"As the circle of light expands, so also does the ring of darkness around it" -- not actually Einstein Although it wasn't a prominent feature of my recent book, The Weirdness of the World, I find myself returning to this metaphor frequently in podcast interviews about the book (e.g., here; see also p. 257-258 of Weirdness). I want to reflect a bit more on that metaphor today. Philosophy, I'll suggest, lives in the penumbra of darkness. It's what we do when we peer at the shadowy general forms just beyond the ring of light. Within the ring of light lies what is straightforwardly knowable thro ..read more

Yes, all parents can rationally think that their children are above average, and everyone could, in principle, reasonably regard themselves as better-than-average drivers. We can reasonably disagree about values. If we then act according to those divergent values, we can reasonably conclude we're better than average. If you think skillful driving involves X instead of Y and then drive in a more X-like manner, you can justifiably conclude you're more skillful than those dopey Y drivers. It's the same with scholarship. Ideally, every scholar should feel more underappreciated than most othe ..read more

Today I'm leaving the Toronto area (where I gave a series of lectures at Trent University) for the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology meeting in Cincinnati. A couple of popular op-eds I've been working on were both released today. The longer of the two (on how to react to weird scientific theories) is behind a paywall at New Scientist (but if you email me I'd be happy to share the final manuscript for personal use). The other (on AI rights) is open access at Time.com. ------------------------------------------ How to wrap your head around the most mind-bending theories of reality F ..read more

Next week (at the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology) I'll be delivering comments on Neil Van Leeuwen's new book, Religion as Make-Believe. Neil argues that many (most?) people don't actually "factually believe" the doctrines of their religion, even if they profess belief. Instead, the typical attitude is one of "religious credence", which is closer to pretense or make-believe. Below are my draft comments. Comments and further reactions welcome! Highlights of Van Leeuwen’s View. Neil distinguishes factual beliefs from religious credences. If you factually believe something – for e ..read more

Suppose you encounter something that looks like a rattlesnake.  One possible explanation is that it is a rattlesnake.  Another is that it mimics a rattlesnake.  Mimicry can arise through evolution (other snakes mimic rattlesnakes to discourage predators) or through human design (rubber rattlesnakes).  Normally, it's reasonable to suppose that things are what they appear to be.  But this default assumption can be defeated -- for example, if there's reason to suspect sufficiently frequent mimics. Linguistic and "social" AI programs are designed to mimic superficial featu ..read more

The first genuinely conscious robot or AI system would, you might think, have relatively simple consciousness -- insect-like consciousness, or jellyfish-like, or frog-like -- rather than the rich complexity of human-level consciousness. It might have vague feelings of dark vs light, the to-be-sought and to-be-avoided, broad internal rumblings, and not much else -- not, for example, complex conscious thoughts about ironies of Hamlet, or multi-part long-term plans about how to form a tax-exempt religious organization. The simple usually precedes the complex. Building a conscious insect-like enti ..read more

In 1865, a 14-year-old boy becomes a Union soldier in the U.S. Civil War. In 1931, at age 90, he marries an 18-year-old woman, who continues to collect his Civil War pension after he dies. Today, in early 2024, she is one hundred and ten years old, still collecting that pension. I was inspired to this thought by reflecting about some long-dead people my father knew, who survive in my memory through his stories. How far back might such second-hand memories go? Farther than one might initially suppose -- in principle, back to the 1860s. An elderly philosopher, alive today, might easily have seco ..read more

Back in 2020, Fiery Cushman and I ran a contest to see if anyone could write a philosophical argument that convinced online research participants to donate a surprise bonus to charity at rates statistically above control. (Chris McVey, Josh May, and I had failed to write any successful arguments in some earlier attempts.) Contributions were not permitted to mention particular real people or events, couldn't be narratives, and couldn't include graphics or vivid descriptions. We wanted to see whether relatively dry philosophical arguments could move people to donate. We received 90 submissions ..read more

In his review (in the journal Science -- cool!) of my recently released book, The Weirdness of the World, Edouard Machery writes: There are two kinds of philosophers: swallows and moles. Swallows love to soar and to entertain philosophical hypotheses at best loosely connected with empirical knowledge. Plato and Gottfried Leibniz are paradigmatic swallows. Moles, on the contrary, rummage through mundane facts about our world and aim at better understanding it. Aristotle, William James, and Hans Reichenbach are paradigmatic moles. Eric Schwitzgebel is unabashedly a swallow. Machery admits to hav ..read more

Today is the official U.S. release day of my newest book, The Weirdness of the World! As a teaser, here's the introduction: In Praise of Weirdness The weird sisters, hand in hand, Posters of the sea and land, Thus do go about, about: Thrice to thine and thrice to mine And thrice again, to make up nine. Peace! the charm’s wound up. —Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act I, scene iii Weird often saveth The undoomed hero if doughty his valor! —Beowulf, X.14–15, tr anslated by J. Lesslie Hall The word “weird” has deep roots in old English, originally as a noun for fate or magic, later evolving toward its pre ..read more