Footnotes2Plato Podcast

I began by referencing a conversation that Simon was recently involved in convened by Tim Adalin (Voicecraft about the question “Is the earth enough?”). I invited Simon to share any lingering ideas or questions from those conversations. Simon reflects that the second episode was packed with “a lot of broad frameworks for thinking about the world,” and by the end of it he was quite full, trying to feel into what still seemed relevant for him. He explains that he is drawn to the question of the direct experiencing of concepts such as the noosphere or “earth’s consciousness.” If the universe is alive and everything has an interior, how might we communicate with these beings?Simon then introduces the topic of nonphysical astral beings by talking about Carl Hayden Smith, who is involved in “DMTx” explorations, an extended DMT experience that Simon describes as “super sci-fi” yet “very, very real.” He calls it “a form of space travel” that is totally different from the materialist framework. He finds it exciting that, rather than building computer interfaces, people are “installing psychotechnological interfaces or energetic interfaces” for human consciousness to communicate with what some esoteric traditions call astral beings. I responded by considering the idea of portals being opened through practices like extended DMT, mentioning that some people encounter alien intelligences (or what McKenna famously called “machine elves”) who seem surprised to see humans—almost as if the humans got there by mistake. I wondered if there is any risk of disturbing other dimensions that we don’t belong in, which prompts Simon to recount a journey in which he literally saw a portal above him and sensed the beings within it thinking, “Oh, he’s seeing us!” before the portal closed. Simon jokes that humans might be bumbling fools in these realms, and therefore not quite capable of serious harm.Sam poses the question of whether these astral encounters induced by psychedelics are the same places we go at night in dreams. He also wonders if we are practicing “spiritual colonialism,” barging into territories uninvited. I see the dream state as more of a regular part of the human rhythm and suggested that psychedelics, especially something as potent as DMT, might represent a different type of portal that can lead people to engage in a kind of “gate crashing” into astral realms they are not spiritually prepared for. We discuss the possibility that encountered entities might want to teach or engage, or might resent the disturbance if we show up with the wrong intentions.Simon recounts Carl Hayden Smith’s report of repeatedly encountering the same entities in extended DMT sessions. At one point, they seemed to think he was coming too frequently, telling him he needed to integrate whatever they had already shared with him. I asked whether there is any attempt in these DMT experiments to coordinate experiences—do different people see the same beings or not? I wonder if the rules are all different on the astral plane, and whether we can build a science of the astral realm. Simon then imagines a frightening possibility of “multidimensional colonialism,” where humans apply “the same strategy as the Europeans did” centuries ago, but this time in other realms. Matt jokes that if karma applies, “the Europeans should be careful.”The conversation turns toward the notion that meme complexes or certain energetic patterns might be infesting humans as a result of astral journey’s without pure intentions. Perhaps we are already in a sort of full-on infestation when it comes to parasitic ideas portaling in from the astral realm. Intentions matter: Are we coming with open hearts or simply to take something from these realms? Might the evolutionary process be guided by the desire for deeper connection, such that bridges ought to be built between dimensions, but only at the right pace and in the right way?Simon muses about the amnesia that comes with incarnation in a human body. I connected this to the challenge of bringing back DMT experiences: “Memory and intellect fail to follow me there,” reminding him of Dante’s struggle to describe his vision of heaven in The Divine Comedy. Simon mentions dreams-within-dreams, a “buffering layer” for experiences. Sam then asks what role artists might play in bringing back what is otherwise difficult to translate, noting that art can circumvent rational routes and embody these revelations in ways that do not rely on conventional memory.The subject of the Incarnation of Christ arises, with Rudolf Steiner’s view that this cosmic being, the Christ, descended into the body of Jesus of Nazareth during his baptism in the Jordan and that the intensity could only be sustained for three years. We discussed the second coming of Christ as radically distributed, leading Simon to observe that “a large amount of people who have psychotic breaks proclaim themselves to be the second coming of Christ,” and that perhaps “they’re all right” on some mystical level.The conversation shifts to the role of music as a “psychotechnology,” controlling or guiding emotions. I point out that we