Author: Matthew David Segall
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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.”
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Notes on the Occupation from the Mountaintop
I walked to the top of Grand View Park here in the Sunset district of San Francisco. I wanted to clear my head by ascending to the mountaintop, where place expands into space and time transforms into history. History, as we know it, has a beginning and an end. Civilizations, and the cosmopolitical habitats they…
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The Mysticism and Cosmology of the American Genius Howard Thurman, a lecture at CIIS
Last night I had the privilage of attending a lecture by Brian Swimme and Bonnie and Kashka Wills on the thought of Howard Thurman. Brian is a mathematical cosmologist who teaches at CIIS here in San Francisco. Bonnie is a Restorative Justice Facilitator in Oakland. Her brother Kashka is a former literature professor turned poet.…
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#OccupySF 10/26 – rumors of attempted SFPD raid… did the people prevent it?
I went down to the #Occupy camp here in San Francisco earlier tonight after reading rumors on Twitter about a possible police raid. I arrived at about 11:30pm, after walking several extra city blocks to Justin Herman Plaza due to the closure of the closest MUNI station at Embarcadero by police to prevent an influx of protestors to…
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Iris Murdoch on Love and Otherness
“Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real. Love…is the discovery of reality.” –Iris Murdoch (“The Sublime and the Good”, in the Chicago Review, Vol. 13, 1959, p. 51)
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Raimon Panikkar on Cosmotheandrism
“I should like to present this cosmotheandric principle with the minimum of philosophical assumptions. And the minimum here is that reality shows this triple dimension of an empirical (or physical) element, a noetic (or psychical) factor and a metaphysical (or spiritual) ingredient. By the first I mean the matter-energy complex, the cosmos; by the second,…
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Towards a Cosmotheandric Re-orientation: Response to Knowledge-Ecology
Adam Robbert over at Knowledge-Ecology recently responded to After Nature’s (Leon Niemoczynski) post on anthrodecentrism in Object-Oriented Ontology. I’ve visited this topic several times lately, but I’d have to admit that I seem to have failed to fully develop my own position in regards to the place of the human in the universe. What I…
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Archetypal Cosmology Presentation at PCC Forum
A link to the text of my talk HERE.
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Religion and Reality in the University: Thinking with Robert N. Bellah
A quote from Bellah’s recently published book Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age. I’ve just started this massive tome, but thus far I think I’m going to really like it. “One could say that if we can no longer glimpse that sacred foundation, the actual university would collapse. For the real…
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Notes on imagination, Poetry as Soul-making
Poetry as soul-making Strictly speaking, what I want to talk about today does not exist, or at least if it does, remains for the most part unconscious to the rational, waking ego’s daylight gaze. Nonetheless, I’m forced to call this unknown phantasm something, and the name ‘imagination’ seems to suit it fine. Imagination is that…
Footnotes2Plato 