Introduction
The discovery of a “theory of everything” is most notably a goal of physics. The problem of incompleteness (Gödel, 1931) arguably prohibits humanity from ever knowing “everything,” and so this project in physics is necessarily limited.
However, we can generate one-word theories of everything, such as “everything” and “reality.” While these one-word theories obviously offer little in terms of detail, they do map onto reality in every way, they conform to our cognitive limitations, and they are grammatically (syntactically and semantically) correct linguistic expressions. After all, that’s what a theory is–an expression in language that maps onto the reality that it describes.
Therefore, the problems of incompleteness and undecidability increasingly enter into the picture as our theories become more specific. It should be possible, then, to find a logical framework that is general enough to map onto reality in every way, and within which all of the more specific theories of reality can be interpreted. Such a logical framework could then inform us as to which of the incomplete theories are worth pursuing. The same benefit would also extend to metaphysical theories.
Elucidating that logical reality-theoretic framework is the goal of this essay. As will become evident, such a framework refutes physicalism, dualism, and panpsychism, while idealism not only remains coherent, but stands out as the only viable theory on the table.
Principles of a coherent reality-theoretic framework
1. The Intelligibility Principle: Reality must be intelligible. Science and philosophy presuppose the intelligibility of reality, for without a “through-line” of intelligibility from reality, to perception, to cognition, to natural languages, and to formal languages, science and philosophy would not be possible. We would also be unable to apprehend reality at all, making it impossible to survive, let alone to theorize.
2. The Reality Principle: Reality is, by definition, what exists. Any real “thing” is a part of reality. More technically, any real “thing” is a behavior (excitation) of reality. By definition, nothing except reality exists, because anything else that did exist would be, by default, part of reality.
3. The Monism Principle: If there is a plurality of real, different things, then reality is, by definition, the set of those real things and of their real differences, which follows from the Reality Principle. A coherent reality-theoretic framework must, therefore, be monistic, because any two or more real things, made distinguishable by real differences between them, will still be the same by virtue of the fact that they are real. Thus, this principle refutes the metaphysical theory of dualism.
4. The Self-Determinism Principle: Reality must be self-deterministic, not deterministic or indeterministic. Determinism fails because it requires an external cause for reality. But were this the case, the external determinator itself would have to be real, and would therefore be part of reality by definition, thereby contradicting the premise. Indeterminism fails because, if reality were completely random, it would lack the structural, functional, and organizational rules necessary to enforce its own consistency. Therefore, reality can only be self-deterministic; it must bring itself into existence, serving simultaneously as cause, effect, and causation in all instances of these. In other words, reality must be a kind of tautology.
5. The Tautological Reality Principle: A true reality theory will, by definition, map onto all of reality in every way, and therefore, constitute a tautology. Because there is nothing that exists except reality, a coherent reality-theoretic framework will be both unfalsifiable and tautological. Falsifiability is crucial in science, in which we can compare and contrast observations of “things” in order to predict their behavior. However, because reality is all that exists, and because a true reality theory maps onto reality in every way, there is nothing that a true reality theory can be compared or contrasted to. Therefore, the theory is unfalsifiable. By the same token, a true reality theory must be true by virtue of its own logical structure, which entails that the theory be self-referential, as must reality itself be. Thus, the theory is, by definition, a tautology.
6. The Principle of Metalinguistics: Because perception and cognition, from which natural and formal languages are derived, are themselves linguistic (consisting of symbols placed in association with each other, including subject-object and time/tense relationships), and because perception and cognition must be isomorphic to reality to ensure intelligibility, reality can also be described as a language, and its ruleset as a linguistic syntax. That syntax distributes over all of reality. Real “things” are instantiations of that syntax, just as sentences and phrases in any language are instantiations of their respective linguistic syntax (Whitehead, 1929). For example, the Law of Conservation of Momentum is possible everywhere in space-time, but instantiates anywhere there are objects in motion.