can become architects of our own emotion in a way no prior generation could have dreamed of, given our capacity to stream any music instantly. Yet much pop music is very much an extension of the advertising industry, aiming to keep our desires oriented toward sex, status, and money. This, in turn, makes people ill-equipped for making sense of deeper astral realms. We live within a vast spiritual ecology, with beings of light feeding off compassion and dark beings feeding off fear and selfishness. We must cultivate relationships that serve our evolution.Sam wonders about the possibility that entities are also doing their equivalent of psychedelic journeying to reach us, an interesting inversion. We then explore how AI-generated art and music may complicate things further. We imagine a future in which anyone with imagination can produce sophisticated art without years of training. I express some concern that this might lead to a loss of appreciation for the artistic process, the agony and joy of genuine creation, and an over-emphasis on the product. Creativity requires embodiment and surrender, while AI emphasizes only the final product. Sam describes a work of art as a “portal to a different reality,” a “relic” of the unique place an artist visited. Simon agrees that “creation is as much about listening as doing,” and that the mind can intrude through the need for control, which parallels the challenges of fully surrendering in psychedelic experiences.I concluded by pointing out that humans seem torn between preserving tradition (treating human nature like a “museum”) and rushing toward ceaseless novelty (treating the human being as “raw material to be shaped and reshaped”). I suggested a middle path, and that as human beings, we may be destine to be “beings of the between.” Get full access to Footnotes2Plato at footnotes2plato.substack.com/subscribe

From New Atheism to Renewed Engagement with ChristianityWe discuss how the early 2000s were dominated by the New Atheists. This phase of cultural development was weighted in favor of the atheist point of view, making religion seem simplistic and stupid, and leading many young people to embrace secularism. Now, there appears to be an intriguing shift in which it suddenly became cool to convert to Christianity, even among individuals who once held prominent positions in the New Atheist movement.Brendan notices that while there may be a cultural oscillation, he sees only a minority moving through a genuine process of deconstruction, or rational working-through of their prior faith, before eventually seeing some sort of reconstruction. He notes how people grappling with a lack of religiosity in their lives might be experiencing a reaction to the excesses of secularism. Instead of a full developmental move that includes and transcends atheism and nihilism, many are simply reaching for more concrete religious forms or reverting to fundamentalism.We discussed Richard Dawkins unexpected claim that cultural Christianity is not so bad, and lamented the way Jordan Peterson, initially recognized for his Jungian archetypal nuance, has increasingly been pulled into more conservative theological circles and into reactionary politics. Brendan and I both welcome moving beyond simplistic atheism, but we call for a deeply philosophical, metaphysically robust conversation rather than allowing ourselves to become stuck in reactive culture-war camps or old school conversions to parochial dogmas. We must embrace a developmental approach that genuinely acknowledges the limitations of both a purely rational atheism and a naive religious literalism.Deconstruction Before Reconstruction and the Developmental PathI affirmed the importance of a deconstruction process of one’s traditional faith before trying to rush into a reconstruction, suggesting that atheism is actually a necessary stage in the emergence of genuine faith. We must genuinely grapple with the prospect at least of atheism, if not nihilism, so that a more participatory approach to meaning-making can emerge on the other side. Brendan characterizes this potential path as still a minority phenomenon but one with transformative power. Postmodern Logic, Jordan Peterson, and the Culture WarI described Jordan Peterson as reflecting precisely the kind of postmodern logic that he’s always railing against. I see him as a postmodern conservative who is basically saying, because all knowledge claims are indeed relative and perspectival, one must be prepared to forcefully re-impose order. Peterson’s appeal to certain conservative or patriarchal frameworks captures a defensive posture in a moment of chaos and breakdown and confusion, which has caused many disenchanted and alienated young men to gravitate toward him.Ultimately, if we cannot find some basis for normative reconstruction, the progressive breakthroughs made possible by postmodern critique—such as an emphasis on diversity and the complexity of social power—risk being undone by reactionary moves that just want to return to previous norms. A new kind of “hieros gamos” or synthesis must emerge, rather than reverting to a kind of more imperialistic