Some thoughts on Kim Stanley Robinson's remarks about the value of science fiction:

schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2026/04/kim-...

AI and Consciousness This is a skeptical overview of the literature on AI consciousness. We will soon create AI systems that are conscious according to some influential, mainstream theories of consciousness but are not conscious according to other influential, mainstream theories of consciousness. We will not be in a position to know which theories are correct and whether we are surrounded by AI systems as richly and meaningfully conscious as human beings or instead only by systems as experientially blank as toasters. None of the standard arguments either for or against AI consciousness takes us far. Table of Contents Chapter One: Hills and Fog Chapter Two: What Is Consciousness? What Is AI? Chapter Three: Ten Possibly Essential Features of Consciousness Chapter Four: Against Introspective and Conceptual Arguments for Essential Features Chapter Five: Materialism and Functionalism Chapter Six: The Turing Test and the Chinese Room Chapter Seven: The Mimicry Argument Against AI Consciousness Chapter Eight: Global Workspace Theories and Higher Order Theories Chapter Nine: Integrated Information, Local Recurrence, Associative Learning, and Iterative Natural Kinds Chapter Ten: Does Biological Substrate Matter? Chapter Eleven: The Leapfrog Hypothesis, Strange Intelligence, and the Social Semi-Solution

Link to full citable manuscript:
arxiv.org/abs/2510.09858

appreciate my skeptical stance, at odds both with the boosters who anticipate imminent AI consciousness and with the scoffers who pooh-pooh the possibility. Or maybe you'll loathe my skeptical stance but grudgingly accept it against your will, due to the force of my arguments!
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AI and Consciousness title page

Last week I submitted my latest book manuscript to Cambridge University Press (for their "Element" series of books about 100 pages long): AI and Consciousness: A Skeptical Overview -- because you haven't heard nearly enough about AI and consciousness recently, of course! 😉

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So You're on the "Waiting List" for a Philosophy PhD Program

schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2026/04/so-y...

a hypothetical waiting list composed of names randomly drawn from students previously in my lower-division classes

So You're on the "Waiting List" for a Philosophy PhD Program

a post of explanation and advice (link in comments)

Ethics vol 136, issue 3, April 2026, Sacrificing Humans for Insects and AI, Eric Schwitzgebel and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong

Hot off the press: "Sacrificing Humans for Insects and AI", a critical review of recent work on animal and AI moral standing, with Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, in Ethics (discusses recent books by @birchlse.bsky.social, @jeffsebo.bsky.social, and Webb Keane).

www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....

A Model of Disunified Human Experience

A Model of Disunified Human Experience:
unity of experiences in the attended "global workspace" while many unattended, peripheral experiences remain disunified.

schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2026/03/a-mo...

Backup and Death for Humanlike AI

Today's blog post: Backup and Death for Humanlike AI

If AI persons capable of duplication and backup ever come to exist, we will need to develop new words, concepts, and customs. "Death" and "same person" will be a matter of degree.

schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2026/03/back...

Age and Fame in Philosophy
Philosophers tend to peak in their influence around ages 55-70, though there's considerable individual variation.
Blog post here:
schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2026/03/age-...

Philosophy Should Be Among the Most Diverse Disciplines, Not the Least

Philosophy Should Be Among the Most Diverse Disciplines, Not the Least
The productive engine of philosophy depends on novelty and difference. A fair and flourishing discipline would treasure rather than repel those who have historically been excluded.
schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2026/03/phil...