Languages carry information, which then makes reality an information system (Wheeler, 1989). Furthermore, information consists of distinctions, which entail constraints differentiating one thing from another (1s and 0s). Therefore, information is two-value logic, True or False, 1 or 0. As soon as there is a distinction present in reality, there is also two-value logic. In other words, even if reality’s ground state is unconstrained potential (as we’ll see, this must be so), once any “thing” exists out of that “no-thing,” it adopts an existence (True) vs. non-existence (False), 1 vs. 0. Information and two-value logic accompany existence from the very beginning. This principle can be conceptualized as the metaphysical application of Chomsky’s universal grammar (1965).
As such, two-value logic is the distributed syntax of reality, the ruleset that is applied to the initial conditions of that first existence in order to generate the multiplicity of reality, including us. This is also why all other forms of logic supervene on two-value logic; two-value logic is primal in that it emerges hand-in-hand with existence itself. We’ll expand on this in subsequent principles.
7. The Isomorphism Principle: Reality is intelligible by virtue of the hierarchy consisting of itself and its contents, structured by means of its ruleset/syntax. As instantiations of reality’s syntax, all levels of reality necessarily share a common set of structural, functional, and organizational rules. Put another way, each level in the multiplicity of reality is unique up to isomorphism in relation to every other level, and to the unity of reality itself. These rules allow reality’s multiplicity to consistently interact with each other and with the unity. Each level can be unique up to isomorphism, allowing for variety in the emergent complexity, but each level is also constrained by their mutual syntactic structure. In other words, reality’s fractal nature, as evidenced by its consistency, creates the through-line of intelligibility that makes reality, perception, cognition, and natural and formal languages isomorphic to each other. Reality can then be visually represented as structurally similar to Hofstadter’s Butterfly, which Hofstadter himself notes in Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid has been called an image of God (1979).
8. The Principle of the Reduction Base: At the “bottom” of any reality theory must be an ontological primitive, beyond which we can’t explain, but which explains everything else by means of itself. Concepts are defined by constraints specifying their structure. Consequently, every concept requires explanation except for the reduction base, which itself cannot be explained by means of anything else, in keeping with the Reality, Monism, and Tautological Reality Principles. Therefore, the reduction base must have no constraints and no structure to explain. It must be the ontological ground state from which all structures, constraints, and distinctions emerge.
9. The Idealism Principle: Consciousness and reality are ultimately inseparable, such that reality is pure consciousness. The only possible candidate for the reduction base is pure consciousness (herein, “consciousness” means phenomenal consciousness/awareness/presence/“I Am-ness,” as opposed to meta-consciousness or cognitive functions). Consciousness is epistemically fundamental–we know that it exists without having to reference any other “thing” in order to know that it exists. As such, it is the only “thing” that is unconstrained. Importantly, both the physical world and the mental (thoughts, emotions, memories, cognitive processes, etc.) are only ever known by means of consciousness. In other words, all objects, be they physical or mental in nature, are always constrained by their relationship to the subject, pure consciousness. Put another way, the one subject of reality is the monad, while quantitative and qualitative properties describe the experiences that arise within the subject.
As a result of these requirements defining the reduction base, reality’s ontological ground state cannot be physical–physical “things” are only ever known as ideas within consciousness, and, therefore, are necessarily always constrained by a relationship to consciousness, the medium in which they appear. Physicalism encounters the hard problem of consciousness and paradoxes in quantum physics because it does not recognize this logical contradiction. Because physicalism makes the map fundamental and then tries to explain the territory by means of the map, the theory is mired in an inherent dualism that it cannot escape (Kastrup, 2019).
10. The Out of “No-Thing” Principle: Because the ground state of pure consciousness is unconstrained, it is “no-thing,” in which there is infinite potential for “some-thing” to exist. The ex nihilo paradox arises when “nothing” is taken as the ground state of reality. Because “nothing” excludes even the potential for “some-thing,” and because the exclusion of potential is a constraint, “nothing” in that sense requires its own explanation and therefore cannot serve as the reduction base, which must be unconstrained. But when “nothing” is instead viewed as unconstrained potential (“no-thing”), the ex nihilo paradox no longer applies.
