Entropy (Basel, Switzerland)
May 14, 2020
Michael Silberstein, William Stuckey
21 citations
The authors argue that conscious experience and fundamental physics are most deeply related through a metaphysical starting point called neutral monism, specifically the variant from William James and Bertrand Russell. Rather than treating physics as fundamental, they derive key features of relativity and quantum mechanics from two axioms grounded in neutral monism, suggesting a unity between these theories. They claim that biases toward property dualism and reductive dynamical explanation create the hard problem of consciousness and the explanatory gap, as well as unresolved issues in physics like the measurement problem and quantum entanglement. The paper aims to resolve these problems and offer a more intuitive model of the relationship between conscious experience and physics.
Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science
December 2, 2017
Michael Silberstein
5 citations
Neutral monism, the view that the fundamental nature of reality is neither mental nor physical but a neutral substance, offers the best solution to the hard problem of consciousness—explaining why and how physical processes give rise to subjective experience. This philosophical position also provides a distinctive path to a new form of panentheism, the belief that the divine pervades and interpenetrates the universe while also extending beyond it, through the lens of Advaita Vedanta, a non-dualistic school of Hindu philosophy. The argument presents neutral monism as superior to rival theories and connects it to a theological framework.
Rethinking Emergence
March 17, 2026
Michael Silberstein
A new type of emergence called contextual emergence (CE) is proposed to advance the hard problem of consciousness. CE holds that properties and behaviors at one scale or domain provide only necessary, not sufficient, conditions for those at another scale; the world is a complex web of irreducibly multiscale extrinsic dispositions. CE explains how novel properties arise and why they matter, emphasizing the equal fundamentality of multiscale contextual constraints in scientific explanation. Together with Jamesian neutral monism, CE deflates the hard problem, breaking metaphysical gridlock between identity theories, strong emergence, and panpsychism, and opens new directions for enactivist and radical empiricist science of consciousness.
arXiv Preprint Archive
January 28, 2019
Michael Silberstein, W. M. Stuckey
Determinate and intersubjectively consistent experience of experimental outcomes is compatible with quantum mechanics without sacrificing free will, locality, or the completeness of the theory. A realist psi-epistemic account—treating the quantum state as knowledge rather than reality—yields a single world where all observers agree on definite outcomes. This approach eliminates the measurement problem and, combined with neutral monism, also resolves the hard problem of consciousness. The account requires no relative states, subjective collapse, or hybrid models.
Topics in Cognitive Science
January 1, 2012
Michael Silberstein, Anthony Chemero
Extended cognitive systems are best understood as complex, non-linearly coupled brain-body-niche systems, not as representational or computational entities. This view explains extended cognition without invoking representations or computation, and it treats cognition and conscious experience as a single phenomenon, thereby dissolving philosophical puzzles about qualia and the hard problem of consciousness. These systems are relational and dynamical, with interactions among heterogeneous parts across multiple spatial and temporal scales.