October 2025 – Footnotes2Plato
4 posts published by Matthew David Segall during October 2025| Footnotes2Plato
4 posts published by Matthew David Segall during October 2025| Footnotes2Plato
This dialogue with my colleague Jake Sherman was recorded last week at our graduate program’s annual retreat. Below is a transcript: Matt: Welcome, everyone. Thanks for j…| Footnotes2Plato
You can listen to my conversation with Ingrid over on her Forest of Thought podcast, or read the revised transcript of my remarks below. We recorded this in Claremont, CA back in June at the “Is It Too Late?” conference on ecological civilization (you can watch my conference presentation on Whitehead’s advice for the business mind here). “Philosopher” is […]| Footnotes2Plato
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
Timothy Jackson and I went deep into descendental philosophy and aesthetic ontology, core concepts developed in my last book Crossing the Threshold (2023). I try to argue against both scientistic neutrality and dogmatic theology. I believe that any attempt at thinking the most general conditions of reality inevitably touches the spiritual. If it did not then natural science […]| Footnotes2Plato
The mystery of biological form has led some biologists, most prominently Michael Levin, back to Plato’s theory of Ideas. Levin is driven primarily by the surprising empirical findings of his lab. He argues that his results are best explained by reference to modes of causality not traceable to genetic histories or molecular components. While he has […]| Footnotes2Plato
We just wrapped the “Forever Jung” conference co-hosted by CIIS and the San Francisco Jung Institute. Tim couldn’t be with us in person, but I enjoyed his Zoom presentation on Jung and Simondon (video of his talk should be online soon; you can listen to mine here). Below are some LLM assisted notes on Tim’s exegesis of the […]| Footnotes2Plato
Judi: Hello, everybody. It’s my great pleasure to introduce Matt Segall. Matt is a PhD, a transdisciplinary researcher, philosopher, and teacher applying process-relational thought across the natural and social sciences. He is an associate professor in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness Department here at CIIS. His presentation is titled Remembering the Repressed with Jung and Steiner. Matt […]| Footnotes2Plato
Just came across this fun reply to my conversation with Pedro and Jack. Gentlemen, your enriching dialogue was as music to my ears and a Dionysian feast of the senses. By Zeus a lot has been covere…| Footnotes2Plato
"The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato." —Alfred North Whitehead| Footnotes2Plato
Adam/Knowledge-Ecology and I interviewed the integral philosopher William Irwin Thompson a while back. He recently posted a transcription of part of that encounter on his blog. Here’s a sampl…| Footnotes2Plato
Charlie Kirk’s assassination is a national tragedy, an unmistakable symptom of civic decay. Kirk’s murder deserves clear condemnation. But condemnation need not include canonization. Kirk’s shock-j…| Footnotes2Plato
This was recorded on Saturday, September 13, 2025 as part of the Frontiers of Knowledge event at Wheeler Opera House in Aspen, CO. Below is the recording and a lightly edited transcript. Good morning, everyone. I want to begin by thanking you all for allowing your curiosity to draw you here. We are engaged in a […]| 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
5 posts published by Matthew David Segall during August 2025| 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
Below is a draft of a chapter for a book on radical and process theologies. My contribution is based on a conversation I had with Peter Rollins earlier this year: Facing the Face Within: Christopoetics in an Unfinished World in Process By Matthew David Segall Ahead of turning to the body of this exposition, a […]| 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
A few weeks back, Jason/Immanent Transcendence asked me if I’d like to start a reading group with him this summer for Terrence Deacon’s new book. A few days later, I found out he’…| Footnotes2Plato
12 posts published by Matthew David Segall during May 2025| Footnotes2Plato
6 posts published by Matthew David Segall during July 2025| 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
A conversation with Pedro Brea and Karsten Jensen. LLM generated transcript below. Matt Segall: Hey, Karsten. Pedro Brea: Hey! Karsten Jensen: Hi, Matt! Hi, Pedro! I’m so happy you both agreed to have this conversation with me, and I really look forward to it. Matt Segall: Likewise. My exposure to Martinus was through you, Karsten, and I really appreciated […]| Footnotes2Plato
Last Tuesday, on Mary Magdalene’s Feast Day, I walked as a pilgrim with about a dozen others from Lewes train station to St. Peter’s Church in Firle along part of a historic route called the Old Wa…| Footnotes2Plato
7 posts published by Matthew David Segall during April 2025| Footnotes2Plato
A transcript of my talk at the Cognizing Life conference in Tübingen, Germany July 18, 2025. Other contributors at the Cognizing Life conference include: Benjamin Bembé (Witten), Bohang Chen (Zhejiang), Luke Fischer (Sydney), Andrea Gambarotto (Wien), Levi Haeck(Ghent), Craig Holdrege (Ghent, NY), Christoph Hueck (Tübingen), Philippe Huneman(Paris), Jan Kerkmann (Freiburg), Dalia Nassar (Sydney), Daniel Nicholson (Fairfax), Gregory Rupik (Toronto), Ulrich Schlösse...| Footnotes2Plato
Below is a transcript of my talk at the Process Philosophy, Plasma Cosmology, and Transpersonal Psychology meeting in Exeter, UK, which took place July 24-27, 2025. Other attendees include Robert T…| Footnotes2Plato
Below is my talk at the “Revitalizing Biophilosophy” conference I co-hosted earlier this week. It is based on a long paper I am working on both for this conference and for “Cogniz…| Footnotes2Plato
The conversation above occurred earlier today at the end of a two-day conference I cohosted with Spyridon Koutroufinis focused on the revitalization of biophilosophy. You can learn more a…| Footnotes2Plato
Originally written in 2013, I decided to slightly revise and repost the following reflections in light of current events. Schelling’s Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Hum…| Footnotes2Plato
Summary of my dialogue with Robert Prentner: I apologize for the sound quality, but there is a full transcript below! Robert began by explaining his shift from skepticism to engagement with AI. Ear…| Footnotes2Plato