As we’ve already seen, reality is informational because information consists of distinctions in which one thing is syntactically constrained to differ from another (Wheeler, 1989). Reality self-configures from potential to information, beginning with the very first distinction. The etymology of “information,” by the way, is “to give form to potential.”
Cognition refers to the complex mental processes through which individuals acquire, store, organize, manipulate, and use information. As such, the mind is seen as an information processing system (Matlin, 2012). An informational reality, therefore, requires consciousness, in the form of Wheeler’s “observer-participants” (1989). Thus, consciousness is the only viable candidate for reality’s ground state, with mind as its constrained subjective/abstract modality and the physical as another constrained, objective/concrete modality. Both aspects are informational objects of the unconstrained subject, pure consciousness. Thus, one could use the label “dual-aspect monism” to describe this theory, for the purposes of distinguishing pure consciousness from mind, as in the Vedantic tradition (Nikhilananda, 1949). However, idealism is arguably the more parsimonious label in Western analytic philosophy.
11. The Natural Teleology Principle: To “in-form” itself from its own potential, reality needs a function to distinguish what it is from what it is not; that is, for any “thing” to exist, reality must recognize it as itself. Because reality is self-contained, tautological, and all that exists, it must employ a recursive process in order to bring itself into existence from its ground state. This process can be considered a naturalistic telos.
12. The Emergent Complexity Principle: Complexity must emerge from the first binary distinction as a result of the recursive application of this selection process by reality. Similar to a cellular automaton, reality can be seen as applying its ruleset to itself repeatedly, beginning with the simplest of initial conditions (a single binary distinction–existence vs. non-existence, “some-thing” vs. “no-thing”). In this way, unimaginable complexity evolves from simple initial conditions and a simple ruleset (two-value logic), producing a fractal structure that ensures isomorphism and intelligibility across all levels (Wolfram, 2002; Azarian, 2022).
This process amounts to cognition in the “mind” of (and that is) reality, and as such, cognition and time are synonymous. For consciousness evolves via the state-transition parameter called cognition, which processes information. Reality evolves along the state-transition parameter called time, which we perceive via observed state changes of information (matter). Both mind and reality are informational systems that arise within pure consciousness, with cognition and time serving as their respective information processing parameters. It follows that cognition and time must be the same state-transition parameter, and the time experienced by any mind at any level of reality must correspond to the information processing happening at that level, consistent with the computational bounds restricting the given mind (Langan, 2002; Wolfram, 2002).
One common question that Bernardo Kastrup, the scientist and philosopher behind analytic idealism, often receives in debates and discussions is: why does reality have the properties and laws that it has? Kastrup’s usual reply is something along these lines: to be is to have properties, so reality is what it is and therefore has the properties that it has. While this is true, the reality-theoretic framework laid out herein fleshes out his point. Reality possesses the properties that it does because it evolves its own complexity from its very first distinction, which is necessarily a single binary (existence vs. non-existence, 1 vs. 0, True vs. False). It does so by applying its own ruleset to that simple initial condition. The ruleset, two-value logic, emerges right alongside that first binary distinction as soon as some “thing” exists out of the ground state of “no-thing.” As such, reality’s properties (laws) emerge along with its states (instantiations of the laws), all derived from reality’s recursive application of its ruleset to itself.
13. The Absolute Infinity Principle: Reality’s ruleset is applied recursively to all possible initial conditions, creating a superposition of all possible instantiations, which ultimately “collapses” into the most stable option for a given observer, based on the observer’s computational limitations. Because reality is self-contained, its external size and duration are undefined, and it cannot expand in an external sense: it has nothing to expand into, and “no-when” to expand during.
Rather, reality must stratify inwardly, into a superposition of sequentially related states (Langan, 2002; Campbell, 2003). New states are formed within the images of previous states. Each fractal image (level/part of reality) gets its identity from that above it, and also gives its own structure to those below it, in a simultaneously top-down and bottom-up process of actualization (not coincidentally paralleling the brain’s predictive, world modeling, and hemispheric shifting processes) (Hofstadter, 1979; McGilchrist 2009, 2021). Each fractal contains its own infinity, with the whole of all fractals (reality itself) being absolute infinity (Cantor, 1874).
