Footnotes2Plato Podcast

Roman and Matt delved into Whitehead's metaphysics, exploring its intersections with modern science and spiritual experience. Roman began by asking Matt about the distinction between Whitehead's eternal objects and Plato's eternal forms. Matt explained that although Whitehead was influenced by Plato, the two concepts are different. Plato saw the physical world as an imperfect imitation of an unchanging realm of forms, whereas Whitehead valued the process by which these forms become actualized in the physical world, emphasizing the dynamic nature of reality.As their discussion continued, Roman sought to understand whether Whitehead's eternal objects are active influences. Matt clarified that in Whitehead's philosophy, eternal objects are passive, while actual occasions are the active elements that bring these objects into existence. This inversion of Plato's idea underscores Whitehead's focus on the processes of realization rather than static perfection.Their conversation then shifted to the broader implications of metaphysics on science and spirituality. Roman inquired about how adopting a process philosophical viewpoint could transform scientific practice. Matt responded by critiquing modern science's historical drive to control nature, often leading to ecological and existential crises. He suggested that a Whiteheadian perspective would promote a more relational approach to science, one that emphasizes cooperation with nature rather than domination, potentially leading to more sustainable and compassionate practices.Roman and Matt then explored the role of values in scientific inquiry. Matt argued for a reimagined science that treats knowledge as sacred and value-driven, rather than value-neutral. This perspective, he believed, could align scientific endeavors with broader human and ecological well-being, moving away from purely economic or militaristic goals.Reflecting on the importance of abstraction and intuition in philosophy, Matt emphasized the need to ground philosophical abstractions in a wide range of human intuitions, including those that might seem irrational or spiritual. This inclusive approach, he argued, ensures that speculative cosmologies remain connected to lived human experiences.The conversation also touched on the future of human knowledge and existence. Matt highlighted the potential for humans to positively influence the evolutionary process through compassionate and knowledgeable engagement with the world. While acknowledging the inevitability of suffering, he suggested that human efforts can reduce unnecessary suffering and enhance joy for all life forms on the planet.They also pondered the relationship between suffering and growth, with Matt affirming that while suffering is inevitable, human actions can reduce unnecessary suffering and enhance overall well-being. When Roman raised questions about the nature of the self and continuity after death, Matt expressed his belief in some form of continuity, suggesting that karma creates a causal connection between lives. He likened death to a transition similar to sleep (or perhaps waking up from a dream!), implying ongoing spiritual development.Finally, Roman reflected on experiences of primal wonder and their connection to spiritual insights. Matt connected these experiences to deeper spiritual truths, suggesting that moments of profound wonder reveal fundamental aspects of reality often overlooked in everyday life.Watch the video of this conversation here: Get full access to Footnotes2Plato at footnotes2plato.substack.com/subscribe

