This is a review of two books about weirdness. One shows that the “weird shit” of its title is scientifically explicable and very likely not weird at all, the other that the whole cosmic/quantic tractatus physico-philosophicus is necessarily weird and dubious. You'd think these were opposed to one another, the one reformist, reducing “wonders” to banality, the other revolutionary, problematising the “obvious”, but the aim of this review is to show that they are facets of the same thing, and that as well as contributions to philosophy, this also has something to offer, and more to expect from, art. (It is also, in passing, a plea for recognising a new formal area of work and study, PPA: Physics, Philosophy and Art. Pace the Wittgenstein of that other Tractatus: whereof we cannot speak, thereof we should not shut up, but write about, make art about and celebrate in theory and practice.)

Diligent research shows Eric Schwitzgebel, author of The Weirdness of the World, recounting that his father took him as a child to a lecture he was giving on psychology and had him sit on the desk and move his mouth as his father hid behind him and spoke the words. This would be a gift to any reviewer of the acclaimed philosopher but try as he may your reviewer has found nothing to suggest that Schwitzgebel’s works is anything other than sui generis. Chris French’s book about the “weird shit” is also one of a kind, being at once quite funny (as is Schwitzgebel’s) and leaving one aghast at the (wilful?) gullibility of many humans.

It is important to remind the reader that in his reviews, whether they are concerned with consciousness, magic, the metal lead or some other apparently non-art subject, your reviewer is consciously practicing the “détournement” or hijacking of ideas from one area or another to be used not “as”, but for art. A brilliant book on large numbers might (might) offer little to the artist; a not very well written text on social or physical boundaries could inspire and provoke art-like activity despite its shortcomings. My criteria are sometimes not those of an expert from the book's normal constituency. 

That said, it is to be expected that these two texts on the “weird” might satisfy the multiple criteria of value for the artist-researcher-philosopher that one might take a typical Leonardo reader to be. For this reviewer art is research (a more or less systematic inquiry whose goal is knowledge) and a kind of mainly visual philosophy, perhaps with transformational or political dimensions, at least on a good day. The rest is decoration. Do we expect science to be decorative, or therapeutic? Then why should all art be? Philosophy and physics often seem to aspire (sometimes resignedly) to the condition of each other. Art should join the party.

Do we want art to be solid and commonsensical, or strange and dubious? Should it satisfy and reassure us, console and comfort us, or should it stimulate us, make us question every received wisdom? Should it “disrupt” in the appallingly conservative sense of tech bros, lying, cynical startups and influencers, or should it be revolutionary, problematising “life, the universe and everything”? Well, that's easy (!). But what about magic, which only works when we know it's an explicable trick (if it wasn't, it would be a miracle). The mundane explanation always removes… the magic. “Oh, is that all it was?” Both of these books disrupt that disappointment.

We might start from the presumption that “weird” is not any more an exception to how things are, an outlier, perturbation or aberration. We surely know by now that weird is wired, the new normal, in everything except perhaps dentistry, polyamory and AI-mashed-up “art”, a comfort in the first two, a tiresome burden in the last.

Professor Schwitzgebel has written that the world is fundamentally weird. “By this I mean that with regard to foundational matters in cosmology, metaphysics, and philosophy of mind, one or another of various bizarre possibilities must be true, but our best science and philosophy don't put us in a position to know which of those bizarre possibilities is in fact correct.” He is also very interested in the psychology of philosophy. This is quite far removed from many other texts on the philosophy of science. It slams philosophy and science together like a large head-on collider and is all the better for that. Paul Feyerabend once wrote that philosophy is "petrified" without physics and physics is "liable to become dogmatic" without philosophy. I suppose most of us believe that these days? (Like all other non-referenced items here, the curious reader can put the salient keywords into a well-known search engine.)

We see everything, perhaps unavoidably, in a human way. Scale, for example: measures of time and distance, ideas of location, beginnings and ends and so on. But can't we have the humility to see that we, not the laws of physics, are the limits and constraints? F*** the Planck length. It is anyway not the shortest length there can be, but “simply” the length at which physics as we know it becomes unusable due to the effects of gravity which there become significant. And the same must apply to time. Uncertainty creeps in. That there is no non-bizarre interpretation of quantum physics and much else is surely not surprising. It would be astounding if implications of theories of life, the universe and everything were not “bizarre” to us blinkered humans. Those with simple, “common sense” solutions to cosmological and quantum problems, made of everyday, human concepts, are surely one slot short of an interference pattern. Acceptance of weirdness is probably the way to transcend our lack of imagination.

