Substratism: The Material Continuity of Being
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) June 3, 2026 A. Reavis Marques
Substratism is a neurophilosophical framework that distinguishes three separate categories: Being (the continuous material substrate that supported a person's consciousness), Entity (the living organism), and Identity (the conscious organization during life). Death ends Identity and typically Entity, but not Being. Postmortem material continuity refers only to the lawful persistence and possible biological re-entry of that historical material substrate, not to any form of psychological survival, resurrection, or afterlife. The framework treats brainstem-thalamic arousal systems as necessary but not sufficient for conscious presence, and proposes a staged research program to test atom retention, arousal-system dependence in disorders of consciousness, and biogeochemical substrate re-entry. No new data are reported.