Back To Egging It
A sharp critique of evidentiary shortcuts, citizen-science optics, psionics claims, and the need for shared methodological baselines in UAP research.
Read post →Michael Christian Cifone
Building the collaborative scholarly infrastructure for studying phenomena that mainstream science has been structurally prevented from taking seriously — and asking what that prevention reveals about the politics of knowledge.
Founding ED & President, Society for UAP Studies
Ph.D. Philosophy of Science · University of Maryland
Former CAS-E Visiting Fellow · FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg · 2025–26
Doctoral Candidate · University of Hamburg
Bio
Philosophy of science, UAP Studies, and the institutions needed to make difficult subjects researchable.
A concise account of Cifone's work across philosophy of science, institution-building, and the emerging scholarly study of UAP.
Michael Christian Cifone is a philosopher of science, editor, and academic organizer. His work began in the conceptual foundations of theoretical physics and now centers on the methodological, institutional, and philosophical conditions under which UAP and the broader empirical weird can become serious objects of scholarly inquiry.
Training
Philosophy of science, quantum foundations, spacetime ontology, and scientific explanation.
Institutions
Co-founder of the Society for UAP Studies (with Michael Silberstein) and founding editor of Limina.
Research Program
Develops the empirical weird, existential empiricism, and the conditions for a future science of UAP.
Teaching
Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at St. John's University, with prior appointments across the U.S.
In 2022, he co-founded SUAPS and launched Limina: The Journal of UAP Studies, treating academic infrastructure itself as part of the research problem: journals, conferences, standards, methods, and spaces of cross-disciplinary collaboration.
His early publications (listed under Publications) appeared in Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, Foundations of Physics, and Physics Essays, focusing on the relational blockworld interpretation, spacetime ontology, and the philosophy of scientific explanation.
His current work is organized around the empirical weird: phenomena that resist simple placement within established categories of the physical, psychological, cultural, and religious. This anchors the research program Prolegomena to Any Future Science of UAP.
From October 2025 to February 2026, he served as a CAS-E Visiting Fellow at Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, where he began work on a book-length study under the research title Elusive Remainder: Jacques Vallée and the UFO Enigma. He is concurrently pursuing doctoral work in Religious Studies at the University of Hamburg, developing an account of religion in relation to the sacred understood as empirical.
Where the work happens
Positions
Institution-building, editorial leadership, doctoral research, and teaching, together with recent fellowship and lecture appointments.
Institutional Leadership
Founding Executive Director & President
Society for UAP Studies (SUAPS) — directing research programs, conferences, publications, and the Society's three Strategic Institutional Research Initiatives across philosophy, forensic science, and physical instrumentation.
Editorial
Founding Editor-in-Chief
Limina: The Journal of UAP Studies — currently the only English-language, peer-reviewed academic journal devoted entirely to UAP Studies (Knuth et al. 2025). Draws together scholars from the physical and social sciences, humanities, and philosophy of science.
Doctoral Research
Doctoral Candidate
Religious Studies, University of Hamburg (supervisor: Prof. Dr. Claudia Jahnel). Dissertation developing a new theoretical account of religion in relation to the sacred conceived as empirical — extending earlier work in philosophy of science into the phenomenology of religious experience.
Teaching
Adjunct Professor of Philosophy
St. John's University, Queens, New York (2017–present). Prior appointments at CUNY Bronx Community College, Gwynedd-Mercy University, Manhattan College, University of San Francisco, Drexel University, and others across the U.S.
Recent — September 2026
Invited Lectures: Copenhagen, Lund & Würzburg
Presented the emerging research program at the University of Copenhagen (hosted by CCSTE and the Danish Network for UAP Studies), before the Advanced Study Group Anomalous Agenda at Lund University's Pufendorf Institute, and at the IFEX SETI & UAP Conference in Würzburg.
Completed Fellowship (Oct 2025 – Feb 2026)
CAS-E Visiting Fellow
Center for Advanced Studies "Alternative Rationalities and Esoteric Practices in Global Perspective," Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. Research title: Elusive Remainder: Jacques Vallée and the UFO Enigma. Began work on a monograph on foundational ideas in UAP Studies, with focus on the thought of Jacques Vallée. CAS-E profile →
Prolegomena to Any Future Science of UAP
An Emerging Research Program
An evolving philosophical, methodological, and formal inquiry into the conditions under which an adequate science of UAP might be constituted.
