Eric Schwitzgebel
@eschwitz.bsky.social
Philosopher, UC Riverside. Father. Human.
There's no shame in losing a long-form popular essay contest on AI consciousness to eminent neuroscientist @anilseth.bsky.social. His piece: www.noemamag.com/the-mytholog...
My piece "AI Mimics and AI Children" appears among the shortlisted contenders here:
loc.closertotruth.com/essay/ai-mim...
My piece "AI Mimics and AI Children" appears among the shortlisted contenders here:
loc.closertotruth.com/essay/ai-mim...
January 14, 2026 at 8:51 PM
There's no shame in losing a long-form popular essay contest on AI consciousness to eminent neuroscientist @anilseth.bsky.social. His piece: www.noemamag.com/the-mytholog...
My piece "AI Mimics and AI Children" appears among the shortlisted contenders here:
loc.closertotruth.com/essay/ai-mim...
My piece "AI Mimics and AI Children" appears among the shortlisted contenders here:
loc.closertotruth.com/essay/ai-mim...
Today's blog post [link in🧵]: Humble superintelligence as a response to AI risk. Build it humble, cautious, and multilateral. Inspired by Burkean conservatism and philosophical Daoism.
January 9, 2026 at 5:34 PM
Today's blog post [link in🧵]: Humble superintelligence as a response to AI risk. Build it humble, cautious, and multilateral. Inspired by Burkean conservatism and philosophical Daoism.
Writings of 2025, with brief descriptions and links:
schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2026/01/writ...
schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2026/01/writ...
Writings of 2025
schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com
January 2, 2026 at 6:15 PM
Writings of 2025, with brief descriptions and links:
schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2026/01/writ...
schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2026/01/writ...
How Much Should We Give a Joymachine?
a holiday post on gifts to your utility monster neighbors
schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2025/12/how-...
a holiday post on gifts to your utility monster neighbors
schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2025/12/how-...
How Much Should We Give a Joymachine?
schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com
December 24, 2025 at 5:22 PM
How Much Should We Give a Joymachine?
a holiday post on gifts to your utility monster neighbors
schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2025/12/how-...
a holiday post on gifts to your utility monster neighbors
schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2025/12/how-...
Debatable AI Persons: No Rights, Full Rights, Animal-Like Rights, Credence-Weighted Rights, or Patchy Rights?
schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2025/12/deba...
schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2025/12/deba...
Debatable AI Persons: No Rights, Full Rights, Animal-Like Rights, Credence-Weighted Rights, or Patchy Rights?
schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com
December 19, 2025 at 6:44 PM
Debatable AI Persons: No Rights, Full Rights, Animal-Like Rights, Credence-Weighted Rights, or Patchy Rights?
schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2025/12/deba...
schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2025/12/deba...
New interview at the Delving In podcast: "Eric Schwitzgebel on the Conundrums of the Mind-Body Problem and the Ethical Dilemmas of Possibly Conscious A.I."
www.lccommunityradio.org/archives/del...
www.lccommunityradio.org/archives/del...
DELVING IN: Eric Schwitzgebel on the Conundrums of the Mind-Body Problem and the Ethical Dilemmas of Possibly Conscious A.I.
Stuart Kelter interviews Eric Schwitzgebel , a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Riverside, whose main interests include p hilosophy of mind , metaphysics, the ...
www.lccommunityradio.org
December 15, 2025 at 5:25 PM
New interview at the Delving In podcast: "Eric Schwitzgebel on the Conundrums of the Mind-Body Problem and the Ethical Dilemmas of Possibly Conscious A.I."
www.lccommunityradio.org/archives/del...
www.lccommunityradio.org/archives/del...
Fascinating piece in the New Yorker on Oliver Sacks, especially his homosexuality and -- unfortunately! -- the fabrications in his lovely and inspiring essays about his patients, esp. in Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.
Since the latter is 1/2
Since the latter is 1/2
December 12, 2025 at 8:23 PM
Fascinating piece in the New Yorker on Oliver Sacks, especially his homosexuality and -- unfortunately! -- the fabrications in his lovely and inspiring essays about his patients, esp. in Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.
Since the latter is 1/2
Since the latter is 1/2
We can introspectively test the Global Workspace Theory of consciousness: Just introspect your experience right now. Is there a welter of detail in many sensory modalities at once? If so, GWT must be false.
Sadly, we are utterly incompetent at introspection.
[link in 🧵]
Sadly, we are utterly incompetent at introspection.
[link in 🧵]
![The Refrigerator Light Error [illustration by Nicolas Demers, p. 218 of The Weirdness of the World]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:tdcgbtd4wvhktrrhksipkuvz/bafkreihdavdufxex5cg2bln6vhfmaxvo5rsw5yfkd2jqe3fqes53ifhgta@jpeg)
December 12, 2025 at 5:17 PM
We can introspectively test the Global Workspace Theory of consciousness: Just introspect your experience right now. Is there a welter of detail in many sensory modalities at once? If so, GWT must be false.