14. The Decombination Principle: Making up the unity of reality is a multiplicity of alters (conscious agents) created via a process of dissociation in the one mind of reality. Similarly to Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) in individuals, which typically occurs as a result of trauma and an attempt to heal a highly entropic (disordered) mind (American Psychiatric Association, 2013), global-level dissociation occurs to maximize the rate at which reality creates order from its ground state of potential. The spacetime manifold is a representation of reality, or what the rest of reality looks like from across the dissociative boundaries of these alters (Hoffman, 2019; Kastrup 2019, 2021). The dreams of patients with DID provide a 1:1 descriptive model of reality. Specifically, the alters of the patient share the same “physical” reality in a transpersonally subjective manner. The seemingly physical world that they inhabit is how the mental contents of the host’s mind appear across the alters’ respective dissociative boundaries (Barrett, 1996), paralleling what idealism claims occurs at the level of reality.
A given alter projects all of spacetime, including the entire past, by applying reality’s self-selection function. A selection is made from the superposed possibilities through einselection, the process by which the most stable informational state survives while fragile quantum superpositions “die off,” amounting to universal Darwinism at the quantum level (Fuchs, 2010; Azarian, 2022). A given alter’s computational limitations guide this selection by defining the stability required. One can think of this like a video game world that renders only as much detail as can be handled by the computational bounds of the given platform, in order to satisfy the player’s query of the program (Campbell, 2003). The concept of exclusion in Integrated Information Theory (IIT), which states that a conscious experience is only ever in one unified state at the exclusion of other possible states (Tononi, 2012), has begun to offer a mathematical formalization of both dissociation and einselection, which itself can be seen as a dissociative process in the mind of reality.
As finite subsets of reality (instantiations of reality’s syntax), we have limited cognition relative to the cognitive power of reality itself. As such, our perceptual faculties are not comprehensive, but rather provide us with an interface. Thus, perception translates the information into a representation, a set of symbols and icons (a language) that allow us to survive (Wolfram, 2002; Hoffman, 2019). More technically, the physical world is the Markov blanket separating our internal state from our external state, so that we can maintain structural integrity in the face of infinite complexity (Friston, 2010). Different alters have different limitations, and so their perceptual interfaces, including the physical laws therein, will differ depending on the bounds of their individual, limited minds (Wolfram, 2002). As a result, we can “read” the language of perception (take in sense data that communicates isomorphic information about reality), process it within our cognition, and then “write” that same language by acting back upon reality.
In this way, reality is a language that reads, understands, and writes itself. It is also a kind of simulation theory, in which reality itself (consciousness) is the computer (Campbell, 2003). Reality has all of the computational power in existence, and so it can experience itself as all alters at once. The infinite instantiates as every finite perspective, thus rendering itself for itself.
Conclusion
As we have seen, idealism is the only viable metaphysics on the table once we explore the logical requirements of a coherent reality-theoretic framework. Such a framework is general enough to map onto reality without encountering problems of incompleteness or decidability. However, it is also specific enough to help us rule out the more detailed theories about reality that do encounter those challenges. As such, we can be confident in saying that physicalism, the mainstream paradigm of today, is incoherent, as physical entities cannot serve as the reduction base. Idealism, especially Kastrup’s analytic idealism, provides the only possible ground state of being–pure consciousness, which Kastrup calls “Mind at Large” (Kastrup, 2019; 2021). With the reality-theoretic framework explicated herein, which requires idealism as its metaphysical extension, we have shown why this must be, why reality is necessarily the way that it is, and why it possesses the properties that it does. Furthermore, since we started from intelligibility as our first principle, we have reached the following conclusion: if reality is intelligible, and it must be intelligible, then idealism must be true.
For a more comprehensive view of this framework, read the paper, “What the Hard Problem of Consciousness Misses: The Case for a Coherent Reality Theory“.
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