Author: Matthew David Segall
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In defense of other possibilities…
I always try to ration myself early in the month since I only get 10 free articles, but Charles Blow’s op-ed in the New York Times this morning–“A Trump-Sanders Coalition? Nah”–seemed worth the read. Blow rightly points out why Trump’s campaign manager is sorely mistaken about the prospects of winning over Bernie’s supporters in the general…
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Ginsberg’s “Plutonian Ode”
Plutonian Ode I What new element before us unborn in nature? Is there a new thing under the Sun? At last inquisitive Whitman a modern epic, detonative, Scientific theme First penned unmindful by Doctor Seaborg with poisonous hand, named for Death’s planet through the sea beyond Uranus whose chthonic ore fathers this magma-teared Lord of…
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Vegetal ontology in Jung
“Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on its rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in the rhizome. The part that appears above ground lasts only a single summer. Then it withers away—an ephemeral apparition. When we think of the unending growth and decay of life and civilizations, we cannot…
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Democratic Socialism or Corporate Cronyism
It’s mid-April, and the 74-year-old democratic socialist senator from Vermont Bernie Sanders is not only still in the race for the Democratic nomination, he is in the midst of a spring surge to overtake the most inevitable candidate in modern political history. On Wednesday (April 13th), Bernie held a rally in Washington Square Park in NYC…
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Caroline Schelling on Birth & Death by Stuart Dean
Originally posted on Feminism and Religion: Of the many letters Caroline wrote to her lifelong friend Luise, one of the most intense (the 57th Letter) dates from seven years after the 4th Letter discussed in my last post. By then both were married; only a few months earlier Caroline had given birth to her first…
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A little birdie told me…
“Of course, miracles do happen; but it is unwise to expect them.” -Alfred North Whitehead That bird knows more than you think, Bernie.
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Draft of my dissertation: Cosmotheanthropic Imagination in the Post-Kantian Process Philosophy of Schelling and Whitehead
If anyone wants a PDF of my dissertation, shoot me an email at msegall@ciis.edu and I’ll send you a draft. I’ll wait to post it here until after I’ve uploaded the final draft with technical edits included to the UMI database.
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Video of my defense yesterday…
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2016 Presidential Election and Political Ontology
J. Thomas Howe describes Whitehead’s process ontology as follows: Whitehead’s theory of experience is extremely complex, and its elucidation is the major task of Process and Reality. What is important for our purposes is the essentially social nature of all actual entities. “There is no entity, not even God, which requires nothing but itself in…
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My first course, Spring 2017 at CIIS
I’ll be teaching my first graduate level course next Spring at CIIS. I have a lot of reading and research to do between now and then.Please do add to my list of books or articles if you have resources relevant to the topic. Speaking of which, poet-activist Drew Dellinger gave me a ton of leads in…
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Socialistic Capitalism (a rant)
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Hillary v. Bernie and the Future of American Democracy
I’ve been meaning to write about the primaries for a while now, but administrative duties at CIIS, finishing my dissertation and other writing projects, and online teaching has taken up all my time and energy. Lack of time hasn’t stopped me from rushing off a ton of tweets and FaceBook posts in support of Bernie Sanders’ campaign,…
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dissertation progress…
Below is the table of contents of my substantially revised and extended draft. Also some excerpts that have been important for me. “The Cosmotheandric [sic] vision is the most obvious human experience, so obvious that it becomes an obstacle to see it once we begin to specialize in our knowledge and forget the whole…The vision of…
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1st draft of dissertation submitted
I submitted the first draft of my dissertation to my committee a couple of weeks ago. I’m aiming to defend in March. Here’s a sneak peak of the table of contents. I still need to fill out the introduction and conclusions. Originally, I had no intention of writing so much about Kant, but he proved…
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Archai: The Journal of Archetypal Cosmology
Originally posted on Becca Tarnas: We in the Northern Hemisphere find ourselves in the heart of the darkest time of year, the Solstice—from the Latin solstitium, when the Sun stands still. Tonight we enter the longest night, when the stars are visible across the sky for the greatest number of hours each year. At this…
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Philosophy of Mythology and Revelation (h/t Schelling)
I meant to post this back in August when Levi Bryant finally started blogging again, but it somehow got stuck in my drafts (a veritable grave yard of unfinished thoughts and undead ideas). The philosophical spirit Bryant expresses in his writing is rather unique in its capacity to inspire me to resist. I am very grateful to him for this.…
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John Horgan’s article in “Scientific American” on Panpsychism
John Horgan published an essay in Scientific American a few days ago criticizing Tononi’s integrated information theory of consciousness. I don’t understand Integrated Information Theory well enough to defend it, but I applaud the effort to make progress toward a scientifically operationalizable definition of consciousness. But it seems to me that part of the problem…
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Certificate in Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapies & Research at CIIS
California Institute of Integral Studies is launching a new certificate program in Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapies and Research. Certificate in Psychedelic Therapies and Research – Information and Application. The Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies and Research Certificate serves a growing need for the training of skilled therapist researchers who will ideally seek advanced training for future FDA approved psychedelic-assisted and…
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Essay republished in “Center for Ecozoic Studies Musings”
I forgot to link to this back in July, but Herman Greene, editor of the CES Musings newsletter, republished my essay Physics of the World-Soul: The Relevance of Alfred North Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism to Contemporary Scientific Cosmology (2013) in their December 2014 issue. You can find the PDF of the issue by clicking here. Or…
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Defeating Daesh
It is clear that American foreign policy and Western colonialism more generally have played a huge role in fanning the flames of “Islamic” terrorism. I’m heartened by the many peaceful Muslims who are speaking up to say that terrorists are most definitely NOT Muslims, including this brave fellow: Be that as it may, these suicide…
Footnotes2Plato 