A philosophical worldview or belief system grounded on the 20th century discovery that Information, rather than Matter, is the fundamental substance of everything in the universe. It is intended to be the 21st century successor to the ancient worldviews of Materialism and Idealism. An Update from Bronze Age to Information Age. It's also a Theory – of – Everything that covers, not just matter & energy, but also Life & Mind & Love.
Post 151.March 10, 2026
The Information Philosopher
Cosmic Programmer
Although Information Philosophy deals with ultimate origins, the meaning of life, and ethical values, it is not a theological worldview. Even though Doyle accepts the Big Bang theory as rational evidence of a creation event, he does not imagine a human-like Creator responsible for magically conjuring a world from nothing. Instead, he postulates that our natural material universe, complete with natural laws, originated in something like abstract Potential, or statistical Probability. Which he calls “Chaos”, referring to Plato’s Cosmos from Chaos theory. For philosophers, Chaos refers, not to disorder & confusion, but to a formless state of being. For scientists & mathematicians, Chaos theory is a also a scientific, interdisciplinary field studying complex, and nonlinear dynamical systems that appear random but are governed by deterministic laws. So, while seemingly disorderly to our rational minds, this formless void has a powerful lawful creative core.
Chaos & Potential are philosophical forms of the statistical Probability⁶ and quantum Uncertainty⁷ that characterize quantum physics : the fuzzy foundation of modern science. What Doyle called “Potential”⁸ is what others call “God”, and Plato’s realm of Forms may be a philosophical term for “Heaven”. But Doyle and I have no direct & certain information about those logically necessary sources & states. So, we refrain from making religious assertions, to be accepted on faith. In my thesis, I some-times call that ideal cause of the Big Bang a Cosmic Programmer⁹, because physical Evolution works gradually & progressively like a computer program, where natural & logical laws guide the process toward an intended end.
However, since our world has both positive & negative values, which some label as “Good & Evil”, we must accept that non-binary unformed Potential can actualize as a full range of types & species, which may seem to be good or bad relative to human priorities. In fact, a living, evolving universe seems to require some motivation from contradiction (hot vs cold) as in non-equilibrium Thermo-dynamics. Physical evolution (directional change) emerges from the energy gradient between hot & cold. This up & down process is central to the development of complex life and ecosystems, which are classified as dissipative structures that emerge to efficiently degrade Free Energy into Bound Entropy. The expenditure of Energy is the price of physical Progress. But, toward what end?
And what is this seemingly magical stuff, invisible & intangible, that causes physical Change & Progress? TIP equates causal energy with the meaningful mental stuff we call Information. Doyle says “The information we mean is closely related to "negative entropy," the departure of a physical system from pure chaos, from thermodynamic equilibrium.” Then, he goes on to explain : “Now information is neither matter nor energy, though it needs matter to be embodied, and energy to be communicated.” But I have found it easier to convey the scientific & philosophical implications of Information by analogy to physical Energy. So, I coined the term EnFormAction.¹⁰ Yet it’s much more than mere hot & cold Energy. Some might call it “spiritual energy”. But I try to avoid such polarizing religious terms.
6. Information & Probability“Information philosophy is built on probabilistic laws of nature. The challenge for information philosophy is to explain the emergence of order from chaos, to account for the phenomenal success of deterministic laws when the material substrate of the universe is irreducibly chaotic, noisy, and random, and to understand the concepts of truth, necessity, and certainty in a universe of chance, contingency, and uncertainty.” https://informationphilosopher.com/index.14.en.html
7. Uncertainty : In quantum physics, the fog of uncertainty is not a flaw in observers or instru-ments but an inherent prop-erty of Nature. Physicists have come to accept that evolution is not rigidly pre-determined, but is open-ended within certain limits.
9. Cosmic Programmer : An alternative label for Aristotle’s “First Cause” and the religious term “God”. It acknowledges that we have no scientific data beyond the Big Bang act of creation. And it observes that the creation of the Cosmos from nothing but near infinite Energy and guiding natural Laws is a mystery. But the sub-sequent evolution of life & mind from invisible power and logical limits is working in a gradual emergent pro-cess evocative of computer programs designed by human minds.
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Holistic & Complex Systems The new properties that appear during a phase transition (e.g., the rigidity of ice versus liquid water's fluidity) are examples of emergence, where the collective behavior of a large number of particles results in system-level properties that individual particles do not possess. This concept is a fundamental aspect of complexity theory, which is mathematically compatible with a materialist and deterministic framework.
Complexity theory contrasts with determinism by showing that some complex systems can have emergent properties that are not reducible to the deterministic rules of their components, and these systems may not be predictable even if they are technically deterministic.. Determinism posits that all events are predetermined by prior causes, while complexity theory suggests that phenomena like consciousness and free will could emerge in complex systems where order and randomness interact
Information Philosophy (I-Phi) is a new philosophical method grounded in science, especially modern physics, biology, psychology, neuro-science, and the science of information. Information philo-sophy offers novel solutions to classical problems in philo-sophy, notably freedom of the will, the objective foundation of values, and the problem of knowledge (epistemology). Insights into human freedom and cosmic values could form the basis for a new system of belief and a guide to moral conduct.
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The Metaphysicist In recent years Bob Doyle has added a new section to his webpage. Perhaps to focus more on general aspects of philosophy, beyond the narrower scope of Science. “A central problem in metaphysics, as seen by the Information Philosopher, is the existential or ontological status of ideas”.
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