Sadly, we are utterly incompetent at introspection.
[link in 🧵]
Sadly, we are utterly incompetent at introspection.
[link in 🧵]
LLMs overwhelming choose octopus as their favorite animal. But if asked 2nd-favorite animal first, they *also* choose octopus and say corvids are their top favorite, then mistakenly deny that their answers are affected by question order. Link to full blog post in thread.
December 5, 2025 at 5:35 PM
LLMs overwhelming choose octopus as their favorite animal. But if asked 2nd-favorite animal first, they *also* choose octopus and say corvids are their top favorite, then mistakenly deny that their answers are affected by question order. Link to full blog post in thread.
Four Aspects of Harmony
[today's blog post, link in thread]
What is it to harmonize with the world? Inspired by @vonkriegstein.bsky.social, I suggest:
1. Mental correspondence (e.g., knowing, achievements in tune with the world)
2. Positive attitudes (e.g., joy, approval, appreciation)
[1/2]
[today's blog post, link in thread]
What is it to harmonize with the world? Inspired by @vonkriegstein.bsky.social, I suggest:
1. Mental correspondence (e.g., knowing, achievements in tune with the world)
2. Positive attitudes (e.g., joy, approval, appreciation)
[1/2]
November 28, 2025 at 5:39 PM
Four Aspects of Harmony
[today's blog post, link in thread]
What is it to harmonize with the world? Inspired by @vonkriegstein.bsky.social, I suggest:
1. Mental correspondence (e.g., knowing, achievements in tune with the world)
2. Positive attitudes (e.g., joy, approval, appreciation)
[1/2]
[today's blog post, link in thread]
What is it to harmonize with the world? Inspired by @vonkriegstein.bsky.social, I suggest:
1. Mental correspondence (e.g., knowing, achievements in tune with the world)
2. Positive attitudes (e.g., joy, approval, appreciation)
[1/2]
Today's blog post: Representational Realism and the Problem of Tacit Belief [link in comments]
To avoid an infinite proliferation of stored representations, industrial-strength representational realists need to distinguished between core beliefs with explicitly stored [1/3]
To avoid an infinite proliferation of stored representations, industrial-strength representational realists need to distinguished between core beliefs with explicitly stored [1/3]
November 20, 2025 at 4:56 PM
Today's blog post: Representational Realism and the Problem of Tacit Belief [link in comments]
To avoid an infinite proliferation of stored representations, industrial-strength representational realists need to distinguished between core beliefs with explicitly stored [1/3]
To avoid an infinite proliferation of stored representations, industrial-strength representational realists need to distinguished between core beliefs with explicitly stored [1/3]
We Are God's Equals in Intrinsic Moral Value
[today's blog post; link in comments]
A humanlike god running us in a simulation wouldn't have an intrinsically more valuable life than ours. Moreover, adding knowledge, power, and benevolence doesn't increase intrinsic moral worth.
[today's blog post; link in comments]
A humanlike god running us in a simulation wouldn't have an intrinsically more valuable life than ours. Moreover, adding knowledge, power, and benevolence doesn't increase intrinsic moral worth.
November 13, 2025 at 6:04 PM
We Are God's Equals in Intrinsic Moral Value
[today's blog post; link in comments]
A humanlike god running us in a simulation wouldn't have an intrinsically more valuable life than ours. Moreover, adding knowledge, power, and benevolence doesn't increase intrinsic moral worth.
[today's blog post; link in comments]
A humanlike god running us in a simulation wouldn't have an intrinsically more valuable life than ours. Moreover, adding knowledge, power, and benevolence doesn't increase intrinsic moral worth.
On Friday, I'll be at Scripps College giving a talk titled "God Sucks" at a two-day (Fri-Sat) workshop on Virtual Reality as Metaphor. My thought is this: If we're living in a virtual reality/simulation, the managers ("gods") are incompetent, indifferent, or cruel. How this generalizes to gods 1/2
November 11, 2025 at 9:01 PM
On Friday, I'll be at Scripps College giving a talk titled "God Sucks" at a two-day (Fri-Sat) workshop on Virtual Reality as Metaphor. My thought is this: If we're living in a virtual reality/simulation, the managers ("gods") are incompetent, indifferent, or cruel. How this generalizes to gods 1/2
Arrived today: My 2024 Clarkesworld story “How to Remember Perfectly” reprinted in Joe Stech’s Think Weirder: Year’s Best Science Fiction ideas. Some great company in the ToC!
