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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Weirdness of the World

The Weirdness of the World

Schwitzgebel, Eric

Paperback

Philosophy

Publisher Price: $21.95

ISBN10: 0691255407
ISBN13: 9780691255408
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: Nov 4 2025
Pages: 376
Weight: 0.78
Height: 0.94 Width: 5.25 Depth: 8.00
Language: English

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 and other fundamental questions about the world and our existence 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.

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