Prolegomena to Any Future Science of UAP is a research program still in development, and its present form is provisional throughout: it proceeds from the working suggestion that the UAP problem is at least three problems operating at different levels of analysis (the institutional and political, the empirical, and the formal), and that the field's failure to produce cumulative knowledge reflects the absence, beyond any want of data, of the institutional conditions, methodological frameworks and conceptual tools by which such data might adequately be gathered and interpreted—an absence that the program itself, in its own partial way, is an attempt to begin repairing.
Level One — Socio-Historical
The Political Economy of Knowledge
Maps the governance of UAP inquiry: the emerging nexus of defense offices, private contractors, and defense-adjacent academic actors, together with the forensic loop, evidentiary regimes, and forms of privatized legitimacy that prevent serious inquiry from becoming institutionally stable.
Level Two — Empirical
Existential Empiricism
Develops a standpoint grounded in William James's radical empiricism, taken through Heidegger's clearing—where experience is allowed to show itself before it is sorted into the mental and the physical—and through the Deleuzean labor of producing concepts adequate to whatever so shows itself, and asks what a science adequate to the full range of UAP phenomena (including the extreme experiential cases) would actually have to look like; here metaphysics names the experience-first grounding move and ontology the downstream inventory of nature that may later be drawn from it, which inverts the customary order of the two terms.
Level Three — Formal
The Metalogical Space
Draws on Harald Atmanspacher's generalized quantum theory and dual-aspect monism to characterize cases where neither purely physical nor purely psychological descriptions are sufficient, and where the physical and experiential aspects of a case stand to one another in a relation of complementarity between global and local descriptions (which is what entanglement comes to in that theory), a relation that no inventory of independent components could recover.
The Research Triangle
The program distinguishes between the Plane of Affect, where UAP appears as an administered cultural and political object, and the Plane of Empiricism, where it appears as a candidate object of a science not yet made. Its working claim—still under development—is that an adequate research order must hold both planes at once.
The Research Triangle maps the literature across three primary zones — governance, empirical study, and formal theory — while locating Zone D along a liminal axis that cuts across, and stands at a right angle to, that triangular plane. Cifone's own contribution, as presently conceived, lies in the explicit naming and theorizing of this liminal interior.
Zone D as a liminal axis above the A–B–C research plane
Zone A
Governance of Anomaly
Socio-historical, political, and STS-inflected work on how anomalous objects are administered, authorized, denied, or absorbed by institutions.
Zone B
Empirical Study of the Phenomena
Scientific, observational, forensic, and instrumentation-centered work directed toward the phenomena as objects of investigation.
Zone C
Philosophical & Formal Framework
Methodological and theoretical work on evidence, ontology, explanation, mind-matter relations, and the formal representation of anomalous correlations.
Zone D
The Liminal Interior
Work that refuses to settle fully onto either plane, exemplified by Pasulka, Kripal, and Vallée, and by the unresolved interior where event, experience, symbol, and institution remain entangled.
Level Two gives this taxonomy empirical bite through six developing postulates drawn from the structure of the evidence, including the rejection of classical separability assumptions, the semiotic character of anomalous phenomena, and the observer-transformation effect. Level Three then asks what formal architecture would be required for cases in which the physical and experiential dimensions cannot be cleanly separated.
Open Frontiers
Five current research fronts give the program its next phase: experimental design, genealogy, religious experience, the excessive remainder, and the artifact interpretation problem.
01Experimental design for entangled-observer conditions.
02The genealogy of the psychical response to UAP.
03UAP encounters and the phenomenology of religious experience.
04The tripartite structure of the excessive remainder beyond mind and matter.
05The artifact interpretation problem: how to reason about possible designed objects operating from an unknown technological base.
The governing stance is disciplined suspension: holding the field's deepest questions genuinely open while actively building the institutional and conceptual conditions under which they might eventually be answered. SUAPS and Limina serve this program as platforms and, to the extent the Level One analysis holds, as part of the argument itself—an attempt to build in practice the independent scholarly infrastructure that the analysis identifies as a precondition for an adequate science.
The field in the public conversation
Press & Media
A sustained presence in national and international coverage of UAP Studies as an emerging scholarly discipline.
We like to emphasize positional neutrality.
In a front-page USA Today feature timed to the Society's second annual conference (held in Erlangen), Cifone presents the empirical weird as the Society's organizing concern and describes a scholarly enterprise committed to methodology and standards of evidence.
USA Today · "These researchers say there are serious questions about UFOs, UAPs" · December 2025 · Society announcement
…serious scientists and student researchers are getting involved.
In Leonard David's year-end assessment for Space.com, Cifone, identified as the Society's founding executive director and President, argues that funding and institutional support remain the decisive constraint on observational and experimental work on UAP.
