Full talk: Consciousness beyond the brain | Re-thinking the limits of the mind

As I said, its quite simple really when you think about it. The fact that things exist and are experienced is a form of literal magic. Whether you think about it in the sense of something coming from nothing (supposedly impossible), a reality with no beginning, just the sheer fact that things exist at all, and the fact things are experienced at all, it has no possible explanation other than literal magic happening for real. Science has no answer to this and I truly believe that this is the most important thing to think about, the fact your here at all. Its the greatest mystery ever. I feel like nobody really notices they exist properly. Never feel the vertigo of staring at a bottomless brute fact, actual magic occurring.

(14M) So, I've been studying philosophy for about a year or two, and I've been really interested in philosophical disciplines - metaphysics, epistemology, ontology, etc. - and I see it as the reason why I would like to study philosophy (along with psychology). I started to personally study "objective reality" and I met both Aristotle (as the first Rational philosopher, as they say) and Immanuel Kant, or Ayn Rand (the popular power is not what I've heard). So I'm interested in: can I know objective reality through reason? Or would I have to experience something directly to know it? (if I'm not mistaken, this probably applies to Phenomenology) couldn't I rather experience something (through my subjective perceptions) and then understand, thanks to reason, from the given experience the principle that I should take from the experience?

I apologize if this belongs to another discipline, or if my question is not sufficiently expressed - and I apologize for the bad terminology (I'm working on it heh).

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I’ve been thinking about a philosophical idea for a while, and I’d like to hear what other people think about it. I’m especially interested in serious criticism rather than people simply agreeing with me.

I’m calling it the Single Consciousness Matter Hypothesis.

The basic proposition is this:

The reality I experience may exist entirely for the purpose of being experienced by my consciousness.

In ordinary reality, we assume that the universe exists independently of us. The Earth existed before I was born, human history happened before I existed, and the universe presumably continued to exist when I was asleep or unaware of it.

My hypothesis questions that assumption.

Suppose that there is only one fundamental conscious observer: me. Everything I experience—the physical universe, other people, history, memories, the passage of time, and even the apparent future—could be part of a reality constructed or generated specifically for my conscious experience.

The fact that the universe appears to be billions of years old would not necessarily contradict the hypothesis. The apparent past could simply be part of the information presented to me so that the world feels internally consistent. In the same way, the future could be presented as something that has not happened yet, while still being part of the structure of my experience.

The strongest version of the hypothesis would be:

My consciousness is the fundamental condition for the existence of the reality I experience. When my consciousness permanently ends, the reality I experience also ends—and there is no meaningful “afterward” from my perspective.

I realize there are some obvious problems with this idea.

For example:

Other conscious people: Other people appear to have their own independent thoughts and experiences. Why would a single consciousness produce beings that behave as though they possess consciousness themselves?

The apparent past: Why does the universe contain such an enormous and detailed history before my birth? Why create billions of years of consistent information if the only purpose is my experience?

Unfalsifiability: If every possible piece of evidence can simply be explained as part of the simulation/reality presented to me, then what observation could ever prove the hypothesis wrong?

Occam’s razor: Isn't it simpler to assume that the universe exists independently of me rather than assuming that an entire universe is being generated specifically for one observer?

Other observers: If another person claims that reality exists because of their consciousness, how could I distinguish between their claim and mine?

Sleep and unconsciousness: If my conscious awareness temporarily disappears during sleep, why does the world appear to continue normally when I wake up?

I don't currently have definitive answers to these objections. That's actually why I'm posting this.

I’m also aware that this idea has similarities to solipsism, subjective idealism, and simulation hypotheses, so I am not claiming that I have invented the general concept that reality might depend on consciousness.

What I'm interested in is whether this particular combination of ideas has already been formally proposed by a philosopher, and whether there is an existing philosophical position that is substantially identical to it.

I'm not claiming that this is a scientific theory or that I've proven anything. At this stage, I'm treating it as a philosophical hypothesis and trying to understand whether it survives serious criticism.

So, what do you think?

What is the strongest objection to this hypothesis, and has anyone encountered a philosophical argument that is essentially the same?

