Field Notes from a Mass Hallucination: A Process Philosopher Goes Phishing for the World-Soul

I went to my first Phish concert on Saturday night at Dick’s in Denver. I came in peace, was torn to pieces and made whole again once or twice, and by the end concresced into someone new. I also did some anthroposophical research. I should explain. I don’t mean any ordinary sort of research, the sort which separates science from art and art from nature, as if nous, techne, and physis were ever found apart.

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A History of Life from Plato and Descartes to Darwin and Lovelock (My Frontiers of Knowledge talk in Aspen, CO)

I was back in Aspen, CO this past weekend for the second annual Frontiers of Knowledge event at Wheeler Opera House. I presented alongside David Peña-Guzman (who you’ll hear in the last few minutes asking me a question about artificial intelligence). All the talks should be available in the coming weeks on the Frontiers of Knowledge YouTube page. 

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This seminar was hosted by Joe Lightfoot here in Chiang Mai.  In the talk, I reprised some ideas I shared in a post a few years ago: Plato and Platonism: Dividing the Line and Completing the Circle Plato and Platonism: Dividing the Line and Completing the Circle I approach Plato not just to offer a scholarly treatment of his arguments but as a teacher of how to live and die as a human being.

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Between the Cross and the Bodhi Tree

The audio is available above, but it is poor quality. Thanks to Joe Lightfoot for hosting us! It was a real joy to meet Michel Bauwens in person for the first time at this event. Slightly edited transcript:  All right—hello, everyone. I’m going to share something that’s very personal, but also transpersonal. I’ll be talking about the tension between Christianity and Buddhism within myself, if indeed there is a self.

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Between Matter and the One: Exploring Plotinus’ Large Logos Model

Max Wade: My dissertation was on Plotinus’ ontology of artifacts, basically looking at Plotinus as a philosopher of technology. It was a fun project. It opens up a lot of interesting questions, and we’ll have a chance to talk about some of that, or just other things in general. Plotinus is my specialty. I’m primarily a historian of philosophy, though I’m also interested in contemporary metaphysics.

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Why Natural Science Would Be Better Off Without Physicalist Metaphysics

I enjoyed my chat with James Faulk the other day. Here’s the video: I had a mustache for like 5 minutes a few years ago. I have had to accept that online the stache may be restacked forever. Anyway. Here’s a recap of what was basically a long argument about why natural science is not equivalent to physicalism. Science Is Not Physicalism…

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What is the grass?: Response to Arthur Haswell’s Pan-Pathism

When I turn away from world-weariness, the child in me finds room to wonder, What is the grass? Is it the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven? Is it a scented gift designedly dropped by God? Or, is it the beautiful uncut hair of graves? Walt Whitman was a cosmic optimist, but he was not naïvely so.

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On Genesis: Toward a New Evolutionary Theology

The Rosy Crux The central issue is not simply whether Hegel is right, or whether we can derive a more empirically grounded metaphysics than absolute idealism from Darwin’s humble hypothesis of descent with variation. I agree with Charles Taylor that Hegel’s treatment of historical evolution is “disastrous.” By my lights what we are in urgent need of today is the healthy progeny of a happy marriage between the best of absolute idealism and radical empiricism.

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The Varieties of Materialism: Matter as the Play of Form

Following up on my contribution to the Latour/AIME reading group, I wanted to say a bit more about the confused concept called "matter." There are many varieties of materialism, but for the sake of time, let's follow Robert Jackson by dividing them up into two basic categories: 1) that variety of materialism which understands matter as some…

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Raymond Ruyer, or The Embryogenesis of Philosophy (dialogue with Pedro Brea and Jack Bagby)

Transcript: Dialogue on Raymond Ruyer with Jack and Pedro Matt: Well, I had already been reading some Raymond Ruyer—is that how you pronounce it? Jack: Yeah. Matt: Close enough? Okay. I guess it was you, Jack, who first suggested him a while ago because of my interest in Whitehead. I finally got around to it. Maybe a month ago, I started reading his book on cybernetics.

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A Serpent in the Garden of Clarity: On Whitehead’s Not So Casual Use of “Casual”

In our last Whitehead Research Project editorial board meeting, a very interesting issue came up as the critical edition of Science and the Modern World moves toward publication. It turns out that the position of a single “s” opens a huge can of metaphysical worms. In Science and the Modern World, there is a passage where an “isolated system” is described as free from “casual contingent dependence” upon the rest of the universe.

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Intelligent Design Meets Process Philosophy: My dialogue with Stephen Meyer 

It was rather serendipitous that a media agent representing Stephen Meyer reached out to me several weeks ago, since the Discovery Institute’s work popularizing intelligent design had just been brought up in a comment exchange I was having. The agent shared a link to the new film, The Story of Everything, which is based on Meyer’s book Return of the God Hypothesis…

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Mind-at-Large: In Dialogue with Iain McGilchrist, Ed Kelly, and Curt Jaimungal

An LLM summary based on the transcript of my panel discussion with Ed Kelly and Iain McGilchrist, moderated by Curt Jaimungal, at last week's Mind-at-Large conference. Videos of the event will be posted soon! Curt Jaimungal opened by cutting past preliminaries and asking the most basic metaphysical question possible: “What do you all think exists? Like what is your fundamental ontology?” He directed the question first to Iain McGilchrist, then to Ed Kelly, then to Matt Segall.

