Episode #199: Dr. Eric Schwitzgebel

In Episode #199, philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel joins Osi to explore the bizarre nature of our existence. Are we living in a simulated reality, or is our universe just a pocket within a vast, unknown structure? Is consciousness entirely physical, or does it involve something nonphysical? And why might some of the most fundamental questions about the mind and the cosmos be beyond human understanding? In his latest book, The Weirdness of the World, Eric delves into these questions and more. Eric Schwitzgebel is a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Riverside, with research interests spanning the intersection of empirical psychology, philosophy of mind, belief, and Classical Chinese philosophy. He earned his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked under the mentorship of Elisabeth A. Lloyd, Alison Gopnik, and John Searle. Since 2006, he has been the author of the influential blog The Splintered Mind. Schwitzgebel is the author of several books, including Perplexities of Consciousness (2011), A Theory of Jerks and Other Philosophical Misadventures (2019), and The Weirdness of the World (2024).