Tag: Process philosophy
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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: Polycomputing in Biological Systems: Introduction of the…
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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: artificial intelligence and the increasing automation of human life the elemental agencies that technologies may be expressions of the cultivation of moral imagination as perception via the heart Rudolf Steiner’s cosmogony as articulated in Occult Science: An Outline the inevitability of loneliness on the spiritual path…
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Dying to be Born (Dialogue with Roman Campolo)
Roman and I sat down for another dialogue. Topics discussed this time include: anatman, evil, relevant novelty, death, the ontological argument for the existence of God and its discontents, and other such matters.
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Conference Update – Metaphysics and the Matter With Things: Thinking With Iain McGilchrist
Andrew Davis and I sat down with Iain McGilchrist to discuss our upcoming conference at CIIS in San Francisco, March 29-31. In-person tickets have already sold out, but online registration is still open. Learn more and register to attend the conference online at the Center for Process Studies webpage. Among other topics, we discuss Iain’s…
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The Process of Metaphysics and the Metaphysics of Process
Jim Rutt has invited me onto his podcast to discuss the meaning and importance of metaphysics (a.k.a., speculative philosophy). That conversation won’t happen for a couple months, so for now I’ll offer a few preliminary thoughts in response to his post above.I agree with him, of course, that metaphysics is unavoidable. But it needn’t be…
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Part 2 of my dialogue with Vervaeke and Henriques on Transcendent Naturalism
You can find part 1 of our conversation here. We spoke about the sacred, which we can discover in our relationships with one another, in art, and in our encounter with nature. I shared my attempt to recognize interiority in the cosmos, which I’ve referred to (drawing on the neoplatonic term) as the world-soul. I…
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Transcendent Naturalism: Dialoguing with John Vervaeke and Gregg Henriques
Here is the first of two conversations that I’ve recently recorded with John Vervaeke and Gregg Henriques as part of the “Transcendent Naturalism” series. Part two is available here. Transcendent Naturalism and Process Philosophy: The episode begins with some of my reflections on the “transcendent naturalism” that John and Gregg have been laying out in…
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Whitehead, God, and Eternal Objects (Dialoguing with Darren Iammarino)
Darren and I had an intense geek out session exploring some of Whitehead’s categoreal scheme. Key points include: The complex nature of eternal objects in Whitehead’s philosophy and the lack of consensus on the subject among scholars. The interaction between eternal objects and actual occasions, and how this relates to the primordial and consequent natures…
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Kant, Reality, Freedom: Dialoguing with Mahon McCann
Timestamps: The podcast begins with an introduction and a discussion on the “Kantian Divide,” exploring how this divide has shaped modern philosophy. This segment delves into Kant’s concept of epistemological dualism, examining its implications and how it influences our understanding of knowledge and reality. The conversation shifts to the importance of imagination in Kant’s philosophy,…
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In Dialogue with Gary Herstein on War Machine Podcast
Matt Baker invited me back on the War Machine podcast to chat with Gary Herstein, coauthor with Randall Auxier of The Quantum of Explanation: Whitehead’s Radical Empiricism (Routledge, 2017). We discussed Gary’s recent blog post about the uses and abuses of Whitehead’s God concept: “Happy-Touchy-Feely-God talk”. I tried to push back a bit as I…
