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

  • Rhythms of the One: Bergson on Plotinus (Dialogue with Pedro Brea and Jack Bagby)

    Our conversation felt like an improvised rhythm of tangents. But as I joked to Pedro, a perfect circle is made of infinitely many tangents. What might appear like digression is often an expression of the deeper topology of thought, where every seeming sidetrack curves back toward the center.  Plotinus’ νοῦς (nous) floats above space and…

  • The Invariance of Variation: Or Why Metaphysics Must Become Ungrounded (Dialogue with Tim Jackson)

    Above, Tim Jackson and I dialogue about a number of conversations we watched, including: Matt Segall: So this is going to be laid back. We didn’t read anything, but we did listen to a whole bunch of conversations. I guess three. Okay, I threw another one in there. So, there’s the Levin and Deacon dialogue…

  • Prehensions, Propositions, and the Cosmological Commons (dialogue with Tevin Naidu)

    Tevin Naidu recently hosted me on his Mind-Body Solutions podcast. Above is the video and below is an edited and somewhat condensed transcript. Tevin: I have shaped today’s episode around your paper, “Physics Within the Bounds of Feeling Alone.” It is a wonderful piece—a beautiful read. One thing I often ask my guests to do is give a…

  • “Psychedelic Realism”: My presentation at Breaking Convention

    Below is an audio version and edited transcript of my talk at Breaking Convention last week, hosted by the University of Exeter. Video should be available in the coming weeks.  Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes (Introduction) It is my pleasure to introduce our next speaker, all the way from California: Dr. Matthew David Segall. Matt is an Associate…

  • Sacred Hospitality and the Dynamics of Initiation: Dialogue with Orland Bishop

    This transcript is an abridged version of Orland and Matt’s conversation. For the full two hours, including dialogue with CIIS students, see the video at the bottom of this post. Abridged transcript:  Orland Bishop: Thank you so very much. Since the inspiration to have this forum and arriving here this evening, so much has unfolded in…

  • Science and Religion in a Participatory Cosmos

    Last night I was invited by the Center for Christogenesis at Villanova University to share some thoughts on how the science/religion dialogue may be transformed by a participatory approach to cosmology. The video will be made available in a few weeks to those who register with the Center. I began by playfully suggesting I’d be proceeding as…

  • Processing Plotinus: A Bergsonian Reading

    I was joined again by Pedro Brea (we discussed Bergson and Whitehead a few weeks ago) and now also by Jack Bagby(a colleague of mine at CIIS). We discussed Jack’s translation of Bergson’s lectures on Plotinus (1898-99). We also discussed an essay by Wayne J. Hankey on Bergson and Plotinus.  Although I had previously known Plotinus influenced Bergson, our discussion highlighted…

  • Culture as The Lifeblood of The Machine Economy (dialogue with Michael Garfield)

    This was a really rich conversation. Michael just recently launched his new podcast Humans on the Loop. You can find more episodes and the show notes for this episode on his Substack: https://michaelgarfield.substack.com/p/h-12. Some brief reflections on the themes we explored: We began with the premise that money is a form of communication, a means…

  • Metaphysics Today

    Monday musings on the necessity of history and its overcoming.  Mythos is an indispensable method in metaphysics. Metaphysics only comes to life in the midst of philosophical dialogues, and so sometimes it is helpful to perform a seance by invoking conceptual personae: Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Aquinas, Hegel, Whitehead. These and many other names tell a…

  • Whitehead’s Revolutionary Concept of Prehension (Thinking with Tim Jackson and Charles Hartshorne)

    Tim Jackson and I discussed Hartshorne’s article, “Whitehead’s Revolutionary Concept of Prehension.” Charles Hartshorne offers a detailed and insightful examination of Alfred North Whitehead’s process-relational philosophy. Hartshorne, who served as Whitehead’s assistant at Harvard University during the 1920s, was also profoundly influenced by Charles Sanders Peirce, whose papers he edited during that same period. This background…

  • Process, Reality, and Context: Timothy E. Eastman Unties the Gordian Knot – Summaries of the Seminar Series