morality or slipping back into New Atheism 2.0. Christ After Christianity, Universal Ethics, and Beloved CommunityI attempted to recover some sense of the pre-Christian Christ impulse. While a religion built up around Jesus as a historical figure (and perhaps also around Christ as a newly revealed cosmological power), there remains a still implicit moral seed that is just beginning to take root. The deeper transformative aspects of Christianity are not yet fully realized, exemplified by the tension between an ethos of forgiveness and the continuing cultural gravity of rituals of sacrifice and mob (in)justice. I believe an aspect of the Christ impulse involves recognizing the individual soul as the locus of value, such that using violence against souls to achieve justice ultimately undermines the very basis of justice itself.Brendan then expands upon Christianity’s cultural legacy, referencing scholars like Tom Holland and his argument that Western ethics, human rights, and democratic ideals have Christian origins. Christianity in some sense generated secularism and even fostered the scientific mindset, illustrating how the waning of religiosity ironically springs from Christianity’s own universalizing impulse. This same impulse can be seen in other Axial traditions, as the move to universal ethics is not uniquely Christian but an evolutionary expansion of humanity’s moral horizon.I then introduced Josiah Royce’s concept of the “beloved community” (which became very influential for figures like Howard Thurman and Martin Luther King, Jr.), where individuals hold a “loyalty to loyalty as such.” Individuals may be the primary locus of values like justice, but individuals are not parachuted into this world already fully formed. Free individuals only arise in the context of loving communities. I emphasized that real psychospiritual and moral transformation cannot be legislatively imposed upon a society by the state, but rather is incubated in cultural life out of inter- and intrapersonal relations. The beloved community is an experiment in “the task of inventing and applying the arts which shall win men over to unity,” as Royce puts it (The Problems of Christianity). If America is to be a truly “Christian nation,” it must be in that universal and multicultural sense, dedicated to “love of your neighbor,” rather than tribal identifications based on blood bonds.Metaphysics and the Cosmic Significance of the Christ EventFinally, we explored the coordinate perspectives of a “naturalistic Christology” and a “Christological naturalism.” Brendan framed this around the idea that “implicit, immanent in the natural world is a law-like pattern or Logos.” Rather than positing a supernatural incursion from “outside,” we both see the Christ event as something almost “unavoidable” once evolutionary and cultural conditions ripened. I reference Teilhard de Chardin and Jung to argue that humanity’s intuition of some sense of a moral world order is not an arbitrary fluke or biopower play but a reflection of deeper patterns of complexification and evolving cosmic compassion. We both wrestled with the problem of theodicy, noting that a God who is “large and in charge” would seemingly have to take responsibility for evil and suffering, whereas a God who is “along for the ride” (or a “fellow sufferer” in Whitehead’s sense) may be more credible. If God is co-evolving with humanity, then perhaps God needed embodiment in order to become conscious. An originally unconscious spirit is gradually waking up, learning through the contingencies of the evolutionary process how to manifest deeper love.In this post-Nietzschean vision, morality emerges from below but also points to a transcendental horizon. I think Jesus is already post-Nietzschean, beyond good and evil, in that his teachings (“hate your family,” “love your enemies”) call us to overcome conventional codes. Brendan notes that reading the Bible through a Jungian lens—where God is a literary character going through personality transformations—is a fruitful approach that integrates science, psychology, and mythopoetic imagination. We conclude that a coherent, integral cosmology must acknowledge the ongoing mutual transformation of God and humanity, leading to a more expansive sense of Christ’s evolutionary role. Get full access to Footnotes2Plato at footnotes2plato.substack.com/subscribe

Below is a summary of our conversation that I have heavily edited but that was originally generated by ChatGPT:I proposed the idea of discussing “The Spiritual Mission of America.” I liked the word “mission” because it evokes both a guiding purpose and, implicitly, something that might carry religious or spiritual weight. We agreed that “mission” felt more active than alternatives like “dream” or “vision,” which struck me as passive or too ephemeral. “Mission” suggests something we must collectively strive toward. Before moving deeper, I thanked Edward for engaging with me. We’d first connected over a contentious Facebook post I had made, suggesting (in short) that no reasonable person would vote for Donald Trump over Kamala Harris. Edward’s thoughtful pushback opened a space