Post Kant Matt Seagall
hi-lights
that he tried to as I I think we'll get into as we move forward here he tried to limit human knowledge
in order to leave room for Freedom which is basically a paraphrase of what he says in the preface uh to the critique
of pure reason and I try to draw on um Alfred North Whitehead and Friedrich
shelling to cross the threshold as I put it beyond the limits of knowledge that Kant
erected in his transcendental approach to philosophy one way of thinking about
what that threshold is is to think about sense experience sensory experience as
Kant understood it and uh you know drawing on Whitehead and showing I try
to suggest that the construal of our sensory experience offered by Kant and
not just Kant but other modern philosophers that he was in dialogue with particularly David Hume that this
construal of our sensory experience is uh probably
incomplete and in need of some amendments and as amended uh I think we
shelling to cross the threshold as I put it beyond the limits of knowledge that Imma Kant
erected in his transcendental approach to philosophy one way of thinking about
what that threshold is is to think about sense experience sensory experience as
Kant understood it and uh you know drawing on Whitehead and showing I try
to suggest that the construal of our sensory experience offered by Kant and
not just Kant but other modern philosophers that he was in dialogue with particularly David Hume that this
construal of our sensory experience is uh probably
incomplete and in need of some amendments and as amended uh I think we
can um re-articulate an epistemology or a way of knowing that would not be limited by
um our sense perception of spatially arrayed surfaces as it were
but both Whitehead and
shelling reject the idea that our most primordial or basic form of experience
uh is just sense experience in this way that I've just defined they think that we
actually have a form of experience which Whitehead calls um bodily reception as opposed to sense
perception he also refers to it as perception in the mode of causal
efficacy so what that means in layman's terms is that our perception through our our bodies is
rooted in these um causal vectors which don't really respect the skin boundary
that there are in Whitehead's terms feeling vectors that are sort of
vibrating into us from the environment and vibrating back out of us to alter
that environment and so crossing the threshold means coming to recognize this deeper form of perception that puts us
back in touch with the natural world around us in a way that Kant to did not think was possible
how's that yeah this deeper form of perception would sort of take for
granted that we are embedded and a part of nature as a part as opposed to something put inside of it trying to
analyze it or trying to find an objective Viewpoint um to stand outside of it is that kind of a fair way to think about that
which he says we have two forms of intuition spatial and temporal intuition
and spatial intuition is uh our outer sense
um and temporal intuition would be our inner sense and it's in const treatment
of space and time right as our outer and inner intuitions of the world around us
that he says we don't you know we don't learn about space and time empirically as if uh by coming into contact with a
bunch of uh extended objects in space that endure through time that we gradually just kind of come to abstract
these ideas of space and time he says know that they're they're pre-installed right which is to say they're
transcendental they're not empirical transcendental here is another way of referring to what
um how our experience is structured prior to any particular experience that
we have right so it's not space and time for Khan or not something we learn about through experience there's something
that we bring to experience uh that we always already are shaping our experience through
um than what when then what Kant believed uh for Kant right space and time or something provided by the
13:59
subject and what I want to do in this book is say no space and time or something uh achieved by a community of
14:09
subjects right and so one way of understanding how Whitehead
14:15
um takes up kant's philosophy and and expands it and in some ways cosmologizes
14:21
it is what Kant thought was only true of human subjects uh Whitehead says is uh
14:27
true of subjects in a much more General sense so you know people who listen to
14:33
our prior conversations Might Recall um that Whitehead is a pan experientialist uh which is to say he thinks that
14:41
experience in some form um to some degree goes all the way down
14:48
right and to exist is to experience so whether we're talking about electromagnetic radiation or uh stars
14:56
and galaxies or single cells plants animals and human beings there's some form of experience
15:03
um that is just part of what it means to exist as an entity
and so what Whitehead basically says is um subjects of various sorts
um with different forms of experience are cooperating with one another and
relating with one another so as to bring forth what physicists know and you know
can measure in various ways as space and time um and that what we experience just in
our everyday um you know attempt to navigate the world as space and time is similarly
this achievement by a whole Cosmic Community uh of of subjectivities right
and so it's breaking us out of what I think is ultimately a a solipsistic or
kind of ego enclosed uh perspective that Kant leaves us with
breaking out of that to to uh step into a more
cosmocentric uh orientation right to put the human being as you were saying back uh in touch seamlessly with with the natural world out of which we come y
right and you can you can see the various ways that Khan's philosophy has been carried forward
um in the Contemporary world I mean so much of um cognitive neuroscience and psychology
takes this this sort of point of view even if they're not as strict about the
underlying philosophical principles the idea that the Mind plays a constructive role
um in our perception of the world is um you know impossible to just dismiss
right and so um but what I what I'm trying to do is uh as Whitehead would
put it transcend and and include what what Kant is suggesting and so
um what I call descendental realism or um descendental philosophy is not the
antithesis of uh transcendental idealism um it's I would hope more of a a
synthesis that's allowing us to restore you know a kind of what you might call a
naive realism that preceded Kant uh to if that's the thesis and kant's critical
idealism or transcendental idealism is the antithesis then descendental
philosophy I hope is a kind of synthesis um a more mature realism as it were (side note: Descendental realism inquires after the necessary and universal conditions of actual rather than merely possible experience. It continues ..)
their time on the deductions and Whitehead's method of philosophy and I'm
I'm a whiteheadian right like I I don't think he's right about everything but I I think
um in terms of the best we can do integrating the history of philosophy and all of contemporary science and
human aspirations um whether you know you think of those
as spiritual aspirations or political aspirations uh social aspirations
I think Whitehead is just you know for me um gets me the furthest in these inquiries
and so um his method is is of philosophizing is
not um narrowly analytic right he's not trying to prove anything he's rather
trying to assemble a scheme of of ideas and what he means by ideas is not
something abstract but um a kind of lens that we can wear to see the world
differently right and so when he is engaging in philosophical assemblage
he's offering us different metaphysical equipment um you know scientists use telescopes
and microscopes and particle colliders and so on as their experimental equipment
um the metaphysician uses language language is the instrument
that we're experimenting on here and uh language isn't just um
and so um his method is is of philosophizing is
you know abstract uh collections of definitions and so on
languages is a is a poetic activity right it's it's something um that's very much intimately
interwoven with our perception of the world that you know when we we can see by studying different cultures
um the words they have for different colors for example um or different aspects of their local
environments u
you're saying about AI like you can see where this is going and I think that also entails the need the necessity of
finding deeper and you know go through scientific material imperialism as you're you know as you're talking about
and trying to transcend it and get to a a place beyond it and this organic process philosophy organic relational
philosophy in general in the Marxist terminology we would call it something like dialectics you know this way of
apprehending the world um to you know all these different thinkers coming together and creating this new way of understanding the world
can kind of perhaps transcend the scientific materialism and reduction that is present and then open up
um you know new possibilities for the direction of humanity going forward or more precisely is a parallel process as
we wrestle with the implications and the way this these ideas actually cash out and we rebel against it we also are
developing at the same time new ways of envisioning ourselves and the universe that is more in line with sort of what
comes next as opposed to tripling down on what currently is and and you know
0:00
0:07
radio on today's episode I have back on the show philosopher Matt Siegel to talk
0:13
about his newest work which is really a publication of his dissertation he got his PhD in philosophy with this work
0:20
called crossing the threshold etheric imagination in the post-contian process
0:26
philosophy of shelling and Whitehead and I certainly know that people who are not into philosophy are not trained in
0:31
philosophy might think that title sounds challenging above and beyond what they're capable of comprehending but I
0:38
promise you if you struggle and challenge yourself to kind of learn we lay out some of the basic philosophical
0:44
Concepts we're working with and then this picture emerges of the way that Matt thinks the way he's engaging with
0:51
philosophy and it is dialectical to its core it is all about the things I talk
0:57
about here on the show whether I'm talking about Buddhism or dialectical materialism or doing our dialectics deep
1:04
dive series trees it is constantly re sort of addressing and coming back to
1:10
this dialectical way of apprehending the cosmos apprehending our place in it apprehending our deep connections with
1:16
the Earth and nature as expressions of the earth and nature um this you know overcoming this
1:23
delusion of separateness that we feel and Matt is doing that work as well at
1:28