    Below is a detailed summary of each of the nine seminar sessions that ran monthly from June 2021 through February 2022 focused on Dr. Timothy Eastman’s book, Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context (2020). This event was sponsored by the Cobb Institute’s Science Advisory Committee, which I chair. You can read my review of…

  • Review of Vol. 2 of ‘The Harvard Lectures of Alfred North Whitehead’

    Below is a draft of my review of: BRIAN G. HENNING, JOSEPH PETEK, and GEORGE LUCAS, eds. The Harvard Lectures of Alfred North Whitehead (1925-1927): General Metaphysical Problems of Science. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2021: lxii + 511 pages. The version that is eventually published in Process Studies will likely need to be about half this length, so I’m…

  • Roberto Unger’s Religious Revolution and Its Anthroposophical Resonances

    I picked up Roberto Unger’s book The Religion of the Future (2014) for the first time yesterday.  On the back cover of his book, this excerpt is printed:  Everything in our existence points beyond itself. We must nevertheless die. We cannot grasp the ground of being. Our desires are insatiable. Our lives fail adequately to express our…

  • Minds in the Making: Bringing Formal and Final Causes Back into Evolutionary Science, with Michael Levin

    Michael, host of the podcast Third Eye Drops, invited me and the developmental biologist Michael Levin into dialogue. The video should be posted in the coming weeks, and I will share it here. I’ve had several conversations with Mike before (see here). In this post, I want to riff on some of the themes we explored…

  • God Beyond and Within (Dialogue with Roman Campolo)

    Below is a ChatGPT summary of my conversation with Roman (which I’ve reviewed for accuracy). You can find the exact transcript on Substack. Roman began by sharing his thoughts on a documentary he recently watched about Mount Athos, a place he had not known about before. He explained that Mount Athos is an island off…

  • The Evolution of Consciousness and the Destiny of America (Dialogue with Formscapes)

    In a spontaneous three-hour livestream, Kehlan and Matt explored the thoughts of influential thinkers and the implications of America’s Pluto Return. They discussed consciousness evolution, materialism’s challenges, and the spiritual mission of the U.S. They expressed concerns over populism and the need for a moral vision amidst societal fragmentation, emphasizing a harmonious approach to spirituality…

  • Mumbling to the Mother of All

    As sleepwalkers, we drift in broad daylight— senses singing us to sleep despite the solar bell resounding overhead. “Wake us up,” we do not hear ourselves crying, while shadows of longing hitch rides on every breath. We can but mumble in reply to its endless smile, answering its Michaelic messages with a verse we ourselves…

  • Christ After Christianity: Metamodern Reconstructions of Religion (dialogue with Brendan Graham Dempsey)

    Transcript: Brendan Graham Dempsey: Hey? How’s it going? Brendan Graham Dempsey: Good to see you, too, man? Matt Segall: Yeah. Brendan Graham Dempsey: Who’s that? Matt Segall: This is Philo. Matt Segall: He loves attention, especially when we’ve got Zoom sessions. Brendan Graham Dempsey: Very cat-like. I have a cat named Shadow that looks very…

  • The Spiritual Mission of America (dialogue with Edward Suprenant)

    Below is a summary of our conversation that I have heavily edited but that was originally generated by ChatGPT: As our conversation wound down, we both felt more prepared to think about the future. I appreciated Edward’s thoughtfulness, which helped me reaffirm my sense that America’s spiritual mission remains vital, unfinished, and worth striving for.…

  • Illusionism Meets Panpsychism: Dialogue with Keith Frankish

    I greatly enjoyed my dialogue with Keith Frankish this morning. Thanks is due to Justin for getting us together. I’d say we had a fascinating conversation exploring process-relational metaphysics and my Whiteheadian form of panpsychism, Keith’s version of illusionism, and how these positions bear on the nature of consciousness and meaning. Keith sent me a few articles to read…

  • Machinic Heterogenesis and Ecosophic Futures: Thinking With Félix Guattari

    The video above records my thoughts after reading a chapter from Felix Guattari’s book Chaosmosis (1995). Turning again to the work of Guattari and his frequent collaborator Gilles Deleuze felt important as the US enters a dangerous moment in its own history. Fascism is not just an external threat, not just about those bad people over there. As…