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

  • 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.…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • PCC Forum – Jamie Socci, MA – “Ceci n’ est pas Michel Foucault”

    If you’re in the Bay Area, join us at CIIS on December 11th @ 6:30pm on the 5th floor/room 565 for this talk by the brilliant and always entertaining Jamie Socci. She’s been deeply immersing herself in Foucault’s work for several years now and I for one am excited to hear about the fruits of…

  • Latour building on Whitehead’s critique of substance

    In Latour’s words, Whitehead replaced the concept of substance with that of subsistence. I appreciate Latour’s insistence on the need for the creation of institutions that encourage and sustain themselves through transformation. Question is, what would such institutions look like?

  • Critique of Pure Feeling: Whitehead on Kant’s Transcendental Aesthetic

  • Cosmic Pessimism: Response to a post by S.C. Hickman

    The Visions of Eternity, by reason of narrowed perceptions, Are become weak Visions of Time & Space, fix’d into furrows of death. -William Blake Read the engaging and wide-ranging post here: The Cosmology of Nick Land: Bataille, Gnosticism, and Contemporary Physics I have noticed my own tendency to waver between a less extreme version of the cosmic pessimism Hickman describes…

  • Schelling’s Descendental Philosophy (and its Whiteheadian resonances)

    Much of the rather fragmentary thoughts to follow were spurred by my reading of Jason Wirth’s wondrous little essay in the HUGE Palgrave Companion to German Idealism (2014), “Nature of Imagination: At the Heart of Schelling’s Thinking.” Based on the subtitle of his newly published book Schelling’s Practice of the Wild: Time, Art, and Imagination…

  • Essay in “Being Human”: “The Influence of R. Steiner on my Philosophical Development”

    A biographical piece published in the last issue of Being Human. Special thanks to my friend Max DeArmon for making this possible. See also this essay Thinking With Steiner Beyond the Brain: Reflections on my Bildung and the Philosophy of Freedom.

  • The Interrupted Irruption of Time: Towards an Integral Cosmology, with Help From Bergson and Whitehead

    Above is my talk for the Jean Gebser Society conference held at the California Institute of Integral Studies the weekend of October 16th. Title: The Interrupted Irruption of Time: Towards an Integral Cosmology, with Help from Bergson and Whitehead Abstract: Gebser suggests that the world-constituting reality of time first irrupted into Western consciousness with the publication…

  • Changing of the Gods

    Originally posted on Becca Tarnas: There are moments in life when you feel deeply grateful for the family you were born into. I’m blessed to have had many such moments, but I’m feeling it with particular poignancy of late. Throughout most of my childhood and teens my father was busy writing the book Cosmos and…

  • Sunday Speculations

    Some thoughts while riding on the subway into the city to dialogue with Rupert Sheldrake: Anyone who is versed in Hegelian philosophy or who has a deeper than normal appreciation for Plato’s chosen dialogical medium of philosophizing–really anyone who understands the dialectical basis of reason and rational discourse–will agree that materialism and idealism as polemical…

  • 11th International Whitehead Conference (2017 in the Azores)

    The 11th International Whitehead Conference will be hosted by the University of the Azores on Sao Miguel Island. The conference website is now up. The title of the 2017 conference is Nature in Process: Novel Approaches to Science and Metaphysics. The section headings and descriptions should be available in a few months. I’m told there…

  • The Universe Story, and/or A Pluriverse Story?

    Sideris’ article in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion Lisa Sideris and Mary Evelyn Tucker speak at a conference about The Journey of the Universe Brian Swimme: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Swimme Lisa Sideris: http://indiana.edu/~relstud/people/profiles/sideris_lisa

  • response to R. Scott Bakker on transcendental phenomenology and BBT

    Anyone who posits some form of efficacy or constraint outside the natural order on the basis of some kind of interpretation of ‘experience’ has the same argumentative burden to discharge: How do you know? What justifies such an extraordinary (supernatural) posit?…What makes the question so pressing now is that their instrument, reflection, has finally found…

  • Evan Thompson on the “Stream” of Consciousness

    R. Scott Bakker and Evan Thompson recently debated the merits of neurophenomenology here: http://philosophyofbrains.com/2015/07/29/is-consciousness-a-stream.aspx. Check out Adam/Knowledge-Ecology’s post, where another comment exchange is taking shape…

  • Far Side of the Moon

    From nasa.gov.

  • New Horizons’ Flyby Photo Shooting of Pluto

    The image of Pluto eclipsing the Sun is the most striking to me. That the human eye could see the effects of its parent star from such a perspective… New Horizons, indeed. The first photo of Pluto:

  • Dogen, Spinoza, and Whitehead by Seth Segall

    Check out this interesting post by my cousin, Seth Segall, over at the Existential Buddhist. The topics Seth discusses include whether consciousness is emergent from or intrinsic to the physical world, the place of values (human or otherwise) in the universe, and the variety of God concepts available to those willing to philosophize about such matters. Seth…