Dr. Michael Cifone, Ph.D.
Philosopher, Academic Researcher, and Institutional Leader
View Academic Profile
Executive Overview
Dr. Michael Cifone integrates metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of science with emerging studies of anomalous and psychophysical phenomena. As Founder and CEO of the Society for UAP Studies (SUAPS), he leads a nonprofit academic organization dedicated to building a rigorous, interdisciplinary foundation for the scientific study of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.
His philosophical research—culminating in the framework termed "Existential Empiricism"—explores the limits of empirical inquiry, the ontology of experience, and the methodological reconstitution of science at its frontiers. His work develops a distinctive synthesis of Spinozist, Nietzschean, Deleuzian, and Jamesian thought, articulating a new empirical metaphysics grounded in ontological incompleteness, affectivity, and the interpenetration of mind and matter.
Current Position
Fellow at Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (CAS-E), FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg
Leadership Role
Founder & CEO, Society for UAP Studies
Core Focus
Philosophy as methodogenesis—creating methods adequate to the unknown
Education
2000
B.A. (Honors) in Philosophy
Elizabethtown College (Minor degrees in: Physics and Mathematical Science)
2007
M.A. in Philosophy
University of Maryland at College Park
2009
Ph.D. in Philosophy
University of Maryland at College Park
Academic Expertise — Research & Pedagogy
Specialization:
  • The Philosophy and Metaphysics of Natural Science (special focus on Relativity and Quantum Theories)
  • Philosophy of Physics
Teaching Competence:
  • Philosophy of Science
  • Non-Western Philosophical Traditions (Indian, Chinese, and Japanese philosophies, with a special focus on Buddhist thought)
  • Ethics
  • Psychoanalysis (Freud and Lacan)
  • Critical Theory
  • History of Philosophy
  • History of Science (special focus on Classical and Modern Physics)
  • Logic
  • Philosophical Foundations of Christian Mysticism
  • Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Deleuze
  • Film and Philosophy
  • Philosophy of Sexuality and Gender
Teaching Experience
Current Positions
Adjunct Professor of Philosophy, St. John's University (2017-present)
Previous Positions
  • Adjunct Assistant Professor in Philosophy, Bronx Community College, CUNY (2016-2024)
  • University of San Francisco (2011-2014, 2014)
  • Drexel University (2010-2011)
  • Gwynedd-Mercy University (2009-2011, 2020-2022)
  • Manhattan College (2019-2020)
  • Rowan University & Rowan College at Burlington County (2016-2017)
  • University of Maryland at College Park (2001-2009)
Course Specialties
  • Philosophy of Physics
  • Asian Philosophy & Philosophy Through Film
  • Ethics & Metaphysics
  • Logic & Critical Reasoning
  • Philosophy of Science
  • Comparative Religion
Certifications
CUNY Summer Online Teaching Program (2020)
Conference Presentations & Speaking
Recent Invited Presentations (2023-2025)
"It's All About the Evidence. But What's the Evidence?"
IFEX SETI & UAP Conference, Universität Würzburg, Germany (2025)
"Actuality Implies Possibility: The Possibilities and Impossibilities of a New Science of UAP"
Rice University, Houston (2025)
"Down To Earth: Characterizing The Landscape of (Scientific) UAP Studies"
Durham University Law School, UK (2025)
"Beyond Cold Cases: Bringing the Science of UAP Down To Earth"
European Astrobiology Institute, Kiruna, Sweden (2024)
"Transcendental Skepticism"
MUFON Orange County (2023, with honorarium)
International Presentations
"Being and Becoming: A Dialogue Between Relational Blockworld and the Implicate Order"
Helsinki, Finland (2010, with honorarium)
"Minkowski Meets Hilbert in a Relational Blockworld"
University of Sydney, Australia (2005, keynote with Nobel Laureate Sir Anthony Leggett)
Conference Organization
  • Inaugural Symposium, Society for UAP Studies (2023)
  • Annual Conference, Society for UAP Studies (2024, 2025)
  • AAAF Technical Commission Sigma2 Seminars on UAP Physical Characteristics (2023-2024, co-organizer)
Philosophical Foundation: Existential Empiricism
Cifone's intellectual trajectory unites rigorous philosophical inquiry with institution-building at the boundaries of contemporary science. His work argues that philosophy's task is not merely to interpret the world's conditions of intelligibility but to create conceptual frameworks adequate to realities that defy inherited categories. Philosophy therefore is "limit work": pursuing thought and experience at their very horizons.
In Existential Empiricism, science is reconceived as operating within an open, ontologically incomplete process of generative conceptual discovery and disclosure—an engagement with the excessive remainder that persists beyond any established paradigm. Drawing from Spinoza's monism, Nietzsche's affirmation of becoming, Deleuze's ontology of difference, and William James's radical empiricism, Cifone develops a methodological philosophy that treats the empirical not as the given but as the ongoing production of relational events between subject, object, and world.
Philosophical Lineage and Key Concepts
Spinoza
Expressive monism, immanence, and ontological continuity
Nietzsche
Affirmation, becoming, and perspectival realism
Deleuze
Difference, genesis, and anti-representational thought
William James
Radical empiricism and pluralistic realism
Ontological Incompleteness
Reality's intelligibility depends upon the very incompleteness that drives scientific discovery
The Excessive Remainder
That which persists beyond any established paradigm
Acategorial Experience
Where boundaries of perception, cognition, and ontology blur
Psychophysical Dual-Aspect Monism
Continuity between mind and nature through relational events
Primary Scholarly Works
RECENT ARTICLES (2022-2025)
  • "Excessive Remainder: Scientific Possibility, Epistemic Limits, and the UFO Experience" (2025) - Mindfield Bulletin 17(1) - Link
  • "The New Science of Unidentified Aerospace-Undersea Phenomena (UAP)" (2025) - Progress in Aerospace Sciences 156, 101097 - arXiv preprint
  • "Editorial" (2025) - Limina - The Journal of UAP Studies 2(1): 6-11 - Link
  • "Editorial" (2024) - Limina - The Journal of UAP Studies 1(1): 3-7 - Link
  • "Transcendental Skepticism" (2022) - The SCU Review, No. 11 - PDF download
FOUNDATIONAL WORKS IN PHILOSOPHY & PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE (2005-2016)
  • "Nothingness and Science (A Propaedeutic)" (2014) - Cosmos and History 10(1): 253-274 - PDF download
  • "Axioms in Z" Parts I & II (2016) - International Journal of Žižek Studies
  • Quantum mechanics papers with Silberstein & Stuckey (2005-2008)
FORTHCOMING & DRAFT WORKS
  • "It's All About The Evidence. But What Is The Evidence?" - forthcoming in UFOs Here And Now for Syracuse University Press (2026-2027) - PDF download
  • "Fire In The Sky: UAP, Climate Change and the Political Economic Future of Human Society" (draft) - PDF download
Institutional Leadership

