The Weirdness of the World

by Eric Schwitzgebel

How all philosophical explanations of human consciousness and the fundamental structure of the cosmos are bizarre―and why that’s a good thing

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’s 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―whatever it is―is weird. Philosophy, he proposes, can aim to open―to reveal possibilities we had not previously appreciated―or 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’s “Universal Bizarreness” thesis, every possible theory of the relation of mind and cosmos defies common sense. According to his complementary “Universal Dubiety” thesis, no general theory of the relationship between mind and cosmos compels rational belief. Might the United States be a conscious organism―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.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Science, Audiobook

376 pages, Hardcover

First published January 16, 2024

About the author

Eric Schwitzgebel is an American philosopher and professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. His main interests include connections between empirical psychology and philosophy of mind and the nature of belief.[1][2] he received his PhD from University of California, Berkeley under the supervision of Elisabeth A. Lloyd, Alison Gopnik, and John Searle.

Reviews

[Mishehu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting premise, interesting book, solid intellectual exercise. The great value in reading this book was being reminded of how important it is to maintain a skeptical mind in general, and of the rigor that’s required to solve problems — or, at least, assert claims about possible solutions. Author’s approach was a little wearying across the approx 300 page span of this book. But I won’t dock him (or the book in review) on that score. I profited from reading this book, and greatly enjoyed it.

[MLD · Rating 3 out of 5]

Listened as an audiobook, and the whole book reads like someone defending their thesis. With a lot of additional editing, I think it could’ve been a good book that might make you ponder some of his ideas. But unfortunately, I started to skim a lot of the repetitiveness. Probably missed some key ideas but overall I was pretty lost on where the book was going.

[April · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think a pretty successful and interesting consideration of some major philosophical questions at a level that most people can connect with. What is consciousness? Is the USA conscious? How feasible is it that we are living in a simulation and that nothing actually exists? A philosophy intro for non-philosophers who still want to be open to the questions of the universe.

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reads a little like a philosophy class. In that sense, it is a good introduction to a broad range of philosophical ideas concerning our reality. The author discussed some contemporary philosophers of whom I was unaware, so I appreciate that. I also value the general message, which is: have an open mind.

[Maddis · Rating 4 out of 5]

An overall accessible book and entertaining book. I found some of the topics to be a tired conversation, but it would probably be more gripping for someone who is wholly unfamiliar with philosophy. That being said, there is a broad range of metaphysics discussed here, so there was still much that caught my attention. Some chapters are better at expanding this principle of "weirdness" than others and I hope that this idea could be expanded on more. I like the idea of taking theories to their extremes as a stress test, and using that as an avenue to open up conversation. The book is a sampler of ideas, and might be a bit limited due to its format.

[Russell Blickhan]

any book that reprints my favourite essay of all time ("if materialism is true, then the United States is probably conscious") will definitely make it onto my top 5 list of the year, so it's a good thing this is a really good philosophy book on top of having that essay!!

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

If mainstream scientific cosmology is correct, we have seen only a very small, perhaps an infinitesimal fraction of reality. We are life fleas on the back of a dog, watching a hair grow and saying, "Ah, so that's how the universe works!"

What a delightfully fun book! It's a playful philosopher playing around with ideas. But not in an effort to find or create weirdness. No, his main point is that the greatest philosophical minds have all reached conclusions about our understandings of reality, humanity, and the interplay of the two that, by virtue of their own logics, lead to very strange places. The opening even includes a "taxonomy of weirdness" to define and delineate the different terms he will use to describe all major theories and fields of thought (weird, bizarre, dubious, wild, and theoretical wilderness). He believes bizarreness is a fundamental, universal quality of all philosophical arguments.

In the most fundamental matters of consciousness and cosmology, neither common sense, nor early twenty-first-century empirical science, nor armchair philosophical theorizing is entirely trustworthy. The rational response is to distribute our credence across a wide range of bizarre options.

This is not simply a wild claim; he is a top philosopher explaining and expanding on the work of other top thinkers.