the high levels of philosophy and so I I really appreciate his work and the
1:33
vision that emerges from it which we talk about at length in this episode is absolutely in line with the vision that
1:41
emerges hopefully from rev left radio as a whole and all the work I do which I
1:46
can I can think of and conceptualize as absolutely pointing in the same exact
1:51
direction that you know somebody like Matt is pointing in and so many other thinkers whether in philosophy or
1:57
outside of it have pointed in from Marx to the Buddha to you know Alfred North
2:02
Whitehead which we talk about in this episode episode and many many other figures so this is really powerful
2:09
important moving stuff and I just can't say enough kind words about Matt and his
2:15
work so I'll leave it up there for now and as always if you like what we do here at rev left radio you can join our
2:21
patreon for pretty much the cost of a single cup of coffee every month you can support the show keep us going and get
2:29
access to three to four bonus episodes every single month that patrons get
2:35
access to and I do a lot of other stuff on the patreon that I don't necessarily do on the public feed including covering
2:42
like timely headlines responding to anti-socialists or anti-lefting arguments by popular right wing or
2:49
Centrist figures and just kind of you know let my hair down a little bit on the patreon in ways that I don't always
2:55
do on the public episode for obvious reasons so if you're interested at that you want to support the show you can go
3:00
to patreon.com forward slash revlift radio sign up for 5.00 month and get three to four bonus episodes every
3:07
single month and we deeply deeply appreciate it it's what keeps this show going on so thank you to everybody who
3:13
supports the show thank you to everybody listening without further Ado here's my conversation with Matt Segal on his new
3:19
book Crossing the threshold enjoy
3:24
so I'm Matt Siegel I'm a teacher and researcher a transdisciplinary
3:31
researcher I like to say applying process philosophy to the Natural and social sciences as well as the study of
3:38
Consciousness and I'm very glad to be back on rev left
3:44
happy to have you back it's an honor and a pleasure every time we get a talk um I know like it's only been like a
3:49
year or so since we had our first episode and already we're on episode number three but that's a testament to the interesting work you do and my
3:55
interest in it and the audience's interest in in you and your work and having you on the show so I'm happy to
4:01
have you back yeah glad to see her glad to hear there's been some receptivity from from the audience and uh hopefully
4:07
we can continue that today totally yeah and for those that don't know um we've we've had you on to talk about the work of Whitehead which will be you know
4:13
revisiting today we also had you on our German idealism episode which again shelling is one of the figures of German
4:19
idealism which we'll be touching on again today um so if people listen to this episode and like it there are two more with you
4:25
that they can go check out and have deeper Dives on you know two main philosophers that you wrestle with and
4:32
work with in this text but this text is a standalone book in and of itself and the new book is titled crossing the
4:39
threshold etheric imagination in the post kantian process success philosophy
4:45
of shelling and Whitehead so as a way to sort of Orient our audience to this book and what we'll be talking about today
4:51
can you just kind of talk about why you wrote the book what you wanted to explore with it and what exactly is the
4:56
threshold that is being crossed yeah happy too um so this was actually my uh
5:02
dissertation for my PhD in philosophy um and I've thoroughly revised it and
5:10
it's taken G6 or seven years to finally publish it as a book but what I'm trying
5:17
to accomplish in this book is to approach the transcendental idealism of
5:24
Emmanuel Kant as a sort of necessary phase of
5:30
maturation that that the human being in its Pursuit not only of scientific
5:36
knowledge of nature but of moral Freedom um that we need to pass through but that
5:42
we can't stop there um I try to pay respect to to kant's
5:48
methodology and um to you know explicate the the reasons
5:53
that he tried to as I I think we'll get into as we move forward here he tried to limit human knowledge
6:00
in order to leave room for Freedom which is basically a paraphrase of what he says in the preface uh to the critique
6:07
of pure reason and I try to draw on um Alfred North Whitehead and Friedrich
6:13
shelling to cross the threshold as I put it beyond the limits of knowledge that Kant
6:21
erected in his transcendental approach to philosophy one way of thinking about
6:26
what that threshold is is to think about sense experience sensory experience as
6:33
Kant understood it and uh you know drawing on Whitehead and showing I try
6:39
to suggest that the construal of our sensory experience offered by Kant and
6:46
not just Kant but other modern philosophers that he was in dialogue with particularly David Hume that this
6:53
construal of our sensory experience is uh probably
6:59
incomplete and in need of some amendments and as amended uh I think we
7:08
can um re-articulate an epistemology or a way of knowing that would not be limited by
7:16
um our sense perception of spatially arrayed surfaces as it were and we'll
7:23
get into more uh detail about about what exactly is entailed by that sort of definition but both Whitehead and
7:29
shelling reject the idea that our most primordial or basic form of experience
7:35
uh is just sense experience in this way that I've just defined they think that we
7:42
actually have a form of experience which Whitehead calls um bodily reception as opposed to sense
7:50
perception he also refers to it as perception in the mode of causal
7:55
efficacy so what that means in layman's terms is that our perception through our our bodies is
8:04
rooted in these um causal vectors which don't really respect the skin boundary
8:12
that there are in Whitehead's terms feeling vectors that are sort of
8:19
vibrating into us from the environment and vibrating back out of us to alter
8:25
that environment and so crossing the threshold means coming to recognize this deeper form of perception that puts us
8:33
back in touch with the natural world around us in a way that Kant to did not think was possible
8:40
how's that yeah this deeper form of perception would sort of take for
8:46
granted that we are embedded and a part of nature as a part as opposed to something put inside of it trying to
8:52
analyze it or trying to find an objective Viewpoint um to stand outside of it is that kind of a fair way to think about that
8:57
exactly yeah that's very well put okay cool and I know this is um you know for people in the audience that aren't
9:03
training philosophy and even those that are I mean Emmanuel Kant can certainly be difficult to wrestle with uh you know
9:10
his critique of pure reason I remember reading it as a grad student and um and
9:15
and having a really tough time with it so I guess and since it's an important part of your book in a lot of ways the
9:21
starting point of your book um I kind of want to maybe lay some of kant's basic philosophy on the table so
9:27
can you discuss the parts of of Emmanuel Khan's philosophy that that you're taking up in this work and kind of help
9:33
our audience to orient themselves to the basic philosophical terrain that you're treading here
9:39
yeah so um Kant is a crucial uh philosopher
9:44
um and you know what he does with his uh his late work uh really it was towards
9:49
the end of his life that he wrote his three critiques uh the first of critique of pure reason and then uh critique of
9:56
practical reason and finally a critique of judgment and what he's doing here is
10:02
um kind of uh reversing the relationship between the subjective knower and the
10:09
objects known that he felt had been presupposed by all philosophy prior so
10:17
um what Kant called dogmatic philosophy was was basically this view that the
10:22
subject or the knower must conform to the objects that are out there right and knowledge consists in such a
10:28
confirmation uh the subject in some way or other mirroring the objects that are around it
10:35
um and thereby coming to know them and what Kant does is reverse this and says no no the objects must conform to the
10:41
subject in other words the way that our mind is organized
10:47
um and our senses are organized uh shapes a priori he would say which means
10:53
shapes before experience um the objects that are possible for us
10:58
to know so objectivity in kant's inverted view as it were uh becomes
11:06
um something that subjects construct the subject constructs or he would say
11:13
determines the objects that it comes to know by applying its own uh
11:18
pre-installed categories as it were and by
11:24
shaping those objects through its uh forms of intuition is kant's phrase
11:30
which he says we have two forms of intuition spatial and temporal intuition
11:36
and spatial intuition is uh our outer sense
11:41
um and temporal intuition would be our inner sense and it's in const treatment
11:47
of space and time right as our outer and inner intuitions of the world around us
11:54
that he says we don't you know we don't learn about space and time empirically as if uh by coming into contact with a
12:02
bunch of uh extended objects in space that endure through time that we gradually just kind of come to abstract
12:09
these ideas of space and time he says know that they're they're pre-installed right which is to say they're
12:15
transcendental they're not empirical transcendental here is another way of referring to what
12:23
um how our experience is structured prior to any particular experience that
12:28
we have right so it's not space and time for Khan or not something we learn about through experience there's something
12:34
that we bring to experience uh that we always already are shaping our experience through
12:41
and it's const treatment of space and time that I really try to dive into
12:46
in this book um to expand some of the insights that con
12:51
uh is is able to articulate in his sort of phenomenological inquiry into space
12:58
sometime and the problem is that in the critique of pure reason um Kant has this relatively short
13:04
section and a very long book it's like 20 Pages which he calls uh the transcendental aesthetic which is where
13:11
he looks at our experience of space and time or rather the way that space and time structure our experienced to put it
13:18
more precisely and Whitehead says in process in reality that Kant really should have spent most of the book The
13:25
critique of pure reason um on this particular issue right our intuitions of space and time
13:33