for genuine conversation rather than shutting it down, and I wanted to publicly acknowledge and appreciate that.Both Edward and I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, a well-known center of progressive politics. Kamala Harris’s career and figures like Gavin Newsom have roots here, so it’s fertile ground for thinking about the current state of American political life. We planned to start personally, with our political autobiographies, and then move to grander questions about the nation’s deeper purpose.Edward explained his background. His parents were academics who started off in California but ended up in Nebraska. He grew up amid a mixture of progressive family ideals and a community deeply influenced by intense forms of evangelical Christianity. His family leaned strongly left, valuing progressive causes and working-class democratic traditions—his grandfather was even involved in union organizing efforts against Reagan. Edward’s education and interest in religion, philosophy, Kingian nonviolence, and Buddhism made him a committed progressive. He admired Cornel West, Chris Hedges, and Howard Zinn, and he’d voted Green more than once. Over time, though, he became disillusioned with the Democratic Party as he recognized that administrations like Obama’s continued many of Bush’s worst policies—foreign wars, surveillance, and the persecution of whistleblowers. He also noted the heartbreak of supporting Bernie Sanders, only to see the Democratic establishment squash his movements. Edward came to see justified resentment toward the American “establishment,” and he began to challenge simplistic party loyalties and liberal assumptions.I reflected on his story and recognized many parallels. For me, the Bush years and the Iraq War were also a political awakening. Having read Chomsky and Zinn in high school, I learned America wasn’t simply “the good guy” internationally. We were involved in deep moral complicities, and our media was too often theatrical, feeding fear and propaganda. What puzzled and troubled me recently was how figures like George W. Bush, once rightly condemned for torture, preemptive war, and lies about weapons of mass destruction, were being rehabilitated by some Democrats simply because Trump seemed worse. Similarly, I noted the odd shift in attitudes toward the FBI and CIA—from the left seeing them as villains up to and including the Bush and early Obama years to embracing them when they appeared to oppose Trump. This struck me as a stunning reversal.We shifted to the 2024 election. I showed demographic data revealing significant shifts in voting patterns: younger Black and Latino men—and working-class people in general—moved more toward Trump. The expected identity-politics logic, which might have predicted stronger support for Harris, didn’t hold. Instead, there seemed to be a growing perception that Democrats were ignoring the struggles of ordinary working people, focusing too narrowly on cultural issues or niche academic language that alienated many. We both understood that cultural struggles matter, but turning them into litmus tests and injecting them into national politics seemed counterproductive.From there, we contemplated the deeper question of America’s purpose. I proposed that the nation’s psycho-spiritual conditions of possibility involve a balance between two core ideals: individual freedom and social justice. Both the right and the left champion freedom and justice in their own ways, but the forms differ. On one side, freedom might mean gun rights; on the other, freedom might mean the right to self-determine one’s gender identity. Likewise, conceptions of social justice differ—some see it in Christian moral values underpinning individual dignity and community responsibilities, others in historical redress of oppression. Holding these tensions in a single national project requires a kind of spiritual maturity that we have yet to fully develop.Edward pointed to America’s tragic and complex origins—slavery, genocide, and the uprooting of peoples—while also recognizing that our ideals involve striving for something greater. We saw literature and mythology as guiding lights. Edward quoted Martin Shaw’s distinction between “vision” (conscious intention) and “dream” (the unconscious mythic reality). He cited Moby-Dick as the first major American work to plumb the deep mythic psyche of America—chaotic, multi-ethnic, uprooted, and forever journeying. I mentioned Walt Whitman, who insisted that democracy’s history remains unwritten and must still be enacted. Both of us believe that America, as a project, is not finished.Edward mentioned Heidegger’s idea of homecoming and the need for a central mystery around which a culture can gather. In America, perhaps because we are so plural and so young, we haven’t found a single organizing myth. We have symbols like the flag, but many find patriotism awkward or suspect. Yet, we still share a currency, laws, and a peculiar sense of possibility. Could our shared spiritual mission be located in art, in beauty, in the way tragedy and comedy combine? Could jazz, with its blend of improvisation and diversity, be