Footnotes2Plato

“The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”
–Alfred North Whitehead

Category: imagination

  • Romantic Imagination and the Recovery of Nature’s Intrinsic Value: Whitehead, Barfield, and Our Crisis of Perception (transcript)

    Over on Substack, I shared an essay based on the transcript of my remarks at a presentation earlier today for the Center for Process Studies. You can read that essay here. Below is the exact transcript of my remarks: I am going to be discussing some ideas from one of Owen Barfield’s essays, “Where Is…

  • Nick Fuentes and the Hollow Soul of America: Is there an America After the Idols?

    Trump seems to be losing control over the MAGA movement he created. His surrogates remain confused, comparing Zoran Mamdani’s success mobilizing young New Yorkers to the rise of the Hitler Youth. Meanwhile Zoomers on the right are openly embracing white supremacism.  Last night, I finally watched Tucker Carlson’s long interview with Nick Fuentes. I hesitate to…

  • The Meaning of ‘Literal’: Thinking with Owen Barfield and Alfred North Whitehead

    The following essay is adapted from the transcript of this recording on our Urphänomen research guild Substack. It is a poetic commentary on Owen Barfield’s essay in The Rediscovery of Meaning, “The Meaning of ‘Literal,’” which was also the subject of discussion in this morning’s reading group: When Whitehead remarked that every science has its…

  • Metaphysics and Theology (a dialogue with Jacob Sherman)

    This dialogue with my colleague Jake Sherman was recorded last week at our graduate program’s annual retreat.  Below is a transcript:  Matt: Welcome, everyone. Thanks for joining us this afternoon for a dialogue on metaphysics and theology, which I hope will be both interesting and entertaining. You should have found the score cards on your seat to decide…

  • Between the Speculative and the Prosaic: Life, Imagination, and Individuation

    Timothy Jackson and I went deep into descendental philosophy and aesthetic ontology, core concepts developed in my last book Crossing the Threshold (2023). I try to argue against both scientistic neutrality and dogmatic theology. I believe that any attempt at thinking the most general conditions of reality inevitably touches the spiritual. If it did not then natural science…

  • Jung, Simondon, and the Ontogenesis of Philosophy

    We just wrapped the “Forever Jung” conference co-hosted by CIIS and the San Francisco Jung Institute. Tim couldn’t be with us in person, but I enjoyed his Zoom presentation on Jung and Simondon (video of his talk should be online soon; you can listen to mine here).  Below are some LLM assisted notes on Tim’s exegesis of the…

  • Remembering the Repressed with Carl Jung and Rudolf Steiner

    Judi: Hello, everybody. It’s my great pleasure to introduce Matt Segall. Matt is a PhD, a transdisciplinary researcher, philosopher, and teacher applying process-relational thought across the natural and social sciences. He is an associate professor in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness Department here at CIIS. His presentation is titled Remembering the Repressed with Jung and Steiner. Matt…

  • Birthing a New Cosmology (reflections on my dialogue with Alexander Beiner)

    I enjoyed dialoguing with my friend Alexander Beiner this morning. The recording will be published on Kainos soon. He asked whether I had a sense for whether the atheistic, secular orientation in academia is thawing, opening room for alternatives to physicalism. I do sense that! Panpsychism and idealism are the two broad categories that capture much of…

  • Value at the Root: Cultivating Virtue in a Post-Truth World

    Context  The following reflections grow out of my live dialogue with Bonnitta Roy about the metaphysics of value. She’ll be sharing the discussion in her pop-up school for those who subscribe. Here I wanted to offer some further reflections on what was stirred up in me. A few orienting points: First, we wanted our philosophical conversation to…

  • Facing the Face Within: Christopoetics in an Unfinished World in Process

    Below is a draft of a chapter for a book on radical and process theologies. My contribution is based on a conversation I had with Peter Rollins earlier this year: Facing the Face Within: Christopoetics in an Unfinished World in Process By Matthew David Segall Ahead of turning to the body of this exposition, a…

  • Notes from the Edge of the Ordinary

    Recapping my time in the twilight zone between physics and psi in Charlottesville, Virginia two weeks ago. I left the DOPS Psi Theory Meeting feeling like I’d been sitting around a camp fire telling ghost stories at the edge of a new continent. In fact, we spent the week together in the Marriott Hotel’s appropriately named Louis…

  • Sancta Maria Magdalena

    Last Tuesday, on Mary Magdalene’s Feast Day, I walked as a pilgrim with about a dozen others from Lewes train station to St. Peter’s Church in Firle along part of a historic route called the Old Way in the south of England that stretches from Winchester in Hampshire to Canterbury in Kent. I slept in…