Space.com · "We didn't find answers in 2025, but UFO researchers say the search continues" · December 2025
Also covered in
ENTAUS · Personal Blog
May 2025
Jan 2025
Nov 2023
Blog Highlights
Selected entries from ENTAUS, Cifone's personal blog, where he pursues sustained critical interrogations of UAP, anomalous experience, scientific possibility, and the politics of knowledge. The views expressed there are his own.
Returning To The Basics
A programmatic statement on case reports, witness testimony, the limits of disclosure politics, and the need for independent empirical research.
Read post →Rising Sun In The UFO Firmament
Reflections on the Sol Foundation's inaugural symposium, the entanglement of celebrity and knowledge, and the politics of legitimacy in the field.
Read post →
The written record
Publications
Spanning foundations of physics, philosophy of science, critical theory, and the emerging science of UAP.
Articles & Editorials
2026
Boundary Conditions – Evidence, Experience and Method Editorial
Limina — The Journal of UAP Studies 3(1): 5–10. DOI: 10.59661/001c.164975
2025
Excessive Remainder: Scientific Possibility, Epistemic Limits, and the UFO Experience
Mindfield: Bulletin of the Parapsychological Association 17(1). June 13, 2025.
2025
Limina — The Journal of UAP Studies 2(1): 6–11. DOI: 10.59661/001c.131857
2024
Limina — The Journal of UAP Studies 1(1): 3–7. DOI: 10.59661/001c.92781
2022
Transcendental Skepticism
The SCU Review, No. 11. October 27, 2022.
2016
Axioms in Ž — Notes on a Scandalous Appropriation of Philosophy out of the Sublimity of the Thing (Parts I & II)
International Journal of Žižek Studies 10(1) (Part I) and a subsequent issue (Part II).
2014
Nothingness and Science (A Propaedeutic)
Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy 10(1): 253–274.
Co-authored Articles
2025
The New Science of Unidentified Aerospace-Undersea Phenomena (UAP) Featured
Progress in Aerospace Sciences 156 (2025): 101097. DOI: 10.1016/j.paerosci.2025.101097
Lead author: Kevin H. Knuth (University at Albany, SUNY); Cifone is one of the named co-authors. Preprint: arXiv:2502.06794
2008
Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 39(4): 736–751.
Michael Silberstein, Michael Cifone, and W.M. Stuckey.
2008
Reconciling Spacetime and the Quantum: Relational Blockworld and the Quantum Liar Paradox
Foundations of Physics 38(4): 348–383.
W.M. Stuckey, Michael Silberstein, and Michael Cifone.
2006
Deflating Quantum Mysteries via the Relational Blockworld
Physics Essays 19(2): 269–283. Source list →
With W.M. Stuckey and Michael Silberstein.
Book Chapters (Co-authored)
2007
The Relational Blockworld Interpretation of Non-relativistic Quantum Mechanics
In G. Adenier, C. A. Fuchs, and A. Khrennikov (eds.), Foundations of Probability and Physics 4, 412–421. Melville, NY: American Institute of Physics. Source list →
With W.M. Stuckey and Michael Silberstein.
2007
An Argument for 4D Blockworld from a Geometric Interpretation of Nonrelativistic Quantum Mechanics
In V. Petkov (ed.), Relativity and the Dimensionality of the World. Springer, Fundamental Theories of Physics series.
With Michael Silberstein and W.M. Stuckey.
2005
Reversing the Arrow of Explanation in the Relational Blockworld: Why Temporal Becoming, the Dynamical Brain and the External World Are ‘In The Mind’
In Endophysics, Time, Quantum and the Subjective (conference proceedings). World Scientific.
With W.M. Stuckey and Michael Silberstein.
Forthcoming in Print
forthc.
Fire In The Sky: UAP, Climate Change and the Political Economic Future of Human Society Forthcoming
For an edited volume. Stanford University Press, anticipated 2027.
forthc.
It's All About the Evidence — But What Is the Evidence? A Philosophical Inquiry Into the Problem of UFO Evidence Forthcoming
For Beyond Believing: New Scholarly Perspectives on UFOs, edited by William Dewan and Daniel Wojcik. Syracuse University Press, anticipated 2027. Listing →
in prep.
Rational Responses To Extraordinary Hypotheses
In preparation.
With Kevin Knuth and Wesley Watters.
Working Papers & Critical Essays
2025/26
Into the 'Workshop' of Being: The Place and Necessity of Theology and the Religious in the UFO Experience Working Paper
Draft essay on religious studies, theology, and the UFO experience.