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Human Consciousness in a Cybernetic Age: Or Why Logos is not a Loom

The following is a transcript of my talk last week at our Mind-at-Large Project’s inaugural conference, “A New Dawn.” Video of all the talks, including this one, will be available in a few weeks on the Mind-at-Large website. Buenos días, everyone. I’m here at the Casa Oasis Guest House in Mérida, on the ancestral lands of the Yucatec Maya, whose descendants continue to live here on the Yucatán Peninsula.

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My Responses at Mind-at-Large Project’s “A New Dawn” Panel: Personhood, Participation, Imagination, and Mystical Theism

A recap of my remarks on Day 2’s Mind-at-Large Conference Plenary Panel (also featuring Ed Kelly and Iain McGilchrist, moderated by Curt Jaimungal). I repeat the questions when relevant so you will know what Curt asked. 1. Well, I am tempted to take this in a direction that might sound a little idealistic, but when you ask what is real, I want to begin with human personhood as the most basic reality, at least the one most relevant to beings like us who would ask such a question.

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Pealing Back the Veils

LLM transcript of my chat with Seekers Mindtalks. Chapter 1: Exploring Reality and Consciousness Raj: What if the way you experience reality isn't reality itself? What if this constant feeling of disconnect, the low-level anxiety, the sense that something's missing isn't modern life, but just a misunderstanding of who you are? In this episode of Seekers Mind Talks, I sit down with Matt Segall, a visionary philosopher known for his work on consciousness and process philosophy, to explore why, despite more knowledge than ever, we feel more disconnected than ever.

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In Defense of Eternal Objects and God: On What Abides in Whitehead’s Process Philosophy

Was there ever a time before metaphysics? Will there be a time after it? Pre and post, a priori and a posteriori, the here and now and the infinite Beyond: always and everywhere the opposites are meeting and making one another! We can strive to grow out of puerile metaphysics, but the claim to have transcended metaphysics entirely is not a sign of philosophical maturity.

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Transcending the Culture War by Recovering Participatory Theism (Dialogue with Nathan Hawkins)

Nathan Hawkins and I just finished a podcast recording (above) that I hope will contribute to amplifying the deeper notes that are still just barely audible beneath the surface noise of the culture war. We both agree that dialogue must replace partisan shouting, and that philosophy has an important public role to play in helping to bring such a shift about.

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How does it feel to be on your own?: Society and the Modern World

A Whiteheadian Reading of Hartmut Rosa and Charles Taylor

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How does it feel to be on your own?: Society and the Modern World – A Whiteheadian Reading of Hartmut Rosa and Charles Taylor

We finished our Hartmut Rosa reading group this morning (recordings are available here). I am grateful for Tripp Fuller’s invitation to study this text. It was my first time reading Rosa, and I found his sociological intervention convergent with many of my own ways of thinking. As I’ll relate below, Tripp and I had no trouble finding connections to Whitehead’s cosmology.

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Sacred Swimmer

I came to this cityat the edge of the continentas so many dreamers before mefollowing the westward winds of timelike the gold-glinting eyesof greedy men who mistook the ocean’s endless horizonfor a promise made only to them.I was destined by a different orenot yet hardened but still molten to the core,

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On God, Absolute Freedom, & the Post-Metaphysical Turn

Revisiting My Dialogue with Matt Segall On Michael Brooks & CIIS

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Whitehead on the Aim of Philosophy

YouTube video by Rahul Sam

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The Logical Animal – Earth to Humanity: Put Down Your Maps

The frogs are croaking on my left down in the Eel River, and on my right is the low roar of semis on the 101. This is nearly my last night in Humboldt County. I came out to the hot tub one last time to take in the night sky. It happened to be clear tonight, for a moment. The fog has already rolled in, but I was able to sneak a few prayers through to our astral ancestors before they vanished.

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Thinking Things with Graham Harman: Whitehead’s Way Beyond Philosophies of Human Access

Rahul Samaranayake has had me on his podcast a few times over the years, including an especially generative conversation with Peter Rollins last year. This time he invited me and Graham Harman into dialogue. Below is the transcript.  Whitehead popping Kant's phenomenal bubble. RAHULIt’s funny. I was reading some of your articles, Graham. You mention Whitehead quite a lot.

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Thinking with rocks.

These rocks, stacked by human hands along a canyon creek near Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, are not simply aggregates or piles. Neither are they simply the freely created artwork of humans. The left-hand stack of eleven rocks (if you count earth) towers toward the sky, together with its local and cosmic ecologies achieving the status of a self-organizing, living being.

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Poetics of Life and Death: Dialoguing with Andreas Weber

Matt: Hi, Andreas. Good morning. Andreas: Good morning. Sorry to keep you waiting. Matt: That’s quite all right. Andreas: I was late anyway, and then Zoom decided it needed to do a new install, like in the old Windows times. Matt: Of course. Always another update. Andreas: Exactly. It’s not the first time it’s happened, but it always seems to happen when you’re already late and trying to get into a call, and you have no choice.

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