because it it seems to me and and you know I'm following in the footsteps of
13:39
of geniuses like Whitehead and shelling here um it seems to me that uh in our spatial
13:46
and temporal intuition there's something far more uh what Cosmic going on
13:53
um than what when then what Kant believed uh for Kant right space and time or something provided by the
13:59
subject and what I want to do in this book is say no space and time or something uh achieved by a community of
14:09
subjects right and so one way of understanding how Whitehead
14:15
um takes up kant's philosophy and and expands it and in some ways cosmologizes
14:21
it is what Kant thought was only true of human subjects uh Whitehead says is uh
14:27
true of subjects in a much more General sense so you know people who listen to
14:33
our prior conversations Might Recall um that Whitehead is a pan experientialist uh which is to say he thinks that
14:41
experience in some form um to some degree goes all the way down
14:48
right and to exist is to experience so whether we're talking about electromagnetic radiation or uh stars
14:56
and galaxies or single cells plants animals and human beings there's some form of experience
15:03
um that is just part of what it means to exist as an entity
15:09
and so what Whitehead basically says is um subjects of various sorts
15:16
um with different forms of experience are cooperating with one another and
15:22
relating with one another so as to bring forth what physicists know and you know
15:29
can measure in various ways as space and time um and that what we experience just in
15:36
our everyday um you know attempt to navigate the world as space and time is similarly
15:41
this achievement by a whole Cosmic Community uh of of subjectivities right
15:48
and so it's breaking us out of what I think is ultimately a a solipsistic or
15:53
kind of ego enclosed uh perspective that Kant leaves us with
15:59
breaking out of that to to uh step into a more
16:04
cosmocentric uh orientation right to put the human being as you were saying back uh in touch seamlessly with with the
16:12
natural world out of which we come yeah incredibly fascinating stuff
16:18
um to talk about kantian's sort of um idealism if you will or in a kant's idea that what the
16:26
the human subject brings to the natural world like when we look out at the natural world or any any object outside
16:32
of ourselves is that you know Kant is saying and you can correct me if I'm wrong here that there's like we we come
16:38
fully equipped with a sort of cognitive apparatus or uh you know layers of
16:44
lenses that we cannot remove that are that are you know essential to our basic functioning that shape the objective
16:51
world or shape how we um interpret and understand the outside world these pre-installed
16:59
categories that we have so when we look out at the world you know we we sort of
17:04
without even knowing it impose a certain interpretation onto the world as it
17:11
actually is which is why he says things like you can't know things in in and of themselves right you can only know your
17:18
sort of interpretation of them and and that kind of culminates into this idea of transcendental idealism I believe
17:23
even I'm a little shaky on some of this so um can you correct anything I said wrong there and kind of maybe help us
17:29
flesh out again what transcendental idealism means in this context yeah no I think you've you've articulated that
17:36
very well um and yes so what what Kant does with his transcendental idealism is
17:42
um reimagine what natural science is uh natural scientists tend to be um would
17:49
say kind of naive realists and they think that they're discovering things about a mind-independent world uh laws of physics and so on and
17:57
um's point is that in his you know Prime Exemplar for this was was Isaac Newton
18:03
that when Newton is um articulating using mathematics uh his
18:08
laws of motion and universal gravitation and so on uh he's not actually
18:14
um discovering something that exists out there and kind of just describing it rather he's
18:20
using mathematical reasoning uh he's actually uncovering the structure of his
18:26
own mind and so the natural scientist and kant's view um is trying to find application for uh
18:36
certain categories of understanding right and yeah scientists use experiment and observation and so on but in a kind
18:43
of um almost uh quasi-platonist way like Plato would talk about knowledge as
18:49
um remembrance or recollection of something that we already knew that the soul already had sort of implanted in it
18:56
eternally con suggesting something not too far from that that when we engage in
19:02
natural scientific study we're really trying to remember and
19:07
uncover these um not laws of nature so much as laws of our own understanding
19:13
right and what what nature becomes in kant's view is a highly structured
19:19
um appearance right and so you could caricature Condon say oh he's reducing
19:24
knowledge to just your appearance and that there's no necessity in universality so he's like no actually
19:31
because our mind has these Universal and necessary categories right
19:36
that are shaped by mathematics and logic like they're really this is secure
19:42
um uh like knowledge like and and there are logical principles at play here that are not just
19:48
um merely apparent right this is what's structuring our knowledge of the appearances of Nature and so Kant would
19:55
say despite the fact that this is all in one way or another subjective
20:00
um science can still claim universally necessary knowledge of of the apparent world uh
20:08
because you know we're using math to describe it now this of course as you mentioned leaves
20:14
us with a kind of um dualism if not a dualism of two
20:19
different kinds of of stuff as we had like in Descartes right mental stuff and
20:24
material or extended stuff that's kind of an ontological dualism two different
20:31
kinds of being that exist in the world is is what Descartes leaves us with and Kant doesn't leave us with that kind of
20:37
dualism it's more of uh an epistemological dualism a dualism in how
20:44
we understand knowledge and what it's what we're capable of knowing so can't said that all knowledge is really uh
20:51
merely phenomenal meaning it has to do with phenomena or appearances and there's this
20:57
um limit to our knowledge the other side of which is you could say numenol would be his
21:04
word but he also talks about uh the realm of things in themselves right
21:09
and what what can we say about those things in themselves um not much Kant wanted to posit that
21:16
there is something out there um but you we can't say anything about
21:22
it because the categories of our understanding really only to determine the phenomenal world so we're left in
21:29
this dualistic situation right and one way again of talking about the threshold I'm trying to cross uh in in the course
21:36
of this book is this phenomenal numinal threshold I'm trying to
21:42
reconfigure our experiential situation so that that boundary
21:47
does not arise yeah really interesting um and yeah so there's so much to say
21:53
there I guess just for like people listening uh especially I think we've even done this in our last episode when
21:58
marxists hear phrases like idealism and materialism it's kind of worth just kind of pointing that out the idealism of
22:05
transcendental idealism within Khan's philosophy is this idea that the subjective cognitive apparatus we bring
22:12
to the objective World structures how we understand the objective world and in
22:18
some sense we can't strip away that scaffolding that cognitive scaffolding that we're born with and see the cosmos
22:25
in and of itself as it truly is beyond any human interpretation of it and so
22:31
that's that um that's the idealism right is that there's something inherent in subjectivity that structures the way we
22:37
understand the objective world and thus the Mind plays a crucial role in our
22:43
understanding of external phenomena correct that's right that's right okay yeah and
22:48
and just to clarify quickly like um there's so much that's true in that
22:53
right and you can you can see the various ways that Khan's philosophy has been carried forward
22:59
um in the Contemporary world I mean so much of um cognitive neuroscience and psychology
23:06
takes this this sort of point of view even if they're not as strict about the
23:11
underlying philosophical principles the idea that the Mind plays a constructive role
23:17
um in our perception of the world is um you know impossible to just dismiss
23:23
right and so um but what I what I'm trying to do is uh as Whitehead would
23:28
put it transcend and and include what what Kant is suggesting and so
23:34
um what I call descendental realism or um descendental philosophy is not the
23:41
antithesis of uh transcendental idealism um it's I would hope more of a a
23:48
synthesis that's allowing us to restore you know a kind of what you might call a
23:54
naive realism that preceded Kant uh to if that's the thesis and kant's critical
23:59
idealism or transcendental idealism is the antithesis then descendental
24:05
philosophy I hope is a kind of synthesis um a more mature realism as it were
24:13
yeah interesting and we'll we'll get to that a little bit later because I want you to kind of sort of retread that specific idea and the concepts
24:19
surrounding it in a bit here but um you you state quote the pages that follow do not lay out a linear argument
24:26
attempting to prove the existence of a world Soul or the possibility of super sensory knowledge rather they invite the
24:33
reader into a series of self-amplifying metaphysical experiments seeking to
24:39
produce intensified experience in the etheric intuition end quote can you kind
24:44
of discuss what this means specifically regarding the idea of experiments seeking to produce an experience in the
24:51
reader yeah absolutely um so I'm I'm trying to head off at the
24:57
pass as it were early in the book um you know the expectations that
25:03
especially analytic philosophers might have about how a philosophical text is uh supposed to engage the reader as a
25:12
kind of you know logical argument right and you know you so you set out your
25:18
premises and then um try to deduce the consequences but
25:23
often um you know philosophers we'll just have to end up saying that
25:29
their premises are self-evident or what have you and they spend the bulk of
25:34
their time on the deductions and Whitehead's method of philosophy and I'm
25:39
I'm a whiteheadian right like I I don't think he's right about everything but I I think
25:44
um in terms of the best we can do integrating the history of philosophy and all of contemporary science and
25:52
human aspirations um whether you know you think of those
25:57