Philosophers who explore foundational metaphysical questions typically begin with some highly plausible initial commitments to commonsense intuitions, some solid starting points. . . . They think long and hard about what these seemingly obvious claims imply. In the end, they find themselves committed to peculiar-seeming, common-sense-defying views. . . . In almost 40 years of reading philosophy, I have yet to encounter a single broad-ranging exploration of the fundamental nature of things that doesn't ultimately entangle its author in seeming absurdities. Rejection of these seeming absurdities then becomes the commonsense starting point of a new round of metaphysics by other philosophers, generating a complementary bestiary of metaphysical strangeness. Thus philosophers are happily employed.

After starting by making these claims about the weirdness of the world, Schwitzgebel spends the bulk of the book demonstrating that absurdity. Chapter 3, for example, makes the case:

If materialism is true, the United States is probably conscious--that is, the United States literally possesses a stream of conscious experience over and above the experiences of its citizens and residents. If we look in broad strokes at the types of properties that materialists tend to regard as indicative of the presence of conscious experience--complex information processing, rich functional roles in a historically embedded system, sophisticated environmental responsiveness, wide information sharing, complex layers of self-monitoring--the United States, conceived of as a concrete, spatially distributed entity with people as parts, appears to have exactly those properties. It thus appears to meet standard materialist criteria for consciousness.

To make the argument, he necessarily explains what philosophers mean by "materialism," "consciousness," and a host of other academic terms and ideas. He wonders about how--or whether--we can ever tell if garden snails have consciousness. If Artificial Intelligence might become conscious and what that means for the morality of personhood. The possibility of infinite multiple universes. And more.

And the key idea underpinning his entire enterprise:

I love philosophy best when it opens my mind--when it reveals ways the world could be, possible approaches to life, lenses through which I might see and value things around me, which I might not otherwise have considered.

Philosophy can aim to open or close. Suppose you enter Philosophical Topic X imagining three viable, mutually exclusive possibilities, A, B, and C. The philosophy of closing aims to reduce the three to one. It aims to convince you that possibility A is correct and the others wrong. If it succeeds, you know the truth about Topic X: A is the answer! In contrast, the philosophy of opening aims to add new possibilities to the mix--possibilities that you hadn't considered before or had considered but too quickly dismissed. Instead of reducing three to one, three grows to maybe five, with new possibilities D and E. We can learn by addition as well as subtraction. We can learn that the range of viable possibilities is broader than we had assumed.

For me, the greatest philosophical thrill is realizing that something I'd long taken for granted might not be true, that some "obvious" apparent truth is in fact doubtable--not just abstractly and hypothetically doubtable, but really, seriously, in-my-gut doubtable. The ground shifts beneath me. Where I'd thought there would be floor, there is instead open space I hadn't previously seen. My mind spins in new, unfamiliar directions. I wonder, and the world itself seems to glow with a new wondrousness. The cosmos expands, bigger with possibility, more complex, more unfathomable. I feel small and confused, but in a good way.

and

Children have a flexibility of mind and an interest in theory building. They get a kick just out of exploring the world, trying new things (well, maybe not asparagus), breaking stuff to see what happens, and capsizing tradition. They annoyingly ask for the why behind the why behind the shy. Mature, boring adults, in contrast, prefer to find practical applications for what they already know. For example, adults want their new computers to just *work* without their having to learn anything new, while children play around with the settings, adding goofy sounds and wallpaper, changing the icons, and of course ultimately coming to understand the computers much better. . . .

Childlike philosophy toys with wild ideas at the boundaries of our understanding. Are these ideas useful or true? Can we plug them in straightaway into our existing conceptions and put them to work? For me, if I was already sure they were false and useless, that would steal away their charm. But to be in a hurry to judge their merits, to want to expunge doubt and wonder so as to settle on a final view that we can put immediately to work, to want to close rather than open--let's not be in such a rush to grow up. What's life for if there's no time to play and explore?

Embracing that everything we can understand about existence is both bizarre and dubious is not only fun, it's good for us. And so is this book.