Society for UAP Studies
Parallel to his academic research, Cifone has translated these conceptual investigations into institutional practice. As Founder and CEO of the Society for UAP Studies (SUAPS), he leads a multidisciplinary organization that seeks to integrate scientific, philosophical, and ethical perspectives on UAP phenomena.
Organizational Infrastructure
  • Comprehensive nonprofit governance and research systems
  • Ethical, financial, and programmatic frameworks
  • Donor-directed research compliance protocols
  • Strategic partnerships across international academic communities
Key Initiatives

EditorLimina

Limina - The Journal of UAP Studies

Limina is an open access, peer-reviewed academic journal devoted to advancing the study of unidentified aerial or anomalous phenomena (UAP).

— first peer-reviewed academic journal in the field since the closure of JUFOS (2006)
Curated Knowledge & Information Hub (CKIH)
Programmatic Innovations
AURA/UPWARD Initiative
Flagship research platform integrating philosophy, science, and phenomenology to explore the conceptual and methodological boundaries of anomalous science.
Curated Knowledge Hub
AI-driven knowledge repository advancing public education and scholarly access to UAP research and interdisciplinary studies.
Ethical Framework Development
Comprehensive policies on experiencer engagement, epistemic responsibility, and institutional integrity for frontier research.
Current Research at FAU CAS-E

Research Topic
"Jacques Vallée, Esotericism, and the Limits of Scientific Rationality: Toward an Existential Empiricism of the Impossible"
Dr. Cifone's research at the Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities "Human Abilities" (CAS-E) explores how philosophical and esoteric traditions intersect in the work of Jacques Vallée, one of the most influential theorists of UAP and anomalous phenomena. Vallée's synthesis of information theory, metaphysics, and the history of esotericism provides a distinctive vantage point for examining the epistemic boundaries of science and the persistence of the imaginal in modern rationality.
The project situates Vallée's thought within a wider philosophical inquiry into the ontological incompleteness of scientific explanation. It interrogates how esoteric and symbolic modes of knowing—traditionally marginalized within Western epistemology—may reveal structural gaps in the empirical project itself. Through this analysis, the research develops an expanded framework of Existential Empiricism that integrates insights from phenomenology, radical empiricism, and the philosophy of information.
Research Objectives and Interdisciplinary Relevance
Core Objectives
  1. Critically analyze Vallée's integration of information theory, hermetic philosophy, and modern epistemology
  1. Trace the philosophical lineage of Vallée's ideas within post-Enlightenment thought and the history of esotericism
  1. Develop a methodological synthesis capable of accommodating transmodal, acategorial experience
  1. Contribute to interdisciplinary dialogue between philosophy, cognitive science, and frontier studies
Interdisciplinary Impact
The research bridges philosophy of science, phenomenology, and esoteric studies, engaging with epistemic and ethical questions at the interface of the humanities and emergent scientific paradigms.
It extends CAS-E's broader inquiry into human capacities by examining how imagination, experience, and cognition operate at the limits of the possible—treating the esoteric not as an alternative to reason but as a complementary register of inquiry into reality's expressive depth.
Intellectual Signature and Vision
Anti-Representationalism
Turning from epistemology to ontology—philosophy as engagement with becoming rather than representation
Ethics of Inquiry
Epistemic humility and responsibility at the frontiers of knowledge
Methodogenesis
Philosophy as the creation of scientific method adequate to the unknown
The Mesoscopic Regime
Between the physical and psychical—where mind and matter interpenetrate
Institutional Epistemology
Designing credible infrastructures for new sciences and frontier research
Throughout his work, both scholarly and organizational, Dr. Cifone maintains a distinctive style: theoretically ambitious, empirically grounded, and institutionally practical. His thought advances a program for what might be called philosophy as methodogenesis—philosophy as the creation of methods adequate to the unknown, to limits, frontiers and horizons. The goal is to provide the philosophical and methodological underpinnings of a reunification of Naturwissenschaft and Geisteswissenschaft—allowing difference to speak while building bridges across disciplinary divides.
Contact Information

Curriculum Vitae

Google Docs

Cifone CV 2025_Redacted.pdf

Email Addresses: