Looking for the Soft Place Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Getting the Priority Right
Journal of Consciousness Studies February 1, 2026 DOI: 10.53765/20512201.33.1.094 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that superpsychism, as presented by Schneider and Bailey, falls into either a version of cosmopsychism or a version of physicalism, and proposes that it should instead look for a middle position in neutral monism. |
Abstract
In a recent paper, Schneider and Bailey (this issue) argue for the view superpsychism by way of their 'prototime interpretation', which argues that entanglement occurs in an aspatial/prototemportal level from which, they argue, space-time and consciousness arise. In this essay, rather than arguing whether superpsychism/the prototime interpretation is correct or preferable to other views in the metaphysics of consciousness, I want to focus on the objection that superpsychism is either (1) a cosmopsychist view or (2) a physicalist view, something which the authors themselves discuss in the paper. I argue that superpsychism falls into either a version of cosmopsychism (a rock) or physicalism (a hard place) and should rather look for a soft place between the two (neutral monism).