2025/26
The Emerging UAP Nexus: National Security, Privatized Legitimacy, and the Reorganization of the Unknown Working Paper Critical Essay
2025/26
The Affect of the Impossible: UAP and the Deterritorialization of Knowledge Working Paper
2025
Existential Empiricism: A Proposed Framework for the Science of Mind, Matter, and Anomalous Phenomena Working Paper
SUAPS Department of Research
Strategic Institutional Research Initiatives
Three interlinked programs that Cifone initiated and spearheads under the Society for UAP Studies, each addressing a distinct foundational problem in the field.
Phenomenology & Philosophy of Science
Empirical Weird Initiative
Anchored in Cifone's concept of the "empirical weird," Phase 1 launched at the Prolegomena Retreat in Porto, Portugal, May 28–June 1, 2026. Fifteen researchers across philosophy, cognitive science, and physical science met to lay the groundwork for a new methodological framework addressing the ontological-interface problem at the heart of anomalous phenomena. Initiated and directed by Cifone; conducted under the auspices of SUAPS.
Phase 1 Complete · Phase 2 in Development
Visit EWI Site →
Forensic Science
Forensic Methodologies Initiative
Addresses the chain-of-evidence problem in UAP research through rigorous application of forensic scientific standards. Led by a principal investigator and co-lead under SUAPS's Department of Research, the initiative is conducting a systematic Freedom of Information campaign targeting approximately 100 organizations across 30+ countries. Conceived and initiated by Cifone as part of the Society's research portfolio.
Phase 2 Active · FOI Campaign Underway
Visit Initiative Site →
Instrumentation & Signal Detection
UAP Standards of Evidence
Modeled on the astrobiology community's biosignature standards of evidence framework, this initiative convenes approximately 55 researchers across astrophysics, data science, philosophy of science, sociology, and information science to develop a rigorous, community-grounded evidentiary framework for UAP science. Organizing team includes Dr. Gretchen Stahlman (FSU), Dr. Laura Dominé (NICT and Kyoto University), Dr. Tim Spuck (AUI), and Dr. Giovanna Pugliese (UvA). Coordinated by Cifone through SUAPS. Following the AstroAccel Innovation Summit in Lisbon (August 2026), the initiative is now in funding discovery and rescoping.
Organizing Phase · Funding Discovery & Rescoping
Visit SOE Site →
Where ideas travel
Selected Talks & Lectures
Invited lectures and conference presentations in North America, Europe, and Australia, spanning philosophy of science, UAP studies, and critical theory.
Sept 2026
Philosophical, Methodological, and Formal Challenges in the Study of UAP: From ‘Pure’ to ‘Mixed’ State Cases
IFEX SETI & UAP Conference 2026 · Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg, Germany · September 23–24, 2026. Host: Prof. Dr. Hakan Kayal.
Sept 2026
Guest Lecture to the Advanced Study Group Anomalous Agenda
Pufendorf Institute for Advanced Studies, Lund University, Sweden · September 7, 2026. An open talk on the philosophical and methodological foundations of UAP Studies, hosted by the group's coordinators, Anders Warell and Melina Tsapos. Event listing → Study group →
Sept 2026
Empiricism and Humility: Characterizing the Problem Space for a (Future) Science of UAP
Invited Lecture · Faculty of Humanities, University of Copenhagen, Denmark · September 6, 2026. Hosted by CCSTE and the Danish Network for UAP Studies (DNUS); organized by Frederik Uldall; discussant: Aaron French. Video →
July 2026
Building a Science of UAP: Institutional Design, Policy, and Scientific Legitimacy
Flash talk and panel discussion · SCU Annual Conference 2026, “The Role of Science and Global Governments in UAP Research” · Toronto, Canada · July 24–26, 2026.
June 2026
UAP Disclosure Forum Special Invited Guest
U.S. Capitol Building (Kennedy Caucus Room), Washington D.C. · June 25, 2026. Full-day event convening congressional leaders, former intelligence officials, scientists, and policy analysts.
Dec 2025
The ‘Empirical Weird’ · Opening Roundtable: “Consciousness Studies, Esotericism, and UAP”
Second Annual Conference of the Society for UAP Studies · Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany (in person and online) · December 2025. Conference organizer. Conference report →
Sept 2025
It's All About the Evidence. But What's the Evidence?
IFEX SETI & UAP Conference 2025 · Universität Würzburg, Germany · September 18, 2025.
Aug 2025
It's All About the Evidence. But What's the Evidence?
