Yesterday in my history of Western philosophy course, where my students are reading Richard Tarnas’ Passion of the Western Mind (1991), I lectured on a couple of seventeenth century philosophers in an attempt to catch the nature of the shift that historians call “the Enlightenment.” I then connect their innovations to a couple of nineteenth and twentieth […]| Footnotes2Plato
I enjoyed dialoguing with my friend Alexander Beiner this morning. The recording will be published on Kainos soon. He asked whether I had a sense for whether the atheistic, secular orientation in a…| Footnotes2Plato
Context The following reflections grow out of my live dialogue with Bonnitta Roy about the metaphysics of value. She’ll be sharing the discussion in her pop-up school for those who subscribe. Here I wanted to offer some further reflections on what was stirred up in me. A few orienting points: First, we wanted our philosophical conversation to […]| Footnotes2Plato
Recapping my time in the twilight zone between physics and psi in Charlottesville, Virginia two weeks ago. I left the DOPS Psi Theory Meeting feeling like I’d been sitting around a camp f…| Footnotes2Plato
I joined Tripp and Aaron to discuss the changing role of religion in public life in our tumultuous political moment. We were discussing my lecture offering a Whiteheadian process cosmological response to Carl Schmitt’s critique of liberalism. “Between Earth and Empire: Cosmopolitical Democracy Beyond the Liberal Horizon“ When Tripp asked how a process philosopher might […]| Footnotes2Plato
Tevin Naidu recently hosted me on his Mind-Body Solutions podcast. Above is the video and below is an edited and somewhat condensed transcript. Tevin: I have shaped today’s episode around your pape…| Footnotes2Plato
This transcript is an abridged version of Orland and Matt’s conversation. For the full two hours, including dialogue with CIIS students, see the video at the bottom of this post. Abridged transcrip…| Footnotes2Plato
Monday musings on the necessity of history and its overcoming. Mythos is an indispensable method in metaphysics. Metaphysics only comes to life in the midst of philosophical dialogues, and so some…| Footnotes2Plato
Ruth Kastner and I first met several years ago in the context of a seminar series focused on plasma physicist and philosopher Timothy Eastman’s work. Ruth also participated in the “Metaph…| Footnotes2Plato
Below is a draft of my review of: BRIAN G. HENNING, JOSEPH PETEK, and GEORGE LUCAS, eds. The Harvard Lectures of Alfred North Whitehead (1925-1927): General Metaphysical Problems of Science.&n…| Footnotes2Plato
A near verbatim transcript: Matt Segall: Hey, Tim. Timothy Jackson: Hey, Matt. How are you? Matt Segall: Hanging in there, doing all right. Yeah. Matt Segall: Nice shirt. Timoth…| Footnotes2Plato
I picked up Roberto Unger’s book The Religion of the Future (2014) for the first time yesterday. On the back cover of his book, this excerpt is printed: Everything in our exis…| Footnotes2Plato
Two years ago, I sat down with the late philosopher and physicist, Wolfgang Smith, to discuss his novel approach to quantum physics and the need for a return to Platonic conceptions of reality. You…| Footnotes2Plato
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 17t…| Footnotes2Plato
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 o…| Footnotes2Plato
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 …| Footnotes2Plato