[Paul Sand · Rating 5 out of 5]

An impulse grab off the "New Books" shelf of the Portsmouth (NH) Public Library. Author Eric Schwitzgebel's overall thesis is expressed in the title: the world is weird. Since he is a philosopher, he rigorously defines his terms:

Weird: contrary to the conventional, ordinary, and well-understood. Bizarre: contrary to common sense—i.e., something that people without specialized training confidently but perhaps implicitly believe to be false Dubious: doubtful in the sense that we are not epistemically compelled to believe it Wild: both bizarre and dubious Theoretical wilderness: a topic on which every viable theory is wild

You get the idea: Professor Schwitzgebel is kind of out there, but in a way that's entirely plausible. And a lot of fun. One of his chapters argues, from materialistic precepts, that the United States of America is a conscious entity; this manages to be both hilarious and profound.

Do we live in a simulation, run on a supercomputer by an alien nerd, just for fun? (Illustrated with a figure captioned: "God stumbles over the power cord". Oops!)

One chapter is "The Loose Friendship of Visual Experience and Reality". Which has the launching point expressed in federal regulation:

Each convex mirror shall have permanently and indelibly marked at the lower edge of the mirror's reflective surface, in letters not less than 4.8 mm nor more than 6.4 mm high the words “Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear.”

Don't think about this too hard while driving; could be fatally distracting. Schwitzgebel argues that the required wording is wrong. At length.

He writes on his experience with ChatGPT, and observes: "The darn thing has a better sense of humor than most humans."

And in a very thought-provoking chapter, he considers what our moral obligations should be toward AIs that develop consciousness. Snippet:

Or suppose we could create an AI system so cognitively superior to us that it is capable of valuable achievements and social relationships that the limited human mind cannot even conceive of—achievements and relationships qualitatively different from anything we can understand, sufficiently unknowable that we cannot even feel their absence from our lives, as unknowable to us as cryptocurrency is to a sea turtle.

Maybe that won't keep you awake at night, but it's something to think about in the dark when you can't sleep.

I'm kind of used to the world's "weirdness", since I studied me some quantum mechanics back in the day. Here's the relevant Feynman quote, from one of his lectures (to a general audience) on quantum electrodynamics:

What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school—and you think I'm going to explain it to you so you can understand it? No, you're not going to be able to understand it. Why, then, and I going to bother you with all this? Why are you going to sit here all this time, when you won't be able to understand what I'm going to say? It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see, my physics students don't understand it either. That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does.

Similarly, I didn't find Schwitzgebel's argument about the "consciousness" of the USA to be all that wacky. It didn't seem that different from: Adam Smith's invocation of the Invisible hand; Hayek's Knowledge Problem; or Leonard E. Read's essay "I, Pencil", in which the titular character claims, perceptively, "not a single person on the face of this earth knows how to make me."

Ah, but "the market" knows how. And does so, cheaply and in abundance.

So: A wonderful book. I found it tough going in spots, but in most parts wonderfully accessible and insightful.

[Robert Lamb · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book reminded me of why I enrolled in undergrad philosophy half a century ago, and also of why I transferred to psychology after 2 years!
Some brilliant ideas, rigorously analysed by a real philosopher, but at the end of the exercise I wondered "why?"
I found Donald Hoffman's "The Case Against Reality" much more gripping and plausible (maybe apart from the last few chapters). Schwitzgebel cites this in his references but doesn't actually refer to it, possible because his book is a compendium of older pieces.
Also I felt he missed an opportunity to link his analysis to on the madness of history and society - we're all chasing each others tails according to the dictates of semi-psychotic mystics, prophets, and economists, except for those with an eye to the main chance who just follow their ids.
Man, you've got to skeptical about a world like this... but if so, how do you comport yourself amongst the gibberish?

[Carlos · Rating 1 out of 5]

The experience of reading this book will depend on whether the reader shares Schwitzgebel’s approach to philosophy, that of opening up more questions regardless of their usefulness. This results in a book that aims to show how few outlandish ideas can be rigorously discounted. This does not preclude some interesting discussions from happening, such as the chapter on consciousness. But it will certainly tax the patience of any reader that thinks along the lines of “what is the point of this train of thought?”.

[Daniel Parsons · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not for casual reading. For me, it was a real slog. I felt ill-equipped to fully grasp this book without having a degree of context in Philosophy, so for me some of the chapters missed there mark (There's a detailed chapter about garden snails reproduction processes that had me questioning why I hadn't stopped reading this book yet).

This book references Sean Carroll, who I think brings readability and accessibility to these topics in "The Big Picture".

