: MATTHEW D. SEGALL, Philosophy and Religion Department, California Institute of Integral Studies, 1453 Mission Street, San Francisco, California, 94103, USA. <msegall@ciis.edu>.] Michael Hogue has written a timely theopolitical intervention drawing from (and contributing to) the American…
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Voices of VR podcast: A Primer on Whitehead’s Process Philosophy
Kent Bye interviewed me about Whitehead a few weeks ago for his podcast Voices of VR. Here’s the recording on Kent’s website. Enjoy!
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Who are we? (thinking w/ Berry and Swimme)
‘Who are we’? Always a good question to ask. Ecologically speaking, this might be the most important question humanity can ask: ‘How wide does the we reach?’ Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme point to the stars, but their point is not that scientific abstractions explain human life down here on earth. Their point, as I understand it,…
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Thinking with Carlo Rovelli: The Physics of Consciousness
Last summer, I traveled to the Gran Sasso Institute in L’Aquila, Italy to participate in a conference bringing physicists and philosophers together to rehash the famous debate in 1922 between Einstein and Bergson. My paper (which should be published soon) brought quantum physicist Carlo Rovelli and Whitehead into the mix. Yesterday I came across this…
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Science and the Soul of the World: Participatory Knowing in Goethe and Whitehead
I’m teaching for Schumacher College again, this time online. This course focuses on two towering exemplars of the organic approach to science, the German poet and naturalist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) and the British mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947). The course will run via live video conference on Saturday mornings (PST) for…
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Dialoguing with Philip Goff about Consciousness, Panpsychism, and Process Philosophy
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Concrescence and the Implicate Order: Whitehead and Bohm in Dialogue
“In our experience there is always the dim background from which we derive and to which we return. We are not enjoying a limited dolls’ house of clear and distinct things, secluded from all ambiguity. In the darkness beyond there ever looms the vague mass which is the universe begetting us.” Alfred North Whitehead (Science…
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Election Coverage: Live-streaming on Growing Down
www.twitch.tv/videos/791279870 Unsurprisingly we steamed for 4 hours and still know nothing about the election results.
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Consciousness between Science and Philosophy (response to Philip Goff on panpsychism)
If you prefer to listen to me read this blog post: tl;dr Panpsychism = All is psyche, which is to say human consciousness and visible Nature take place within the World-Soul. Most moderns have accepted as a matter of course that the best people to speak on behalf of Nature are the scientists. Scientists are…
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Apology for a Democratic Ontology (response to Keith Woods)
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Rune Soup Podcast with Gordon White: Talking Whitehead, Plato, & Panpsychism
Had a great time with Gordon on Rune Soup a few days ago:
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Thinking Cosmologically with Whitehead
Below is a presentation on Whitehead’s contributions to the natural sciences for the Cobb Institute several weeks ago. My talk is followed by some remarks by plasma physicist Timothy Eastman (editor of https://www.sunypress.edu/p-3844-physics-and-whitehead.aspx):
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Towards a Marian Consciousness (Ep. 1 of the Great American Road Trip Diaries)
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Alchemical Consciousness After Descartes: Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism as Psychedelic Realism
The following is an essay originally submitted for publication in a book on philosophy and psychedelics. After some feedback from the editors, I realized it is too long and includes too many (I hope interesting!) digressions. I’ll be thoroughly revising my submission for the book, so I figured I’d share this earlier version here. Feedback…
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American Immanental Philosophies and the Future of Theopolitics: Dialoging with Michael Hogue
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The brain is not a computer, and thinking is not information-processing.
Sharing an email response to a question I received about the possibility of explaining human consciousness computationally, and whether such explanations might be compatible with Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual science. I do not think the computational paradigm has much to teach us about the sort of Sophianic consciousness Steiner attempted to unveil. I summarized my thoughts…
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“The Great American Trip,” dialogue on “Growing Down”
I’m winding down a cross-country road trip and had the pleasure of talking about it in the context of America’s larger political predicament with Jeremy and Ryan on their “Growing Down” podcast.
Footnotes2Plato 