Author: Matthew David Segall
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Pluralism as the Choreography of Coexistence, with William James and Co.
There’s been quite an uproar recently across the philosophy blogosphere regarding the possibility of a pluralist ontology (see Critical Animal’s recap of this cross-blog event). The multitude of angles being offered got me thinking, and eventually sent me back to William James’ A Pluralistic Universe, from which I quote below (lecture 1): The theological machinery…
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Life in the Pluriverse: Towards a Realistic Pluralism
Levi Bryant recently called for a cross-blog discussion concerning what he perceives to be the problematic relationship between ethnographic pluralism and ontological realism. His call was instigated by Jeremy Trombley’s post on the so-called “ontological turn” in contemporary anthropology and ethnography. Trombley articulated what might be described as an ontology of the concept, wherein concepts…
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Towards a “Thermopolitics” (question for Levi Bryant)
Levi Bryant just posted on what he is calling “thermopolitics.” He wants to shift the discourse in philosophy away from its exclusive focus on linguistic analysis and the critique of ideological superstructures toward the energetics of the universe that provide the condition for their possibility. Bryant writes: This is not a metaphor. At this very…
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Science, Religion, and Philosophy: Responding to a conversation b/w L. Krauss, D. Dennett, and M. Pigliucci
Above is my response to the recent conversation between Krauss, Dennett, and Pigliucci. If you don’t know the context of their meeting, see the links below. I agree with Dennett that cosmology is an area of natural science where we are not even close to being done with philosophy. My own small contribution to the…
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Disenchantment, Misenchantment, and Re-Enchantment: A Dialogue with Richard Tarnas
This dialogue took place in October 2013 at Esalen in Big Sur, CA.
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“Nature is a priori” -Schelling
Thanks to milliern for his commentary on and reflections about an exchange Professor Corey Anton, myself, and others have been having on YouTube. I’m reposting my comment to him below: I wanted to offer a few clarifications of my own position. I don’t normally think of myself as a “Heideggerian,” though I suppose most people…
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Soul-Making vs the Blind Brain Theory
Steven Craig Hickman recently posted a fascinating commentary on the fantasy writer R. Scott Bakker’s “Blind Brain Theory.” I’ve offered several of my own commentaries in the past (see HERE). My general sense of unease seems to be shared by Hickman, who ponders towards the end of his post whether Bakker’s BBT might be more…
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Agency in the Universe: Towards a Physics of the World-Soul
My book on Whitehead’s relevance to scientific cosmology.
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Emerson and Whitehead: Towards a Transcendentalist Kosmopolitics
Recorded on Monday, Oct. 28, 2013 at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, CA.
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Leaves of Grass (a poem for Walt Whitman)
Written at Esalen on Oct. 29 for the 5th Annual PCC Poetry Jam, MC’d by Drew Dellinger. Minor edits on 11/14/2017. How, with only twenty-six letters, do poets dare to spell the smell of even a mere tuft of grass? How, with only ten fingers, do poets come to grips with galaxies as large as…
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What is Philosophy?
Post by Matthew David Segall.
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The Difference Between Kant’s and Schelling’s Philosophies of Nature
A lecture I gave earlier this week in a class at CIIS on Spirit and Nature.
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Reflections on Bruno Latour’s “An Inquiry into Modes of Existence,” Ch. 4: Learning to Make Room
I’m participating in a reading group with about 40 other scholars focusing on Bruno Latour‘s recently published book An Inquiry into Modes of Existence: An Anthropology of the Moderns (2013). This week it is my turn to comment on Ch. 4, which is titled “Learning to Make Room.” I’m going to cross-post my comments here,…
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Answering some queries about Whitehead
A college student emailed me with some questions about the technical details of Whitehead’s metaphysical scheme as laid out in Process and Reality. I figured I’d post my response to him here since I haven’t been able to blog much lately and don’t want anyone to think I’ve given it up, and because some of…
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Thinking with Emerson, Or how German Idealism Came to America
The Beacon of Mind: Reason and Intuition in the Ancient and Modern World (forthcoming).
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Audio from International Whitehead Conference in Krakow
Here is the audio of my presentation at the IWC last week in the philosophy of religion section: Here is a PDF of the paper I read, titled “Worldly Religion in Whitehead and Deleuze: Steps Toward an Incarnational Philosophy” Related articles 9th Annual International Whitehead Conference in Kracow, Poland (footnotes2plato.com) Also, thanks to Leon over…
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Ecologies of Space-Time in Organic Ontologies
Adam over at Knowledge-Ecology threw a great post up concerning ethology, ecology, and time. Here is a sneak peek: “The organism is not an entity acting from within space and time; rather, the organism is an active generator of space-time, enfolding both into a complex ecology that flows from organisms and their behavior. The ecosystem,…
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9th International Whitehead Conference in Kracow, Poland
I’m headed halfway around the world today to present a paper at the IWC in Poland. Roland Faber, Catherine Keller, Herman Greene and others will be giving talks. I’ll do my best to record and/or live blog during their remarks. I’ll be presenting a paper in the religion section on the secularization of God in…
Footnotes2Plato 