as spiritual aspirations or political aspirations uh social aspirations
26:02
I think Whitehead is just you know for me um gets me the furthest in these inquiries
26:10
and so um his method is is of philosophizing is
26:15
not um narrowly analytic right he's not trying to prove anything he's rather
26:21
trying to assemble a scheme of of ideas and what he means by ideas is not
26:28
something abstract but um a kind of lens that we can wear to see the world
26:34
differently right and so when he is engaging in philosophical assemblage
26:41
he's offering us different metaphysical equipment um you know scientists use telescopes
26:48
and microscopes and particle colliders and so on as their experimental equipment
26:54
um the metaphysician uses language language is the instrument
26:59
that we're experimenting on here and uh language isn't just um
27:05
you know abstract uh collections of definitions and so on
27:12
languages is a is a poetic activity right it's it's something um that's very much intimately
27:19
interwoven with our perception of the world that you know when we we can see by studying different cultures
27:25
um the words they have for different colors for example um or different aspects of their local
27:32
environments um you know like uh it's often said Eskimos have like a hundred words for
27:37
snow I don't know if it's quite that many but you get the idea that um
27:42
language is uh you know part of human behavior obviously but it's like it's
27:49
it's it's intimately interwoven with our neurophysiology if you want to think about it
27:55
um in in material terms but also with with the very structure of our Consciousness right and so
28:01
by metaphysical experiments that intensify experience I'm talking about you know different ways of poetically
28:08
rendering into language um our encounter with reality whether
28:14
it's the inner reality of our psychological um Soul life or or the outer reality of
28:22
of the surrounding Cosmos um I'm trying to experiment with
28:28
different ways of talking about what uh what this existence is is really like
28:36
and so it's an invitation um into
28:42
a novel way of speaking and so I I don't want people to think
28:47
um that I will at the End of This Book have proven
28:53
um a particular ISM or whatever but rather I I hope that I will have painted
28:58
a picture that people appreciate enough to consider um
29:04
not just as as a possibility but as something to try to actualize yeah beautiful
29:10
um is there anything just out of curiosity because I know how philosophy departments sort of sort of operate in
29:16
their heavy analytic bias is there anything to be said about the analytic Continental Divide here as far as your
29:22
approach and is there any weirdness in its reception given that it's sort of
29:27
flying in the face of more um I guess mainstream analytic philosophy texts and how analytic
29:33
philosophers go about doing philosophy well I mean I don't want to disparage an
29:39
entire school of thought right I think there's so much of value in analytic philosophy and in so many ways Whitehead
29:45
is one of the inaugurators of that method um you know he and Bertrand Russell
29:50
uh who was began as his student and became his collaborator on the principia Mathematica kind of developed the the
29:58
idea that we can think with a symbolic logic and that this is really the the
30:04
um the ideal for clear and and accurate thinking is is to is to use
30:12
um the analytic methods like this and Whitehead took logic very seriously logical analysis but he didn't think
30:18
that it was the proper method for philosophizing um because language
30:25
um while it can do really creative and imaginative things to alter our
30:30
perception as I was saying when we limit it to symbolic uh logic we run the risk
30:36
of um falling prey to what he called the fallacy of the perfect dictionary
30:41
um which is to say that we already have all the ideas and Concepts we need to understand the world and so it's just a matter of lining up those Concepts
30:48
correctly and Whitehead thinks that um you know
30:53
language is always intimately interrelated with experience but that
30:59
there's something about experience which is um open-ended and creatively advancing
31:05
in such a way that we're never going to be finished with the dictionary um we need to invent new words and new
31:12
phrasings um and and remember that no verbal statement No even logical or
31:18
mathematical proposition can ever finally render the world uh in its complete form simply because the world
31:25
itself is incomplete uh in Whitehead's view right as a process philosopher and and in shelling
31:31
to you there's a kind of incompleteness uh that is intrinsic to Nature
31:36
um because nature is a creative advance and so you know analytic philosophy is important
31:43
um but I think we need to go further Continental philosophy in that it is typically phenomenological you know it's
31:50
trying to look at Human Experience I think it it uh it also can't be ignored
31:59
um it adds something to the merely analytic approach that would otherwise kind of get forgotten and erased
32:05
um which is human experience and uh history and
32:11
um the role of interpretation and harmonutics and all these things that are kind of just I don't know
32:17
backgrounded or ignored by the analytic approach uh but then the problem at least more
32:25
historically with Continental philosophy this has changed um in light of What's called the ontological turn or the non-human term
32:32
um but you know phenomenology historically was was pretty anthropocentric
32:37
um right the focus was Human Experience and because initially most of these were
32:44
European dudes it was Human Experience was was mostly construed and more of a
32:50
white male kind of a way um but you know nowadays this is definitely been
32:57
um an issue that's been and continues to be dealt with in productive ways so that it's phenomenology can be less
33:05
anthropocentric and um less eurocentric and that's a very positive development
33:12
but um I think there are ways in which the um process relational perspective on all
33:20
these things that you know it's one way of talking about Whitehead's philosophy
33:25
um it's it's able to draw on analytic and Continental uh approaches while also
33:34
um going further in in some some crucial ways um and you know a lot of the
33:39
changes that have occurred in more recent Continental philosophy and phenomenology
33:45
um you know to break out of anthropocentrism are um a consequence of encountering
33:51
Whitehead's philosophy right so he's played a role in these positive developments um
33:56
but yeah I think uh ultimately I would want us to overcome this analytic Continental Divide and
34:03
um a process relational approach is a good way to to do that again to seek a kind of synthesis between the two yeah really
34:10
really interesting thank you for that so as I've said earlier we've we've had you on previous episodes to talk at length
34:16
about Whitehead and shelling but let's revisit the relevant aspects of their philosophies for this work starting uh
34:22
with shelling so how was shelling an organic process philosopher and what aspects of his philosophy do you take up
34:29
interpret and work with in this book in particular yeah so um shelling's often thought of
34:35
as an idealist and there's good reason for that but he also developed a philosophy of nature
34:42
um in the late 1700s in the wake of of kant's um
34:49
Revolution and philosophy really uh so I mean the first major German philosopher
34:55
to inherit kant's the spirit of Khan's philosophy was was uh Johan Gottlieb ficta and
35:04
um you know ficto was the philosopher of the eye uh the you know Capital uh first
35:10
person pronoun the um the the ego as um as you know Kant would have it as as
35:16
sort of freely creating its World um rather than uh passively
35:22
um receiving uh a separately existing world and shelling studied fictus
35:28
philosophy very closely through the um Mid 1790s and began to come into his
35:36
own as a philosopher by defending the fictian point of view but shelling
35:42
um more and more came to realize that nature was being given short shrift in
35:49
this whole approach um to say that all of reality all of the universe is the result of the
35:56
constructive activity of the ego um the shelling seems somewhat one-sided
36:03
and it led him to a closer study of Spinoza uh for one thing but also you
36:10
know shelling always had this um mystical uh pietist the sort of the form
36:16
of Christianity of protestantism um in his part of Germany at this time he had this mystical sense of nature as
36:22
a kind of um incarnate divinity and as as a nature as a kind of dynamic
36:29
process that um you know the Incarnation isn't something that just happens all at once it's rather this Dynamic
36:38
evolutionary process that moves through a series of stages and so always in the background for shelling even when he was
36:45
um much aligned with ficta's approach as a young uh Really T was in his late
36:50
teens at this point when he started publishing um works of philosophy and journals
36:57
um he was always trying to hold this perspective in Balance
37:02
um to keep the ego and nature uh more in balance with each other but he didn't
37:07
publicize this until around 1797 his his first uh he started lecturing on uh on
37:16
the philosophy of Nature and he publishes a book called ideas for
37:21
philosophy of nature in 1797. and you know in this book what he's
37:27
basically doing is picking up on some of kant's ideas about organisms and their
37:34
um in internal uh purposiveness or uh their
37:39
um form of teleology that Kant described um which is just teleologies the sort of
37:45
study of ends or purposes that organisms display a kind of purposive activity
37:51
that's not found in the material in the inorganic world uh where a different
37:57
kind of sort of linear causality Reigns in organism's concept there's this circular causality where an organism in
38:05
being composed of Parts which produce one another for the sake of a whole
38:11
that there's not just the mechanical or efficient causality one sees in the
38:16
inorganic world there's this formal causality and final causality uh which
38:22
is to say there's this self-organizing end directed uh activity
38:28
in living organisms so shelling picks up on this idea and
38:33
um really applies it to cosmology applies it to metaphysics in ways that Kant was not
38:41
comfortable with because you know Kant was still putting the subject at the center of philosophy
38:49
um right where uh rather than as I said earlier saying that um the subject must
38:55
conform to the objects around it in order to know them Kant had said that uh no the objects must conform to the
39:02