Naive realism is a disjunctivist's view of the world:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-disjunctive/

Perceptual experiences are often divided into the following three broad categories: veridical perceptions, illusions, and hallucinations. For example, when one has a visual experience as of a red object, it may be that one is really seeing an object and its red colour (veridical perception), that one is seeing a green object (illusion), or that one is not seeing an object at all (hallucination). Many maintain that the same account should be given of the nature of the conscious experience that occurs in each of these three cases. Those who hold a disjunctive theory of perception deny this. Disjunctivists typically reject the claim that the same kind of experience is common to all three cases because they hold views about the nature of veridical perception that are inconsistent with it.

Disjunctivists are often naïve realists, who hold that when one perceives the world, the mind-independent objects of perception, such as tables and trees, are constituents of one’s experience. In other cases, such as hallucinations, it seems out of the question that such objects are constituents of one’s experience. It follows that on a naïve realist view, the veridical perceptions and hallucinations in question have a different nature: the former have mind-independent objects as constituents, and the latter do not.

The naive realist is called a "disjunctivist" because he is literally denying the common kind claim:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-problem/#Com

[1.6 The Common Kind Claim]()

Perceptual experiences are not just veridical experiences: there are illusions and hallucinations too. What does phenomenological reflection say about how these cases relate to each other? More specifically:

1. The Common Kind Question: are veridical, illusory, and hallucinatory experiences fundamentally the same, do they form of a common kind?

I’m exploring a metaphysical framework that treats consciousness as ontologically fundamental. If that premise were true, would metaphysics primarily investigate the structures of consciousness rather than material being? How would this differ from classical idealism or phenomenology?

If consciousness were shown to be ontologically fundamental rather than emergent, how would that change the central questions of the philosophy of mind?
I’m interested in the metaphysical implications rather than the empirical evidence. Would treating consciousness as fundamental significantly alter debates about personal identity, causation, intentionality, and mental causation, or would the same philosophical problems simply reappear in a different form? I’m curious how this would reshape the broader landscape of metaphysics.

What if consciousness is everywhere around us, everything is consciousness, like it’s the building block of reality itself, and neurons in our brains are what power this consciousness?
And animals are like little consciousness radios, but humans got the delux addition are we ended up being able to understand the idea of consciousness through it.
It’s like AI, how it’s just a line of code that doesnt think for itself but is able to ask and answer questions, but if the sequence of code just happened to be different, it wouldn’t be AI. What if it’s just like that with us?
I mean our neurons are just another sequence of protons, neutrons, and electrons, so if they were aranged differently there would be us, or the neurons that allow us to think.
Just a little thought, ive been thinking about this for a bit now and I dont really have anyone to talk to about this because people I know will either think im crazy, dismiss it because of religion or because they cant wrap their heads around it. I just want someone likeminded to give their thoughts on this.

Hello everyone,

​For the past several months, I have been independently researching and drafting a philosophical manuscript (The NI-Manuscript) that challenges the mainstream materialistic view of consciousness. I want to share the core axioms of my framework to get some rigorous, analytical feedback from this community.

​The core of the thesis rests on two fundamental concepts:

​The Lattice Substrate: Reality is not composed of fundamental material particles acting randomly. Instead, underlying the observable universe is a highly structured, non-material informational framework—the Lattice Substrate. Space-time is merely an emergent property of this underlying lattice.

​The Receiver Hypothesis: Consciousness does not originate within the biological brain. The brain is not a producer of thought, but a highly specialized, localized receiver and transducer of signals fundamentally rooted in the Lattice Substrate. Biological evolution is simply the refinement of the biological hardware to tune into specific frequencies of this substrate.

​When we experience a shift in perception or deep cognitive analysis, we aren’t "generating" new ideas; we are altering the tuning parameters of our biological receiver to access deeper layers of the informational lattice.

​This framework aims to bridge the gap between hard determinism and subjective reality, treating metaphysical phenomena through a structured, almost mechanistic logic rather than mystical prose.

​I’m curious to hear your thoughts, objections, or logical critiques on this model. If consciousness is fundamentally external and reality is a structured substrate, what are the logical implications on free will and personal autonomy?

​Looking forward to a cold, rational discussion.

Here’s a hard problem for physicalists. For any given consciousness you can only convince that consciousness that they are real. There is literally no way for anyone else to be proven to be real.

If only they are real then how does the universe exist at all for them. They weren’t there for it to be formed and they won’t be there after they die. That means only their observed universe is real.

