Looking for the Soft Place Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Getting the Priority Right
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).
Fields of Study & Subjects
Philosophy and Theoretical Science
Epistemology
Ethics
and Metaphysics
Mental Health and Psychiatry
Publication details
- Journal / source
- Journal of Consciousness Studies
- Volume
- 33
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 94–104
- Publication date
- 1 February 2026
- Language
- EN