  • Romanticizing Evolution: Whitehead’s Organic Realism and the Return of Organic Science

    A transcript of my talk at the Cognizing Life conference in Tübingen, Germany July 18, 2025. Other contributors at the Cognizing Life conference include: Benjamin Bembé (Witten), Bohang Chen (Zhejiang), Luke Fischer (Sydney), Andrea Gambarotto (Wien), Levi Haeck(Ghent), Craig Holdrege (Ghent, NY), Christoph Hueck (Tübingen), Philippe Huneman(Paris), Jan Kerkmann (Freiburg), Dalia Nassar (Sydney), Daniel Nicholson (Fairfax), Gregory Rupik (Toronto), Ulrich Schlösser (Tübingen), Matthew Segall (San Francisco), Joan Steigerwald (Toronto), Georg Toepfer (Berlin), Gertrudis Van de Vijver (Ghent), Denis Walsh (Toronto). See also my responses to a (rather reductive!) geneticist. I draw on some…

  • My Biophilosophy Conference Talk: Romanticizing Evolution with Schelling, Peirce, and Whitehead

    Below is my talk at the “Revitalizing Biophilosophy” conference I co-hosted earlier this week. It is based on a long paper I am working on both for this conference and for “Cognizing Life,” another conference that I’ll present at next week in Tübingen, Germany (there is a free livestream option if you’d like to tune…

  • Three Academic Philosophers Sitting In A Tree: S-M-I-L-I-N-G

    Just came across this fun reply to my conversation with Pedro and Jack. Gentlemen, your enriching dialogue was as music to my ears and a Dionysian feast of the senses. By Zeus a lot has been covered in this interview, and… Three Academic Philosophers Sitting In A Tree: S-M-I-L-I-N-G

  • Infinite Intimate: Dialoguing with Marc Gafni and Zak Stein

    Matt Segall: Hi Marc, pleasure to meet you. Marc Gafni: Good to meet you, Matt. Matt Segall: Really, as I said in my email, it’s an honor and it’s humbling to get to talk to you and Zak. I’ve had a chance to spend a little time with Zak. But yeah, great to connect with you. Where are…

  • In Defense of Participatory Platonism: Dialoging with Tim Jackson about Dan McQuillan’s Critique of Data Science as Machinic Neoplatonism

    Tim and I read McQuillan, Dan. Data Science as Machinic Neoplatonism. Philos. Technol. 31, 253–272 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-017-0273-3 Key themes discussed: Transcript: Matt Segall: Hey Tim. Timothy Jackson: Hey, man, how you doing. Matt Segall: Cool sweater—are those sea slugs? Timothy Jackson: Yeah. Nudibranchs. Matt Segall: Nice. Timothy Jackson: Naked gills. Matt Segall: So you are underslept and overread? Timothy Jackson: Oh, yeah, big time. I…

  • It from Bit from Chit: Philosophizing at the Threshold of Artificial Intelligence (dialogue with Robert Prentner)

    Summary of my dialogue with Robert Prentner: I apologize for the sound quality, but there is a full transcript below! Robert began by explaining his shift from skepticism to engagement with AI. Early versions of ChatGPT struck him as underwhelming, but newer models like GPT-4 and Claude impressed him with their linguistic and problem-solving fluency.…

  • Alchemy, Technology, and Individuation in Novalis, Simondon, and Jung (dialogue with Tim Jackson)

    Timothy Jackson: I really do think Simondon is becoming a very timely figure, and I think it’s probably underappreciated that his stated goal is to refound—have a novel axiomatic for the humanities, basically, or the human sciences. Like, to really break—I mean, like Whitehead, obviously—but to really break down that boundary between the two cultures. Matt…

  • Imago Machinae: Made in the Image of Our Machines, Rethinking God, Technology, and Consciousness at Edge Esmeralda

    Introduction by Janine: All right, we’ve got two more talks this evening for the next hour. I’m really excited to welcome Matt Segall. He is a transdisciplinary philosopher, associate professor in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness department at the California Institute of Integral Studies. And I first came across some of Matt’s work both online,…

  • Human Consciousness and Machine Intelligence

    I sat down with my friend Kent Bye earlier today to discuss the intensifying entanglement of human consciousness with machine intelligences. He read my recent chapter on the philosophical implications of AI and asked some great questions that elicited fresh thoughts. The podcast should be posted soon, but for now below is a preview of some of what we…