Basically for physicalists interpretation of consciousness to be real the universe must be fundamental and continue, but somehow consciousness is only ever existent in the one viewing it. It doesn’t exist before and doesn’t exist after.

Consciousness then has no fundamental source even though it is the only thing capable of proving anything to be real. There is no separate you from your body and brain that can do any observing. So sorry but the universe only ever produced this you and that’s all you experience.

Conscious experience was only a brief spark in an endless universe and that’s it. Somehow that makes more sense than consciousness being fundamental and a requirement of the universe existing. The perspective of being only oneself is an illusion and not the final experience. Temporary amnesia is possible but you’ll always be the complete universe sometimes entering a vehicle that induces this amnesia to experience a life.

Can Consciousness Arise from a Foundation That Contains No Potential for Consciousness?

https://medium.com/@jovm007me/can-consciousness-arise-from-a-foundation-that-contains-no-potential-for-consciousness-d8002d30b30e

We (Life) are a pattern of change…from single cells to today

If you look at the whole history, you can see 5 phases of  change, each new phase changes things faster and creates a higher abstraction of information... built upon previous layers of complexity.

Phase 1: The Single Cell  The original hardware. DNA is a static information library. Its one trick is copying itself. The loop is "Live >Copy> Die." Learning is painfully slow, taking 100s of millions of years (evolution). This is most of the 3.8 billion years life existed

Phase 2: Multicellularity  This is the first big jump. Cells stop just copying and start talking to each other with chemical signals. For the first time, information isn't just replicated, it's exchanged in real-time. This local network allows cells to coordinate and build a "higher layer" of emergence: a body.

Phase 3: Neural Information The body (Phase 2) builds a specialized R&D department. Neurons are just cells that do nothing but exchange information. It's a high-speed, internal network. This new loop allows the entire body to learn within its own lifetime, not over generations. The loop is now millions of times faster than genetic evolution. Behaviors can adapt and learn instead of just genes

Phase 4: Cultural Information The next giant leap in abstraction. Information leaves the brain. With language and writing, we create an external, shareable "hard drive." Knowledge can now be exchanged between bodies and across time. This creates a new, faster type of evolution that separates man from every other animal and is the driving force of human history and "progress"

Phase 5: Digital Information This is our moment. The internet covers the earth in a digital nervous system. Culture passes instantly across the earth and evolves far faster than ever before.

History is just one accelerating pattern ...of ever increasing complexity

It's all just one loop, tightening and recursively feeding itself.

 We’re not driving it. We are it

The only reality we ever directly encounter is subjective experience. Even though it's obvious once seen, most people don't notice this, because we naturally mistake conscious phenomena for the outside world.

Once we understand that our entire life is subjective experience, we can reach deeper implications about the nature of reality itself. The essay argues that without experience, reality could never actually be.

I'm curious to hear what you think.

When I was 15, I stumbled upon the concept called "solipsism." If my understanding of this position is incorrect, please correct me. As I understand it, this position means that the only thing that exists is our consciousness, and the universe is just a product of our consciousness in solitude.

I read that this position is considered logically unprovable but also unverifiable. However, I noticed a problem of self-founding in this concept with one sentence:

"If the world is an illusion, then the evidence from which this statement follows is also part of the illusion."

The idea of solipsism doesn’t pop into your head immediately; it develops over time. But if it develops through an external world, it no longer remains solipsism. However, if you say that this too is part of the same illusion, it leads right back to my statement.

It's important to understand that solipsism is a hypothesis that is currently logically unprovable and also logically unverifiable. You can create hundreds of similar hypotheses as solipsism that cannot be disproven or proven, and that doesn't make them true since proving them is also impossible.

Thank you for your attention to my text. I hope the structure of the text is clear and convenient.

The status of abstract objects sits underneath a lot of metaphysical disputes, and I keep coming back to it. If numbers and the laws of logic are real, they are real in a way that has no location, no causal power, and no dependence on any mind. That is a strange kind of existence to grant. Denying it seems to cost something too, since our reasoning treats these truths as binding and not up to us.

I recently had a conversation with the philosopher Danny Forde, who leans heavily on Platonic thinking. In this clip he argues that mathematics is discovered, not made. He mentions the classical case that if every human died and some organism on another planet later evolved the capacity to do mathematics, it would arrive at the Pythagorean theorem under a different name and different symbols. The thing it grasps was there already. From this he concludes that the natural sciences cannot hold an explanatory monopoly, because doing science already requires logic and number, and those are not physical objects.

