Author: Matthew David Segall
-
The Logic of Life and the Life of Logic
I’ve just finished Eugene Thacker‘s After Life, wherein he surveys the positions of key pre-modern thinkers, including Aristotle, Plotinus, Pseudo-Dionysius, Eriugena, Duns Scotus, Aquinas, and Nicholas of Cusa. Despite the often illuminating nature of their thoughts, it seems that none of these men were able to articulate a workable account of life-in-itself, at least not…
-
Process Philosophy of Science
I’m pasting a dialogue that I’m having on Facebook with Steven Goodheart here so others can chime in if they so please! ——————————————————————— Steven remarked that my comment about the paradox of science’s ancestral statements reminded him of Roger Penrose‘s somewhat Platonist take on the matter. I responded by saying: Steven, I think my statement…
-
Marshall McLuhan on Electronic Consciousness
-
Michael Persinger and the Extended Mind
I’d like to follow up on my recent post about Michael Persinger’s research on the non-local electromagnetic aspects of consciousness. There is a growing contingent of cognitive scientists taking what has come to be called the “extended mind” theory quite seriously. Andy Clark is most associated with the idea, but Levi Bryant has been blogging…
-
De Anima Mundi
Some questions have emerged about what the hell (or heaven) I might be talking about in my last essay about death and the soul. These questions provide me with an opportunity to reflect on my own writing in an attempt to more fully articulate the vision behind it. I don’t already have answers to these…
-
Death as Trickster
A reflection after participating in Steven Goodman‘s “Tibetan Trickster” workshop at CIIS several weekends ago. See my follow up comments to this essay here. ——————————————————————— I should begin. I don’t know how much time I have… I’d like to tell you a secret, even though I’m not sure if I can repeat it exactly as…
-
Michael Persinger on non-local consciousness.
Most of you have probably already heard of Michael Persinger. He is a distinguished and extensively published cognitive neuroscientist at Laurentian University in Ontario. He is best known for his research with the “God Helmet,” which is supposed to give most people who wear it a non-ordinary state of consciousness often described as encountering a divine intelligence…
-
Emerson on Philosophical Inebriation
From lecture 7- “Inspiration,” given on March 7, 1871: “Happy beyond the common lot if he learn the secret, that besides the energy of his conscious intellect, his intellect is capable of new energy by abandonment to a higher influence; or, besides his privacy of power as an individual man, there is a great Public…
-
The Feat of Human Flight
Prometheus stole fire from the Gods, and now Icarus is closing in on the Sun. Daedalus reverse engineered the technology of angels and made man into bird. Will our wax wings melt in the light of space, or has the fire of spirit burst free of heavier elements? With each invention, are we more upright, or…
-
The Ideal Realism of Schelling and Emerson
I have come across a copy of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1871 lectures at Harvard. They were his last lectures, a sort of summation and final testament of his life’s work. He titled these lectures “Natural History of the Intellect.” I wanted to draw attention to one lecture in particular, that on Imagination given on February…
-
Islam in Iran
A few strange and interesting facts about the theologico-political situation of our friends in Iran. Several men who work closely with president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have been arrested recently due to pressure from supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Khamenei’s and Ahmadinejad’s relationship has been deteriorating rapidly. His associates have been accused of performing magic and conjuring djinns…
-
Religious Dialogue as Soul-Making: A Prayer to Buddha and Christ
Why Religious Dialogue? Interreligious dialogue is not a distant possibility but a present necessity. This essay is a response to this need, but it is written also as an intrareligious dialogue. This is because the conditioned nature of my own personality, having been historically shaped into what it is by my unique imaginal participation in…
-
I am Time
I am Time Time is unwinding through its eternal hour and life is heading always toward the grave. The sun is being born and dying every day as the earth rolls across the sky. Toward the Origin all creation flows, though once upon a time, the destiny of this world was written with words. History:…
-
Buddhist and Christian Soul-Making
So far as I know, John Keats coined the phrase “soul-making” in a letter to his brother and sister in May of 1819. He writes: “…suppose a rose to have sensation. It blooms on a beautiful morning. It enjoys itself–but there comes a cold wind, a hot sun–it cannot escape it, it cannot destroy its…
-
Audio from “Here Comes Everything”: A Speculative Realism Panel @ CIIS (4/8)
Conference put on by the Interdisciplinary Dialogue Forum, a student group in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program at CIIS. The History of Access: An Introduction to the Speculative Turn – Sam Mickey and Adam Robbert Ganga – River, Goddess, Thing – Elizabeth McAnally The Astonishing Depths of Things – Sam Mickey Objects in Action: Promiscuous Applications of…
-
“Here Comes Everything” Speculative Realism Panel summary (via Knowledge-Ecology)
Adam Robbert has written a nice summary of the panel discussion last week (4/8) on Speculative Realism. I’ve pasted it below. For the audio from the event, click HERE. Here are a few reflections on last Fridays event “Here Comes Everything: An Introduction to Speculative Realism.” Video of the event will be posted later today (hopefully!). The…
-
Object as subject-superject, or why Harman is wrong about Whitehead
Graham Harman and Alfred North Whitehead have a lot in common, but they differ in what they say about substance as a metaphysical category. I think Harman overstates this difference. Whitehead suggests “the whole universe consists of elements disclosed in the experiences of subjects” (Process and Reality, p. 166). This multiple disclosure of the One…
-
Schelling and the Transcendental Abyss of Nature
“What is essential in science is movement; deprived of this vital principle, its assertions die like fruit taken from the living tree.” –Schelling, The Ages of the World ——————————– The Copernican Revolution had the exoteric effect of throwing the Earth into motion, decentering human consciousness in the Cosmos. We, like the other planets, became a…
-
Phenomenology and Reality, Philosophy and Nature
Professor Corey Anton’s video about the impossibility of speculative realism, of an account of nature that doesn’t already include consciousness: My response, ending with an excerpt from Schelling‘s “Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature” :
Footnotes2Plato 