November 8, 2025 at 7:11 PM
Arrived today: My 2024 Clarkesworld story “How to Remember Perfectly” reprinted in Joe Stech’s Think Weirder: Year’s Best Science Fiction ideas. Some great company in the ToC!
I met James Watson as a high school student in 1986, at an event in Washington DC for selected students to meet leaders in business, academia, and culture. Watson gave a talk about how the Japanese would dominate the world unless the US funded more science. Around a 1/3
apnews.com/article/jame...
apnews.com/article/jame...
James Watson, co-discoverer of the double-helix shape of DNA, has died at age 97
Scientist James Watson, who shared a Nobel prize for helping discover the double-helix shape of the DNA molecule, has died. He was 97.
apnews.com
November 7, 2025 at 9:28 PM
I met James Watson as a high school student in 1986, at an event in Washington DC for selected students to meet leaders in business, academia, and culture. Watson gave a talk about how the Japanese would dominate the world unless the US funded more science. Around a 1/3
apnews.com/article/jame...
apnews.com/article/jame...
Today's post: Debatable Persons in a Voluntary Polis [link in thread]
A partial solution to the "full-rights dilemma" for future AI who might or might not be full moral persons: Create them in a voluntary polis where they and human volunteers dwell as equals.
A partial solution to the "full-rights dilemma" for future AI who might or might not be full moral persons: Create them in a voluntary polis where they and human volunteers dwell as equals.
November 7, 2025 at 5:17 PM
Today's post: Debatable Persons in a Voluntary Polis [link in thread]
A partial solution to the "full-rights dilemma" for future AI who might or might not be full moral persons: Create them in a voluntary polis where they and human volunteers dwell as equals.
A partial solution to the "full-rights dilemma" for future AI who might or might not be full moral persons: Create them in a voluntary polis where they and human volunteers dwell as equals.
New interview of me at Tevin Naidu's podcast, on whether we will know whether near-future AI systems are conscious:
YouTube: youtu.be/zxNyX1kq9ro?...
Blog Post: www.mindbodysolution.org/blog/the-epi...
Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/0WHK...
YouTube: youtu.be/zxNyX1kq9ro?...
Blog Post: www.mindbodysolution.org/blog/the-epi...
Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/0WHK...
Will We Know When AI Becomes Conscious? The Epistemic Fog of Artificial Minds | Eric Schwitzgebel
YouTube video by Mind-Body Solution
youtu.be
November 5, 2025 at 6:17 PM
New interview of me at Tevin Naidu's podcast, on whether we will know whether near-future AI systems are conscious:
YouTube: youtu.be/zxNyX1kq9ro?...
Blog Post: www.mindbodysolution.org/blog/the-epi...
Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/0WHK...
YouTube: youtu.be/zxNyX1kq9ro?...
Blog Post: www.mindbodysolution.org/blog/the-epi...
Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/0WHK...
Letting Pass
For two months we kept the dog run, as if she might come back. But we had killed her ourselves, or rather the vet had, with that bright needle, in Pauline's arms. Pauline had thought she was ready; she was not.
Our children's favorite toys, from when they were two, are stacked 1/5
For two months we kept the dog run, as if she might come back. But we had killed her ourselves, or rather the vet had, with that bright needle, in Pauline's arms. Pauline had thought she was ready; she was not.
Our children's favorite toys, from when they were two, are stacked 1/5
October 31, 2025 at 4:16 PM
Letting Pass
For two months we kept the dog run, as if she might come back. But we had killed her ourselves, or rather the vet had, with that bright needle, in Pauline's arms. Pauline had thought she was ready; she was not.
Our children's favorite toys, from when they were two, are stacked 1/5
For two months we kept the dog run, as if she might come back. But we had killed her ourselves, or rather the vet had, with that bright needle, in Pauline's arms. Pauline had thought she was ready; she was not.
Our children's favorite toys, from when they were two, are stacked 1/5
Two Dimensionalism about Other Minds, and Its Implications for Brain Organoids and Robots
[link in thread]
Two-dimensionalism holds that we are justified in attributing consciousness to others only when *both* their physiology and their functional/behavioral patterns are similar.
[link in thread]
Two-dimensionalism holds that we are justified in attributing consciousness to others only when *both* their physiology and their functional/behavioral patterns are similar.
October 22, 2025 at 4:53 PM
Two Dimensionalism about Other Minds, and Its Implications for Brain Organoids and Robots
[link in thread]
Two-dimensionalism holds that we are justified in attributing consciousness to others only when *both* their physiology and their functional/behavioral patterns are similar.
[link in thread]
Two-dimensionalism holds that we are justified in attributing consciousness to others only when *both* their physiology and their functional/behavioral patterns are similar.