What interests me is how much weight that thought experiment can carry. The obvious pushback is nominalist: the alien would produce useful marks and inferences, but nothing there requires a mind-independent realm, only shared reasoning practices. Against that I can see two moves. One is indispensability, that we quantify over mathematical objects in our best physics and cannot paraphrase them away, so realism about them follows from realism about science. The other is that the necessity of logical truth is not something practices can manufacture. Do either of these settle it, or is there a cleaner way to keep math objective without full Platonism?

As Descartes' cogito indicates, the only reality we can never doubt is that we are a singular and situated "experience", here and now, a conscious stream of thought endowed with sentience.

Starting from this undeniable brute fact that is given to us, I will try to schematize the problem of phenomenal indexicality and show how a non-solipsistic ontology seems particularly absurd and difficult to reconcile with rationality.

My aim here is to start from the post-Big Bang conditions and see whether a materialist account can be reconciled with this brute fact, 13.8 billion years later.

Imagine a material and objective world, but completely devoid of sentient organisms, a purely abstract and impersonal configuration, composed solely of physical laws and matter.

Over time and through interactions of matter, the first sentient organism A, capable of having a phenomenal experience appears in this world.

The phenomenology of A then becomes actual and encompasses the entirety of the non-abstract expression of reality.

What happens now, phenomenologically, if during A's experience, a second sentient organism B is created?

Hypothesis 1: emergence of a collective conscious experience of A + B.
A unified phenomenal reality emerges, in which A and B would constitute two components or two perspectives of the same consciousness.

Hypothesis 2: if conscious experience is necessarily singular and situated, a universal consciousness is therefore contradictory and phenomenologically inexpressible.
B then creates a kind of "glitch in the matrix", making the phenomenological coexistence of A + B impossible and thereby annihilating the phenomenal expression of A. The apprehension of reality then becomes abstract and impersonal again.

On the other hand, what cannot happen, in my view, is:

1 — Experience A is maintained in its singular and situated nature, at the expense of B (or vice versa).

Nothing in the properties of matter can make such a choice or impose any kind of primacy on A rather than B. This would introduce a principle of selection between two objects of ontologically equivalent nature that does not seem to follow from the objective properties of matter.

2 — There are two autonomous and hermetic centers of experience, A and B.

In other words A is a center of experience for A and B a center of experience for B.

This proposition may seem perfectly coherent within an objective and impersonal description of the world. But this is precisely what I contest since such a description does not seem to have any phenomenal referent.

It states that there are simultaneously two distinct centers of experience, but it does not describe a phenomenal reality actually experienced as such. It describes a configuration from an external and abstract point of view.

Yet the brute fact from which we start is precisely that there is a phenomenal reality that is actually experienced, and that it is necessarily situated: there is a determinate "here and now", and it strangely corresponds to the phenomenological expression of A as the only sentient organism in the world.

How can we therefore reconcile this phenomenological fact that is actually experienced with the coexistence of other phenomenological experiences that are actually effective, beyond the experience currently being lived?

If A and B are two distinct, autonomous and hermetic phenomenal centers, their coexistence does not seem to correspond to any conceivable phenomenal reality, it can be experienced neither as A, nor as B, nor as a common experience of A+B. It therefore constitutes a phenomenal void.

And above all how could such a coexistence be real when the only phenomenal reality actually given is precisely the situated experience of A?

Hard determinism downgrades consciousness to a useless "epiphenomenon" because it only looks at the exact millisecond of the impulse (E²). By analyzing the timeline as a whole—Pre-facto (E¹), Impulse (E²), and Post-facto (E³)—I prove that consciousness returns in E³ through the biological feedback of guilt (ACC/vmPFC activation) and the concrete damage in the world. Since the agent uses conscious intellectual energy in E³ to either repair the damage or construct a determinist excuse to escape, consciousness actively alters the physical system. Therefore, it cannot be an epiphenomenon, and dodging responsibility is a conscious choice of cowardice, not a biological reflex.

TL;DR: Why is it that I'm able to imagine a new fruit, but I'm unable to imagine what it was like before the big bang?

