Author: Matthew David Segall
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The Difficulty of Christianity (a response to ProfessorAnton)
Professor Anton will probably respond to my response, as is his kind habit. I’ll post it here when he does. (Be sure to visit the YouTube link so you can read the comment threads beneath my video. The dialogue is getting rather interesting…)
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More on Myth, Panentheism, and Participation…
Levi Bryant has posted a few more reflections on myth. I’ve pasted some of our discussion over on Larval Subjects below. Bryant also recently posted on what he calls “a-theism,” and I’m more inclined to follow him at least part way in what he suggests. I have a few caveats, however. I do interpret the…
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Andrew Pickering on Cybernetics
Philosopher Andrew Pickering on Cybernetics.
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Thinking in media res.
My Muse’s ideas remain mute to the world until given voice by the poet who courts her. For this I use my mouth, my tongue, my teeth, and my lungs. As I inhale and prepare to name the world, it dawns on me that I have lost the ability to tell the difference between my…
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William Irwin Thompson on the transformation of our economy
COLUMN – THINKING OTHERWISE – The Digital Economy of W. Brian Arthur | Wild River Review. It would now appear that industrial and service economy “jobs” are disappearing at the same time that national currencies are in crisis and public universities and community colleges are being stripped of funds, so that they cannot take up…
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American Academy of Religion in San Francisco: My schedule
The AAR is here in San Francisco this year. It has been difficult to weed out my schedule this weekend, since there are very few weeds! There are at least 5 events I’d like to attend in every time slot. But here is what I’ve been able to single out: Friday at 4pm Theme: Homo…
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Comic Reality
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Reich speaks at #Occupy Cal
Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich speaks at Occupy Cal in Berkeley yesterday (Nov. 15th): One thing that really sunk in: if the Supreme Court ruled that money is speech and corporations are people, then our government must also protect the rights of ordinary Americans to speak, and indeed, to speak in non-traditional ways (i.e., with…
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Thinking with Latour and Bellah: Religion beyond Nature and Culture
I’m giving a brief presentation in a course on Christianity and Ecology with Prof. Jacob Sherman on Thursday. In what follows, I’ll try to sketch out what I’d like to say. I plan to briefly summarize the cosmotheandric potential of Robert N. Bellah’s recent tome, Religion and Human Evolution (2011). Bellah develops an account of the…
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Conversations about consciousness…
…with John Searle last night. Related articles Consciousness: Problem, Paradox, or Practice? (footnotes2plato.com) The Mystery of Consciousness (samharris.org)
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research papers for graduate courses on Ernst Cassirer and Jean Gebser, and Christianity and Ecology
I’m enrolled in two courses this semester here at CIIS. The first is taught by Prof. Eric Weiss; the second by Prof. Jacob Sherman. We’re well into the second week of November already, so its time to start fleshing out my term papers. Weiss’ course is on the evolutionary schemes of the 20th century cultural…
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What is Enlightenment? – a response to Levi Bryant
Bryant posted recently about how he would define the notion of “Enlightenment.” I agree with part of what he has to say, in that clearly Enlightenment does concern the bursting forth of critique. Where we seem to disagree is on the extent to which critique can ever lift itself entirely above the mythopoietic structure of the…
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Further evidence that Whitehead was already object-oriented…
From his 1927 lectures published as Symbolism: Its Meaning and Effect. While speaking about the way ordinary language can mislead us about the nature of reality, Whitehead begins reflecting on the common term “wall.” “This so-called ‘wall,’ disclosed in the pure modes of presentational immediacy, contributes itself to our experience only under the guise of…
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Knowledge-Ecology on Alphonso Lingis: Cosmopolitical Selfhood and Ecology
Adam has posted a brilliant reflection on A. Lingis’ words about words. A few highlights: “…words act as objects in the world and the manner by which they act is ecological. Words transform not just the environments which they disclose, but also feedback upon the one who uses them, transforming the subjectivity of the speaker in an…
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Work and Play in Human Evolution
At the center of Robert Bellah‘s 700 page account of the axial turn in the evolution of religion (Religion in Human Evolution, 2011) is a theory of play. The relaxed field generated by playfulness, according to Bellah’s richly empirical story, is the source of all human ritual and religion, and indeed of culture more generally. Play is…
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Commentary on the Occupy Movement
Adam (Knowledge-Ecology.com) and I discuss the Occupy Movement…
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Images from General Strike in Oakland 11/2
Some film clips I recorded on Wednesday:
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Anarchy of the Heart
I am still struggling to understand what motivates the black bloc vandalism of the anarchists. I gather that they believe the big banks of the world have lost the ability to communicate with anything but monetary ammunition. It’s true, the bank’s way of transacting with the world is inherently violent, since their modus operandi is…
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Occupy Oakland General Strike 11/2: Peaceful protest shuts down Port of Oakland while anarchists throw temper tantrum
A few classmates from CIIS and I attended Occupy Oakland’s General Strike on Wednesday. I meant to report on my experience earlier (in today’s fast-paced world, news gets old within 2 days), but I was unable to gather my thoughts after the day’s (and evening’s) events unfolded. As an intellectual and an introvert, I am…
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Zizek on Al Jazeera – “Now the Field is Open”
Al Jazeera brings us Zizek on the crisis of capitalism. “The world is asking for a real alternative.”
Footnotes2Plato 