Category: Alfred North Whitehead
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On Genesis: Toward a New Evolutionary Theology
The Rosy Crux The central issue is not simply whether Hegel is right, or whether we can derive a more empirically grounded metaphysics than absolute idealism from Darwin’s humble hypothesis of descent with variation. I agree with Charles Taylor that Hegel’s treatment of historical evolution is “disastrous.” By my lights what we are in urgent need of…
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Raymond Ruyer, or The Embryogenesis of Philosophy (dialogue with Pedro Brea and Jack Bagby)
Transcript: Dialogue on Raymond Ruyer with Jack and Pedro Matt: Well, I had already been reading some Raymond Ruyer—is that how you pronounce it? Jack: Yeah. Matt: Close enough? Okay. I guess it was you, Jack, who first suggested him a while ago because of my interest in Whitehead. I finally got around to it. Maybe a month…
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A Serpent in the Garden of Clarity: On Whitehead’s Not So Casual Use of “Casual”
In our last Whitehead Research Project editorial board meeting, a very interesting issue came up as the critical edition of Science and the Modern World moves toward publication. It turns out that the position of a single “s” opens a huge can of metaphysical worms. In Science and the Modern World, there is a passage…
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Intelligent Design Meets Process Philosophy: My dialogue with Stephen Meyer
It was rather serendipitous that a media agent representing Stephen Meyer reached out to me several weeks ago, since the Discovery Institute’s work popularizing intelligent design had just been brought up in a comment exchange I was having. The agent shared a link to the new film, The Story of Everything, which is based on Meyer’s book Return of…
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Mind-at-Large: In Dialogue with Iain McGilchrist, Ed Kelly, and Curt Jaimungal
An LLM summary based on the transcript of my panel discussion with Ed Kelly and Iain McGilchrist, moderated by Curt Jaimungal, at last week’s Mind-at-Large conference. Videos of the event will be posted soon! Curt Jaimungal opened by cutting past preliminaries and asking the most basic metaphysical question possible: “What do you all think exists?…
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Human Consciousness in a Cybernetic Age: Or Why Logos is not a Loom
The following is a transcript of my talk last week at our Mind-at-Large Project’s inaugural conference, “A New Dawn.” Video of all the talks, including this one, will be available in a few weeks on the Mind-at-Large website. Buenos días, everyone. I’m here at the Casa Oasis Guest House in Mérida, on the ancestral lands of the…
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My Responses at Mind-at-Large Project’s “A New Dawn” Panel: Personhood, Participation, Imagination, and Mystical Theism
A recap of my remarks on Day 2’s Mind-at-Large Conference Plenary Panel (also featuring Ed Kelly and Iain McGilchrist, moderated by Curt Jaimungal). I repeat the questions when relevant so you will know what Curt asked. 1. Well, I am tempted to take this in a direction that might sound a little idealistic, but when you ask…
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In Defense of Eternal Objects and God: On What Abides in Whitehead’s Process Philosophy
Was there ever a time before metaphysics? Will there be a time after it? Pre and post, a priori and a posteriori, the here and now and the infinite Beyond: always and everywhere the opposites are meeting and making one another! We can strive to grow out of puerile metaphysics, but the claim to have transcended metaphysics entirely is not…
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Transcending the Culture War by Recovering Participatory Theism (Dialogue with Nathan Hawkins)
Nathan Hawkins and I just finished a podcast recording (above) that I hope will contribute to amplifying the deeper notes that are still just barely audible beneath the surface noise of the culture war. We both agree that dialogue must replace partisan shouting, and that philosophy has an important public role to play in helping to…
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How does it feel to be on your own?: Society and the Modern World – A Whiteheadian Reading of Hartmut Rosa and Charles Taylor
We finished our Hartmut Rosa reading group this morning (recordings are available here). I am grateful for Tripp Fuller’s invitation to study this text. It was my first time reading Rosa, and I found his sociological intervention convergent with many of my own ways of thinking. As I’ll relate below, Tripp and I had no trouble finding…
