The Weirdness of the World

in draft

In this book, I argue that the world is fundamentally weird. By this I mean that with regard to foundational matters in cosmology, metaphysics, and philosophy of mind, one or another of various bizarre possibilities must be true, but our best science and philosophy don't put us in a position to know which of those bizarre possibilities is in fact correct.

Chapters

1. In Praise of Weirdness

Part One: Bizarreness and Dubiety

2. If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably Conscious

3. Universal Bizarreness and Universal Dubiety

4. 1% Skepticism

5. Kant Meets Cyberpunk

Part Two: The Size of the Universe

6. Experimental Evidence for the Existence of an External World

7. Almost Everything You Do Causes Almost Everything (Under Certain Not Wholly Implausible Assumptions); or Infinite Puppetry

Part Three: More Perplexities of Consciousness

8. An Innocent and Wonderful Definition of Consciousness

9. The Loose Friendship of Visual Experience and Reality

10. Is There Something It’s Like to Be a Garden Snail? Or: How Sparse or Abundant Is Consciousness in the Universe?

11. The Moral Status of Future Artificial Intelligence: Doubts and a Dilemma

12. Weirdness and Wonder

This book is currently in DRAFT, under contract with Princeton University Press to appear in late 2023 or early 2024.

Comments, corrections, objections, and suggestions welcome!

Or email eschwitz at domain: ucr.edu for a copy of this paper.

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