subject to the structure of the subject's way of knowing them shelling again inverts this right so
39:08
there's a kind of double known version moving from dogmatic through content to shilangian philosophy where instead of
39:15
asking um what must the mind be such that nature can appear to us in the way that it does
39:22
as Kant had asked shelling asks what must nature be such that mind could have
39:28
emerged from it such that our Consciousness capable of knowing it could have could itself be a higher
39:35
potency of the very natural world that we're attempting to know so um shelling allows us to remain
39:45
um critical and not dogmatic in the way that you know Kant was was so focused on
39:52
establishing but shelling allows us to break out of the kantian shell as it
39:58
were which would keep the keep us locked within a realm of appearances unable to touch the real world
40:04
because shelling is saying that the natural world far from being a mere appearance is the source of our mind
40:10
that nature has a soul in other words Nature has an interior and we know that
40:16
because we are that interior and recognizing that
40:23
um it doesn't only have implications for How We Do Science I mean there's a deep kind of spirituality in that as well
40:30
um not necessarily A Spinoza's pantheism sort of kind of compatible with that but
40:36
it's a slightly more complex point of view because you know in Spinoza there's
40:41
there's no room really for human Freedom um to say that we're the mind and nature
40:47
are one thing in Spinoza is is to say that mind is determined by natural laws
40:53
whereas in shelling and in Whitehead natural laws are
40:59
um more like habits they're things that are established through social relations
41:05
whether through human social relations where we make laws in Democratic societies hopefully uh or in you know
41:12
relations between non-human entities uh that that develop into these sort of
41:18
statistical patterns or habits right and so
41:23
the laws of physics in a shelangian or what headian point of view would be more
41:30
like the the social habits of electrons and protons that have been collectively
41:35
established over billions of years of evolution right so I think shelling adds this the
41:41
possibility of a kind of creative freedom it's like yes the world is structured by these social habits but
41:46
they're also um these habits are habits because the world continues to evolve and there's
41:52
some creative impulse that in the natural world leads to unexpected
41:58
emergence um you know photons and electrons and
42:03
protons eventually you know become organized so as to bring forth Elemental atoms
42:11
um and and then stars and galaxies and from a you know schlenghian point of view or whiteheadian point of view
42:19
even if there were scientists around um at that early stage in cosmogenesis
42:25
or the evolution of the universe when it was just like protons electrons and photons and stuff like the plasma stage
42:32
they never even if they had a complete knowledge of the universe at that stage they never would have seen even like a
42:39
helium atom much less a star a Galaxy as being possible
42:45
um in the future right and so there's creative emergence that allows us to describe a universe not
42:52
just as the kind of closed necessary order that you have in Spinoza but more as this open-ended Adventure
43:00
and one implication of that is of course when we create as human beings art philosophy science religion
43:08
civilization that we are sort of a microcosmic version of the whole
43:13
creative power intrinsic to the universe and our creativity emerges out of you
43:20
know the cosmos just as much as it merges out of us because as you said we are the interiority of the cosmos you
43:26
know other ways of putting that is we are the the we are nature becoming conscious of itself or you know I've
43:32
even put it in terms of like environmental activism against the degradation of of the natural world that
43:38
we're currently living through is like the Earth literally fighting for itself through us like we are the Earth
43:44
becoming conscious and that is a smaller version of the cosmos itself becoming conscious of course not just through
43:50
human beings but through all conscious creatures all experiential creatures and I'm sure you know higher levels of alien
43:56
intelligence that are out there as well are just as much the interiority of the cosmos experiencing itself from a
44:03
seemingly infinite amount of point of views right so like this idea in Kant
44:09
that there's a certain unique causality with an organism shelling takes and applies to the cosmos itself and one of
44:16
those implications being that our Consciousness is literally how is it is a creative emergence of the entire
44:23
Cosmos and literally how the cosmos comes into a form of its own self-awareness and self-consciousness
44:28
very well put I love that yeah I think you've got it um
44:33
you know and it it it I think I I really want to emphasize the extent
44:39
to which yeah we are the universe become conscious of itself which I mean in some circles is almost a
44:46
cliche at this point like what is that what does that really mean well I love the way you connected that to you
44:52
know these um fights to protect uh Gaia to protect the
44:59
community of life on Earth um because it yeah it has intrinsic value
45:04
but also because that's us that's that's what we are and what are we protecting it from well there's this split that has
45:11
occurred in in the human being which I think you know whether we could point to Descartes
45:18
or Kant as expressions of how this split plays out but um it's a split between a sense of our
45:26
Consciousness as continuous with the interiority of the rest of the cosmos and what you could call just this sort
45:33
of disembedded alienated intellect which is the 50 in the ego it's the it's the
45:42
kantian subject that thinks that it's cut off from the World by this screen of
45:48
sense perception uh that produces appearances which we know according to our own sort of
45:54
internal organization that that sense of a alienated disconnected intellect is
46:01
what's driving techno-industrial techno-capitalist civilization right and and the urgency of the kind of
46:09
perspective I'm trying to articulate here is is is I'm really trying to talk to that intellect and say hey
46:17
you're not actually disconnected from the world um and I just want to get that alienated
46:25
ego uh and you know maybe people know if Ian mcgilchrist's work I'm obviously talking about the left hemisphere
46:32
um maniacal uh um attempt to master the world that that
46:37
typifies that sort of left hemisphere way of thinking that is that kantian ego that kantian intellect is obsessed with
46:44
trying to master nature according to these deterministic rules that it's uh
46:50
reducing and I just want to get that ego to kind of like slow down and look down
46:58
to remember that it has a body and that it's only possible for it to do all of its thinking
47:03
in the context of that body and that that body is inseparable from uh the
47:09
ecosystems around it from the soil uh from the the the the plants and animals that it has to eat in order to survive I
47:17
mean some would say it doesn't have to eat animals but uh that nonetheless we are
47:22
um embedded in this whole community of life and I think it would
47:28
actually be um a tremendous relief if this ego would just look down and that's what decent
47:34
Dental in a sense is is pointing to as the method I'm articulating in this book I'm just I'm saying we need to look
47:40
look down and in and recognize that uh at the
47:47
that in the depths of our own conscious egoic um experience there is this this portal
47:54
to um into this Cosmic creativity and so you know etheric imagination is in the
48:01
title it's what I'm trying to point to is this Cosmic creativity that's at the depths of our own thinking activity of
48:07
our own imaginative capacity and I think thinking feeling willing these different
48:13
what used to be called faculties or powers of our cognition these are all different ways
48:20
of talking about the imagination and um I'm trying to
48:25
yeah speak to this content and intellect
48:31
you have to get it to just remember uh what's what's always been there at the edge of its experience because that's
48:37
the portal back into communion with the cosmos so yeah and what comes out of this is
48:43
like you know this philosophy that we're doing although it can seem sort of abstract and speculative and kind of hard to Grapple with has real life
48:50
consequences in the real world and is really behind so much of the troubles
48:55
that we're dealing with in society whether it's the eco-crisis whether it's War nationalism various forms of hate
49:01
fascism Etc um and it's it's not a coincidence that you know science is kind of catching up
49:07
to this with Concepts like the Flow State but that we're at our most creative and we feel the most alive
49:13
precisely when we are not incessantly referring back to ourself and thinking
49:18
about ourselves but when we lose ourselves lose our felt sense of a separate self up here somewhere in the
49:25
head commenting on everything that's happening we can actually you know let ourselves fall into the thing that we're
49:31
doing and this is called the Flow State and there's all these you know cognitive scientists working on this and what it means and how to get into it Etc but
49:37
that creativity of the cosmos comes out most when our ego is the least active which is an interesting thing and and
49:44
also I just wanted to say that this delusion of separateness that is fueling
49:50
you know just crises after crises I mean it's behind everything from colonialism
49:55
those people over there are sub-human we can go take their land slavery again you know they're not us there's something
50:02
outside of us they're actually more objective outside nature than they are subjects like us white men in Europe are
50:09
subjects right and so this delusion of separateness is at the root of so much and in each one of us
50:15
it's a felt sense of supper now we truly if you can look at yourself and how you think about your own life think about
50:21
your own death and feel yourself to be moment to moment you know assuming you
50:27
don't do extensive spiritual practices like Buddhist Meditation or experiment heavily with psychedelics or whatever is
50:33
if you're honest with yourself and you really pay attention you you feel this too you feel as if you know my
50:39
Consciousness is inside my skull fundamentally separate from everybody and everything else I was placed into
50:45
the universe and one day I'll be ripped out of it and that is you know it's not
50:50
often articulated it operates often subconsciously in most people but that is a felt sense of separateness that is
