Footnotes2Plato

“The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”
–Alfred North Whitehead

Author: Matthew David Segall

  • Matter, Life, and Mind: Love as a Cosmological Power

    This was recorded on Saturday, September 13, 2025 as part of the Frontiers of Knowledge event at Wheeler Opera House in Aspen, CO. Below is the recording and a lightly edited transcript.  Good morning, everyone. I want to begin by thanking you all for allowing your curiosity to draw you here. We are engaged in a…

  • Birthing a New Cosmology (reflections on my dialogue with Alexander Beiner)

    I enjoyed dialoguing with my friend Alexander Beiner this morning. The recording will be published on Kainos soon. He asked whether I had a sense for whether the atheistic, secular orientation in academia is thawing, opening room for alternatives to physicalism. I do sense that! Panpsychism and idealism are the two broad categories that capture much of…

  • Value at the Root: Cultivating Virtue in a Post-Truth World

    Context  The following reflections grow out of my live dialogue with Bonnitta Roy about the metaphysics of value. She’ll be sharing the discussion in her pop-up school for those who subscribe. Here I wanted to offer some further reflections on what was stirred up in me. A few orienting points: First, we wanted our philosophical conversation to…

  • Facing the Face Within: Christopoetics in an Unfinished World in Process

    Below is a draft of a chapter for a book on radical and process theologies. My contribution is based on a conversation I had with Peter Rollins earlier this year: Facing the Face Within: Christopoetics in an Unfinished World in Process By Matthew David Segall Ahead of turning to the body of this exposition, a…

  • Notes from the Edge of the Ordinary

    Recapping my time in the twilight zone between physics and psi in Charlottesville, Virginia two weeks ago. I left the DOPS Psi Theory Meeting feeling like I’d been sitting around a camp fire telling ghost stories at the edge of a new continent. In fact, we spent the week together in the Marriott Hotel’s appropriately named Louis…

  • Cosmology, Democracy, and the Spirit of the Earth: Talking Process-Relational Political Theology with Tripp Fuller and Aaron Simmons

    I joined Tripp and Aaron to discuss the changing role of religion in public life in our tumultuous political moment. We were discussing my lecture offering a Whiteheadian process cosmological response to Carl Schmitt’s critique of liberalism. “Between Earth and Empire: Cosmopolitical Democracy Beyond the Liberal Horizon“ When Tripp asked how a process philosopher might…

  • Creativity and the Cross: Martinus, Bergson, and Whitehead in Dialogue

    A conversation with Pedro Brea and Karsten Jensen. LLM generated transcript below. Matt Segall: Hey, Karsten. Pedro Brea: Hey! Karsten Jensen: Hi, Matt! Hi, Pedro! I’m so happy you both agreed to have this conversation with me, and I really look forward to it. Matt Segall: Likewise. My exposure to Martinus was through you, Karsten, and I really appreciated…

  • Sancta Maria Magdalena

    Last Tuesday, on Mary Magdalene’s Feast Day, I walked as a pilgrim with about a dozen others from Lewes train station to St. Peter’s Church in Firle along part of a historic route called the Old Way in the south of England that stretches from Winchester in Hampshire to Canterbury in Kent. I slept in…

  • Romanticizing Evolution: Whitehead’s Organic Realism and the Return of Organic Science

    A transcript of my talk at the Cognizing Life conference in Tübingen, Germany July 18, 2025. Other contributors at the Cognizing Life conference include: Benjamin Bembé (Witten), Bohang Chen (Zhejiang), Luke Fischer (Sydney), Andrea Gambarotto (Wien), Levi Haeck(Ghent), Craig Holdrege (Ghent, NY), Christoph Hueck (Tübingen), Philippe Huneman(Paris), Jan Kerkmann (Freiburg), Dalia Nassar (Sydney), Daniel Nicholson (Fairfax), Gregory Rupik (Toronto), Ulrich Schlösser (Tübingen), Matthew Segall (San Francisco), Joan Steigerwald (Toronto), Georg Toepfer (Berlin), Gertrudis Van de Vijver (Ghent), Denis Walsh (Toronto). See also my responses to a (rather reductive!) geneticist. I draw on some…

  • Ever-Living Fire: Process Philosophy and Plasma Cosmology

    Below is a transcript of my talk at the Process Philosophy, Plasma Cosmology, and Transpersonal Psychology meeting in Exeter, UK, which took place July 24-27, 2025. Other attendees include Robert Temple, Timothy E. Eastman, Barnard Carr, Steve Odin, Andrew M. Davis, Nick Cook, Ashton Arnoldy, John Priestland, Massimo Teodorani (virtual), Jeffery Kripal (virtual), Kelly Chase,…