Humanities majors in free fall in the US: Since 2008, English has declined from 3.8% to 1.7% of Bachelor's degrees awarded, history from 2.5% to 1.2%, foreign lang/lit from 1.9% to 0.9%, and philosophy from 0.6% to 0.4%. 22% of philosophy BAs are awarded by just 20 universities.
October 15, 2025 at 4:59 PM
Humanities majors in free fall in the US: Since 2008, English has declined from 3.8% to 1.7% of Bachelor's degrees awarded, history from 2.5% to 1.2%, foreign lang/lit from 1.9% to 0.9%, and philosophy from 0.6% to 0.4%. 22% of philosophy BAs are awarded by just 20 universities.
New in draft with Susan Schneider, David Sahner, Robert Lawrence Kuhn & Mark Bailey - a primer on central ideas and concepts in the AI consciousness debate. If you're looking for a toehold in the sea of jargon, this might help.
philpapers.org/rec/SCHIAC-22
philpapers.org/rec/SCHIAC-22
Susan Schneider, David Sahner, Robert Lawrence Kuhn, Eric Schwitzgebel & Mark Bailey, Is AI Conscious? A Primer on the Myths and Confusions Driving the Debate - PhilPapers
Artificial intelligence is sparking unprecedented claims about machine minds — but are today’s systems really conscious? In this primer, we disentangle the myths, misconceptions, and confusions fuelin...
philpapers.org
October 13, 2025 at 11:39 PM
New in draft with Susan Schneider, David Sahner, Robert Lawrence Kuhn & Mark Bailey - a primer on central ideas and concepts in the AI consciousness debate. If you're looking for a toehold in the sea of jargon, this might help.
philpapers.org/rec/SCHIAC-22
philpapers.org/rec/SCHIAC-22
New book in draft: AI and Consciousness [link in thread]
This book is a skeptical overview of the literature on AI and consciousness.
Anyone who emails me comments on the entire manuscript will be thanked in print and receive an appreciatively signed hard copy.
This book is a skeptical overview of the literature on AI and consciousness.
Anyone who emails me comments on the entire manuscript will be thanked in print and receive an appreciatively signed hard copy.
October 8, 2025 at 5:58 PM
New book in draft: AI and Consciousness [link in thread]
This book is a skeptical overview of the literature on AI and consciousness.
Anyone who emails me comments on the entire manuscript will be thanked in print and receive an appreciatively signed hard copy.
This book is a skeptical overview of the literature on AI and consciousness.
Anyone who emails me comments on the entire manuscript will be thanked in print and receive an appreciatively signed hard copy.
Why Philosophy? has published a brief interview of me on the nature and practice of philosophy
celineleboeuf.substack.com/p/eric-schwi...
celineleboeuf.substack.com/p/eric-schwi...
Eric Schwitzgebel
In living life thoughtfully, we are always already practicing philosophy.
celineleboeuf.substack.com
October 7, 2025 at 3:32 PM
Why Philosophy? has published a brief interview of me on the nature and practice of philosophy
celineleboeuf.substack.com/p/eric-schwi...
celineleboeuf.substack.com/p/eric-schwi...
Early Career Hugo Nominations -- Yes, They Definitely Happen
a quantitative analysis [link in thread]
Almost half of Hugo nominations go to early-career authors: 51/112 (46%)
a quantitative analysis [link in thread]
Almost half of Hugo nominations go to early-career authors: 51/112 (46%)
October 2, 2025 at 5:04 PM
Early Career Hugo Nominations -- Yes, They Definitely Happen
a quantitative analysis [link in thread]
Almost half of Hugo nominations go to early-career authors: 51/112 (46%)
a quantitative analysis [link in thread]
Almost half of Hugo nominations go to early-career authors: 51/112 (46%)
The Searle Chair
John Searle died a couple weeks ago. Since people are sharing stories, I'll share one of my own.
As a philosopher of science studying developmental psychology, my dissertation committee initially consisted of Elisabeth Lloyd, Martin Jones, and Alison Gopnik. The topic led me 1/11
John Searle died a couple weeks ago. Since people are sharing stories, I'll share one of my own.
As a philosopher of science studying developmental psychology, my dissertation committee initially consisted of Elisabeth Lloyd, Martin Jones, and Alison Gopnik. The topic led me 1/11
September 29, 2025 at 5:48 PM
The Searle Chair
John Searle died a couple weeks ago. Since people are sharing stories, I'll share one of my own.
As a philosopher of science studying developmental psychology, my dissertation committee initially consisted of Elisabeth Lloyd, Martin Jones, and Alison Gopnik. The topic led me 1/11
John Searle died a couple weeks ago. Since people are sharing stories, I'll share one of my own.
As a philosopher of science studying developmental psychology, my dissertation committee initially consisted of Elisabeth Lloyd, Martin Jones, and Alison Gopnik. The topic led me 1/11