"A experiência é uma invenção" Herberto Helder
What is reality?
When we ask this question, most people say that what we can touch and feel is real. For example, the sand on the beach is real, as is the ocean and the heat of the sun, because we can feel them. Physicists take this intuitive notion further, arguing that only matter and energy are real, so anything that is not material is not fundamentally real.
If we believe this, it means that anything that exists must have a material origin. This seems sensible until we try to explain mind and consciousness. For a classical physicist, consciousness is not real. They consider it an epiphenomenon, seeing it as a product of matter (which is considered more fundamental). The currently accepted idea is that consciousness somehow "emerges" from material causes, but no one is certain exactly how...
Body and Mind
This separation between matter and consciousness was popularized by Descartes in his body and mind dualism. The body represented material causes (res extensa), and the mind represented the non-material aspect of existence (res cogitans), where consciousness takes place. He argued that these are totally different things that somehow interact. He then called this separation the mind-body problem.
The problem is, if consciousness is immaterial, how does it affect matter? If I consciously decide to move my arm, I can see that it moves... How can consciousness be a cause? Perhaps instead of focusing on why the body and mind are different (material vs. immaterial), we should focus on why they are the same. They both cause something to happen.
Causality
But what does it mean to cause something? If I throw a rock at a window, I can predict the final outcome. The window will break because of the rock, and the rock will hit it because I threw it. We use the word "causality" to describe the structure of change; that is, the network of cause-and-effect relationships that allows us to build models for predicting outcomes.
In physics, causality is governed by strict constraints on the conservation of matter and energy. That's why we can predict the motion of planets and the life of stars. If causality were solely material and energetic, reality would reduce to nothing more than physics. But is that truly the case?
After Galileo went to the top of the Tower of Pisa and dropped two cannonballs of different masses to prove that the acceleration of gravity is the same for all objects, he returned with a cannonball and a pigeon. He couldn't help but notice that the two lumps of matter behaved very differently... What were the causes behind the strange behaviour of the pigeon?
More seriously, we know today that causality, understood as the structure of change, is much broader and more nuanced than classical physics suggests. Quantum mechanics shows that the very act of measurement by an observer can alter the outcome, as demonstrated in the famous double-slit experiment. The simple act of observation influences the state of a system, and implicitly, the causal structure of what can happen.
Observers
But what exactly do we mean by "observation"? We usually use the term to refer to human minds as observers, but we should expand and generalize the definition and say that "observation" simply means measuring a property of the environment through interactions.
At the quantum level, when a system interacts with its environment, it decoheres and resolves quantum uncertainty, effectively making an observation. For instance, if an electron scatters off another particle, the scattering process can act as an observation, pinning down certain properties of both systems. At the macro level, we could say that a thermometer is also making an observation of temperature, as it measures the ambient temperature through billions of quantum interactions. When a person checks the thermometer and reads the information provided, they are also making an observation. What is important to notice is that "observation" is a relational concept that rest on interactions and that doesn't depend on scale. It is dependent on the reference frame of the system that is making the observation (the observer). Ultimately, one could say the universe when it interacts with itself, observes itself.
Why does this matter? By acknowledging that causality depends on an observer and their measurements, we recognize that causality is fundamentally linked to information. As we delve deeper, we discover that information-based causality surpasses material-based causality, explaining phenomena that traditional material causality cannot.
Information
One major challenge is that the word "information" is often tainted with confusion and ambiguity, because people use the word in a whole lot of different ways. Perhaps the clearest definition, in everyday language, that I know of, is by Gregory Bateson: "Information is a difference that makes a difference."
Consider digital computers: they store data in bits, represented by zeros and ones. The information isn't contained in the zeros or the ones themselves, but in the difference between them. We could just as well have a computer that uses red and green bits, or hot and cold bits. The crucial point is the difference, not the particular states. However, this difference means nothing without an observer to interpret it! For example, a computer that relies on red and green bits would be useless to someone who is colour blind. In short, information is a difference that makes a difference to an observer.
Information has causal power. There is a great Veritasium video that asks random people in the street what powers life on earth, and everyone says it is the energy of the Sun. But then the video makes them realize that the amount of energy that arrives from the Sun is about the same amount that leaves. The key is that for every high-energy photon that arrives at the earth, there are about 20 low-energy photons in thermal radiation that are emitted. What powers the earth is the difference between these two energy configurations. In the video, he talks about entropy, but entropy is missing information. The rise of entropy is the fading of differences. What powers the Earth is information.
Information is an abstract concept, like a number. We don't see the numbers run around in the wild, but numbers are still very real in the sense that we can count one dog or two persons. Using the same metaphor, while there is no "objective" information out there, it always depends on an observer, but what we see as order is a concrete realization of information to an observer.
At first glance, one might think that distinguishing between "information causality" and "material causality" is merely semantic. However, there is an important difference. Material causality requires a physical entity—a particle or a field—to serve as the cause. In contrast, information causality allows an "absence" (or nothingness) to be the cause.
The Cause of Nothing
This idea may seem counterintuitive: how could nothing cause something? In the story, “The Adventure of Silver Blaze”, Sherlock Holmes solves the mystery because the dog didn't bark on the night of the murder. That very absence of the dog's barking provided the critical clue to know that the murderer was someone familiar to the dog. Similarly, in a computer, what we call a zero is not really a number at all, but the absence of an electric voltage. It is the difference between the presence of voltage and its absence that conveys one bit of information.
Terrence Deacon refers to this property of information as "Absential." That is, a causal source caused by something that isn't there (no matter or energy). To be aware of this intrinsic property of information is akin to recognizing the number zero in our numerical system. Likewise, we are now incorporating a "zero" into our understanding of causality. To say that reality is more than pure physics is to argue that the structure of information causality is more expansive than material causality, and we must view reality through the lens of information theory — echoing John Archibald Wheeler’s famous remark, "It from bit."
