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Layer 1 · the world is more than matter
Evidence 03

Consciousness resists naturalist reduction

The claim

The hard problem of consciousness — why there is something it is like to be you — has no traction in a purely physical ontology, despite a century of trying.

Eliminative materialism asks you to deny that you are conscious. Property dualism quietly admits the supernatural under another name. The cleanest hypothesis is that mind is fundamental, not derivative — and that we are made in the image of a Mind.

Evidential weight
John Polkinghorne
physicist-priest
1930–2021

Information is more fundamental than matter.

Quantum measurement, the structure of physical law, and the very intelligibility of nature push physics toward a picture in which information — pattern, meaning, formal cause — is irreducible.

A universe whose deepest layer is information is a universe whose deepest layer is mind-like. This is not a covert theology. It is where the equations are pointing.

When the question 'why these laws?' is finally pressed, the answer that does the most work is: a Mind chose them.

Citations Belief in God in an Age of Science (1998)
Ad maiorem Dei gloriam