50:57
what we're talking about here and it can be overcome through obviously various methods but um you know if you can look
51:03
inside and see that that sense of separateness is there you can agree with us that that's fundamentally an illusion
51:09
that's not backed up by science you can start working in the direction of of seeing beyond that that illusion and
51:16
um the interesting things that can happen in the and the reimagining and the different relationship you have with your own existence when you can see
51:23
through that ego delusion that you are somehow separate from everything and everyone else around you
51:28
yeah yeah beautifully put um and I I think you know again as I as I said at the
51:35
start like this there's something about the egotistical
51:40
um perspective that ins is necessary to go through like we need that um critical
51:48
stance to like grow up out of um a childish point of view where it's
51:54
like almost primitive narcissism right um and so this isn't just a sort of like
52:00
naive um return to the womb Oceanic feeling that psychoanalyst psychoanalytic Freudian
52:08
critiques would would want to resist this is um I really want to go through the
52:14
content point of view right and and to acknowledge that um
52:19
in order to connect with the universe we first have to uh have experienced the possibility
52:26
of Separation yes um and only once we have
52:31
uh tasted alienation can we truly freely uh through as an act of love
52:39
remember our our connection uh with with with the cosmos and and with each other
52:45
so um I think it's so important like you know what we're saying that we have to reconnect
52:51
but it's it's also important you know to to honor the
52:56
um the part of the struggle of of waking up and becoming conscious as as freed and loving human beings is experiencing
53:03
this possibility of of Separation uh we couldn't be free unless we experience
53:08
that possibility yeah I think that's incredibly important there's a fundamental difference between
53:13
the infant and the Buddha and that fundamental difference is the only way out is through it's not some regression
53:19
to some past state it is you have to develop this you know through the the delusion of separateness you have to
53:26
develop this sort of what we would consider in a functioning Society a healthy ego and then be able to
53:32
transcend it um to not develop that and we've seen like you know the feral children children that aren't raised in Social
53:37
contexts that they don't come out as as you know Buddhas they're they're
53:43
deformed and they're they're prevented from their full blossoming so yes I really think that that's an incredibly important point to make
53:50
all right well let's go ahead and move forward um and let's talk a little bit about Whitehead of course we have an entire
53:55
episode people interested can go dive deeper into that but just sort of what we did for shelling to do for Whitehead
54:01
here um how was he a process philosopher maybe how he differs from shelling and just the aspects of his philosophy that
54:07
you're really emphasizing um in this work in particular yeah so you know and so much of my work
54:13
not just in this book I'm trying to put Whitehead in lineage with with shelling
54:20
um as process philosophers and so what what shelling does for the new paradigm
54:26
Sciences of his day uh sort of in the late 18th early 19th century when
54:32
um geology was discovering deep time and you know chemistry was advancing and
54:38
electricity and magnetism um were being experimented with and
54:43
theorized about and um you know the early stages of a kind of evolutionary theory were being worked
54:50
out in biology and so shelling was absorbing all of these new paradigm Sciences in his day well Whitehead does
54:56
the same thing in the early 20th century when science goes through another round
55:02
of major Paradigm shifts and I mean you could even call the early 20th century
55:07
the second scientific revolution in the sense that the old Newtonian
55:13
mechanistic view was demolished um you know Whitehead recounts he was at
55:19
Cambridge um studying and then teaching mathematics and mathematical physics he studied uh
55:27
with the his teacher was the student of um Clerk Maxwell
55:33
um who developed electromagnetic Theory and so you know Whitehead uh understood
55:39
mathematics and the application of mathematics to electromagnetism very deeply and at the end of you know in the
55:45
last couple of Decades of the 19th century you know Whitehead says that Newtonian physics was considered to be
55:53
um almost complete there were just a few little uh you know Mysteries around the
56:00
edges of this complete knowledge that would soon be worked out and nobody expected that
56:06
you know with maximum Max Planck's ideas in the last few years of the 19th
56:11
century and then of course 1905 Einstein's miracle year I think they call it he publishes these several
56:17
papers that establish relativity Theory the special Theory and
56:24
um the photoelectric effect and all these things and then a few years later with the general theory almost a decade
56:30
later um it was clear that uh
56:35
physicists had to re-imagine the nature of nature right and and Whitehead was
56:40
uniquely equipped uh to do this kind of work um he was one of the few physicists
56:46
at the time who could really understand what Einstein was proposing um and so he's inheriting all of these
56:54
changes in science but he's also very aware of the
57:00
the Damage Done To Human social life and
57:06
to the natural environment by a kind of materialistic metaphysics he called it
57:12
scientific materialism which you know he understood as rooted in what he called a
57:19
bifurcation uh the bifurcation of nature as he refers to it uh in his 1920 book the
57:27
concept of Nature and bifurcation means uh that um scientific materialism has split the
57:34
world into on one side uh would be um you know the the world as we
57:40
experience it with its qualities um its its uh colors and its uh sounds
57:47
like The Melody of uh of a robin um or the feel of the velvet is an
57:54
example what it gives that's all the stuff that's on one side of this bifurcation which we would call the
58:01
subjective or the psychological side and then the other side would be all the stuff that's measured and Quantified uh
58:08
by physics maths and motion and whatnot uh and when
58:14
it points out that you know we never actually experience any of that stuff uh we conjecture it and you know come up
58:21
with instruments and mathematical phenomenalisms to describe it but we never actually experienced it what we
58:27
experience or the colors and the sounds and the tastes in the feel of the velvet and so on and Whitehead's whole
58:33
philosophy in a way is is a it begins in pointing out the incoherence of this bifurcated point of view
58:40
um that scientific materialism is asking us to believe that the world is nothing at all like what we experience that our
58:49
um all of our subjective experience of feelings and values uh and aesthetic
58:54
Beauty and so on is purely ephemeral like the smoke uh or the whistle on a train is t.h
59:02
Huxley once put it uh what's really real are this are these conjectured systems
59:09
of particles and forces and so on then again when it says we never experience
59:14
um and so to overcome this bifurcation uh and to provide a scientifically
59:20
grounded alternative to materialism which he thinks early 20th century
59:26
physics not only relativity of a quantum theory uh itself refutes right so in other
59:31
words Whitehead begins this attempt to revise Newtonian
59:36
mechanistic metaphysics by saying science itself has disproven materialism
59:42
and the operative metaphor for Whitehead rather than the machine becomes the
59:48
organism so he says his philosophy is a philosophy of organism he also calls it
59:53
organic realism and as shelling did in in his own day Whitehead takes this this image or this
1:00:01
this idea of the organism and applies it to cosmology uh and applies it to
1:00:07
physics and says for example that um you know the entity studied by physics are just smaller organisms uh
1:00:15
which you know you could see um self self-organization as sort of synonymous
1:00:20
or what's implied by organism and hydrogen atom is just as much as self-organizing system or process uh as
1:00:29
as is a a bacterium or
1:00:34
any other living organism and so Whitehead's process philosophy is
1:00:40
exploring the implications of this organic view of Nature and I think allowing us to not only bring all the
1:00:47
special Sciences physics biology sociology psychology uh into
1:00:53
um harmony with one another but he's allowing us to bring our scientific picture of nature into
1:00:59
alignment with our sense of human um values and ethics and aesthetic
1:01:09
um judgments and um you know he wants us he wants to be able to describe the universe such that
1:01:16
we don't need to say that you know human freedom and law
1:01:25
and political order and all these things are somehow reducible to
1:01:30
um the laws of physics as if you know physicists nowadays like Sean Carroll will say you know I'm not saying
1:01:36
that we shouldn't have our values and our morals and whatever as human beings and that we shouldn't act as if we're
1:01:42
free and so on I'm just saying that in reality that's all uh really it's just the laws of physics playing
1:01:48
out and so let's do the best we can to get along knowing it's all fake I think
1:01:53
that's a recipe for disaster like you you can't live with
1:01:58
that kind of bifurcated philosophy and Whitehead's trying to say as a mathematical physicist hey we don't need
1:02:04
to do that we can actually see these the the human values are consistent with
1:02:11
what we know about the natural world yeah an incredibly important sort of
1:02:16
development and yeah that that hardcore scientific materialist reductionism is still obviously very much alive and well
1:02:22
as you just alluded to I know in philosophy of mine there's you know also ideas like limitivism which just sort of
1:02:29
like takes off the table this idea that Consciousness is really anything that's special or interesting or worth
1:02:34
investigating really at all and it's more like a a delusion than it is a real feature of the cosmos and I think that's
1:02:40
a direct outgrowth of this scientific materialist uh reductionism would you agree with me there yeah and you know I
1:02:46
almost think eliminative materialism is um more
1:02:52
consistent in a way then um like it's biting the bullet whereas the bifurcated
1:02:57
view like like Sean carrolls is just sort of um half-assed like not really taking seriously the uh
1:03:06
