Footnotes2Plato

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

Tag: biology

  • More Reflections on “The Blind Spot”: Life, Cognition, and Consciousness

    These are rough notes that capture some of my ongoing reflections after re-reading the core chapters of The Blind Spot. You can read my original review here: Blind Spot Review. I composed these notes in preparation for a dialogue tomorrow with biologist Timothy Jackson. Stay tuned for that! Chapter 6, titled “Life,” begins with the authors’ reflection…

  • Review of “The Blind Spot: Why Science Cannot Ignore Human Experience”

    Review of The Blind Spot: Why Science Cannot Ignore Human Experience (MIT Press, 2024) by Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser, and Evan Thompson By Matthew David Segall In The Blind Spot, Frank, Gleiser, and Thompson offer an urgent philosophical intervention into humanity’s all but doomed technoscientific civilizational project. The authors argue cogently that our contemporary scientific culture has steered…

  • Some Philosophical Implications of Michael Levin’s New Paradigm Biology

    Over the last year, I’ve had a couple of extremely stimulating conversations with the developmental biologist Mike Levin.  The first was moderated by Karen Wong: Platonizing Biology: A Dialogue with Michael Levin  Read full story The second was a one-on-one exchange on my YouTube channel: Taming the Technological Dragon, with Michael Levin Read full story…

  • Polycomputing and Process Philosophy

    Tim and I were at it again this afternoon. I begin by introducing some ideas from this preprint by Joshua Bongard and Michael Levin: “There’s Plenty of Room Right Here: Biological Systems as Evolved, Overloaded, Multi-scale Machines.” Here are some of the ideas we discussed in this video: 

  • Whitehead’s Panprehensionism: A Feeling For Reality (Dialogue with Tim Jackson)

    Video timestamps are available on YouTube. Below is Claude 3 Opus’ summary of the transcript (with a few edits by me):  In this detailed conversation, Matt, a philosopher, and Tim, a biologist, delve into various philosophical topics related to perception, consciousness, and the nature of reality, with a particular focus on the ideas of Alfred…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • The Art and Science of Improvisation: Dialogue with Merlin Sheldrake and Tim Jackson

    I recently had a fascinating conversation with mycologist Merlin Sheldrake and evolutionary toxinologist Tim Jackson. Our discussion revolved around the themes of improvisation, the nature of life, and the interplay between order and chaos in both biology and philosophy. Merlin shared his insights on improvisation in the context of jazz music, which led us to…

  • 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…

  • 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),…

  • 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:

  • 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…

  • Music, Memory, and the Song of Life (dialogue with Karen Wong)

    Karen Wong invited me on The Meaning Code again to discuss ideas we both find enriching. Below I’ll share a near transcript of some interesting tidbits, including discussion of Michael Levin’s work. Mike Levin frequently quotes William James, who defines intelligence as the ability to accomplish the same goal by different means. This definition emphasizes…

  • Energy is Information, Information is Communication: Thinking with Vervaeke and Henriques

    Have a listen to Greg Henriques and John Vervaeke exploring the limits of reductive naturalism and the dangerous of decadent romanticism: John and Greg got some thoughts stirring, which I shared in the video below: For more on the communicative ontology I am proposing here, see this article of mine in Process Studies on Whitehead…

  • NYTimes profile on mycologist Merlin Sheldrake mentions Whitehead (and me)

    Today’s New York Times featured a profile on my friend, mycologist Merlin Sheldrake. In addition to discussing the philosophical implications of his scientific research, the article shares a bit about his magical childhood and fascinating family. Do give it a read. Merlin was kind enough to mention a collaboration with me to sort out the…

  • Michael Levin’s Latent Space of Biological Form

    Michael Levin’s Latent Space of Biological Form

    Iain McGilchrist mentions my dialogue with Michael Levin a few weeks ago at the start of this video, before proceeding into an inquiry concerning the whereabouts of ideal form: Where are the forms in the ‘latent space’ of biological possibility? I think everyone in the conversation, including Iain, senses that asking “where”–while essential for noting…

  • 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…

  • Mind and Life in the Cosmos

    I’m sharing a version of a lecture I delivered for the Pari Center earlier this morning.

  • “Modes of Thought” (1938) by Alfred North Whitehead

    I was re-reading Whitehead’s final book, Modes of Thought (1938), and decided I may as well record an audiobook version. Below is the YouTube playlist with all 9 lectures/chapters (click the menu button in the upper right corner to expand the playlist).

  • Goethe and Whitehead article in “In Dialogue: Journal for Holistic Science”

    In Dialogue: Journal for Holistic Science, Vol 2 is available as a PDF here. My contribution is titled “Goethe and Whitehead: Steps to a Science of Organism”

  • 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.