a model for democracy itself?At one point we contrasted the aesthetics of democracy with the aesthetics of fascism. I emphasized their differing approaches relating the whole and its parts. Democracy thrives on a dynamic balance where individual parts maintain their independence yet harmonize in tension with the whole, creating a form of beauty akin to jazz—an improvisational art form that celebrates individuality while integrating it into a collective composition. This process highlights the democratic ideal of dialogue and integration of values, which preserves the social fabric and nurtures unity without erasing difference.In contrast, fascism (and any kind of totalitarianism) embodies a reactionary and reductive aesthetic, seeking safety and uniformity by collapsing individuality into an undifferentiated whole. This approach, driven by fear of dissonance, results in a rigid and simplistic form of order that stifles creativity and complexity, rendering it intellectually and aesthetically impoverished.We both hope that America can become what it aspires to be: a pluralistic democracy that honors individual dignity while pursuing social uplift. This aspiration is not just for our own sake. If we fail, the human species will lose a crucial experiment in managing the political tension between the values of individual freedom and social justice. As climate change accelerates and global migrations swell, the ability to hold different peoples together under shared values becomes ever more critical. If the US can’t manage to pull this off, who else can?As our conversation wound down, we both felt more prepared to think about the future. I appreciated Edward’s thoughtfulness, which helped me reaffirm my sense that America’s spiritual mission remains vital, unfinished, and worth striving for. Video of our dialogue: Get full access to Footnotes2Plato at footnotes2plato.substack.com/subscribe

Tim and I turned our attention to Guattari’s book Chaosmosis and in particular chapter 2 on machinic heterogenesis. I shared a few thoughts yesterday about the same chapter:Tim and I discuss Varela’s concept of autopoiesis, Guattari’s machinic assemblages, Whitehead’s relational ontology, and the need to recover a new from of truth sensitive to singularities.The distinction between autopoietic machines and machinic assemblages becomes central. While Varela emphasizes organizational closure and structural coupling, Guattari critiques this for lacking evolutionary and cognitive openness. My suggestion that we shift from ontological “relativity” to “relationality” results from my deeper concern to uphold a concept of truth that resists absolutism yet avoids nihilistic relativism. We must reconstruct a concept of truth as emergent, participatory, and situational—a shared event rooted in singularity and ongoing processes of mutual implication. Relating this to political action, the framing of truth as incarnational and contextually bound could empower resistance to oppressive ideologies while fostering pluralistic solidarity. Tim’s discussion of molecular evolution and the pharmacological effects of exogenous substances (e.g., psilocin) highlights the porous boundaries between the autopoietic and machinic. These substances disrupt established neural patterns, fostering new configurations—a vivid example of machinic processes in biology. This dovetails with Guattari’s machinic heterogenesis, where disruptions lead to the emergence of new systems, assemblages, and truths. Guattari’s critique of Heidegger’s deterministic view of technology as a “malefic destiny” introduces a hopeful, non-totalizing alternative. Machinic assemblages are singular, open-ended, and precarious—a source of multiple potentials rather than inevitable doom. Get full access to Footnotes2Plato at footnotes2plato.substack.com/subscribe

I’m sharing some thoughts after reading a chapter from Felix Guattari’s book Chaosmosis (1995). Turning again to the work of Guattari and his frequent collaborator Gilles Deleuze felt important as the US enters a dangerous moment in its own history. Fascism is not just an external threat, not just about those bad people over there. As Michel Foucault says in his preface to Anti-Oedipus (1972), we must beware of the way our own desires can be captured, of the little fascist in each of us that causes us to love power, even to love our own domination and exploitation. “We must die as egos and beborn again in the swarm, notseparate and self-hypnotized, butindividual and related.” -Henry Miller, Sexus“To be cured,” Miller continues, “we must rise from our graves and throw off the cerements of the dead. Nobody can do it for another—it is a private affair which is best done collectively.” Get full access to Footnotes2Plato at footnotes2plato.substack.com/subscribe