the ontological situation that he's describing because like the eliminativist is willing to say yeah look it's all just the laws of physics
1:03:12
we talk about Consciousness but it's just a word you're not actually conscious I'm not actually conscious
1:03:18
which is a bunch of the zombies in an illusion um I think they're Consciousness and that
1:03:25
sort of philosophy I think is what's or world view of eliminativism is kind of what's guiding all the hype right now about
1:03:32
chat GPT and like the AI has woken up and um you know is is if not already soon to
1:03:39
become conscious in a way and distinguishable from human beings like that whole fantasy
1:03:44
that whole science fiction narrative that we are mistaking for reality is is rooted in the eliminativist
1:03:50
assumption that it's not so much that AI is becoming conscious it's that
1:03:55
um you know if if one argues that as conscious then what what you know I
1:04:01
would want to believe um Consciousness would be in human beings is
1:04:06
um it's not actually worth anything I mean it's if if it it's it's actually mistaking intellect
1:04:14
um or the sort of disembodied rationality that you know Kant was trying to root all of our knowledge uh
1:04:22
of nature Within it's mistaking that kind of um
1:04:27
disembodied intellect for Consciousness and I have no doubt that AI is very intelligent but it's definitely not
1:04:33
conscious it never would be at least if it remains um you know computer circuitry what
1:04:40
might happen when we begin to integrate these circuits into human brains I mean who knows
1:04:46
um it could be dealing with a kind of speciation event actually but that's a whole other topic but yeah I think
1:04:52
eliminativism in so many ways is like the default worldview among
1:04:58
uh educated and especially Highly Educated people in the West
1:05:03
you you begin to imagine the universe such that Consciousness can't really exist within it right and or you reduce
1:05:09
Consciousness to this mere intellectual capacity um which is why we think or some people
1:05:15
think AI is conscious so yeah I think I wanted to drop that in there very very interesting the AI discussion and in a
1:05:22
lot of ways this scientific materialism and often the reductionism that it that it comes with is sort of it grew up
1:05:28
under industrial and post-industrial capitalism and it seems that it's premises and its basic assumptions about
1:05:34
who we are and and you know our place in the cosmos is underwriting this
1:05:39
increasingly dystopic techno dystopic um future that is that is sort of
1:05:44
emerging Over the Horizon that it seems that we're headed towards I mean these ideas of transhumanism you know and what
1:05:52
you're saying about AI like you can see where this is going and I think that also entails the need the necessity of
1:05:59
finding deeper and you know go through scientific material imperialism as you're you know as you're talking about
1:06:05
and trying to transcend it and get to a a place beyond it and this organic process philosophy organic relational
1:06:12
philosophy in general in the Marxist terminology we would call it something like dialectics you know this way of
1:06:18
apprehending the world um to you know all these different thinkers coming together and creating this new way of understanding the world
1:06:24
can kind of perhaps transcend the scientific materialism and reduction that is present and then open up
1:06:31
um you know new possibilities for the direction of humanity going forward or more precisely is a parallel process as
1:06:38
we wrestle with the implications and the way this these ideas actually cash out and we rebel against it we also are
1:06:45
developing at the same time new ways of envisioning ourselves and the universe that is more in line with sort of what
1:06:52
comes next as opposed to tripling down on what currently is and and you know
1:06:57
driving off the cliff um with that as our engine does that make sense is that a line that's what
1:07:03
you're saying yeah couldn't have said it better cool all right well yeah another content well
1:07:09
actually let me ask you this question really quick as a sort of a side where is Whitehead's place in philosophy right now like in
1:07:15
academic philosophy departments and you know people that do history of philosophy Whitehead doesn't seem to
1:07:21
figure overly overly prominently um in this in this realm what is his
1:07:27
sort of status in in philosophy you know mainstream philosophy as far as you can tell well it's it's getting better
1:07:34
um but he was ignored for a long time um perhaps I mean there are different
1:07:40
reasons for that but um you know he's he was entering into
1:07:48
um metaphysics and philosophical cosmology in the mid-1920s
1:07:53
um just at the time that philosophy both analytic and Continental philosophy were
1:07:58
rejecting metaphysics right so in analytic you have vickenstein saying
1:08:04
um that philosophers should just focus on clarifying language and that ultimately
1:08:09
truth could only ever be um you know these sort of sentential sentences indicating states of Affairs
1:08:17
in in the world has revealed to us by the senses and um
1:08:22
in Continental philosophy you have Heidegger in a very different way is also rejecting metaphysics and saying we
1:08:29
really shouldn't be engaged in that that sort of a project and so Whitehead's
1:08:34
major philosophical works just kind of um fell on deaf ears and they they were
1:08:41
articulated in the wrong season uh as it were and it's taken a while
1:08:46
um luckily they've been these books have been kept in print kind of in Cold Storage as it were for decades by
1:08:53
theologians who um developed process theology based on
1:08:59
Whitehead's ideas about a kind of imminent worldly Divinity that is
1:09:06
nonetheless not reducible to the already existing world in the way that Spinoza
1:09:11
had it right I got into that earlier that there's new possibilities and potencies for
1:09:18
theologizing in a modern and post-modern context that in a way I think gave
1:09:24
Protestant theologians in particular American Protestant theologians initially at the University of Chicago
1:09:31
especially Charles hartsorn and then later John Cobb Jr and David
1:09:36
Ray Griffin developed this this process theological response in many ways to
1:09:42
some of Nature's you know concerns about the death of God and so on and the
1:09:47
Amendments Whitehead makes to classical theology just yeah they proved really fertile and
1:09:53
um the center for process studies at the Claremont School of Theology for the last 50 years has been
1:10:00
keeping Whitehead's work alive in its applications to religion and theology
1:10:06
but I think over the last decade or decade and a half
1:10:11
um there's just been a real Resurgence of interest in Whitehead from across
1:10:17
different disciplines in philosophy but I think also people in like
1:10:23
environmental ethics and and thinking about thinking about the ecological crisis
1:10:28
have been very interested in and in the Natural Sciences as well more and more physicists and biologists are
1:10:34
recognizing um that Whitehead was quite ahead of his time and an early sort of
1:10:42
um you know he had some early um gestures towards what's what's nowadays
1:10:48
called complex systems science and and so on and uh so you know for all for all
1:10:55
these in all these ways I think Whitehead is potentially um going to be as Bruno LaTour suggested
1:11:03
the philosopher of the 21st century um in the way that people might say
1:11:08
Heidegger or wittenstein was the philosopher of the 20th well yeah I love
1:11:13
that that's that's really awesome and I know you're doing your part as well to to push things in that direction which
1:11:19
which I applaud um another philosopher couple actually that you mentioned in the book that that
1:11:24
play a role is is Duluth and you just mentioned Nietzsche we have an episode actually coming out on Nietzsche fairly
1:11:31
soon do you want to talk about both or one of those figures and sort of how they figure into to this text yeah so I
1:11:38
I think as I put it in the book I kind of wanted to test both white ahead and Spelling's ideas and the fires of
1:11:45
post-modernism and uh the sort of skepticism of metaphysics uh at least
1:11:51
Nietzsche skepticism of sort of a platonic metaphysics to lose obviously
1:11:56
as a metaphysician who's um when he says he's inverting Plato which in some ways is exactly what wernet is
1:12:03
doing but you know I I thought that um to really show the relevance of
1:12:09
whiteheads and showings approaches it would be important to respond uh to
1:12:15
Nietzsche's uh resistance to um
1:12:20
what the idea of ideas like his resistance to platonism um and his resistance to the idea that
1:12:27
there might be some you know Divine Divine ground or Divine
1:12:32
ingredient um I guess you know Nietzsche what I end up finding out in this close uh
1:12:39
comparison of Nietzsche uh and Duluth with Whitehead and shelling is that there's already kind of divinity
1:12:46
um in Nietzsche's work Dionysus maybe is the Divinity uh most important to
1:12:51
Nietzsche but um in so many ways how the ways that Whitehead amends traditional theism and theology
1:12:59
brings it very close to this nietzschean dionysian understanding of of the
1:13:05
universe um and you know Nietzsche also had lots of critiques of of Kant and German
1:13:11
idealism generally um and I felt that I was kind of unfair given that so many of the things that
1:13:19
shelling articulates um are precursors to tanisha's own ideas
1:13:26
and Duluth in terms of bringing Whitehead and shelling into conversation with
1:13:32
Duluth it's way easier because to lose already did that you know the influence of showing in Whitehead is is all over
1:13:39
so many of his books um but yeah the the idea here is to show
1:13:44
that um in thinking with Whitehead and shelling I'm not kind of regressing certainly not
1:13:51
to a pre-kantian mode of thought um but I'm also not trying to regress to a prenatian uh mode of thought trying to
1:13:58
go through Nietzsche's encounter with nihilism right and uh as you put it
1:14:04
earlier come out the other side and hopefully I've done that I think there are certain amendments I make to
1:14:10
whiteheads um speculative scheme in light of Nietzsche's criticisms of a kind of
1:14:16
Timeless divine order um and so I'm not just trying to um when Hedy and eyes in each as it were
1:14:23
I think I think things also move in the other direction on certain questions
1:14:29
the only way out is through and yeah you're literally talking about that and then doing it I like that a lot
1:14:34
um so we're coming up on our our time limit here so I just have a couple more questions for you one is is Around The