Timothy Jackson: I really do think Simondon is becoming a very timely figure, and I think it’s probably underappreciated that his stated goal is to refound—have a novel axiomatic for the huma…| Footnotes2Plato
Introduction by Janine: All right, we’ve got two more talks this evening for the next hour. I’m really excited to welcome Matt Segall. He is a transdisciplinary philosopher, associate p…| Footnotes2Plato
I ended up giving a brief (10 minute) impromptu talk at Edge Esmeralda today, and this is a transcript of what came out: Hey, everyone, can you hear me okay if I speak at this level…| Footnotes2Plato
I sat down with my friend Kent Bye earlier today to discuss the intensifying entanglement of human consciousness with machine intelligences. He read my recent chapter on the philosop…| Footnotes2Plato
Matt: Hi, Victoria! How are you doing this morning? Victoria: Good. Well, it’s evening for me here in England. Matt: Right. Well, really lovely to connect with you. Victoria: Ye…| Footnotes2Plato
Our conversation felt like an improvised rhythm of tangents. But as I joked to Pedro, a perfect circle is made of infinitely many tangents. What might appear like digression is often an expression …| Footnotes2Plato
Above, Tim Jackson and I dialogue about a number of conversations we watched, including: Matt Segall: So this is going to be laid back. We didn’t read anything, but we did listen to a whole bunch o…| Footnotes2Plato
I’m grateful to Tevin Naidu for getting Deacon and Levin together. They only had 90 minutes but still managed to cover a lot of territory, including where they overlap and where some tens…| Footnotes2Plato
Slightly abridged transcript: Maitreyabandhu: So what we’re going to do this evening is have a conversation—obviously between Matt and me—about process philosophy and Buddhism. Really simply,…| 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
“What man most passionately wants is his living wholeness and his living unison, not his own isolate salvation of his ‘soul.’ Man wants his physical fulfillment first and foremost, since now, once …| Footnotes2Plato
Below is an audio version and edited transcript of my talk at Breaking Convention last week, hosted by the University of Exeter. Video should be available in the coming weeks. Peter Sjöstedt-…| Footnotes2Plato
My conversation with Dr. Brian Tierney traces a winding path through the imaginal dimensions of philosophy, beginning with the etheric imagination as the subtle medium through which connection betw…| Footnotes2Plato
Pedro Brea, Jack Bagby, and I decided to continue digging into Plotinus—specifically the Sixth Ennead—focusing on the relationship between the One and the Intellect, and between the World…| Footnotes2Plato
In this conversation, Mahon McCann invited me to reflect on what he referred to as a metaphysical revolution in natural science—gesturing toward the shift I and others have been tracking across dis…| Footnotes2Plato
This morning my friend Edward and I attended the Divine Liturgy of St. Basil the Great at Holy Trinity Cathedral in San Francisco, part of the Orthodox Church in America. We are cooking up another …| 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
Tim Jackson and I discussed Hartshorne’s article, “Whitehead’s Revolutionary Concept of Prehension.” Charles Hartshorne offers a detailed and insightful examination of Alfred…| 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 detailed summary of each of the nine seminar sessions that ran monthly from June 2021 through February 2022 focused on Dr. Timothy Eastman’s book, Untying the Gordian Knot: Process,…| 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
Michael, host of the podcast Third Eye Drops, invited me and the developmental biologist Michael Levin into dialogue. The video should be posted in the coming weeks, and I will share it here. I’ve …| 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 ChatGPT summary of my conversation with Roman (which I’ve reviewed for accuracy). You can find the exact transcript on Substack. Roman began by sharing his thoughts on a documentar…| Footnotes2Plato
I just finished listening (at x2 speed!) to Tyler Goldstein’s very long but also very insightful YouTube commentary (see above) responding to my recent dialogue with Curt Jaimungal (“What is …| Footnotes2Plato
Below I am sharing a couple of outputs from ChatGPT4o1 as a hopefully interesting way of summarizing my 3 hour conversation with Curt. In my prompt I asked it to create a very detailed narrat…| Footnotes2Plato
Transcript: Brendan Graham Dempsey: Hey? How’s it going? Brendan Graham Dempsey: Good to see you, too, man? Matt Segall: Yeah. Brendan Graham Dempsey: Who’s that? Matt Segall: This is Philo. Matt S…| Footnotes2Plato
Below is a summary of our conversation that I have heavily edited but that was originally generated by ChatGPT: As our conversation wound down, we both felt more prepared to think about the future.…| Footnotes2Plato
The following reflections are based on transcribed excerpts from a recent podcast that should appear at the end of the year and that I will be sure to share. Do I consider myself a Whiteheadian? On…| Footnotes2Plato
In October of 1922, Rudolf Steiner met with about 80 young people between the ages of 18 and 25 in Stuttgart to deliver a series of 13 lectures that have since been translated and published as Beco…| Footnotes2Plato
I greatly enjoyed my dialogue with Keith Frankish this morning. Thanks is due to Justin for getting us together. I’d say we had a fascinating conversation exploring process-rela…| 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
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…| 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
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 a…| Footnotes2Plato
A clinical psychologist and psychiatrist involved in MAPS’ phase 3 MDMA trials weigh in on the ethical and ontological challenges of psychedelic psychotherapy. Here is a rough transcript of t…| Footnotes2Plato
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 Independ…| Footnotes2Plato
Below are some excerpts and more or less stream of consciousness reflections upon reading the student notes from Rudolf Steiner’s so-called “Light Course” (GA 320; Dec 1919-Jan 1920). The number he…| Footnotes2Plato
