Footnotes2Plato Podcast

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

Flavio and I explored the intersection of Whitehead’s process philosophy with modern theories of consciousness, such as Integrated Information Theory (IIT) and the Free Energy Principle (FEP), while also tying in quantum physics (as we’ve discussed in prior sessions). Flavio had been pondering whether IIT could be compatible with Whitehead’s framework and how concepts like Von Neumann entropy in quantum mechanics might lead to a rethinking of FEP’s treatment of Shannon information. I agreed that there are superficial similarities between IIT and Whitehead's philosophy, but pointed out a key difference: IIT treats experience as intrinsic and non-relational, while Whitehead’s process-relational ontology allows us to analyze experience in terms of prehensions or feelings; that is, in terms of its relational essence.Flavio proposed that IIT might be useful in quantifying moments of concrescence, the process by which an actual occasion reaches satisfaction. I agree there is something to the comparison worthy of further consideration. I also shared my concerns with FEP’s focus on error minimization, suggesting that Whitehead’s philosophy offers a more complete account of life, one that includes a creative urge to ingress novelty. We moved into a discussion about quantum physics, specifically how Whitehead’s process ontology might address the question of wave function collapse. I introduced Quantum Bayesianism (Qbism), suggesting that with a slight shift from an epistemological to an ontological orientation it starts to sound a lot like Whitehead’s panexperientialism.We ended by reflecting on the broader implications of moving from a mechanistic worldview to a cosmovision that embraces relationality and the intrinsic value of all life. Get full access to ☿Footnotes²Plato☀☾ at footnotes2plato.substack.com/subscribe

Simon, Sam, and I followed up on our conversation a few weeks ago. We began with my reflection on the depth of insight expressed in Simon’s recent Voicecraft conversation that included Sean Kelly, Cadell Last, and Layman Pascal. This lead to a discussion of creativity, initiated by Sam, who wonders whether human artistic expression is merely uncovering something already present rather than inventing something new. He reflects on Walt Whitman’s idea that music already exists and is awakened through instruments. Here is a stanza from Whitman’s poem “Music”:All music is what awakes from you when you are reminded by the instruments,It is not the violins and the cornets, it is not the oboe nor the beating drums,It is nearer and farther than they.Do you suppose that in these, touched by the fine players of the world, are the primary of the feelings that move you?No; there is something else,This something is in the soul and eludes description.Do you know what music does to the soul?Music, the most spiritual of sensuous enjoyments, gives it some faint sign of the harmony and measure that are of its essence.I tied this idea to what J. R. R. Tolkien wrote in a letter to his friend C. S. Lewis: “If God is mythopoeic, man must become mythopathic.” There are many parallels between Tolkien's view of divine cosmogenesis and Whitehead’s concept of divinely inspired creativity, where God is imagined as akin to a conductor guiding (but not determining) an orchestra.We moved on to explore the unconscious mind’s role in creativity, how human alignment with unconscious patterns brings clarity to one’s purpose, and the relationship between past, present, and future possibilities. We tried out metaphors of constraint, growth, and improvisation, weaving in references to Whitehead’s eternal objects and immanent forms of teleology.I tried to articulate how constraints, both from past actualities and future lures, shape creativity. I contrasted mere randomness with meaningful improvisation and emphasized Whitehead’s notion of a divine “lure for feeling” that entices but does not determine the possibilities that we end up actualizing. Sam introduced the idea of mystic consciousness, asking whether those at the edges of human experience might access different realms of creativity or potential.As the conversation progressed, we explored the role of trauma and suffering in evolution. Trauma can overly constrain creativity but, when processed or reinterpreted, may also deepen our sensitivity to and expression of deeper beauty. Simon elaborated on metaphors of roots, slime molds, and nutrient gathering to illustrate how revisiting the past can release hidden potential. I noted how life seems to push beyond mere survival, seeking intensified experience and flourishing in ways that challenge materialistic reductionism’s narrow focus on natural selection. Sam brings up the duality of health and disease, suggesting that illness can enhance life’s depth. Suffering isn’t something we necessarily seek out, but it nonetheless intensifies experience and might ultimately enhance beauty.Toward the end, we circled back to philosophical questions about justice, creativity, and aesthetics. I recommended the final chapters of Whitehead’s Adventures of Ideas which emphasize how human creativity participates in the universe’s broader artistic impulse. The discussion closed with Simon asking what generative AI means for creativity, suggesting it as a topic for future conversation.Watch the video of this conversation: Get full access to ☿Footnotes²Plato☀☾ at footnotes2plato.substack.com/subscribe