Exploring Questions of Cosmology and Consciousness with Eric Schwitzgebel

Air Dates: April 28-May 4, 2025

When philosophers grapple with the nature of human consciousness or the cosmos, they are asking fundamental questions about human existence and the very nature of the universe.  Eric Schwitzgebel paints a stunning portrait of the weirdness of our reality and some of the bizarre implications that follow.

Schwitzgebel teaches philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. His research interests include connections between empirical psychology, philosophy of mind, and the nature of belief and Classical Chinese philosophy. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, under the supervision of Elisabeth A. Lloyd, Alison Gopnik, and John Searle. He has run the online blog, “The Splintered Mind” since 2006.

On this episode of “Story in the Public Square,” Schwitzgebel discusses his provocative new book, “The Weirdness of the World.”  With a mother who was a scientist and statistician, he recalls growing up in a household that celebrated “science, philosophy and strangeness.”  His new book dives into  fundamental questions in cosmology, including how big the universe is, what it’s made from and how human consciousness fits into the cosmos.” Schwitzgebel argues the tools of ordinary science and common sense leave us “unable to determine where the truth lies among various bizarre possibilities, adding, “the one thing we know for sure is that our commonsense view of the world can’t be right.”

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