Evan Sola and Casey Paleos both have chapters in a soon to be published American Psychological Association textbook on psychedelic therapy, which formed the basis of our dialogue. Introductions* Matt Segall, PhD introduces himself as a philosopher with a deep interest in psychedelics due to personal experiences and their potential as agents of belief change and philosophical research instruments.* Casey Paleos, MD follows, detailing his background as a psychiatrist and psychedelic researcher. He recounts his journey from his residency at NYU, involvement in the Psilocybin Cancer Anxiety Study, and his transition to private practice and work with MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies).* Evan Sola, PsyD then shares his experiences as a clinical psychologist. He talks about his initial exposure to MDMA therapy during his grad school years, his work with Michael Mithoefer on adherence rating, and his doctoral research on the qualitative processes in MDMA-assisted therapy.Discussion on Psychedelics in Therapy The conversation delves into the therapeutic potential of psychedelics. Matt emphasizes the importance of understanding the philosophical and spiritual implications of psychedelic experiences, while Casey and Evan discuss their professional experiences and the transformative impact of these substances on mental health treatment.Ethical Considerations and Therapeutic Approaches* The participants explore the ethical complexities in psychedelic-assisted therapy, such as the issues of consent and the role of touch during sessions.* Casey Paleos emphasizes the necessity for therapists to do their own inner work to manage transference and countertransference, ensuring they maintain clear professional boundaries.* Evan Sola highlights the importance of being present with clients’ experiences, managing conflict and disappointment, and not rushing clients out of negative feelings but rather helping them navigate these emotions.Philosophical and Ontological Insights The discussion touches on various philosophical perspectives, such as dual aspect monism and the idea that consciousness may be a non-local phenomenon. They discuss how these perspectives can enhance the understanding and practice of psychedelic-assisted therapy.Challenges and Future Directions The conversation shifts to the challenges in the field, including maintaining ethical standards and the potential for psychedelic-assisted therapy to be misrepresented as offering reductive solutions or “cures.” They address the importance of nuanced and ongoing research, proper training, and establishing a community and clinic with high standards for safety and efficacy.Some background reading material: * Psychedelics and the ‘inner healer’: Myth or mechanism? By Peill J, Marguilho M, Erritzoe D, et al. in Journal of Psychopharmacology. 2024;38(5):417-424. * Comment to FDA advisory committee looking at MDMA therapy by Nese Devenot* “A Theological Reckoning with ‘Bad Trips’” by Rachel Petersen. Watch the video of this conversation here: Get full access to Footnotes2Plato at footnotes2plato.substack.com/subscribe

We discuss Ashley Woodward’s paper on Simondon: “Philosophy of/as Information”Here’s a ChatGPT4o summary: Matt greeted Tim, sharing about the warm weather in Oakland and the ongoing Independence Day celebrations with fireworks already exploding despite it being 4 o’clock in the afternoon. They had both read Luciano Floridi’s work on Philosophy of Information and Ashley Woodward’s article on Simondon in preparation for this dialogue. Matt expressed his appreciation for Floridi's balanced approach, merging analytic and continental philosophies seamlessly.The conversation turned to information theory and cybernetics. They reflected on Norbert Wiener's insights and the significant moral implications that information technologies carry. They touched upon the historical context of these technologies, referencing how radio had been a powerful tool for propaganda during World War II and comparing it to the pervasive influence of modern digital information systems.Timothy brought Heidegger into the discussion, exploring his views on technology, particularly the concept of "enframing," which describes technology as a mode of revealing the world. Heidegger’s caution about mistaking calculation for thinking resonated strongly, highlighting the existential risk of losing the ability to think meaningfully in a world dominated by computational systems.Matt and Tim examined the concepts of individuation and primary information in Simondon’s work. They explored Simondon's notion of the pre-individual milieu and how the process of individuation is central to understanding the nature of information. Timothy pointed out Simondon’s critique of traditional hylomorphic models, emphasizing the active role of the material in the process of individuation.Matt then drew parallels between Simondon and Whitehead, particularly around the idea of eternal objects. They debated the nature of definiteness versus determinacy, considering how eternal objects might be interpreted within Simondon’s framework to make Whitehead’s ideas more accessible and less platonic.Throughout their discussion, the importance of human mediation in information transmission and control was a recurring theme. Unlike machines, humans are the real timekeepers, the ones who imbue information with meaning and context. This distinction underscored the limitations of machines and the irreplaceable role of human consciousness in the informational ecosystem.They also touched on the contemporary relevance of philosophy, particularly in addressing the pressing issues of the digital age. The conversation underscored the need for philosophy to be timely, engaging with the challenges posed by social media and the digital marketplace of ideas.Watch the video of this conversation here: Get full access to Footnotes2Plato at footnotes2plato.substack.com/subscribe

What is the ontology of evolution? Does it have a direction? What are its a priori conditions, if any? What if Whitehead is right that life strives not only to survive but also to thrive and evolve towards greater complexity and sensitivity? Download the unedited transcript.Watch the video of this conversation: Read what I’ve already written about this book: Get full access to Footnotes2Plato at footnotes2plato.substack.com/subscribe

We start out talking about open relationships and somehow make our way through deep time to the incarnation of the Logos and the harvest of life’s tragic beauty. This is at once an intimately personal and a cosmological discussion. Get full access to Footnotes2Plato at footnotes2plato.substack.com/subscribe