Schwitzgebel starts with a section on how weirdness is a good thing, and how pervasive it is. Including, emphasising really, the “dubiety” of it all. Questioned in various interviews, he often responds (at first) “I don't know”. Which is nice. Because of course mostly, we do not know. He wants us to admit that first, all possible explanations for most of the important stuff are going to be weird. And then that the acceptance of that, rather than imposing simplistic, less weird “explanations” on everything, is the only way to go. There's an almost Buddhist feel about this, which is rather persuasive. It's almost a freedom. He contrasts the philosophy of opening with that of closing, or exclusion. “We can learn by addition as well as subtraction”. I suppose that any eventual theory of everything will be in some way a reduction, but before we get to that far bank we have to wade in a river of flowing possibilities.

Now as well as open philosophers, who are the people most obligated to see things in new ways, to shift the ground beneath the obvious? Surely artists, who have or should have a professional permission to think the unlikely, the absurd even, and see where it goes. Testing the boundaries. It's easier to make a convincing drawing of a chair if you first turn it upside down, possible reducing its chairness but increasing the value of the interplay of different parts. 

Personally, when I think of this “creative othering” I don't think of, say, Christo or Magritte or Dali, who seem only to illustrate what this book is about. We need, I believe, an art that actually explores the field, research again. As Walter Benjamin wrote, “Beauty that endures is an object of knowledge. And though it is questionable whether the beauty that endures still deserves the name, it is nevertheless certain that nothing is beautiful unless there is something worthy of knowledge in its interior”. Of course it can be argued that the beauty consists exactly in that knowledge. And if instead of “certain” knowledge we have weirdness and doubt, so be it, and probably so much the better.

The book “unmoors” us by asserting that the results of removing common sense (not a reliable guide) as a constraint on questions about mind and world, here mainly in the context of consciousness, are bizarre and beautiful possibilities that, once open, refuse to shut. I love his three possible explanations of why metaphysics is always bizarre: either a) we want it to be, else it would be “downmarket”; or b) we want a simpler metaphysics but haven't achieved that yet; or c) we can't have one. Of course he's for the last one. Good.

The next section takes seriously three weird possibilities that are implausible “but not as implausible as all that”. Skeptical enlightenments are conjured. The possibilities are that the United States is conscious, that we don't really exist, being simulated or “envatted brains”, and that reality is non-material, brought into being by our minds.

He is not arguing for or against these propositions, really, but showing that if we think seriously about the questions they apply to, we are going to end up in a sceptical weirdness. The whole book seems essentially to be saying that everything just is weird, and we would do well… not to get used to it, but to accept that the universe is stranger than we (probably can) imagine. Also that we must surely try to precede our daily breakfasts by believing in several near- but not quite-impossible ideas. Remember, a philosophy that is open, not closed. There could be a massive “having one's cake and eating it too” aspect to all this, but even that, if you think about it, is not a clear indictment of anything. The word cake is not in the index, sadly, though almost everything of importance in this weird… “thing”… is.

The following section considers the “it's all in my mind” possibility (he often talks of possibilities rather than hypotheses) and the many-worlds idea. At the extremes of scale, the former suggests that the universe are all in just one (his) mind, the latter that the universe is infinite and almost everything you do causes almost everything else. “Among the least likely possibilities is that the universe is the size we might unreflectively think it is”, the observable universe with us at the centre.

As with most other ideas in the book, the author (and for some this must be frustrating) examines ideas and their logical implications, all of the weird, dubious, some less mad than others, and exhausts the alternatives, leaving us one possibility short of the full Sherlock gamut of likeliness. For here, immersed in this wonderful book, when we have eliminated the impossible, what remains must be… really weird and unlikely. 

Solipsism - my consciousness is all that exists - must “surely” be untrue. Our faith is strong, we don't need a proof, but Schwitzebel is dancing on the roof, the better to overthrow that particular silly rejection of ours based on common sense, not that he really thinks it's true. “The two most famous attempts to cure radical solipsism from within come from Descartes… and from Kant… neither succeeds.” Neither do Russell or G. E. Moore. The former gets short to medium shrift, Moore gets less. The author's nice proof of the falsity of solipsism is to play 20 games of chess against a former graduate student, Alan Tonnies Moore who collaborated on this chapter six and who is a better player. Remember that Schwitzgebel is a solipsist for the purposes of this experiment, so neither  “seeming-Alan”, chessboard nor pieces exist outside his consciousness. The seeming-opponent defeated him in 17 games out of 20. You can't specifically imagine the moves of an expert player if you're not one, so “it feels hard to avoid the conclusion that something exists that exceeds my own conscious intelligence in at least this one arena”. This doesn't prove that solipsism is wrong, so that an external world does exist, but to escape the results would need really crazy stuff involving scepticism about memory or ad hoc doubts about connections between one experience and the next.