The discussion of Reiner Schürmann’s article on neoplatonic henology in Plotinus, Eckhart, and Heidegger begins at 30:07. The first half hour is a discussion of Tim’s work on improving interactions between venomous snakes and human beings. The conversation begins with Tim recounting his recent work in India, where he has been engaged in projects addressing the pervasive issue of snakebites. He explains the challenges of understanding and mitigating the issue, touching on topics such as venom variability, regional antivenom production, and the behavioral ecology of snakes.The discussion then transitions into philosophy, with a focus on Reiner Schürmann's essay, "Neoplatonic Henology as an Overcoming of Metaphysics." We delve into Schürmann’s critique of traditional Western metaphysics and his embrace of the historical and cultural situatedness of philosophical inquiry. Philosophy has an epochal nature, such that in some sense philosophy just is the history of philosophy. We consider the dangers of reifying metaphors and the risks of projecting static hierarchies onto dynamically nested systems. We discuss Heidegger’s Nazi affiliations, grappling with how a thinker so attuned to the subtleties of Being could fall prey to such a violent ideological fixation.We advocate for a process-oriented approach that embraces groundlessness as a source of creativity and renewal, rather than as a cause for nihilistic despair."Radicalizing analogy means moving beyond resemblance to operation—to active participation in the process itself. This is not about static structures mirroring each other but about sharing in the active principle of becoming." -Tim"The no-thingness of the ground is not a void; it’s a pure activity. It’s a precondition for the formation of determinate objects—a groundless ground." -Tim"Philosophy is the history of philosophy. Science is the history of science. And the history of ideas is really an evolution of consciousness, where the very perceptual Gestalt changes—not just the concepts, but the way phenomena themselves appear transforms over the course of history." -Matt"There is a way in which the groundlessness of the soul mirrors the anarchic creativity of the divine—not as a fixed structure but as a shared openness to becoming." -Matt"The way up and the way down are the same. There’s a strange indecipherability between the One and matter, where the highest and lowest coincide in a way that questions the idea of linear hierarchy." -Matt Get full access to Footnotes2Plato at footnotes2plato.substack.com/subscribe

Trigger warning! Chad and I discuss archetypal astrology in this podcast : ) We have both studied with the cultural historian and philosopher Richard Tarnas. Check out his introduction to archetypal cosmology at this link. We circle back to a conversation Tim Jackson and I had about Carl Jung’s Problem of the Fourth and connect it with the archetypal significance of Pluto’s discovery in 1930, Rudolf Steiner’s prophecy of the second coming of the etheric Christ, and explore the role a depth psychologically informed recovery of astrology can play in cosmological renewal. For more context, here are my reflections on Jung’s essay on the Problem of the Fourth: Get full access to Footnotes2Plato at footnotes2plato.substack.com/subscribe

The Theōros Project hosted philosopher Evan Thompson at CIIS for a dialogue with me about his new book (with Adam Frank and Marcelo Gleiser) The Blind Spot: Why Science Cannot Ignore Human Experience (2024). We covered a lot of territory:* early 20th century philosophical warnings about an impending crisis in scientific culture from Husserl and Whitehead* the construction of temperature out of our felt sense of warmth* the radically different treatments of color by Newton and Goethe* the nature of time as highlighted in the Einstein-Bergson debate* the nature of life as autopoiesis and what makes its emergence rather surprising from the perspective of the blind spot metaphysics informing much of physics and chemistry* the hype surrounding artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies (which Evan and I argue are not intelligent and will not at least with anything like their current architecture realize consciousness)* the way the horizonal structure of consciousness makes it entirely unlike any other natural phenomenon; it provides the condition for the possibility of scientific knowledge as such, and so cannot be explained in objectivist scientific terms.I’ve written about and discussed the book several times earlier this year: Get full access to Footnotes2Plato at footnotes2plato.substack.com/subscribe

I begin with historical context about two important biologists who influenced Whitehead at Harvard: Lawrence Henderson and William Wheeler. Henderson, in his 1913 book The Fitness of the Environment, argued for continuity between cosmic and biological evolution, suggesting the universe is fundamentally biocentric. Wheeler, in his 1928 book Emergent Evolution, discussed balancing genetic continuity with evolutionary novelty, arguing that the emergence of life and mind were gradual developments rather than sudden appearances. Tim points out that gradualism was orthodox Darwinism regarding species change, though Darwin himself was agnostic about the origin of life. We discuss how Whitehead distinguishes between gradualism at the level of matter/life/mind distinctions versus gradualism in speciation, with Whitehead rejecting strict gradualism at the species level. He