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Thinking Things with Graham Harman: Whitehead’s Way Beyond Philosophies of Human Access
Rahul Samaranayake has had me on his podcast a few times over the years, including an especially generative conversation with Peter Rollins last year. This time he invited me and Graham Harman into dialogue. Below is the transcript. RAHULIt’s funny. I was reading some of your articles, Graham. You mention Whitehead quite a lot. So obviously my head went…
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Poetics of Life and Death: Dialoguing with Andreas Weber
Matt: Hi, Andreas. Good morning. Andreas: Good morning. Sorry to keep you waiting. Matt: That’s quite all right. Andreas: I was late anyway, and then Zoom decided it needed to do a new install, like in the old Windows times. Matt: Of course. Always another update. Andreas: Exactly. It’s not the first time it’s happened,…
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Ontologizing Enactivism: Worldmaking with Ezequiel Di Paolo (dialogue with Tim Jackson)
Timothy Jackson and I were back in the saddle, this time to discuss Ezequiel Di Paolo’s article seeking an enactive ontology: Di Paolo, E. A. (2023). F/acts: Ways of enactive worldmaking. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 30 (11–12): 159-89. doi: 10.53765/20512201.30.11.159. Ezequiel will be joining us to present in the biophilosophy track at this summer’s International Whitehead Conference in…
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Truth in the Making: On the Possibility of Metaphysics in a World-in-Process
“…‘becoming’ is the transformation of incoherence into coherence.” -Whitehead (PR 25) “There is not one completed set of things which are actual occasions. For the fundamental inescapable fact is the creativity in virtue of which there can be no ‘many things’ which are not subordinated in a concrete unity. Thus a set of all actual occasions…
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“Time and World” By Hartmut Rosa: Reading Group Invitation
I want to invite you to join a new online reading group I’m co-hosting with my friend Tripp Fuller. We’re going to be working through Hartmut Rosa’s Time and World. The group will happen over Zoom in a seminar style with plenty of time for dialogue. If you’re a paid subscriber to either my Substack or Tripp’s, you’ll have access…
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Philosophies of Ontogenesis: Evolution by Artistic Selection
First, have a listen to Timothy Jackson’s recent Lepht Hand podcast about the ontogenetic stance: Then have a read of his essay on Darwin, Simondon, and Battaile and the importance of a “variation first” approach that replaces classical effective theory ontology with an account of ontogenesis. One consequence of such an approach is that we can only…
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There’s no scientific evidence that consciousness exists.
Evidence, in a scientific age, is usually thought of in a very specific way. We tend to assume evidence means empirical measurement: can I record this on a camera, or on some kind of detector? Can I transform what I observe—signals, data—from something tangible in the world into a mathematical model? Can I make predictions,…
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Flights and Perchings: A 2025 retrospective and a look ahead as I turn 40
As the new year begins, I decided to take a look back at my speaking engagements in 2025. I turn 40 later this month, so this has been an occasion not only to recollect the recent course of my intellectual development, but to imagine how to shape what I hope will be at least another…
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Christ and Caesar: Christian Nationalism in the News
I wish I didn’t care that Nick Fuentes’ star continues to rise. I wish it didn’t matter. But I fear Christian nationalist Joel Webbon may be right when he says (in the first of a series of new interviews) that Fuentes is “not merely the most controversial man in America” but for men under 45…
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Patterns Are Not Puppeteers: The Return and Reformation of Platonic Form in Biology
I’ve discussed the return of Platonism in biology before. The following recounts some of what I discussed with Bonnitta Roy as a visitor at The Pop-Up School earlier today. The main driver of the Platonic turn in the life sciences is Michael Levin’s remarkable lab research on bioelectric patterning in morphogenesis. He is now framing this as…
Footnotes2Plato 