[Karen Carlson]

J holbo retweeted. Might be too academic, but worth looking into

[Judith · Rating 3 out of 5]

A funny and open exploration with interesting observations and clear and clever lines of argumentation. The chapter with all the chance calculations wasn't for me.

[Константин Зарубин · Rating 4 out of 5]

One can think what one wants about some of Schwitzgebel's assumptions and arguments, but this book is still philosophy at its best: bold and anal/pedantic in equal measure.

[Jeremy I Skipper · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pure gold. 🏅👏

[Jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a work! I like the humility, the creativity, the range of metaphysical/cosmological views engaged.

[Doug · Rating 5 out of 5]

More books like this! Someone who thinks roughly like I do but with more background and eminence.

[Stephen Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rocked my world! Heard Eric on Mindscape, and just had to look further. Glad I did! (I’ll wager you will, as well;)

[Jay Rothermel · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF

[Kelly Sparwasser · Rating 1 out of 5]

I did not get far in this one. To be honest, I was totally lost. I have no idea what this book was talking about.

[Diane · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too scholarly, so I ended up skimming it. I wasn't enjoying it, so I wanted to move on to the next book waiting for me. Life, the universe, and everything are still a weird mystery.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a dense read, especially as an audiobook, but given its subject matter, I commend it for its clarity. The more we learn about the world, whether the macro-scale, micro-scale, or the mind, the stranger it appears. We are kidding ourselves if we think we can confidently conclude that our conceptions of reality are sufficient. The only conclusion we should confidently draw is the need for humility in the face of the vastness and mystery of the universe and all it contains.

[Steve Jordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

So if figure over there, somewhere, the philosophers are doing their difficult work and talking to each other about it. And it's complicated and their books can be impenetrable, like Heidegger's Being and Time and Hegel's The Phenomenology of Spirit.

Ideally a book comes out that tells the rest of us what's been going on--in readable form. Two great example are Sandel's "Justice" and Cox's "Deep Thought: 42 Fantastic Quotes That Define Philosophy."

That's what I needed The Weirdness of the World to be. Because concepts like consciousness and infinity and simulation worlds are all fascinating and I wanted the dope.

Which you mostly get. Which I'm mostly glad for. But Schwitzgebel can also slip into academic and impenetrable mode:

"Anti-nesting principles thus imply the possibility of unintuitive dissociations between what we would normally think of as organism-level indicators or constituents of consciousness (such as organism-level cognitive function, brain states, introspective reports, and behavior) and that organism's actual consciousness, if those indicators or constituents happen to embed or be embedded in the wrong sort of much larger or much smaller things."

C'mon. I realize I don't have academic philosophy chops, but I also think I'm kind of his target audience: someone who is interested and spent money on the book. So why you gotta be like that?

[Poiq Wuy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Su tesis es que el mundo es irreductiblemente extraño. Distintas teorías e interpretaciones, filosóficas y científicas, pretenden explicarlo; pero si se toma cualquiera de ellas y se sigue hasta sus últimas consecuencias se llega a conclusiones «extrañas» o «poco intuitivas». Es más una tesis estética que metafísica (o metametafísica); los argumentos con que la defiende son vagos, pero la exposición de conclusiones extrañas de teorías universales merece la pena; es pintoresca y entretenida. También defiende —con argumentos arbitrarios— que es apropiado mantener un escepticismo moderado ([[escepticismo del 1% - Schwitzgebel]]), esto es, no descartar por completo los escenarios escépticos extremos (vivo en una simulación, estoy soñando, un genio maligno confunde mis sentidos) pero tampoco asignarles una probabilidad alta. El mejor capítulo, a mi gusto, el que discute la posibilidad de que los estados modernos sean conscientes.

[E. · Rating 3 out of 5]

thanks to libro.fm for the alc copy!

this one is difficult to review because while the subject is interesting and the message of having an open mind is something i can get behind, the whole time i felt like when my father is trying to explain cars to me? or a very enthusiastic teacher talking to a very bored class, idk.

maybe it reads better in print. maybe it should have been slides.

maybe it's on me and i'm just not the best audience for philosophy.

all in all, i feel like i retained zero information but i would love to have someone explain this to me again and this was a rather entry-level book so making me curious for more is enough of a goalpost to warrant approval.