Flash talk · UAP Data Workshop hosted by AUI with support from AARO (U.S. Dept. of Defense) · Vienna, Virginia · August 4–6, 2025. Society newsletter → Workshop records →
Apr 2025
Actuality Implies Possibility: The Possibilities and Impossibilities of a New Science of UAP
The UFO and the Impossible: Archives of the Impossible Conference 2025 · Rice University, Houston, Texas · April 3–5, 2025. Speaker page →
Apr 2025
Down To Earth: Characterizing the Landscape of (Scientific) UAP Studies
Grounding the SETI and UAP Debate: Law, Evidence and Anticipated Futures · International Symposium, Durham Law School, Durham University · April 24, 2025. Programme →
Oct 2024
Anomalous Trajectories: Charting A Course from the New Science of UAP to Anomalistics
IGPP Colloquia Series · Freiburg, Germany · October 2024 (online).
Sept 2024
Beyond Cold Cases: Bringing the Science of UAP Down To Earth
Social and Ethical Frontiers in Space 2024, EAI/SSoCIA · Kiruna, Sweden · September 22–26, 2024. With Wesley Watters, Wellesley College.
Mar 2023
Fire In the Sky: UFOs, Climate Change and the Political-Economic Future of Human Society
Bringing SETI Home: The Politics of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena · Mershon Center, Ohio State University · March 13–14, 2023.
Nov 2010
Being and Becoming: A Dialogue Between Relational Blockworld and the Implicate Order Invited · Honorarium
Toward An Algebra of Process: A Symposium in Honor of Basil J. Hiley · Helsinki, Finland · November 11–14, 2010.
Jul 2005
Minkowski Meets Hilbert in a Relational Blockworld Invited · Honorarium
Time Symmetric Approaches to Quantum Mechanics · Centre for Time, University of Sydney · July 23–26, 2005. Keynote: Nobel Laureate Sir Anthony Leggett.
Academic record
Fellowships & Distinctions
- 2025–26
CAS-E Visiting Fellowship (October 2025 – February 2026)
Center for Advanced Studies "Alternative Rationalities and Esoteric Practices in Global Perspective," FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg · CAS-E profile
- 2006
Jacob K. Goldhaber Travel Grant
University of Maryland · for the 8th Biennial Meeting of the International Quantum Structures Association, Sliema, Malta
- 2006 · 2005
Department of Philosophy Summer Research Scholarship
University of Maryland
- 2005
Distinguished Teaching Assistant Award
Center for Teaching Excellence, University of Maryland
- 2004
National Science Foundation Young Researcher's Grant
Travel and Presentation Award · for the 7th Biennial Meeting of the International Quantum Structures Association, Denver
- 2002
Brian Hull Fellowship for Best First Year Graduate Student
Dept. of Philosophy, University of Maryland
In conversation
Podcasts & Video
Selected podcast appearances, radio segments, and video interviews on the foundations, politics, and future of UAP Studies.
Sept 2026
Empiricism and Humility: Characterizing the Problem Space for a (Future) Science of UAP
Recording of the University of Copenhagen lecture · Danish Network for UAP Studies and CCSTE · September 6, 2026.
Apr 2026
Skepticism and the New Science of UAP
SUAPS UAP Studies Seminar Series · Society for UAP Studies · April 16, 2026. Livestreamed lecture on the epistemological challenges confronting the emerging science of UAP.
2025
Toward A Science of Nonhuman Intelligence
Inaugural Lecture (online) · The Human Institute · 2025.
Oct 2024
Dr. Michael Cifone — Society for UAP Studies Co-Founder
WTUFO S2E9 · October 18, 2024. Long-form interview on philosophy of science, SUAPS, Limina, and the challenges of developing UAP as a legitimate subject for contemporary research.
Jan 2023
UAP Research / Historical Alien Beliefs
Coast to Coast AM · hosted by George Knapp · January 15, 2023. Cifone joined in the first half to discuss academic debate and dialogue in the UFO field; Chris Aubeck followed in the latter half on historical alien beliefs.
Get in touch
Inquiries & Collaborations
Speaking invitations, editorial and research collaborations, fellowship enquiries, and press contacts are all welcome.
Professional
Institutional enquiries, research collaborations, editorial correspondence, and speaking invitations should be directed to the Society for UAP Studies address.
director@societyforuapstudies.orgPersonal
Personal correspondence, media requests, and academic networking through the personal address.
cifonemc@gmail.comProfessional Affiliations
Society for UAP Studies (Co-Founder)
Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies
Philosophy of Science Association
Society for European Philosophy
Forum for European Philosophy
American Philosophical Association
International Society for Advanced Study of Spacetime