Category: imagination
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Imagining a Gaian Reality After the Virus
Imagining a Gaian Reality After the Virus by Matthew Segall What follows is a brief paper outlining a path forward for post-pandemic humanity. It attempts to integrate Marxist critiques of capitalism with the efforts of contemporary Whiteheadian philosophers to compose an alternative ecological civilization. … A specter is haunting modern civilization—the specter of Gaia. All the powers…
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What is life? interview with Tim Freke
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Metaphysics in Process (reflections on Whitehead’s system of philosophy)
As best I understand it, in Part IV of Process & Reality, Whitehead attempted to account for how geometrical measurement of the physical world is possible without any empirical presuppositions. He was worried that physics had not yet fully accounted for its own experimental practices and so searched for a presuppositionless mathematical starting point for…
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Introduction to German Idealism
My lecture in two parts introducing German Idealism (focusing on Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Goethe, Hegel)
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Robert McDermott & Matt Segall on Rudolf Steiner’s 12 Ways of seeing the world
see also: Foreword to an upcoming anthroposophical book on twelve ways of seeing the world
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Divine Mereology, or Why Black Holes are Pores in God’s Face
Thinking and driving…about the evolution of matter, life, and mind.
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The Birth of Life & the Future of Consciousness
UPDATE. Here’s a video of our dialogue: Next Tuesday, October 22nd at 7pm, I’ll be in dialogue with astrobiologist Bruce Damer about his hot spring hypothesis of the origins of life. For Bay Area locals, the event will take place at the Mission Street campus of California Institute of Integral Studies and is free and…
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![Physicalism and Its Discontents: A Study in Whitehead’s Panexperientialist Alternative [draft]](https://footnotes2plato.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/fluorescence.jpg?w=1024)
Physicalism and Its Discontents: A Study in Whitehead’s Panexperientialist Alternative [draft]
UPDATE: Here is a PDF of the final draft accepted for publication under the revised title “The Varieties of Physicalist Ontology: A Study in Whitehead’s Process-Relational Alternative.” I’ve just finished drafting this article, which will hopefully be featured in a special issue of the Journal of Philosophy, Theology, and the Sciences focused on panpsychism. It still…
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Thinking with Whitehead about boundaries, perpetual perishing, and perception
Maybe, as one of my graduate students suggested, mind is more like a liquid that flows through and between things than it is a light projected onto and reflecting off of their surfaces (bracketing for now the fact that light also behaves like a fluid). This is an imaginative way of describing the difference between…
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“Astrology: Science, Art, or Religion?”
Here’s the recording of a lecture that Becca Tarnas and I delivered last night for the Atlanta Astrological Society. Here are some relevant links if you want a more in depth discussion on some of what I mention in this lecture: The Politics of Renaissance Hermeticism, and the Magic of Science The Copernican Odyssey: From…
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My presentation on Whitehead & Deleuze for the Pacific Association for the Continental Tradition conference at Seattle University
Here’s the audio: I’m particularly interested in what folks familiar with Deleuze think about the exchange between me and the woman in the audience during the discussion portion. Am I getting Deleuze’s general approach wrong? Here’s the text of my paper: pact-2019-conference-presentation.pdf
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A Panpsychism Primer
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Lecture and notes on Part I of Whitehead’s “Process & Reality”
This Fall at CIIS.edu, I’m teaching an online advanced seminar on Whitehead’s magnum opus, Process & Reality. Here are my reflections on Part I of Process & Reality, “The Speculative Scheme.” Note that I discuss Richard Rorty’s conference presentation during a symposium on Whitehead at Stanford back in April 2006. Isabelle Stengers and Donna Haraway were…
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EcoCiv podcast on Whitehead, Marx, and Ecological Civilization
Andrew Schwartz and I discussed Marx and Whitehead last week. Have a listen.
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Theology of Nature Templeton research proposal, shelved : (
Several weeks ago, I submitted a proposal for a Templeton Foundation research fellowship called “God and the Book of Nature: Science-engaged Theology of Nature.” I just heard back from the review committee that my proposal was not selected. : ( Oh well. I thought I’d share my cover letter and shelved (for now) research proposal.…
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Burning Man and the Seeds of a New Story
Mission at Tenth special supplement Vol. 7, 274-279 (2018) “Carnival of Consciousness: Practice as Research in Black Rock City” A Submission by Matthew T. Segall, PhD “Burning Man and the Seeds of a New Story” “We are lived by powers we pretend to understand.” –W. H. Auden, Another Time (1940) As religious scholar Lee Gilmore argues…
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Whitehead and Marx: A Cosmopolitical Approach to Ecological Civilization
Below is a recording of my talk (a video first, then audio only that includes the discussion afterwards). I’ve also included an extended draft of some notes I took to prepare my talk. Finally, I’ve included my notes taken while listening to Jason Moore during yesterday’s opening lecture. Fifth annual conference of the World-Ecology Research…
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A Process Theological Invitation
Below, I’m sharing my response to a student in my course this semester. I cannot thank you enough for sharing your childhood experiences of religion with us. Know that you are certainly not alone in having been so mistreated and shamed by repressive patriarchal dogmatism. I am so glad you were able to find your…
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Physics and Freedom
“Scientists, animated by the purpose of proving they are purposeless, constitute an interesting subject for study.” -Alfred North Whitehead, The Function of Reason I’m a frequent reader of the theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder‘s blog Backreaction. She has helped me better understand many difficult concepts in contemporary theoretical physics. I’ve benefited in particular from the times she has weighed in on…
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Whitehead’s Final Interpretation of Reality: God and the World
Whitehead tells us at the start of the final part of Process & Reality (“Final Interpretation”) that the chief danger in philosophy is narrowness in the selection of evidence. For many modern, scientifically inclined philosophers, this narrowness has taken the form of an all too easy rejection of the world’s religious traditions and the religious experience which gave rise…
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The Side View podcast
Adam Robbert interviewed me over on The Side View Podcast. Check it out HERE. We discussed speculative philosophy, panpsychism, politics, and more.
Footnotes2Plato 