affirms a deeper cosmological gradualism (or synechism, to borrow Peirce’s term) such that there can be no sudden leaps into life from matter, nor from matter into mind, at least not if matter is conceived of as bits of stuff pushed around by forces obeying fixed laws. To provide more historical context, I shared that Whitehead was responding to the rise of logical positivism and behaviorism in the 1920s. While some of his specific targets may seem dated, his defense of final causality and immanent aims in nature remains relevant. Whitehead saw purpose as plainly evident in animals and human beings, our behavior becoming entirely inexplicable if its reality is denied. And it is only denied when special scientific methods effective within limited domains are inappropriately generalized. We discuss Whitehead’s warning against the reduction of reason to merely pragmatic survival value, and his defense of speculative reason as necessary for science to understand itself. Without acknowledging the reality and importance of speculative reason, science risks adopting naive materialism as an unacknowledged metaphysics. A key point of discussion is Whitehead’s treatment of Spenser’s term “survival of the fittest” and the extent to which we can meaningfully define grades of complexity in evolution. Tim argues that complexity can emerge through niche partitioning and differentiation without requiring a separate principle of upward progress. I suggest Whitehead is making observations about complexity rather than proposing explanatory principles. The conversation concludes with an exploration of Whitehead’s concept of rhythm and cycles as basic not only to life but to all physical existence. He sees rhythm as involving both repetition and variation, providing a way to understand evolution that balances order and novelty. I tried to connect his idea of cycles to contemporary theories about the origin of life through chemical cycles and the intimate resonances between organisms and their environments (mostly other organisms). We acknowledge both the dated aspects of his presentation and the continuing relevance of his core insights about reason, purpose, and evolution. Get full access to Footnotes2Plato at footnotes2plato.substack.com/subscribe

You can find links to the articles Timothy Jackson and I are discussing in this brief reflection I wrote about them: I asked ChatGPT4o to condense and dramatize the transcript of our three hour conversation into the form of a Platonic dialogue. Here is the output: In the Platonic style, we can condense the dialogue between Matt and Tim into succinct philosophical positions, with each interlocutor sharply focusing on their core points. Here’s a distilled version of their conversation:Matt: "Tim, you are but a hallucination, just as I am to you, a constructed model of your mind. Does this not lead us to question the reality of our perceptions?"Tim: "Indeed, the models we create must constantly update themselves. But this does not negate our experience—it refines it. We are not static beings; we exist as multiplicities, always shifting and adapting."Matt: "As in my recent experience, when time seemed to stretch in a moment of danger, our consciousness reveals its plasticity. Time dilates, and in that dilation, we discover the deep relationship between mind and world. Yet, is not this dilation evidence of a more profound engagement with reality than mere predictive error minimization?"Tim: "Ah, but therein lies the paradox. Predictive processing offers us a model, yet can it account for the spontaneity of improvisation, of flow states where we exceed even our own expectations?"Matt: "Predictive processing, as useful as it is, often seems to trap us in a feedback loop. We must turn to active inference, wherein perception is action, and action reshapes perception. It is in this engagement that we transcend the Kantian trap of a merely representational mind."Tim: "But even in improvisation, are we not bound by constraints? The self dissolves, yes, but does this not allow a deeper attunement to the richness of the world around us? The danger lies in confusing constraint with generation. We do not create the world—we respond to it."Matt: "True, but is not the act of responding itself a form of creation? When we act, we reshape the world. The brain may indeed function like a Bayesian engine, but we are not mere calculators. Our consciousness, our awareness, stretches beyond the confines of predictive models. We are agents, creators of novelty, not prisoners of expectation."Tim: "And yet, agency itself must be understood in context. The environment, too, acts upon us. Just as we shape it, it shapes us in return. The self, the environment, the organism—each influences the other in an endless dance of improvisation."Matt: "Exactly. This mutual shaping is the essence of experience. But the danger, as always, is in reducing this dynamic to mere mechanism. We must acknowledge the creativity at the heart of perception, the spontaneity at the core of life."Watch this conversation on YouTube: Get full access to Footnotes2Plato at footnotes2plato.substack.com/subscribe