Tag: Process philosophy
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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…
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Becoming the World-Body
You are not your brain, and you’re not just your body either, at least not if you think of your body as just what’s encased within the skin. To really understand what’s going on inside your body, you would need to understand its history, which is as old as the universe. Understanding the body means…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Paradigm Shifts, Human Experience, Panpsychism, and Psychedelics (dialoguing with Jack Roycroft-Sherry)
Jack and I discussed a number of topics, beginning with how science and philosophy might be demarcated. I suggest that science, born from natural philosophy, relies on metaphysical presuppositions and requires philosophical foundations to justify its knowledge claims. Philosophy seeks the general and universal, while science specializes in isolated regions of inquiry. Both are valuable…
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Between Phenomenology, Science, and Process Ontology (dialogue with James Schofield)
In this video, James Schofield and I have detailed discussion about process philosophy, with a focus on our respective backgrounds, interests, and scholarly work. James begins by introducing his academic journey, highlighting his studies in anthropology, consciousness, and philosophy, which led to his book on Errol Harris. He shares his dissatisfaction with traditional anthropology and psychology, which propelled…
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Philosophy of/as Information in Simondon, Floridi, and Whitehead (dialogue with Tim Jackson)
We discuss Ashley Woodward’s paper on Simondon: “Philosophy of/as Information” Here’s a ChatGPT4o summary: Matt greeted Tim, sharing about the warm weather in Oakland and the ongoing Independence Day celebrations with fireworks already exploding despite it being 4 o’clock in the afternoon. They had both read Luciano Floridi’s work on Philosophy of Information and Ashley…
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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…
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Radio 2050 Interview about Process Philosophy
Alanna Goldsmith from Radio 2050 interviewed me last year in the hopes that I might introduce process philosophy to a general audience. You can listen to the episode (interspersed with musical interludes) by following this link: https://radioparadise.com/episode/matt-segall; or read the transcript of my remarks below. Alanna Goldsmith: Today we’ll be taking a bit of a philosophical…
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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:
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Alfred North Whitehead: Ideas and Influence
Below is an article I’ve just finished that will eventually be translated into German and published in The Whitehead Handbook (Verlag).
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Generalizing the Function: Process Ontology and Free Energy
Summary by ChatGPT4 based on the YouTube transcript: This conversation between Tim and Matt revolves around their philosophical exploration of process philosophy, the Free Energy Principle, and Simondon’s philosophy of individuation, with a particular focus on how these philosophical frameworks intersect with personal health experiences and broader biological and environmental contexts. The discussion starts with…
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“In Defense of Truth as Participation,” my McGilchrist Conference Presentation
First, here’s a clip of Iain McGilchrist’s impromptu remarks on the opening night of our “Metaphysics and the Matter With Things” conference (which happened to be Good Friday). Next, my welcome and opening comments about the conference (partial transcript to follow): Welcome to CIIS. I’m Matt Segall. I’m an associate professor here in the Philosophy,…
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Jim Rutt Show on the Metaphysics of the Origin of Life
Here’s a link to Episode 232 of the Jim Rutt Show, wherein I join Jim to discuss the metaphysical presuppositions and cosmological implications of the Hot Spring Hypothesis of the origin of life. You can find a PDF of the chapter that Jim and I are discussing here: “The Cosmological Context of the Origin of Life: Process…
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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…
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Fantasy, Science, and Beauty in an Evolving Universe (dialogue with Tim Jackson)
Tim and I continued our dialogue about the Free Energy Principle and Whitehead’s cosmology. I began by recounting a short video of Karl Friston saying all human perception is fantasy. From there we discussed FEP’s instrumentalism, the Peirce-James pragmatist difference, and explored the implications of evolution as a general principle extending beyond just biology. We also…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Artificial Intelligence, Moral Imagination, and Spiritual Evolution (dialogue with Roman Campolo)
Roman and I had another wide-ranging dialogue. Topics traversed include:
Footnotes2Plato 