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

  • Power and Presence in Theology

    Another response to NRG’s questions for me on Pharyngula: I have trouble conceiving of God as all-powerful because of the problem of evil and my experience of human freedom. I associated God’s omnipresence with “will” even though, for God, there is really nothing to “do.” From the “perspective” of eternity, God is already everywhere and everywhen…

  • God did it, or aliens?

    “NRG” posting over on Pharyngula asks me: Why impute an admittedly Unknowable Omni God to explain currently inexplainable phenomena, if it’s much more reasonable, based on what we actually know, to assume that other citizens of the universe, evolved like us but to a much greater degree, are responsible for such phenomena? To make it…

  • Christianity and Ecology: Response to Glenn Beck

    Glenn Beck’s segment on Christianity and the environmentalist movement. My response:

  • Natural Science and Spiritual Science

    My recent comments on Pharyngula Excerpts from my comments: I should have written “all-loving” instead of “all-powerful” twice. Just a typo, nothing esoteric. The “etc.” was a placeholder for all the other typical attributes (infinite, eternal…). I wouldn’t say these attributions are necessarily incorrect, they are just inadequate descriptors. Cataphatic theology must be balanced by…

  • PZ Myers’ will never believe in God

    PZ Myers’ blog post: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/10/eight_reasons_you_wont_persuad.php Some excerpts from my comments (beginning around #403): The sort of god PZ has decreed impossible to believe in has little in common with Augustine’s, or Plotinus’, or Aquinas’, or with any other great theologian’s God. Natural science is epistemically closed to theological issues, not because they are unreal, but…

  • Consciousness: Problem, Paradox, or Practice?

    A quick contextualizing note for those who are just joining the tangled thread of my recent blogalogue concerning the nature of consciousness and its relationship with the nervous system and surrounding cosmos: Last month, Steve Ramirez, a PhD candidate at MIT, posted an entry on his blog (http://okaysteve.wordpress.com/) concerning neuroscience’s supposed successes explaining the “problem” of consciousness purely…

  • On Consciousness and the Brain

    This is my textual response to Steve Ramirez’s post: Steve, First, thanks for taking the time to rebut, in writing, some of my statements concerning consciousness on YouYube. As a thinker, I can hardly think of a more helpful gift than a detailed counter-posturing in response to my ideas. I think consciousness is involved in…

  • Consciousness: The Holy Grail of Neuroscience

    The following is a video response I posted on YouTube to a blog post by Steve Ramirez about consciousness and neuroscience.     He writes the following: Matthew Segall, known popularly as “0ThouArtThat0″ on youtube, is as eloquent as any up and coming philosopher – an eloquence rivaled in magnitude only by his deep misunderstanding of how science…

  • messages about the purpose of philosophizing…

    Here is a message and my response that I’ve exchanged over on YouTube as 0ThouArtThat0.   From YouTube user drchaffee:   Thanks for understanding that I wasn’t trying to demean you with my length-constrained message to your video. I’ve had a question rolling around in my head for a couple of days, and I just…

  • On the loss of loved ones

    Our losses of loved ones are not true losses, though they may leave temporary wounds in our heart. Death is not an end, but the transformation of what will always remain alive. Life is immortal, though it may seem to die in this or that place from time to time. The living breath of the…

  • A Prayer to Burn the Man and Birth the Son

    music by Caribou, Sun

  • A personal correspondence about the universe.

    The following is an email exchanged with a good friend of mine doing doctoral work on complexity theory as it applies to neuroscience at Florida Atlantic University. My email is in response to this Science Daily article about a measured variance in a specific physical constant: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100909004112.htm Perhaps I’ll post his response when it comes…

  • Knowing and Being: philosophy as poetry, learning through expressing

    To know the world, the mouth must first make words. I speak, therefore I am and can know the world. Being conscious is a poetic act, a participatory co-creation of life and all that is. That it is co-creationary also makes being conscious a process of discovery. The human universe is populated by countless centers…

  • Soul-making

    “Poetry is soul-making,” says Keats. Mere words make only sound, but poetry makes worlds, unwinding the coiled creativity of God’s voluminous loom to weave again the stories of angels and earthlings. Like lightning, ideas are made that strike the ground of our corporeal being, and from the tired dust of ages sprouts new life, awash…

  • An Anonymous American in Amsterdam

    For those who read my original itinerary in Europe, posted here in June, I should first explain why I ended up in Amsterdam instead of Florence and Rome. There are several reasons, one geographic, another economic, and a third intuitive. The geographic has to do with my being unable to switch my flight back to…

  • Celestial and Sexual: The Antipodes of Philosophy

    First, do yourself a philosophical favor and watch the film “Agora” (2009). Now that you’ve seen it, I’m not worried about playing spoiler. Ok, even if you haven’t had a chance to watch it yet, it’s historical fiction, so just pretend I’m refreshing your memory concerning the social and spiritual upheaval in the 4th century…

  • Prophecy without profit

    The prophet is beside himself, and breathes into history the words that will not be heard but by those with silent hearts, whose longing for a world more real reminds them daily of the night that has befallen us. Illusions are paraded as truth, and the people cheer. But does not everyone know with ever-increasing…

  • The Spirit of Philosophy

    I am passionate about philosophy not because I desire answers to arbitrary questions or explanations of abstract problems. My passion arises because life, as given–as it at first appears to my everyday consciousness–is incomplete and unaccounted for. The reason for my existence has never been self-evident, and yet discovering this reason is the prerequisite of…

  • Basel on Fire

    I arrived in Basel this morning after a very tiring (and very expensive) 2 days in London. I’ll return to the English capital on better terms in a few weeks before I head back to the States, but I couldn’t have been happier to leave it behind today. To make a long story short, Kel…

  • Tapadh leat, Dublin.

    One would think two days is hardly enough time to get to know a place, but Dublin is small and her people know how to show her off. I arrived on the 4th of July, my first abroad, to celebrate a different sort of independence. The small prop plane that flew me from Plymouth across…

  • Leaving Schumacher

    It’s raining for the first time in two weeks here at the college, but the soft patter on the old roof provides the perfect ambiance for reflecting upon my stay. We had our second bonfire last night to commemorate our time together. Each of us threw a small pine cone into the flame to signify an…