1:14:41
Ether how you make use of it of course the subtitle is etheric Imagination so can you kind of talk about ether Theory
1:14:48
imaginal ether and sort of the role it plays in crossing the threshold particularly I found interesting in
1:14:54
reimagining nature as you put it as a plant I thought that was that was pretty interesting yeah so The Ether and the
1:15:01
etheric imagination uh plays a large role um kind of hinted at it earlier it's a
1:15:08
way of understanding like the the Subterranean depths of our conscious
1:15:14
egoic experience right that and that there are methods for diving below that
1:15:21
threshold which Kant took to be um kind of impossible to to pierce and I'm
1:15:29
not suggesting that we can pierce it so much just asking us to um reframe our situation such that
1:15:37
um that the Mind shouldn't have been imagined as as separated from the World by this veil of appearance to begin with
1:15:43
uh and and you know just to touch back with um Nisha for a second when he goes
1:15:49
through his how the true world became a fable um sequence of the history of philosophy if
1:15:54
people are familiar with that um Google it you'll find it it's where he ends up is you know he's saying
1:16:01
there's not an ideal world out there of platonic forms independent uh of
1:16:07
appearances um once we get rid of that Ideal World though we're not then stuck in a world
1:16:13
of appearance the the nature of appearance becomes uh transfigured
1:16:19
um and so uh appearance becomes a portal into the into the real in some senses
1:16:25
what I think Nietzsche would be suggesting and I call this an aesthetic ontology right appearance as a portal
1:16:33
back into the real is an aesthetic ontology in the sense that um usually ontology
1:16:39
uh is is always presupposing a division between appearance and reality and
1:16:44
ontology is trying to get behind or beyond the appearance to the real but in the aesthetic ontology saying no the
1:16:50
real is the appearance the reality is itself this um
1:16:56
this infinite series of appearances and um
1:17:01
what the etheric dimension of of nature is an attempt to point towards is this
1:17:09
aesthetic aspect of of reality that um it's not just matter in motion uh that
1:17:16
if you really want to offer a concrete description of what nature is what
1:17:22
reality is it's a it's a field of of feelings uh and and
1:17:28
pulses of emotion vector vector feelings is is what it says as I said earlier and
1:17:34
so the reason I chose the E3 I refer to this is because both shelling and
1:17:39
Whitehead as well as Kant actually and some of his late posthumously published
1:17:44
work they all developed an ether Theory not as a kind of scientific hypothesis
1:17:51
that one might uh experimentally prove or disprove but rather as a metaphysical
1:17:59
um condition that would make our knowledge of nature possible Right by providing
1:18:06
this bridge uh between mind and nature right and so
1:18:11
um the if the ether has a bridge between mind and nature can be analogized to the plant realm in the sense that plant life
1:18:18
is kind of between the mineral and animal um dimensions of of nature right it's
1:18:26
plants are clearly alive but they're not quite as mobile as as animals and they
1:18:34
don't seem to have as um as Rich a sort of emotional and and
1:18:41
imagistic and sensory life but they're clearly capable of sensing and feeling
1:18:46
and they do move especially when you look at time lapse photography you see that at a different time scale they move
1:18:52
quite a bit um but they're also plants are closer to the mineral and you begin to see how
1:19:00
um you know there are aspects of order already in the inorganic mineral World
1:19:06
um that are you know like crystals and um the ways that chemistry can become
1:19:12
self-organizing and so you know by analoging analogizing The Ether to the plant realm I'm trying to indicate that
1:19:18
it's kind of this this me it plays this mediating role between mind and matter
1:19:25
um and it's it's the the in between um tension as it were that
1:19:33
is a they can become for us a kind of organ of perception like I think we can cultivate
1:19:39
um a a form of um of perception that would be
1:19:46
um capable of hanging out in this tension um rather than snapping to one side or
1:19:52
the other we can hang out in this tension and really cultivate this organ of etheric
1:19:59
imagination as as a new methodology in in metaphysics yeah
1:20:06
I find I find that idea exhilarating I think a lot of what you're doing of course following in the footsteps of
1:20:12
someone like Whitehead and correct me if I'm wrong but is tearing down these fences between these various dualities
1:20:18
that we take for granted whether it's between subject and object mind and matter or whatever else and where those
1:20:24
fences were Building Bridges building ways of connecting and synthesizing what we took to be a binary two opposite
1:20:32
things and actually showing how they bleed into one another and implicate one another is that a fair way of sort of
1:20:38
framing it yeah exactly beautiful so I know you touched on this a little bit earlier and of course we've been
1:20:43
touching on it throughout this conversation but maybe as a great way to sort of come to the end of this
1:20:49
conversation and summarize it what vision of the cosmos and our place in it
1:20:54
emerges from this work in your opinion and how do and I guess how might it impact different fields like philosophy
1:21:02
cosmology anthropology Etc yeah well I think the best way to encapsulate that
1:21:07
would be to say it's a participatory Vision um and you know the idea of
1:21:13
participation has um you know uh connotations both in in
1:21:20
human social life um and and in terms of political
1:21:25
participation and cultural participation but I think there's also this um
1:21:31
cosmological aspect to the form of you know participation that uh
1:21:37
this um approach the philosophy of forwards it's it's to recognize that um
1:21:43
you know human beings are like leaves on a tree as Alan Watts uh would put it
1:21:49
it's in you know uh or to extend the metaphor Alan walks would often say that
1:21:55
um you know the the Earth peoples like an apple tree apples you know and so we are
1:22:02
expressions of the cosmos we're not um aliens imported from elsewhere
1:22:09
um we weren't parachuted onto this planet from somewhere else we are natural expressions of it and it's uh
1:22:20
we can participate um if we're able to you know reconnect with the uh the depths of our
1:22:28
own being we can participate in you know creating a more flourishing Planet not
1:22:34
only for um ourselves but for the rest of the community of Life on this planet and I
1:22:40
think in so many ways um this participatory Vision allows us to see how many of our social ills and
1:22:49
social inequalities are connected to the ecological crisis
1:22:56
in the sense that our alienation from nature is is not
1:23:02
um at the end of the day different from our alienation from one another and you you were speaking to this earlier I thought in a really uh clear and
1:23:09
compelling way um and so you know developing
1:23:14
um this new approach to cosmology is just brilliant invitation uh to get us
1:23:20
to participate um in in the world and participate in
1:23:25
the construction of a better Society yeah beautiful I I really do see it as
1:23:30
the sort of next step in our growing up as a species like I kind of Envision
1:23:36
ourselves now as as this this like adolescent stage of of an intelligent
1:23:41
species where we're still childish in so many ways um we still have so much growing up to
1:23:47
do I mean teenagers in this adolescent phase they often will destroy their Futures through short-sightedness and
1:23:53
you know doing risky things and Etc and we're kind of in that phase but there's this promise of being able to grow out
1:23:59
Beyond it to develop as a species in in the direction that will allow us to
1:24:05
become what we want to be to fulfill our potential as a species not eliminate
1:24:10
ourselves through the creation of of AI or eliminate ourselves through our own
1:24:15
short-sightedness things like nuclear war whatever if we can get past those threats
1:24:21
um and and we can Embrace a philosophy and a way of envisioning ourselves in relation to everything and everyone else
1:24:27
and the way way that you're promoting I really do think it represents sort of the next big evolutionary jump of our
1:24:34
species and would be equivalent of Us coming out of our adolescence into mature adulthood and open up the
1:24:40
possibilities of what could come next for our species um and so I I really enjoy it and I
1:24:46
think it's really important work and I deeply appreciate everything you do Matt and thank you so much for coming on the
1:24:52
show as well before I let you go though any last words you want to say and also where people can find you and your work
1:24:58
online thanks so much Brad it's really it's been a lovely conversation and you know
1:25:04
the last thing I'd say is just to emphasize what you were just sharing I think of this phrase growing down rather
1:25:11
than growing up as you would think of what it means to become an adult to mature out of this adolescent phase we
1:25:17
need to grow down um I'm not sure if it was James Hillman or another
1:25:23
psychologist lots of people talk about this idea nowadays but it's part of what I mean by decent Dental philosophy right
1:25:29
let's get rooted on this planet stop trying to escape you know get let's stop
1:25:36
being fixated on the idea of escaping this planet it's really um not gonna happen
1:25:43
um it's just way too hard to live on Mars I don't know if you've actually elon's actually thought it through but you've gotta we've gotta save this
1:25:49
planet and um grow down and just you know accept humbly our our place as as uh as human
1:25:58
beings on the planet Earth and um I know I know you're uh your podcast and all the ideas that
1:26:04
you're trying to amplify here are all contributing to that so it's really really great to join the course
1:26:10
my friend I deeply appreciate that all right where can listeners find you and your work online oh right yes so uh best
1:26:17
place would be my my blog uh it's footnotes to plato.com number two and
1:26:24
um yeah they can find the book at various booksellers um not just not just Amazon if you want
1:26:31
to it is available Elsewhere on the Publisher's website revolor uh is the
1:26:36
publisher um so yeah okay cool and I will link to all of that in the show notes keep up
1:26:42
the great work my friend and you always have a home here at rev left I look forward to talking to you next time thanks so much Brett I look forward to
1:26:48
it
Comments
Post a Comment