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: phenomenology

  • the nature of consciousness and what to do about it, a dialogue

    Here I am with Aaron Weiss, scholar of Tibetan Buddhism and doctoral candidate at CIIS, talking about the nature of consciousness and what to do about it. The first talk was filmed back in April; the second was filmed in September as a follow-up.

  • Fragments on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit

    Fragments on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit

    Below are a few reflections after teaching a module on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit this past week. My natural inclinations draw me to Schelling’s Naturphilosophie, but every time I return to Hegel’s writing after some time apart I start to worry I’ve allowed myself to fall into a caricatured understanding of his trickster-like dialectical method. I’m reminded of…

  • Diagramming German Idealism

    Diagramming German Idealism

    I’m teaching an online graduate course called Mind and Nature in German Idealism this semester. Below I am sharing several diagrams that I’ve developed to depict Kant’s transcendental method as it evolves through the first three critiques, as well as Fichte’s radicalization of the Kantian project. I hope to continue developing this diagram to elucidate Schelling, Goethe,…

  • response to R. Scott Bakker on transcendental phenomenology and BBT

    Anyone who posits some form of efficacy or constraint outside the natural order on the basis of some kind of interpretation of ‘experience’ has the same argumentative burden to discharge: How do you know? What justifies such an extraordinary (supernatural) posit?…What makes the question so pressing now is that their instrument, reflection, has finally found…

  • Evan Thompson on the “Stream” of Consciousness

    R. Scott Bakker and Evan Thompson recently debated the merits of neurophenomenology here: http://philosophyofbrains.com/2015/07/29/is-consciousness-a-stream.aspx. Check out Adam/Knowledge-Ecology’s post, where another comment exchange is taking shape…

  • Evan Thompson @ CIIS on Neuroscience, Meditation, and Self-Enaction

  • Phenomenology and Process Ontology: Evan Thompson, Merleau-Ponty, Whitehead, and the Growing Together of the Flesh of the World

    I had a friendly exchange yesterday with the cognitive scientist and philosopher Evan Thompson about his debate earlier this year with another cognitive scientist Owen Flanagan. The two distinguished thinkers disagreed about whether physicalism as currently understood can provide an adequate account of consciousness. I wanted to revisit several of the themes Evan and I…

  • Is Physicalism Enough? Can Consciousness be Naturalized? – Owen Flanagan in dialogue with Evan Thompson

    Check out the video from their exchange at Northwestern earlier this year. Below are some of my notes and reflections after watching… Owen Flanagan argues that physicalism is the only feasible view. Naturalism is the inference to the best explanation. Conscious states are brain states. At some point in evolutionary history, somehow dead matter came to…

  • John Sallis’ Logic of Imagination as an Example of Etheric Imagination

    Below is another section of my dissertation proposal. More to come… ……………………………………. John Sallis begins his Force of Imagination: The Sense of the Elemental (2000) by regretting the Husserlian phenomenological tradition’s tendency to subordinate imagination to pure perception in an effort to “[protect] the bodily presence of the perceived from imaginal contamination.”208 Sallis argues that…

  • This Thursday’s PCC Forum- “Goethe’s Color Theory” – A lecture by Prof. Fred Amrine

    For those who live in the Bay Area, the next PCC Forum (hosted by my partner Becca and I) will feature Prof. Fred Amrine, a Goethe scholar from the University of Michigan’s German department. The lecture is open to the public and will take place at the California Institue of Integral Studies (1453 Mission St., San Francisco,…

  • Thinking with Hegel: Preface to The Phenomenology of Spirit

  • Husserl and Schelling, from Phenomenology to Naturephilosophy

    A video by emblemOFbeing about Husserl‘s phenomenology as the final resolution of all antithetical schools of philosophy.   And my response questioning Husserl’s correlationism and suggesting Schelling’s geocentric realism:

  • Graham Harman’s Object-Oriented Ontology

    I’ve just finished part one of Guerrilla Metaphysics: Phenomenology and the Carpentry of Things, Harman’s treatise on the relationship between the phenomenology of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Lingis and his object-oriented approach to philosophy. He is motivated by a desire to direct our attention to the things themselves, the independently existing objects of the world. It…

  • Logos of the Lived Body: Remembering the Way Home

    Logos of the Lived Body: Remembering the Way Home   By Matthew Segall Fall 2009 Buddhist Philosophical Systems Prof. Steven Goodman     Introduction   “Embodiment is: emerging into this world of light and sound…confinement to a body as a constantly changing piece of luggage, always a surprise to look down and it has sprouted…

  • On the Matter of Life: Towards an Integral Biology of Economics

    On the Matter of Life: Towards an Integral Biology of Economics Table of Contents Preface Introduction: What is Life? I. The Irruption of Time II. Ancient Biology III. Modern Biology IV. Teleology as a Regulative Principle of Living Organization V. Autopoiesis: Teleology as Constitutive of Living Organization VI. Concrescence and Bodily Perception VII. Concrescence and Autopoiesis…

  • “Out of Our Heads” by Alva Noë

    It’s probably not news to most people that philosophers have a tendency to get stuck in their heads. This is especially true in the field of cognitive science, where for several decades the dominant paradigm has lead philosophers (and scientists) to look in the brain for evidence of thought and consciousness. The core metaphor guiding…

  • Unearthing the Earth: A Phenomenological Excavation

    Unearthing the Earth: A Phenomenological Excavation of our Being-on-the-Earth By Matthew Segall “Eco-phenomenology offers a methodological bridge between the natural world and our own, or rather the rediscovery of the bridge that we are and have always been but—thanks to our collective amnesia—have forgotten, almost irretrievably. It is not enough to disguise our forgetting; there…

  • Enactivism, Integral Theory, and 21st Century Spirituality

    The following is lifted from my old blog at Gaia.com, which has since shut down. Sorry of some hypertext doesn’t work! I first want to thank everyone for participating in this symposium. The intersection of integral spirituality and enactive cognitive science is, for whatever reason, one of my passions, and I couldn’t be more excited…

  • Phenomenology and Science

    Science (empirical observation coupled with logical deduction), as a way of thinking, has undoubtedly made more out of mankind than any other mode of thought in his historical arsenal. In both the material and mental spheres, man has used the knowledge and technology that he has gained from science to make many great practical advances.…