  • My Biophilosophy Conference Talk: Romanticizing Evolution with Schelling, Peirce, and Whitehead

    Below is my talk at the “Revitalizing Biophilosophy” conference I co-hosted earlier this week. It is based on a long paper I am working on both for this conference and for “Cognizing Life,” another conference that I’ll present at next week in Tübingen, Germany (there is a free livestream option if you’d like to tune…

  • A Biophilosophical Dialogue: Conversations at the Evolutionary Edge of the Life Sciences 

    The conversation above occurred earlier today at the end of a two-day conference I cohosted with Spyridon Koutroufinis focused on the revitalization of biophilosophy. You can learn more about it at the Center for Process Studieswebsite. You can find a YouTube playlist of all the talks at this link.  Two days of phenomenal presentations of ideas that push at…

  • Thinking the Holocaust with Schelling

    Originally written in 2013, I decided to slightly revise and repost the following reflections in light of current events.  Schelling’s Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom (1809) is a text I have returned to time and again over the years. Short, salty, and bittersweet, its alchemical depths continue to nourish my love of wisdom. Schelling’s core…

  • Three Academic Philosophers Sitting In A Tree: S-M-I-L-I-N-G

    Just came across this fun reply to my conversation with Pedro and Jack. Gentlemen, your enriching dialogue was as music to my ears and a Dionysian feast of the senses. By Zeus a lot has been covered in this interview, and… Three Academic Philosophers Sitting In A Tree: S-M-I-L-I-N-G

  • Infinite Intimate: Dialoguing with Marc Gafni and Zak Stein

    Matt Segall: Hi Marc, pleasure to meet you. Marc Gafni: Good to meet you, Matt. Matt Segall: Really, as I said in my email, it’s an honor and it’s humbling to get to talk to you and Zak. I’ve had a chance to spend a little time with Zak. But yeah, great to connect with you. Where are…

  • Whitehead’s Evolutionary Theology: Reflections on Process-Relational Panentheism

    Below is a lightly edited, somewhat abridged transcript derived from a conversation I had earlier today with Jack Roycroft-Sherry. You can watch the conversation here. The Polysemic Nature of God What do we learn about God from Whitehead’s metaphysics? This is a difficult question because the term “God” is polysemic. Whitehead has a concept of God…

  • In Defense of Participatory Platonism: Dialoging with Tim Jackson about Dan McQuillan’s Critique of Data Science as Machinic Neoplatonism

    Tim and I read McQuillan, Dan. Data Science as Machinic Neoplatonism. Philos. Technol. 31, 253–272 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-017-0273-3 Key themes discussed: Transcript: Matt Segall: Hey Tim. Timothy Jackson: Hey, man, how you doing. Matt Segall: Cool sweater—are those sea slugs? Timothy Jackson: Yeah. Nudibranchs. Matt Segall: Nice. Timothy Jackson: Naked gills. Matt Segall: So you are underslept and overread? Timothy Jackson: Oh, yeah, big time. I…

  • Cast of One: Non-Dual Spirituality and the Diversity of Divinity (dialogue with Sami Chhapra)

    Sami Chhapra: Hi, Matt! Matt Segall: Hello, my friend. Sami Chhapra: Hello! Matt Segall: How are you doing this morning? Sami Chhapra: Good, thanks. How are you? Are you feeling better? Matt Segall: Yeah. I slept in. Philo allowed me to sleep in, which is very nice of him. Sami Chhapra: You look nice and rested. Matt Segall: Good. Sami Chhapra: So we’re recording…

  • It from Bit from Chit: Philosophizing at the Threshold of Artificial Intelligence (dialogue with Robert Prentner)

    Summary of my dialogue with Robert Prentner: I apologize for the sound quality, but there is a full transcript below! Robert began by explaining his shift from skepticism to engagement with AI. Early versions of ChatGPT struck him as underwhelming, but newer models like GPT-4 and Claude impressed him with their linguistic and problem-solving fluency.…

  • Alchemy, Technology, and Individuation in Novalis, Simondon, and Jung (dialogue with Tim Jackson)

    Timothy Jackson: I really do think Simondon is becoming a very timely figure, and I think it’s probably underappreciated that his stated goal is to refound—have a novel axiomatic for the humanities, basically, or the human sciences. Like, to really break—I mean, like Whitehead, obviously—but to really break down that boundary between the two cultures. Matt…

  • Imago Machinae: Made in the Image of Our Machines, Rethinking God, Technology, and Consciousness at Edge Esmeralda

    Introduction by Janine: All right, we’ve got two more talks this evening for the next hour. I’m really excited to welcome Matt Segall. He is a transdisciplinary philosopher, associate professor in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness department at the California Institute of Integral Studies. And I first came across some of Matt’s work both online,…