Some key themes that emerge in our dialogue: Jung begins the book with an emotional, active imagination style condemnation of Yahweh’s behavior in the Book of Job. In the second half, he steps back to analyze not just what is going on in Yahweh's unconscious and in Job, but to look at all of Western civilization and the perils it faced after World War II. A key theme is the ongoing nature of the incarnation process. The incarnation of Christ was an incomplete attempt to reconcile Yahweh with man, as Jesus was not fully human. There is a lack of full integration between the divine and human such that the incarnation must be read not as a once and done event but as an ongoing process through the Holy Spirit. This can be connected to the Protestant emphasis on unmediated individual access to the divine, which Jung sees as important but also prone to excess without the counterbalance of church authority and tradition that Catholicism provides. With the Assumption of Mary, Catholicism also takes steps to integrate the feminine, while Protestantism remains overly masculine and so falls out of step with the Zeitgeist. Jung justifies the importance of both critical and creative approaches to interpreting religious scriptures. Doubt and transgression of norms can be generative. While the church has a role in examining the authenticity of revelations, individuals also have a responsibility to be alert, critical and self-aware in relation to religious claims. Visions and revelations from the unconscious are ambivalent - they can be creative or destructive. So a careful, conscientious approach is needed.From a developmental psychology point of view, Yahweh can be likened to a father enabling but also needing to constrain the creative transgressions of the son. The son grows up to become a father but with new insights integrated. Psychologically, there is an oscillation between the ego's immersion in the unconscious and its re-emergence in a reformed configuration. Consciousness expands but whenever something new enters consciousness, something else necessarily falls into the unconscious. Completion is never fully achieved.Jung suggests that it would be psychologically appropriate if the author of John’s epistles is the same John of Patmos who wrote the Book of Revelation. The latter text records an eruption of unconscious contents in compensation for the author's one-sided emphasis in the epistles on God/Christ as all-good and all-loving. Revelation presents a wrathful, apocalyptic Christ making a final judgment: the sacrificial lamb has become a wrathful ram. We consider the interplay of active and passive principles in the divine and in the human soul. God as pure act requires the passive resistance of matter to enable consciousness. A dynamic back-and-forth between activity and passivity, symbolized by the syzygy of Christ/Sophia, is at play in the individuation of the human soul and the incarnation of the divine. Jung ultimately points to the autonomous, living reality of archetypes as transcendentally conditioned dynamisms. Their effects manifest in human experience even if their exact metaphysical status remains uncertain. Jung's psychological approach to the Bible and Christianity is not a reductive psychologism but an attempt to understand the continuing incarnation of the divine in the human soul. Get full access to Footnotes2Plato at footnotes2plato.substack.com/subscribe

This recording is our first of at least two dialogues on a book I’ll never be done reading.…Below is my own brief summary after re-reading roughly the first half of the text:Physical facts aren’t the only basis for truth. According to Jung, there are also psychic truths, and they are no less valid, and, for human beings at least, may even possess an overriding importance. Beliefs, Jung asserts, represent facts about human psychology regardless of their empirical accuracy. In considering the history of human religious experience, Jung claims that "miracles appeal only to the understanding of those who cannot perceive the meaning" [para. 554].In his prefatory note for Answer to Job (1952), Jung offers an apologia for his book as an attempt to reimagine the duality between good and evil in the human psyche and its God-image. This may seem irrelevant to the major problems faced by contemporary civilization. But his reimagination is responsive precisely to our unprecedented modern situation: the death of God and birth of enlightened Man, who after attempting the technoscientific rationalization of both human and physical nature had thus far (by the time of Jung’s writing) only world war, holocaust, and the threat of total nuclear annihilation to show for it. More than half a century after Jung’s death, we must add the increasing inevitability of planet-wide ecological collapse. Psychically speaking, Jung diagnoses the etiology of this whole situation by pointing to the metaphysical and moral scandal of monotheism. The old idea of evil as merely a “privation” or absence (of God) no longer captures our attention or inspires moral courage. Jung recognizes (again, psychologically) that evil is a positive reality in God and in Man. The challenge, then, is to justify the ways of God—not just to Man but also to Woman—as an unprethinkable coincidentia oppositorum. Jung wrestles with the Biblical story of Job, highlighting how Job seeks divine aid against the same God who is unfairly testing him. The concept of divinity is approached as both a subject and an object, i.e., as an evolving personality as well as a mirror image for humanity. He describes Yahweh as only just beginning to reflect on his own nature, which makes him an amoral natural force or divine darkness. Jung contrasts Yahweh with Greek gods like Zeus because of Yahweh's intense interest in humanity. Yahweh, it seems, requires human consciousness to establish his own existence (a dialectic that bears some resemblance to Hegel's master-slave dialectic).Job, who feels defenseless against God's omnipotence, possesses a keener consciousness due to his capacity for self-reflection. Yahweh becomes jealous of Job's moral insight, which reflects Job's likeness to God, implanted at creation. Jung identifies Ahriman as the “doubting thought” within God (para. 579, note 3), suggesting that Yahweh hides his own dark side. Lucifer is another aspect of Yahweh’s unconscious, he who often appears more prescient than his supposedly omniscient Creator. In the Book of Job, Yahweh spends 71 verses asserting his omnipotence, but Jung sees this as a diversion from the real issue, implying that Yahweh's anger is not directed at Job but at Satan. Job serves as an external catalyst for an inner dialectical process in God. After Job's moral superiority elevates him above the stars in heaven, Yahweh is compelled to recall Sophia, the divine wisdom. In Jewish Kabbalistic teachings, Job's dawning awareness of Yahweh's dark side is understood by Jung to be mirrored in the sefirothic counterpole, the shards or “kelipot” [para. 595, note 8].Yahweh reveals himself to be "less than human," an amoral force of nature, leading to the aforementioned metaphysical scandal. Jung here introduces Sophia as an advocate for humanity, linking her archetypally to Chokmah, Logos, and Shakti. Sophia, the "unspotted mirror of the power of God," leads Yahweh to reassess his overly masculine nature and remember feminine divine wisdom. In the patriarchal mythology of Genesis, but also in Jung’s reading of the archetypes of the collective unconscious, masculinity implies perfection while femininity embodies completion, creating opposites that require reconciliation.After his encounter with Job, Yahweh realizes he must incarnate as a human being, a deed which will require a new creation, but a new creation of the divine nature rather than of the physical world. Thus Mary, Queen of Heaven and Mother of God, is elevated to divine status as the second Eve, whose immaculate conception gives birth to the God-man. Mary becomes the incarnate Sophia, a divine reflection free from original sin. This divine elevation of Mary to the level of perfection, associated with the masculine, in Jung's terms, “queers the pitch for a genuine incarnation” [para. 626]. Mary lacks the completeness essential to the feminine (yes, Jung is a bit of an essentialist), thus masculine perfectionism overplays its hand by usurping feminine completeness. Further compensation will be needed to bring balance, as Jung says, “we have not by any means heard the last of it” [para. 627].Jung emphasizes that the crucifixion symbolizes the reconciliation of opposites, with the cross as the vessel for transformation of divine conflict into wholeness. He attributes schisms in Christianity and even in politics to differing partial interpretations of this symbol. Ultimately, for Jung, the divine mystery can only be met as a coincidentia oppositorum. Bearing the cross means reconciling these opposites in one’s Self, a challenge that continues eternally among the angels in heaven as much as individually in each earthly human being. Get full access to Footnotes2Plato at footnotes2plato.substack.com/subscribe

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Roman has been reading my book Crossing the Threshold (2023). In this session, he asks some great questions about plant-thinking and the intangibility of etheric betweenness. I try my best to articulate it. One connection I didn’t draw is to the concept of a relational ontology. The ether is one way of effing the groundless interpenetration of all beings in one another. Get full access to Footnotes2Plato at footnotes2plato.substack.com/subscribe