13 A Planning Theory of Incoherence in Belief: Sara Aronowitz @aronowitz.bsky.social
14 The Nature of Believing: David Hunter
15 The Trinity and the Light Switch: Two Faces of Belief: Neil Van Leeuwen
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8 Belief as Commitment to the Truth: @keshavsingh.bsky.social
9 Cognitive Architectures, Kinds, and Belief: Joshua Mugg
10 Belief as a Feeling of Conviction: Declan Smithies
11 Translucent Beliefs: @bencenanay.bsky.social
12 Dispositionalism, Yay! Representationalism, Boo! Eric Schwitzgebel
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5 Belief: Dumb, Cold, and Cynical: @nicporot.bsky.social and Eric Mandelbaum @ericman.bsky.social
6 A Minimalist Threshold for Epistemically Irrational Beliefs: Marianna B Ganapini @mbergam.bsky.social
7 Why Think That Belief Is Evidence-Responsive? Carolina Flores @floresophize.bsky.social
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1 Three Theories of Belief: D A King and Aaron Zimmerman
2 Beliefs as Self-Verifying Fictions: Angela Mendelovici @braininavat4eva.bsky.social
3 Lack of Attitude: @timcrane.bsky.social and Katalin Farkas
4 In Defense of Ontic Austerity for Belief: Ema Sullivan-Bissett @emas-b.bsky.social
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The Nature of Belief Abstract. This book explores the fundamental and complex nature of belief, addressing various philosophical questions surrounding its essence. It examines

New and free online: @msgjonhere.bsky.social
& my edited collection of essays on belief with Oxford University Press:
academic.oup.com/book/62410

Table of Contents in thread

Today's blog post: Discussion Arcs for Topics and Philosophers

schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2026/02/disc...

Disunity and Indeterminacy in Artificial Consciousness (and Maybe in Human Consciousness Too)

Disunity and Indeterminacy in Artificial Consciousness (and Maybe in Human Consciousness Too)

blog post: schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2026/02/disu...

The Intrinsic Value of Diversity

Today's blog post: The Intrinsic Value of Diversity

I think you'll join me in thinking that the world would be better, better for its own sake, if it were diverse rather than uniform.

schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2026/02/the-...

Oh, some of you disagree? Good!

Weirdness of the World, by Eric Schwitzgebel, snail cover

Weirdness on sale!

Paperback $15.36 at Princeton's website with discount code P330. Hardback more than half off (?!) -- $14.85 -- at Amazon. (At least that's what I'm seeing right now.)

Welcome some Weirdness into your mind.

Congratulations!

Full draft: faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/Sc...

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intelligence, such errors on their own do not demonstrate a system's lack of outstanding general intelligence. Conversely, excellent performance on one type of task, such as an IQ test, cannot warrant assumptions of broad capacities beyond that task domain.
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reduction to a single linear quantity. We conclude with implications for adversarial testing approaches to evaluating AI capacities. If AI is strange intelligence, we should expect that even the most capable systems will sometimes fail in seemingly obvious tasks. On a nonlinear model of AI 4/x

surprising errors that few humans would make. We develop and defend a nonlinear model of intelligence on which "general intelligence" is not a unified capacity but instead the ability to achieve a broad range of goals in a broad range of environments, in a manner that defies nonarbitrary 3/x

"strange intelligence". AI intelligence is likely to be strange intelligence, defying familiar patterns of ability and inability, combining superhuman capacities in some domains with subhuman performance in other domains, and even within domains sometimes combining superhuman insight with 2/x

Artificial Intelligence as Strange Intelligence: Against Linear Models of Intelligence, by Kendra Chilson and Eric Schwitzgebel

New paper in draft with Kendra Chilson: "Artificial Intelligence as Strange Intelligence: Against Linear Models of Intelligence"

Abstract:
We endorse and expand upon Susan Schneider's critique of the linear model of AI progress and introduce two novel concepts: "familiar intelligence" and 1/x

AI systems must not confuse users about their sentience or moral status One relatively neglected challenge in ethical artificial intelligence (AI) design is ensuring that AI systems invite a degree of emotional and moral c…

Related: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

The Emotional Alignment Design Policy - Topoi We articulate and defend the Emotional Alignment Design Policy, according to which artificial entities should be designed to elicit emotional reactions from users that appropriately reflect the entiti...

Don't create nonconscious AI systems that people react to as if they are genuinely conscious persons. And if we ever do create AI persons with genuine moral standing, don't encase them in a bland box that people are tempted to disregard or devalue.

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

The Emotional Alignment Design Policy, Topoi, Eric Schwitzgebel & Jeff Sebo

My paper with @jeffsebo.bsky.social , "The Emotional Alignment Design Policy", now live at Topoi [link in comments].

Artificial entities should be designed to elicit emotional reactions from ordinary users that appropriately reflect the entities’ capacities and moral status, or lack thereof.