The Information Field
Let’s consider a thought experiment. Imagine that an alien civilization visits our solar system—not to make contact, but purely to observe us from orbit. These aliens, masters of physics yet unaware of human concepts like "bodies" or "minds," will see only physical patterns. They would observe that some areas of the landscape are rich in organic compounds (forests), while others consist of intricate, inert structures of minerals (cities). As they analyse how one specific pattern (a city) maintains its stability over time (homeostasis), they would note an exchange of matter with its surroundings (metabolism) through conduits (roads and highways) facilitated by specialized structures (cars and trucks). When they examine one of these systems, they would see a mixture of metal, glass, and organic material (the human driver).
They might be able to explain how energy flows within the system (from the battery or fuel tank to the wheels), but they'd struggle to understand why these moving patterns do not collide when they are speeding on these conduits (roads). Their measurements of electromagnetic radiation between the moving patterns (cars) would reveal too little energy to account for the force needed to prevent collisions. Consequently, they might infer the existence of some kind of "dark energy" working between the systems, a factor that they can only detect indirectly.
From our perspective, however, we know that what is really happening is an exchange of information. For instance: the fact that a car in front is slowing down is transmitted via photons to the driver’s eyes. The driver’s brain processes this signal, converting it into a command to press the brake pedal and, in doing so, preserving the integrity of the whole system. This process is not simply about energy; it is a closed-loop information network that preserves itself. The presence of a car in front causes the braking, and the absence causes the acceleration. Photons are involved, but they are not the cause of the outcome, only a carrier of information. The same matter and energy, but without the proper information network of observers, would be unable to produce the same outcome.
Experience is Invention
To claim that reality is nothing more than physics, where matter and energy represent the sole sources of causality in an objective universe, is both misleading and limited. When we examine reality through the lens of information theory, we see that the role of the observer and the relational nature of information are indispensable. This broader view reveals that even "nothing" can be a cause, prompting us to rethink our understanding of causality and ultimately, the nature of reality itself.
To say that information is more fundamental than matter, is the same as saying that the building block of reality is not some elusive particle, but an act of observation: a kind of recurrent feedback loop that gathers subjective information through interactions. Whitehead called this vision Pan-Experientialism and called these acts of observation, units of experience. Everything is a process of experience, and what is real is these recurrent dynamic information patterns. There is no duality of body and mind. There is also no duality of form and substance, as Plato and Aristotle believed. The body or substance is an illusion granted by the temporal stability of certain forms. Everything is a process of information "crystallization", and this process is fundamentally creative, in the sense that the information build up is purely relational.
Reframing
When we see the pattern of a city from a plane, it's impossible not to draw parallels with something alive. The homeostasis, allowing the pattern to persist through time. The fight against entropy, through a metabolic exchange with its environment. Its evolution through selection pressures and growth. If we define Life as biology, of course a city is not alive, but do we have the correct definition of Life? If we define Life as a dynamic information process that is substrate-independent, then saying that cities are alive stops being a metaphor and becomes actually true.
It is the same if we define consciousness as a human property. Then nothing outside of humanity would be conscious; not animals, nor plants, and especially not rocks. But if we define it as a unit of experience, even rocks experience the heat of the sun. The only difference between rocks, plants, animals, and humans would be the degree and quality of that experience.
Map and Territory
Science has been on a quest to search for the best model of reality. This search is evolutive, ongoing, and selective. The selection of models is based on their value, and their value comes from what they can predict. General relativity and quantum mechanics make predictions with astonishing precision. That's why they are useful, but we should never mistake the map for the territory. Models are not reality. "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" as Magritte would say.
Today, we do have good models, but they are all fragmented and don't fit with one another. Physics is useless for predicting the behaviour of biological entities. Similarly, biology is useless for predicting societies and minds. We could simply believe that reality is just like that: fragmented and inconsistent, or we could try to find models that unify our understanding, in the belief that reality must be whole and consistent across scales.
To say that reality is based on a unit of experience is to say that acts of observation require an observer, and the base unit is information. With this axiom, we can connect physics with biology using the Free Energy Principle, and with the Bayesian agent model, we get cells, animals, and societies as a scaling up of Mind, understood as information scaling. Abstract away all the materialism and it is all the same informational process.
Telos
This view provides a good explanation for what is happening to us. When we see the rise of new kinds of intelligent AI that are independent of a biological substrate, it shows us that what is important for mind is not a materialistic origin, but a dynamic information pattern. With this view, mind didn't "emerge" from physics; the potential was already there, and the process just scaled up and expressed that potential across all scales.
What will happen to us if this view is true? Well, if we look at the past, billions of years ago, cells decided to live in multicellular aggregations, became interdependent, specialized, coordinated, and built neural nets. These new neural cells allowed them to create a fully coherent superorganism with a scaled-up mind.
We humans are scaled-up minds and are doing exactly the same with integrated societies, economic markets, armies, and the internet as scaled-up metabolisms, immune systems, and neural networks. The pattern is repeating at all scales, and our integration scales this up yet one more level into a new kind of superorganism.
That's why superintelligence is not something that will come from some machine; it is already here. I call this process of integration of information across all scales Neuroplex. It is a process made possible by the information potential given by the difference between the heat of the sun and the cold of space but it is also integrating all that information through interactions into a build up of information structure, that we see as complexity.
To what purpose? Perhaps to persist, to exist, to make itself real. Who knows? But we do know that the process exists and that it has a direction, a telos, to exploit every difference in the universe and to scale up Mind to its most unlimited potential.