The Weirdness of the World
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Do we live inside a simulated reality or a pocket universe embedded in a larger structure about which we know virtually nothing? Is consciousness a purely physical matter, or might it require something extra, something nonphysical? According to the philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel, it\\u2019s hard to say. In The Weirdness of the World, Schwitzgebel argues that the answers to these fundamental questions lie beyond our powers of comprehension. We can be certain only that the truth\\u2014whatever it is\\u2014is weird. Philosophy, he proposes, can aim to open\\u2014to reveal possibilities we had not previously appreciated\\u2014or to close, to narrow down to the one correct theory of the phenomenon in question. Schwitzgebel argues for a philosophy that opens.
According to Schwitzgebel\\u2019s \\u201cUniversal Bizarreness\\u201d thesis, every possible theory of the relation of mind and cosmos defies common sense. According to his complementary \\u201cUniversal Dubiety\\u201d thesis, no general theory of the relationship between mind and cosmos compels rational belief. Might the United States be a conscious organism \\u2014 a conscious group mind with approximately the intelligence of a rabbit? Might virtually every action we perform cause virtually every possible type of future event, echoing down through the infinite future of an infinite universe? What, if anything, is it like to be a garden snail? Schwitzgebel makes a persuasive case for the thrill of considering the most bizarre philosophical possibilities.
Shermer and Schwitzgebel discuss: bizarreness \\u2022 skepticism \\u2022 consciousness \\u2022 virtual reality \\u2022 AI, Turing Test, sentience, existential threat \\u2022 idealism, materialism \\u2022 ultimate nature of reality \\u2022 solipsism \\u2022 evidence for the existence of an external world \\u2022 computer simulations hypothesis \\u2022 mind-body problem \\u2022 truths: external, internal, objective, subjective \\u2022 mind-altering drugs \\u2022 entropy \\u2022 causality \\u2022 infinity \\u2022 immortality \\u2022 multiverses \\u2022 why there is something rather than nothing.
Eric Schwitzgebel is professor of philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. He is the author of A Theory of Jerks and Other Philosophical Misadventures; Perplexities of Consciousness; and Describing Inner Experience?
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