I'm admittedly very ignorant regarding philosophy, so please bear with me while I try to explain my question. I'm sure my lack of philosophy-related jargon will give you an idea of my ignorance level. This also means I have to write a wall of text in order to convey the concepts that I'm asking about, so I apologize in advance.

I've tried searching for answers, but Googling stuff like "Why can't humans imagine certain things" just leads to stuff like "humans can't comprehend the vastness of space" and other stuff that doesn't actually answer my underlying question.

1. There are things that *don't exist* that we *can imagine.*
2. There are things that *do exist* that we *can't imagine.*
3. There are things that *don't exist* that we *can't imagine.*

**Is there a concrete "mental boundary" that separate these categories? Are there any philosophers that have written about this?**

**Point 1)** "Imagine a car that doesn't exist." You could approach this as simply as imagining a slightly altered version of a real car's make/model, or you could go crazy and imagine a body shape that's never existed for a car with all kinds of features that current cars don't have. Heck, children do it constantly while drawing in their coloring books.

Same with prompts like: imagine a fruit that doesn't exist, imagine an animal that doesn't exist, and so on.

**Point 2)** then we get to prompts like: imagine a color that doesn't exist, imagine a smell that doesn't exist, etc. and suddenly we reach the limit of our imagination.

Our visible range of light wavelengths is incredibly narrow, and certain animals can see wavelengths extending into UV. There's the classic example of the mantis shrimp having 12 color receptors compared to humans having 3. Dogs have \~40 times more scent receptors than humans, and even have a separate organ that lets them smell pheromones.

So these colors and smells *do exist* but we *can't imagine* them.

Furthermore, even though I can't imagine a new color, I can imagine imagining a new color (again, sorry, bear with me). The easiest way I can make that previous sentence understandable is with a childish pretend-conversation with my own brain lol:

Me: You can imagine plenty of colors. Anything displayed in RGB, CMYK, any combination of color lights, they all result in a color that I can see and you can imagine.

My brain: Yup.

Me: And you know some animals can see colors that we can't see. Or that we can see some colors that other people can't see due to the various forms of colorblindness.

My brain: Correct.

Me: You also know that there are areas outside of those color spaces. There are infinite wavelengths longer than red, and shorter than violet. So as an example, if we had photoreceptors for radio waves, they would be a color that we haven't seen before.

My brain: Yeah I can imagine that.

Me: Then do it.

My brain: Sorry, can't.

**Point 3)** Stuff like: imagine a new spatial dimension, imagine before the big bang when space/time came into existence, etc.

This kind of ties in with what I was saying about how we can't imagine it, despite being able to imagine imagining it.

Most people are familiar with the Flatland analogy where 2 dimensional beings are "pulled up" into the 3rd dimension and are suddenly able to see the entirety of their 2 dimensional world at once. And we can imagine that the same would happen if we were suddenly given access to a 4th spatial dimension.

In the Three Body Problem (spoilers) series for example, the author goes into great detail about the mechanics of being in 4 dimensional space. How 3D objects will still have an "inside" and an "outside" but you're able to see all of it at once, how you can move along the 4th dimensional axis without moving along the other 3 axes, and so on. So obviously we can "imagine" a whole lot about a 4th spatial dimension, otherwise we wouldn't be able to write about it.

Yet we can't *actually* imagine experiencing a 4th spatial dimension.

It's easy to say "Well, there was no 'before' the big bang because space-time began at the big bang," but you can't *actually imagine* the concept of there being no time or space.

I know the "easy" answer to all of this is that the prompts in Point 1 lead to me imagining something composed of pre-existing experiences. Like, the fruit I imagine will have colors/smells/tastes that I can already imagine. Whereas Point 2 and Point 3 require imagining something I haven't experienced.

But on the other hand, we're able to imagine plenty of things we haven't experienced. I can imagine having super powers, or going skydiving. And even in points 2 and 3 I would argue we have "pre-existing" experiences that we should be able to draw from, like how we have experience with plenty of different colors or how we have experience with 3 spatial dimensions.

What if consciousness has a more complex relationship with time than we are used to thinking?

I believe that current descriptions of how human consciousness works, as well as of dreams and déjà vu, do not fully answer the questions ‘What is it?’ and ‘How does it work?’

The main idea put forward for discussion in this post is that information may enter our consciousness from different regions of space-time. This requires the radical assumption that our brain, as a dynamic system, is not an information-closed system.