And that happens throughout the book, with reference to simulated realities, the unconscious, many worlds and so on. He doesn't prove that the only (currently and historically) possible theories in various areas are all wrong, but shows the traditional, “common sense” or otherwise attractive ones to be even more unlikely than the best current ones, despite the latter entailing great weirdness. To again misuse Sherlock Holmes, when all the sensible but ultimately daft stuff has been removed, what is left, however weird or dubious, might be the truth. But possibly not. To reiterate, this book is not about finding the truth, but accepting that whatever the truth is, it is going to be weird. And dubious.

He goes on to more perplexities of consciousness and again, after pointing to problems with all theories from hard materialism to panpsychism, which says consciousness is everywhere in everything, which he like your reviewer seems to find rather attractive if against common sense, decides that we just don't know. And perhaps can't know, at least for a long time. ”We are not justified in believing any general theory of consciousness.” 

Then how can we know whether future AI systems are conscious, or possess any consciousness at all? How will we treat them if we're unsure?  What if we're mistaken? And then what if actually we, life, the universe and everything are “just” a simulation? Considering such questions, and then going along with the book's very convincing thesis that most theories are crazy but not provably wrong, and that ones that seem a gnats breath closer to truth are inevitably weird and dubious, might make a reader depressed. However the uncertainty on all levels seems to delight and excite him, and because he writes well, even if there are sometimes feelings of déjà vu, I found his book an exciting and very stimulating read. His various videos and interviews are good too. He laughs a lot, always a good sign.

A point where I diverge from his zen-like, quizzical observation and enjoyment of life's (or whatever's) joke, is in the context of AI. This area is either that of lesser importance than the cosmological questions, or it is of paramount supremacy for us, especially if we're just in a necessarily intelligent simulation. The author is used to seemingly rational discussions with seemingly rational people. They can enjoy the weird. My fear is that decisions between what is usefully weird and criminally weird are likely to be culturally determined. We have apparently lowered the bar for logic, truth, humanity and sincere enquiry in social media, and “the public have had enough of experts”, as a British government minister said about Brexit. There is a creeping acceptance of AIs' mediocrity as good enough. As they improve, their remaining imperfections will, I think, be seen almost as lovable. Certainly acceptable, if weird. We have gone from laughing at the output of LLMs and art generators to public quasi-acceptance in a period of less than a year. This is in a number of peoples' interests, with not all of whom one would wish to have a drink. 

I love the idea that everything that seems sensible is more likely weird and dubious. That seems common sense, which the book reinforces. But just as assertion has been commodified as a simulation of, not truth, but of what we may do, or used to do, with truth, so may lumpen outputs from populist, non-expert systems make their own rules in ethical, moral, creative, scientific, philosophical and other areas, to public and corporate approbation. If accepting the weirdness of all philosophising about life, the universe and everything is the price of asking the questions, there will be those happy to ask other questions and provide more “reassuring” answers, for money and power. Let us make fun of that while we still can, and write and make art about it too. The AI people may not like this, especially those involved in creativity. As one eminent Professor replied to me on Facebook: ‘We need to protect AI from “artists.” These are mostly vulgar, tasteless, no knowledge of art history or elegance or nuance. Let’s look inside contemporary art galleries, it’s even worst kitsch than AI images. So while brilliant AI scientists created the most amazing culture memory and generation machine the world ever known, in the hands of kitsch artists it produces kitsch. It’s easy to blame companies for everything, or “capitalism” or “big tech.” This is nonsense…letting typical artists use AI is like giving oil paints to a one year old and expecting that he will paint like Rembrandt.’ This seems a complete, beautifully weird reversal of almost anything one might say in criticism of AI-generated art.

A practical experiment from the sceptics’ sceptic’s book: When we look at an object, he says, we can be fairly, if not 100%, confident about the accuracy of our perceptions. But our introspection is very faulty! If you close your eyes and imagine your home, it’s pretty undetailed. The questions you can ask about introspection are hard. Is the picture of my home blurred? Is the colour really like that? In the object such as his stapler, it is. But not usually in the mental picture of something. It’s less secure, less stable than our visual knowledge. Some AI work seems to assume that art’s style or colours or the brightness of pixels of their digitalisations (really!) are at least partially defining characteristics, dimensions along which paintings (never minimalism, op-art, constructivism or especially conceptualism, which it is therefore necessary to dismiss as charlatanism) may be distributed or clumped. Weird.