The Meaning of ‘Literal’: Thinking with Owen Barfield and Alfred North Whitehead The following essay is adapted from the transcript of this recording on our Urphänomen research guild Substack. It is a poetic commentary on Owen Barfield's essay in The Rediscovery of Meaning, "The Meaning of…

Metaphysics and Theology (a dialogue with Jacob Sherman) 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 joining us this afternoon for a dialogue on metaphysics and theology,…

The Cosmic Poetry of Whitehead’s Philosophy: Notes on my dialogue with Ingrid Rieser 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?”…

From Substance to Creativity, Or on the Modernity That Could Have Been 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…

Schelling & Whitehead inheriting Spinoza & Leibniz: God and the Modern World I've just finished Matthew Stewart's popular book The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World (2006). I was hoping to fill out my own understanding of the historical context…

Between the Speculative and the Prosaic: Life, Imagination, and Individuation Timothy Jackson and I went deep into descendental philosophy and aesthetic ontology, core concepts developed in my last book Crossing the Threshold (2023). Order a copy... I try to argue against both scientistic…

The Return of Form in Biology: Thinking Through Platonic Morphospace 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…

Jung, Simondon, and the Ontogenesis of Philosophy 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…

Remembering the Repressed with Carl Jung and Rudolf Steiner 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…

Beyond MAGA and Wokeshevik Ressentiment: Or how to avoid a civil war 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-jock rhetoric served only to…

Matter, Life, and Mind: Love as a Cosmological Power 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…

Birthing a New Cosmology (reflections on my dialogue with Alexander Beiner) 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 academia is thawing,…

Value at the Root: Cultivating Virtue in a Post-Truth World 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…

Facing the Face Within: Christopoetics in an Unfinished World in Process 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…

Notes from the Edge of the Ordinary 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 fire telling ghost stories at the edge of a new continent. In fact, we spent…

Cosmology, Democracy, and the Spirit of the Earth: Talking Process-Relational Political Theology with Tripp Fuller and Aaron Simmons 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…

Creativity and the Cross: Martinus, Bergson, and Whitehead in Dialogue A conversation with Pedro Brea and Karsten Jensen. 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…

Sancta Maria Magdalena 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 Way in the south of England that stretches from Winchester in Hampshire to…

Enjoyed being part of a *packed* final session of @ishpssb2025.bsky.social where we all witnessed @asmeincke.bsky.social make a compelling case to @kevinlala.bsky.social (in the room!) as to why he should explicitly adopt a process ontology for the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis! 🌱🐋

Romanticizing Evolution: Whitehead’s Organic Realism and the Return of Organic Science 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),…

Ever-Living Fire: Process Philosophy and Plasma Cosmology 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 Temple, Timothy E. Eastman, Barnard Carr,…

My Biophilosophy Conference Talk: Romanticizing Evolution with Schelling, Peirce, and Whitehead 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 "Cognizing Life," another…

A Biophilosophical Dialogue: Conversations at the Evolutionary Edge of the Life Sciences  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 about it at the Center…

Thinking the Holocaust with Schelling 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 Human Freedom (1809) is a text I have returned to time and again over the…

Three Academic Philosophers Sitting In A Tree: S-M-I-L-I-N-G 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 covered in this interview, and… Three Academic…

Infinite Intimate: Dialoguing with Marc Gafni and Zak Stein Matt Segall: Hi Marc, pleasure to meet you. Marc Gafni: Good to meet you, Matt. Matt Segall: Really, as I said in my email, it's an honor and it's humbling to get to talk to you and Zak. I've had a chance to spend a little time with Zak.…

Going live on Substack in 10 minutes open.substack.com/live-stream/...?

Whitehead’s Evolutionary Theology: Reflections on Process-Relational Panentheism Below is a lightly edited, somewhat abridged transcript derived from a conversation I had earlier today with Jack Roycroft-Sherry. The podcast should be posted on YouTube and elsewhere in about a month. The Polysemic…

In Defense of Participatory Platonism: Dialoging with Tim Jackson about Dan McQuillan’s Critique of Data Science as Machinic Neoplatonism Tim and I read McQuillan, Dan. Data Science as Machinic Neoplatonism. Philos. Technol. 31, 253–272 (2018). Key themes discussed: The critique of vulgar vs.…

Cast of One: Non-Dual Spirituality and the Diversity of Divinity (dialogue with Sami Chhapra) Sami Chhapra: Hi, Matt! Matt Segall: Hello, my friend. Sami Chhapra: Hello! Matt Segall: How are you doing this morning? Sami Chhapra: Good, thanks. How are you? Are you feeling better? Matt Segall: Yeah.…

It from Bit from Chit: Philosophizing at the Threshold of Artificial Intelligence (dialogue with Robert Prentner) 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…

Alchemy, Technology, and Individuation in Novalis, Simondon, and Jung (dialogue with Tim Jackson) 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 humanities,…

Imago Machinae: Made in the Image of Our Machines, Rethinking God, Technology, and Consciousness at Edge Esmeralda 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…

“Philosophy in the Age of Technoscience: Why We Need the Humanities to Navigate AI and Consciousness” 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? Great. So,…

Human Consciousness and Machine Intelligence 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 philosophical implications of AI and asked some great questions that elicited…

The Mind is Not the Brain, and the Brain is Not a Computer (Dialogue with Victoria Trumbull) 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: Yes! Matt: I wish I had had…

Rhythms of the One: Bergson on Plotinus (Dialogue with Pedro Brea and Jack Bagby) 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 of the deeper…

The Invariance of Variation: Or Why Metaphysics Must Become Ungrounded (Dialogue with Tim Jackson) Tim Jackson and I dialogue about a number of conversations we watched, including: Full Transcript of my dialogue with Tim: MATT SEGALL We didn't read anything, but we did listen to a whole bunch of…

Goals Go All the Way Down: Responding to the Deacon-Levin Dialogue 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 tensions may exist. I first met Deacon back in…

On this line of thought I'm going to be ordering this book by @footnotes2plato.substack.com soon! Very excited

And in other news... @evanthompson.bsky.social, Marcelo Gleiser and I have started a podcast! The Blind Spot. Science, philosophy and more but not the usual reductionist, triumphalist view. New ways of understanding the Universe with us in it. Episode 1 here. www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXXO...

The Essence of Evolution: Reflections on my dialogues with evolutionary biologist Tim Jackson about God and Eternal Objects  My friend Timothy Jackson and I have been engaged in a rich interdisciplinary dialogue for nearly four years now. Where does the time go? After a bit of an email…

Reality is a Process: Dialogue with Maitreyabandhu at the London Buddhist Centre 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, that's what we're doing.…

Prehensions, Propositions, and the Cosmological Commons (dialogue with Tevin Naidu) Tevin Naidu recently hosted me on his Mind-Body Solutions podcast. Below is the video and an edited and somewhat condensed transcript. Tevin: I have shaped today’s episode around your paper, “Physics Within the…

And now, a note on Bill Owens who, until this past week, was the executive producer of 60 Minutes. We’ll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.

"Each fact is more than its forms & each form participates throughout the world of facts. The definiteness of fact is due to its forms but the individual fact is a creature & creativity is the ultimate behind all forms, inexplicable by forms, & conditioned by its creatures." -AN Whitehead (PR 30)

An Anthropocosmic Approach to the Nature of Consciousness (My Talk at the UTOK Conference on Consciousness) “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…

"Connectedness is the essence of all things of all types ... Abstraction from connectedness involves the omission of an essential factor in the fact considered. No fact is merely itself." -- A.N. Whitehead, 'Modes of Thought'