Category: autopoiesis
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Generalizing the Function: Process Ontology and Free Energy
Summary by ChatGPT4 based on the YouTube transcript: This conversation between Tim and Matt revolves around their philosophical exploration of process philosophy, the Free Energy Principle, and Simondon’s philosophy of individuation, with a particular focus on how these philosophical frameworks intersect with personal health experiences and broader biological and environmental contexts. The discussion starts with…
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Agency and Perception in Whitehead and the Free Energy Principle (dialogue with Tim Jackson)
Tim and I continue to explore how Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism might intersect with contemporary scientific theories, especially the Free Energy Principle (FEP). The FEP suggests that organisms strive to minimize the surprise of sensory inputs by adjusting their internal models of the world, which resonates in some ways with Whitehead’s account of perception as…
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Whitehead and the Free Energy Principle: The Physics and Metaphysics of Information (dialogue with Tim Jackson)
Tim Jackson and I met for another thought jam to explore the interplay between contemporary physics, information theory, biology, and Whitehead’s process philosophy. We got into the ontology of abstraction and in the end found ourselves ruminating on the nature of reality in an increasingly technologically mediated world. Our conversation unveiled a shared concern: as…
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On the Place of Life in the Cosmos: Whitehead and Contemporary Theoretical Biology
This is an excerpt from the final session of our “Intuiting Life” Seminar Series hosted by the Cobb Institute Science Advisory Committee last month. You can find the full playlist here. Outline of lecture: Introduction to Participatory Cosmology Critique of Mechanistic Explanations The Philosophical Shift from Life to Death Organic Ontology in Biology and Physics…
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Intuiting Life Seminar Series
Above is a playlist including four sessions from the “Intuiting Life” seminar series hosted by the Cobb Institute Science Advisory Committee. Click on the hamburger menu icon in the top right corner of the video to see the playlist. The series featured the authors of a new book, Process-Philosophical Perspectives on Biology: Intuiting Life (2023),…
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Intuiting Life Seminar Series, a preview with Spyridon Koutroufinis
If you’d like to join us for the Saturday morning seminar series beginning this weekend, you can RSVP HERE.
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Thinking With Machines
A rough transcript of the video above of me cleaning dog poo out of my robot vacuum: My earlier conversation about machines and organisms with Levin:
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Seminar Series next month on Process Approaches to the Philosophy of Biology
The Cobb Institute Science Advisory Committee, which I chair, will be hosting a series of seminars next month featuring the contributors to a new book, Process-Philosophcal Perspectives on Biology: Intuiting Life (Cambridge, 2023). The book challenges the reductionist, materialistic metaphysics often adopted by biologists, arguing that this approach overlooks the intricate complexities and essential characteristics…
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Taming the Technological Dragon, with Michael Levin
Selections from the transcript of this conversation (complied by AI): Matt Segall: I just finished your paper “Technological Approaches to Mind Everywhere” that came out last year and really enjoyed it. The more I read your stuff, the more I am shaken free of some philosophical commitments that I think I had arrived at because…
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Metaphysics and the Matter With Things: Thinking With Iain McGilchrist
I’m very excited to announce that my graduate program (Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness at CIIS) and the Center for Process Studies are cohosting a conference March 29-31, 2024 focused on the work of Iain McGilchrist. The temporary conference landing page is HERE. You can provide an email address for updates on conference registration in the…
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Platonizing Biology: a dialogue with Michael Levin
Thanks to Karen for hosting this conversation on The Meaning Code. We started with a high level issue: the relationship between metaphysics and/or (philosophical) cosmology and the special sciences. I wanted to be sure he understood that I as a philosopher am in no way trying to tell scientists how to define or understand their…
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Mind and Life in the Cosmos
I’m sharing a version of a lecture I delivered for the Pari Center earlier this morning.
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Standing Firm in the Flux: On Whitehead’s Eternal Objects (draft article)
The article to follow is a draft posted here for your review. As usual, I invite your comments and criticisms (Note that I have been continually updating the draft below in light of helpful feedback and my own ongoing reflection: the doctrine of eternal objects is a deep ocean, but hopefully this study at least…
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Integral Facticity podcast with Erik Haines: Varieties of Integral & the Next Left
More info: https://medium.com/integral-facticity/matt-segall-on-the-varieties-of-integral-michael-brooks-the-next-left-af41e79a8a0e
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Evolutionary Thinking with Timothy Jackson
Below are parts 1 and 2 of my dialogue with toxinologist and evolutionary philosopher Timothy Jackson. We discuss everything from the philosophy of science and evolutionary epistemology, to the social and cultural impact of evolution, to the full-blown evolutionary cosmologies of thinkers like Whitehead and Peirce.
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Human Energy Project podcast interview by David Sloan Wilson
Bruce Damer and I joined David Sloan Wilson on the Human Energy Project podcast for a conversation about the Hot Spring Abiogenesis Hypothesis and its cosmological implications. This was recorded late last year. Transcript available.
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Tim Eastman Unties the Gordian Knot: Complete Seminar (Sessions 1-9)
Above is an embedded playlist featuring all 9 of the Eastman Seminars that I facilitated for the Science Advisory Committee of the Cobb Institute from June 2021 through February 2022. Tim Eastman, a plasma physicist and philosopher, is the author of Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context (2020). These seminars invited other scholars…
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Returning to Cassette Tapes to dialogue with Will July about abiogenesis, the afterlife, and everything in between
It was great to chat with Will again on his podcast Cassette Tapes. Check it out here: https://www.cassettespodcast.com/episodes/30-matt-segall
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The Cosmological Context of the Origin of Life: Process Philosophy and the Hot Spring Hypothesis
I just sent a draft of this coauthored essay off to the editors. Astrobiologist Bruce Damer and I have been building toward this for a few years. I’m thrilled to have gotten it to this point, and looking forward to peer review! The essay will be featured in a book coming out of this conference…
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Dialoging with John Torday about Cellular Evolution
Dr. Torday is Professor of Evolutionary Medicine at UCLA: https://www.evmed.ucla.edu/torday/ For more on the cellular theory of evolution: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4447538/ More about the Cobb Institute Science Advisory Committee: https://cobb.institute/science-advisory-committee/