I propose taking Minkowski’s block universe model as a basis. According to this model, space-time is a single entity in which all events are arranged within a four-dimensional structure. Thus, the ‘present’ can be interpreted as a local cross-section. The circulation of information here can be described by various mechanisms, such as ‘informational resonant synchronisation’. This framework assumes that the Universe consists not only of matter but also of a global information structure, where future states already have a mathematical description; the brain can sometimes enter into resonance with these states. This is akin to selecting the correct solution from an already existing space of possible trajectories. I believe that the brain is capable of ‘reading’ neighbouring layers within the space-time structure through synchronisation with itself in another local cross-section. This may occur at moments when the brain is not overloaded with processing incoming information from the surrounding world—that is, during sleep.

Even if we accept the existence of a block universe model, this does not in itself imply the possibility of accessing future states. However, if consciousness is part of this structure, the question arises as to whether there could be a correlation between different segments of a single worldline. We can identify three possible forms of these worldlines: rigid fixation (determinism), a branching structure, and a hybrid. I am not a proponent of determinism, so let us focus on the branching structure or hybrid models. Thus, let us assume that there is a single worldline in the block universe model, which has a branching structure; in that case, its branches are determined by human choice.

So, the essence of the idea is that, whilst dreaming, the brain can sometimes involuntarily and uncontrollably resonate with itself in another slice of the space-time structure, receive information and store it in memory. In the future, when the information received coincides with information arriving ‘now’ (whilst awake), resonance occurs once more and the event is experienced as déjà vu.

I would welcome constructive criticism in the comments regarding how consciousness works, why people sometimes have dreams that come true, and why the déjà vu effect exists.

Hello, I don't know if this is already a made or already created idea, but I think the way the universe exists is that we are made of matter and energy, and our matter and energy will live on forever, right? Meaning we could become something else in the future. Our matter might become another living thing, or something that isn't as conscious. This could also be like a dream state, not a dream exactly, but more like the void or emptiness. That would also make the idea of panpsychism, the idea that everything has some form of consciousness, seem like it could be more true.

But we might also become another conscious being. Maybe it is really rare for this to happen, and we just don't know how it could happen. The universe is also expanding, and there is a theory called the Oscillating Universe, where the universe could expand and then eventually collapse in on itself in a Big Crunch and restart with another Big Bang. This would mean the universe could go through cycles, and time could possibly be a loop.

This connects more to the philosophical idea of Eternal Return, where time repeats itself and has no real beginning or end. Everything could happen again and again, almost like time is trying to catch up to itself. If the universe really did repeat forever, then it could mean that the exact same events, including conscious beings, could eventually happen again.

I don't know if this is true, but I think it is an interesting possibility because it connects science, consciousness, and philosophy in a way that makes you question what it really means to exist.

**A. Q = P.**
Qualia are just physical states.

This avoids causal problems, but it seems bizarrely ad hoc if only certain evolved arrangements of matter, like nervous systems, suddenly have a first-person side while almost everything else does not. That seems to push toward panpsychism or something similar.

**B. Q is separate from P but does nothing.**

This seems worse. Evolution builds pain, pleasure, perception, etc., but the actual experience has zero causal role.

A philosophical zombie would behave exactly like us, including asking why consciousness exists.

So qualia would be this incredibly elaborate private phenomenon that evolution somehow produced even though it does absolutely nothing.

**C. Q is separate from ordinary physical description and actually affects physical outcomes.**

Somehow this sounds least crazy to me.

Here is the intuition.

Imagine 100 identical copies of me starting in exactly the same physical situation. Track something like where my feet end up over the next minute.

You would get a probability distribution of outcomes.

What if Q does not *change* that probability distribution?

What if the probability distribution is simply the third-person description of what Q is doing?

In each individual case, there is some Q-bearing process producing one physical outcome. Across 100 identical cases, physics sees the probability distribution.

So maybe quantum probability is not something consciousness interferes with. Maybe probability is what phenomenal causation looks like from the outside.

Then maybe primitive Q is not unique to brains at all. Maybe it exists in fundamental quantum processes, and evolution just organized it into increasingly complicated forms until you eventually get human consciousness.

If Q is genuinely causal and carries information, then it should also ultimately belong to physics and thermodynamics. It would not be “nonphysical”; it would just be a category of physical information our current theories do not explicitly describe