Tag: nature
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Thoughts on William James, Pure Experience, and Materialism
Idealism and panpsychism seem to me to make easy friends in the debate against materialism. They both affirm that consciousness or experience or mind in some generic sense are intrinsic to Nature. There are important differences between idealism and panpsychism, of course, and there are a variety of ways one can be an idealist or…
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How is Natural Science Possible?: Whitehead’s first lecture at Harvard
I read Whitehead’s first lecture at Harvard, delivered in September 1924, which focuses on the metaphysical possibility of modern natural science. This lecture was just published in Process Studies 48.2. Here’s a link to the interview of Lynn Margulis I mention at the beginning.
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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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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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![Time and Experience in Physics and Philosophy [draft]](https://matthewsegall.files.wordpress.com/2019/02/cosmic-clock-in-space-29764-e1549938074709.jpg?w=1000)
Time and Experience in Physics and Philosophy [draft]
Below is the introduction of paper I presented at a conference in L’aquila, Italy in April 2019. The conference aimed to revisit important philosophical issues related to the famous 1922 debate between Einstein and Bergson. HERE is the conference site (it is in Italian, so you’ll need to ask Google to translate it for you).…
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The Schelling & Hegel Tapes
I’m sharing some clips from a live video conference session a few days ago with students in my online course this semester, “Mind and Nature in German Idealism.”
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Schelling’s Philosophy of Freedom
The following was originally written in 2012 as a chapter in a short book titled Philosophy in a Time of Emergency. It feels relevant given our current political situation, so I’m sharing it again. The Nature of Human Freedom By Matthew D. Segall The Naturphilosoph comes to understand “Nature as subject.”1 This is not the Kantian…
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Fall 2018 Online Course: “Mind & Nature in German Idealism”
I’ll be offering this course for the second time in Fall 2018 at CIIS.edu (the semester runs from late August through mid-December). Special students and auditors are welcome to enroll! Email me at msegall@ciis.edu for more information about registration.
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Mind and Nature in German Idealism: A Spring Course at CIIS
There’s still a few weeks left to enroll in my spring course at CIIS.edu as an auditor or special student. Mind and Nature in German Idealism will start on January 17th and run until May 8th. Email me if you are interested and I can share the syllabus and/or enrollment instructions (msegall@ciis.edu).
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Mind and Nature in German Idealism, a graduate course
I’m very excited to teach a 10-week online course at CIIS next semester (Spring 2017, running from Jan – Mar) called Mind and Nature in German Idealism. The course includes readings and lectures on Kant, Fichte, Goethe, Hegel, and Schelling. Note that you do not need to be enrolled in a graduate program at CIIS in…
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2015 Whitehead Conference Poster – “Seizing an Alternative: Towards an Ecological Civilization”
More about the conference, and my track, can be found HERE and HERE.
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Emerson and Whitehead: Towards a Transcendentalist Kosmopolitics
Recorded on Monday, Oct. 28, 2013 at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, CA.
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Reflections on Bruno Latour’s “An Inquiry into Modes of Existence,” Ch. 4: Learning to Make Room
I’m participating in a reading group with about 40 other scholars focusing on Bruno Latour‘s recently published book An Inquiry into Modes of Existence: An Anthropology of the Moderns (2013). This week it is my turn to comment on Ch. 4, which is titled “Learning to Make Room.” I’m going to cross-post my comments here,…
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The Cosmic Body by Alan Watts
Let’s spend some time with Alan Watts. I recommend a decent dose of sour diesel just prior to pushing play. So then, is it true? Is the modern idea of consciousness–the so-called “me,” my “I,” the “ego”–a hallucination, a sort of muscle knot inside our forehead in sorry need of a meditative massage? Is our…
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Imagining Nature with Schelling and Whitehead
Schelling and Whitehead were speculative philosophers. This appellative, like that of metaphysician or theologian, may carry with it certain baggage that those of a skeptical or positivist bent are wont to do without. But aside from those epochal moments when thinkers are suddenly inspired by speculative imagination, or by the break through of concept creation,…
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Panpsychism and Its Emergent Discontents
Several of us got into a discussion on my FaceBook page regarding panpsychism and emergentism. On some accounts, if a philosopher rejects dualism and so desires to ontologically integrate what common folks normally call mental with what natural scientists understand to be material, her only option is to develop either a panpsychist or an emergentist…
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Reflections on Deleuze’s Engagement with Natural Science in D&R
In chapter V of Difference and Repetition, “The Asymmetrical Synthesis of the Sensible,” Deleuze engages with the various scientific theories of 19th and 20th century thermodynamics, not by identifying his fictions with scientific facts, but by detonating the philosophical idea of “intensive depth” in range of the qualitative extensity studied in terms of the scientific…
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Reflections on “The Function of Reason” (1929) by Alfred North Whitehead
“The function of Reason,” says Whitehead, “is to promote the art of life” (4). Reason thereby becomes primarily an aesthetic concern, a matter of appetition, and of the appetition of appetition with “emphasis upon novelty” (20). Reason is not simply the art of surviving, but of living well, and living better. If some degree of…
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Discussing Bruno Latour’s Gaian Political Theology
Footnotes2Plato 