Tag: ecology
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Realizing the Noosphere
Below are some reflections following my dialogue with Layman Pascal and Brendan Graham Dempsey as part of Limicon 2025. The video of our dialogue should be online soon, and I’ll be sure to share it here. It seems to me that this conversation (see prior episodes) is necessarily transdisciplinary, drawing on natural sciences, aesthetics and art, myth and religion,…
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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…
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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…
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Experiential Philosophy, Psychedelic Entities, and Naturalistic Reincarnation: Cheltenham and UK Philosophers Interview
I recorded this dialogue with Matthew Gray of the Cheltenham and UK Philosophers group a few days ago. A transcript is below. Introduction and Matt Segall’s Credentials Matt Gray: “Hey guys, it’s Matt Gray from Chelam UK Philosophers here, um, just had a fantastic conversation with Matt Segall, the renowned process philosopher, um, he’s a well-decorated,…
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Re-Thinking Economics and the Meaning of Value with Tim Adalin and O. G. Rose
It was a genuine joy to be in dialogue with Daniel and Tim yesterday. I want to reflect on some of what I shared during our discussion. The first thing I think, to frame my remarks, would be to say that over the last couple decades of my adult life, in thinking about economics and…
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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…
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Whitehead’s ‘Foresight,’ Or How Philosophy Can Shape the Business Mind of the Future
What follows is a brief essay reflecting on the relevance of Whitehead’s philosophy for shaping the business mind of the future. It is written for the Institute of Transactional Philosophy. I’ll be elaborating on these ideas at their annual Institute Study next month. Whitehead’s “Foresight,” Or How Philosophy Can Shape the Business Mind of the…
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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),…
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Cosmic History in Steiner and Whitehead (dialogue with Formscapes)
This was a really fun conversation with Formscapes (check out his content on YouTube). The dialogue begins with Whitehead’s ideas on hybrid prehension and how they might relate to Steiner’s cultivation of higher organs of spiritual perception. Whitehead appears to have been open to esoteric ideas, based on some evidence that he tried contacting his…
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Love and Death in the Gaianthropocene (prologue to my talk at Boom Festival)
Sharing some thoughts I’ll expand upon during my talk at Boom Festival next week. A transcript of this video: Next week, I’ll be in Idanha-a-Nova, Portugal to attend the Boom Festival. This festival is known for its psytrance, cultural offerings, and art. I’ve often heard it described as the European version of Burning Man, though I’m…
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In dialogue with David Abram
This conversation was recorded earlier this year in San Francisco. TRANSCRIPT This is the CIIS Public Programs Podcast, featuring talks and conversations recorded live by the Public Programs department of California Institute of Integral Studies, a non-profit university located in San Francisco on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Land. Author, cultural ecologist, and geo philosopher David…
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The Urgency of Social Threefolding in a World Still at War with Itself (draft article)
I understand that the threefolding idea is likely to upset people on all sides of the political spectrum. I am sharing the article at this stage to invite criticism, as my aim is not to antagonize but to dig below the superficialities that separate well-meaning people. … The Urgency of Social Threefolding in a World…
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Motor Oil and Panpsychism: Dialoging with Artist Johnna Arnold
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The Cosmological Context of the Origin of Life: Process Philosophy and the Hot Spring Hypothesis
I just sent a draft of this coauthored essay off to the editors. Astrobiologist Bruce Damer and I have been building toward this for a few years. I’m thrilled to have gotten it to this point, and looking forward to peer review! The essay will be featured in a book coming out of this conference…
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“Another End of the World is Possible” by Servigne, Stevens, and Chapelle
“How could we call ‘rational’ an ideal of civilization guilty of a forecasting error so massive that it prevents parents from leaving a habitable world to their children?”—Bruno Latour “The system is collapsing all around us just at the time when most people have lost the ability to imagine that anything else could exist.” —David Graeber…
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“How Everything Can Collapse: A Manual for our Times” by Servigne and Stevens
Pablo Servigne and Raphaël Stevens cover a lot of territory in this book. It is clear enough to anyone open to even consider reading it that climate change and other ecological catastrophes are already occurring and will only intensify. This book was published in French in 2015, well before the Covid-19 pandemic. While the origins of this virus…
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Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology Podcast
Had a great time chatting with my friend Dr. Sam Mickey about Whitehead’s philosophy of organism.
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Towards a Mycological Metaphysics
The mycologist Merlin Sheldrake recently published Entangled Life (2020). The book revels in the power of fungi to “make us question our categories,” thereby “[changing] the way we think and imagine” (14, 214). A few pages in, Merlin defines mycelium as a process, rather than a thing (6). I am inclined to agree. As a…
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Meta-Politics – a discussion with Layman Pascal on “The Integral Stage”
META-POLITICS – This is the first episode in a new conversation series between Layman Pascal and Matthew T. Segall. After touching on the deep strangeness of our time, and on the importance of finding a new post/metaphysical nexus for politics, religion, and ecology (a reintegration of the value spheres) Layman and Matt take up an…
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Dialoguing with Brent Cooper about ecosocialist politics and integral spirituality
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The Anthropocene: End Times/New Age
Sean Kelly and I delivered this a few weeks ago at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, CA at our philosophy program’s annual retreat.
Footnotes2Plato 