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: materialism

  • 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,…

  • 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…

  • Theories of Everything Podcast: Process Philosophy from Plato to Whitehead and Beyond (Dialogue with Curt Jaimungal)

    Below I am sharing a couple of outputs from ChatGPT4o1 as a hopefully interesting way of summarizing my 3 hour conversation with Curt.  In my prompt I asked it to create a very detailed narrative summary of the transcript written from the perspective of a 23rd century natural philosopher who had lived through the paradigm…

  • Becoming Michael’s Companions: Reflections on the Age of the Consciousness Soul

    In October of 1922, Rudolf Steiner met with about 80 young people between the ages of 18 and 25 in Stuttgart to deliver a series of 13 lectures that have since been translated and published as Becoming the Archangel Michael’s Companions: Rudolf Steiner’s Challenge to the Younger Generation. Below are my fragmentary comments on the text. Steiner…

  • 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…

  • Dialogue with Evan Thompson about “The Blind Spot”

    The Theōros Project hosted philosopher Evan Thompson at CIIS for a dialogue with me about his new book (with Adam Frank and Marcelo Gleiser) The Blind Spot: Why Science Cannot Ignore Human Experience (2024).  We covered a lot of territory:

  • Reading Whitehead on Evolutionary Theory (Dialogue with Tim Jackson)

    Tim Jackson and I just read Whitehead’s 1929 book The Function of Reason together. Here is our discussion: I begin with historical context about two important biologists who influenced Whitehead at Harvard: Lawrence Henderson and William Wheeler. Henderson, in his 1913 book The Fitness of the Environment, argued for continuity between cosmic and biological evolution, suggesting…

  • Whitehead’s Philosophy of Science

    According to Susanne Langer, who was one of Whitehead’s students at Radcliff in the 1920s, every great philosophical scheme “must, in its original form, be regarded as a myth[1], which sets forth freshly and naively some new point of view [and] reveals new opportunities for rational construction” (The Practice of Philosophy, p. 178). Whitehead understood…

  • Quantum Physics and Process Metaphysics (dialogue with Flavio Lanfanconi)

    A transcript of our conversation: Dr. Flavio Lanfranconi: Good to see you. Great. I was just trying to keep up with everything you’ve posted recently. It’s difficult, but… Matt Segall: Sorry about that. Dr. Flavio Lanfranconi: Never mind, it’s great. I was just finishing your last conversation with… Matt Segall: Roman. Dr. Flavio Lanfranconi: Roman. Yep, exactly. I’m bad with…

  • Evolution as a Universal Learning Process

    “Meaning arises out of the most fundamental dynamics of the physical world: energy and information…[I]t is precisely via the thermodynamic forces driving cosmic evolution as a whole that meaning evolves into more complex biological and social registers such as we experience as conscious agents…[M]eaning is a particular kind of information—namely, information linking entities with their…

  • Exploring the Physics of the World-Soul (dialogue with Sam Al-Qattan)

    Below is a rough transcript of my dialogue with Sam.  Sam: Do you mind just giving a definition? What is mechanistic materialism?  Matt: Mechanistic philosophy emerges in the 16th and 17th centuries in Western Europe and it’s really a rather sharp divergence from the sort of worldview that had characterized human societies for thousands of…

  • Discussing “The Blind Spot” with Gregg Henriques

    Here is a rough transcript of some of my comments to Gregg: I think this book speaks to both of us for obvious reasons. The work you’ve been engaged in with your UTOK system to bring together the humanities and the natural sciences in a more comprehensive, systematic perspective, and any of the dialogues you’ve…

  • Evolution as Cosmic Cognition (dialogue with Richard Watson)

    Matt Segall: Well, where do I want to begin? Richard, I know that you do a lot of work on evolutionary theory and evolution as a learning process or a cognitive process. While you have a lot of respect, if that’s the way I can put it, for Darwin’s theory of natural selection, it seems not…

  • Toward a Goethean Physics: Reading Steiner’s “Light Course” (GA 320) through Whitehead’s Organic Realism

    Below are some excerpts and more or less stream of consciousness reflections upon reading the student notes from Rudolf Steiner’s so-called “Light Course” (GA 320; Dec 1919-Jan 1920). The number headings correspond to each of his lectures. These notes are helping me prepare for a presentation next month at MysTech’s “Mysteries of Light” conference.  1. Rudolf Steiner spent…

  • 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…

  • The Future Impact of Artificial Intelligence

    On Wednesday evening (March 13) at Grace Cathedral, was in dialogue with the Rt. Rev. Dr. Marc Handley Andrus, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of California; Brian Behlendorf, CTO of Open Wallet Foundation; and Zann Gill, author, former research scientist on collaborative intelligence at NASA, and a founder of Generative AI Lab & Library in an effort to explore the future impact…

  • Descendental Philosophy and the Confrontation with Nihilism (dialogue with Roman Campolo)

    Roman has been reading my book Crossing the Threshold. In this dialogue, we explore Whitehead’s mathematical imagination, theory of perception, and attempt to overcome the nihilism that Nietzsche marked out as a pathological transition stage. Watch on YouTube for timestamps. ChatGPT summary: 📘 Perception and Reality: Perception is not merely passive reception through the senses but…

  • Processing Process Ontology (dialogue with Bonnitta Roy and Gregg Henriques)

    Bonnie, Gregg, and I met to discuss the interplay between process philosophy and UTOK. We begin by unpacking the status of metaphysics vis à vis science in order to head off some common misconceptions. I make the point that physics has been without a widely accepted metaphysical underpinning since the quantum and relativistic revolutions of the early 20th century. Physics…