Author: Matthew David Segall
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Thinking with Whitehead about boundaries, perpetual perishing, and perception
Maybe, as one of my graduate students suggested, mind is more like a liquid that flows through and between things than it is a light projected onto and reflecting off of their surfaces (bracketing for now the fact that light also behaves like a fluid). This is an imaginative way of describing the difference between…
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“Astrology: Science, Art, or Religion?”
Here’s the recording of a lecture that Becca Tarnas and I delivered last night for the Atlanta Astrological Society. Here are some relevant links if you want a more in depth discussion on some of what I mention in this lecture: The Politics of Renaissance Hermeticism, and the Magic of Science The Copernican Odyssey: From…
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My presentation on Whitehead & Deleuze for the Pacific Association for the Continental Tradition conference at Seattle University
Here’s the audio: I’m particularly interested in what folks familiar with Deleuze think about the exchange between me and the woman in the audience during the discussion portion. Am I getting Deleuze’s general approach wrong? Here’s the text of my paper: pact-2019-conference-presentation.pdf
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A Panpsychism Primer
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My Poststructuralist Tent Revival podcast on Whitehead
Part 1: https://soundcloud.com/ptrpodcast/matt-segall-on-whiteheads-philosophy-part-1-49 Part 2: https://soundcloud.com/ptrpodcast/matt-segall-on-whiteheads-philosophy-part-2-50
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Panpsychism: a brief reply to Massimo Pigliucci
The Side View recently published an essay by Massimo Pigliucci titled “The Stoic God is Untenable in Light of Modern Science.” Pigliucci is entering into a critical dialogue with a few other Side View authors, Brittany Polat and Kai Whiting, about how best to inherit from ancient Stoic philosophy. I don’t have a horse in the contemporary interpretations of…
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Lecture and notes on Part I of Whitehead’s “Process & Reality”
This Fall at CIIS.edu, I’m teaching an online advanced seminar on Whitehead’s magnum opus, Process & Reality. Here are my reflections on Part I of Process & Reality, “The Speculative Scheme.” Note that I discuss Richard Rorty’s conference presentation during a symposium on Whitehead at Stanford back in April 2006. Isabelle Stengers and Donna Haraway were…
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EcoCiv podcast on Whitehead, Marx, and Ecological Civilization
Andrew Schwartz and I discussed Marx and Whitehead last week. Have a listen.
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Theology of Nature Templeton research proposal, shelved : (
Several weeks ago, I submitted a proposal for a Templeton Foundation research fellowship called “God and the Book of Nature: Science-engaged Theology of Nature.” I just heard back from the review committee that my proposal was not selected. : ( Oh well. I thought I’d share my cover letter and shelved (for now) research proposal.…
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Burning Man and the Seeds of a New Story
Mission at Tenth special supplement Vol. 7, 274-279 (2018) “Carnival of Consciousness: Practice as Research in Black Rock City” A Submission by Matthew T. Segall, PhD “Burning Man and the Seeds of a New Story” “We are lived by powers we pretend to understand.” –W. H. Auden, Another Time (1940) As religious scholar Lee Gilmore argues…
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Whitehead and Marx: A Cosmopolitical Approach to Ecological Civilization
Below is a recording of my talk (a video first, then audio only that includes the discussion afterwards). I’ve also included an extended draft of some notes I took to prepare my talk. Finally, I’ve included my notes taken while listening to Jason Moore during yesterday’s opening lecture. Fifth annual conference of the World-Ecology Research…
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A Process Theological Invitation
Below, I’m sharing my response to a student in my course this semester. I cannot thank you enough for sharing your childhood experiences of religion with us. Know that you are certainly not alone in having been so mistreated and shamed by repressive patriarchal dogmatism. I am so glad you were able to find your…
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Physics and Freedom
“Scientists, animated by the purpose of proving they are purposeless, constitute an interesting subject for study.” -Alfred North Whitehead, The Function of Reason I’m a frequent reader of the theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder‘s blog Backreaction. She has helped me better understand many difficult concepts in contemporary theoretical physics. I’ve benefited in particular from the times she has weighed in on…
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The Brain Initiative is right on schedule
Right on schedule: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/neurophilosophy/201904/five-years-how-fares-the-brain-initiative For more context, read my Speculations on Obama’s Brain Initiative from five years ago.
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Peterson & Zizek: my response to the event
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Whitehead’s Final Interpretation of Reality: God and the World
Whitehead tells us at the start of the final part of Process & Reality (“Final Interpretation”) that the chief danger in philosophy is narrowness in the selection of evidence. For many modern, scientifically inclined philosophers, this narrowness has taken the form of an all too easy rejection of the world’s religious traditions and the religious experience which gave rise…
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The Side View podcast
Adam Robbert interviewed me over on The Side View Podcast. Check it out HERE. We discussed speculative philosophy, panpsychism, politics, and more.
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From pedagogy to cosmology with A. N. Whitehead
A student in my course this semester asked a great question recently: “How is Whitehead’s cosmology related to his pedagogy?” Many commentators find it strange that Whitehead decided to include (and indeed to conclude) his book Aims of Education with a few chapters on relativistic space and time. What on earth does his alternative interpretation…
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Economics as though life on Earth depended on it
Some related essays on integral economics, a Christian ecological worldview, and slavery and capitalism.
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On the Matter of Life: Towards an Integral Economics
I’m posting a revised version of a long essay I wrote a decade ago. It draws on thinkers including Sri Aurobindo, Jean Gebser, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, William Irwin Thompson, Francisco Varela, Alfred North Whitehead, and Alf Hornborg in search of a more integral approach to economics. I had not yet encountered the social ecology…
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Notes on Deleuze’s “Bergsonism”
Intuition as Method Stating and creating problems Realizing that we are the creators of our own problems gives us “semi-divine power”; those who accept ready-made problems of society are slaves (15) Deleuze: “the history of humanity, from the theoretical as much as from the practical point of view, is the construction of problems. It is…
Footnotes2Plato 