Philosophical musings on Quanta & Qualia;  Materialism & Spiritualism; Science & Religion; Pragmatism & Idealism, etc.

ENFORMATIONISM

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 159.  November 10, 2026

  Governed Causation : Mind Power

     The Power of Information

The original poster argued that “a mind-like foundation explains conscious experience, understanding, and reasoning” better than dumb atoms moving in void. This raises the ancient debate between Materialism vs Spiritualism, or Naturalism vs Supernaturalism. Yet, the belief system of Materialism assumes, as an axiom, without empirical evidence, that mental phenomena are merely emergent properties of fundamental Matter. Hence no need for a magical act of creation to imbue the world with living & thinking Soul or Spirit. Yet, the physical world showed no signs of latent Life or Mind for the first 10 billion years of development. So it seems that abiotic evolution⁸ took a lot of runtime to make-up its mind. Also, the only known property of Matter that even remotely resembles Life or Mind is the abstract Energy that pushes matter around, and that we detect only by rational inference.

However, modern science has discovered another aspect of reality that does seem related to Mental activity : Information⁹. Originally, the word To Inform simply meant to convey Meaning into a mind. Yet today, scientists have begun to equate meaningful Information with thermodynamic Energy¹⁰. Of course, they are not the same thing¹¹, but merely different forms of the Primordial Power of the Bang, that we have described here as “Governed Causation” : a combination of physical Change and metaphysical Control.

The ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle, inferred that the variety of physical substances were composed of malleable Hyle (wood, clay, matter) and Morph (Form, design, pattern). The Hyle was raw material, but required a Sculptor to transform it into a meaningful or beautiful shape. Today, we understand that, working together, those natural powers, Cause & Control (energy & laws), produce what Charles Darwin poetically effused as : "endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful".

Aristotle’s teacher — Plato, in his allegory of the Cave —imagined a more perfect realm of Ideal Forms beyond the flickering appearances of physical Reality, and unstable ever-changing things (Hyle) of the material world. Metaphorically, he could look over the shoulder of the Sculptor-Designer¹² to see what he had in mind. Of course, Science has to be careful about taking liberties with reality. So, it’s left up to feckless Philosophers, and theoretical Cosmologists, to peer beyond the closed door of the Big Bang.

However, modern science has found that “mind-like” Information is also the foundation of Causation, which we are most familiar with as Energy¹¹. That “power to transform” illuminated our “cave” with a Cosmic ray of microwave energy (photons). Yet in addition to Raw Power¹³, it came complete with logical Natural Laws, and limiting Initial Conditions. Hence, Causal Information combines physical Power and metaphysical Reason (Logic) into the ongoing Process we call Evolution.

Cognitive Science has recently found evidence of a connection between Cognition and Causation¹⁴. The human brain instinctively creates stories & narratives from incoming information. Meaning requires a logically structured sequence of events. When constructing a narrative from otherwise unrelated episodes, the brain concludes that “this caused that”. “The primary glue for what remains is cause and effect”. Glue words : “therefore” for a causal connection and “however” for a reversal”. It’s the connection and direction of Causation that makes sense to us.  

8. Evolutionary computation :
  a subset of artificial intelligence and machine learning that uses computer algorithms inspired by biological evolution and natural selection to solve complex search and optimization problems.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=evolutionary+computation

9. Information :   Information is the core substance of cognition, which is the mental activity that happens in the brain when a person acquires, processes, stores, and uses knowledge.
https://www.google.com/search?d&q=information+is+mental+activity

10. Energy :
   Defined in physics and thermodynamics as a property describing the state or arrangement (order) of a system. It requires a physical substrate—such as brain neural networks, computer memory, chemical molecules, or electro-magnetic waves—to exist.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=science+information+and+energy

11. Information is Energy
  scientific book written by Lienhard Pagel and published by Springer.
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-658-40862-6

12. Plato’s Principle :
   Plato did not believe in a single, personal creator God like the one in modern monotheism, but instead described a philosophical theology centered on the Form of the Good and the Demiurge.
https://www.google.com/search?+Plato+did+not+believe+in+a+singl+personal+creator+God+

13. Information Power :
   Information is not raw power on its own; it becomes power only when it is understood, verified, and actively applied to make decisions or influence outcomes.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=power+of+information

14. Brains Wired for Story    Scientific American magazine article : how the brain decodes elements of plot, identifies scenes, traces characters, and decodes a story’s overall meaning.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/issue/sa/2026/09-01/

Metaphor based on Causal Energy

Information is Energy

Objective Definition of Information: The book builds upon Claude Shannon’s concept of entropy to propose an objective, dynamic, and physically grounded definition of information rather than a purely abstract or subjective one.

End of Post 159

Programmed Causation

Power + Information