This chapter studies the approaches of Arthur Eddington and John Wheeler, both renowned physicists, who came to dual-aspect monist views from slightly different angles. Both place strong emphasis on concepts of meaningful information. We group them together since their fundamental link connecting the objective (physical) and the subjective (mental) is the notion of participation . The subjectivity of agents is reflexively implicated in the very existence of objective reality – a position now known as “participatory realism”. Eddington called his view “selective subjectivism” while Wheeler’s view was encapsulated in his slogan “it from bit” (whose erroneous reception in contemporary discussion we clarify). Both Eddington and Wheeler describe a psychophysically neutral realm with no space and no time (what Wheeler calls “pregeometry”) from which subject and object emerge. We compare similarities and differences between their viewpoints and examine their dual-aspect features together with the deep structure of meaning.
This chapter studies the approaches of Arthur Eddington and John Wheeler, both renowned physicists, who came to dual-aspect monist views from slightly different angles. Both place strong emphasis on concepts of meaningful information. We group them together since their fundamental link connecting the objective (physical) and the subjective (mental) is the notion of participation . The subjectivity of agents is reflexively implicated in the very existence of objective reality – a position now known as “participatory realism”. Eddington called his view “selective subjectivism” while Wheeler’s view was encapsulated in his slogan “it from bit” (whose erroneous reception in contemporary discussion we clarify). Both Eddington and Wheeler describe a psychophysically neutral realm with no space and no time (what Wheeler calls “pregeometry”) from which subject and object emerge. We compare similarities and differences between their viewpoints and examine their dual-aspect features together with the deep structure of meaning.
Dual-Aspect Monism and the Deep Structure of Meaning investigates the metaphysical position of dual-aspect monism, with particular emphasis on the concept of meaning as a fundamental feature of the fabric of reality. As an alternative to other positions – mainly dualism, physicalism, idealism – that have been proposed to understand consciousness and its place in nature, the decompositional version of dual-aspect monism considers the mental and the physical as two aspects of one underlying undivided reality that is psychophysically neutral. Inspired by analogies with modern physics and driven by its conceptual problems, Wolfgang Pauli, Carl Gustav Jung, Arthur Eddington, John Wheeler, David Bohm, and Basil Hiley are the originators of the approaches studied. A radically novel common theme in their approaches is the constitutive role of meaning and its deep structure, relating the mental and the physical to a psychophysically neutral base.The authors reconstruct the formal structure of these approaches, and compare their conceptual emphases as well as their relative strengths and weaknesses. They also address a number of challenging themes for current and future interdisciplinary research, both theoretical and empirical, that arise from the presented frameworks of thinking. Dual-Aspect Monism and the Deep Structure of Meaning will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working in consciousness studies, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, philosophy of physics, metaphysics, and the history of 20th-century philosophy and physics.
Introduction First a word of thanks. When I first came across the papers of John Archibald Wheeler on the foundations of quantum mechanics, most of them reprinted in Wheeler and Zurek (1983), I could not believe what I read. Finally here was a colleague of worldwide reputation, given his many contributions to theoretical physics, who was not afraid to discuss openly the conceptual problems of quantum mechanics. The outstanding feature of Professor Wheeler's viewpoint is his realization that the implications of quantum mechanics are so far-reaching that they require a completely novel approach in our view of reality and in the way we see our role in the universe. This distinguishes him from many others who in one way or another tried to save pre-quantum viewpoints, particularly the obviously wrong notion of a reality independent of us. Particularly remarkable is Professor Wheeler's austerity in thinking. He tries to use as few concepts as possible and to build on this the whole of physics. A fascinating case in point is the title of one of his papers “Law without law,” the attempt to arrive at the laws of nature without assuming any law a priori. For me personally his work on fundamental issues in quantum mechanics has been particularly inspiring. The questions he raises are exceptionally far-reaching and some of his concepts in the foundations of physics are so radical that calling them revolutionary would not do them justice.
In the Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote, " 'I' is not the name of a person, nor 'here' of a place, .... But they are connected with names. ... [And] it is characteristic of physics not to use these words." This statement expresses the dominant way of thinking in physics: Physics is about the impersonal laws of nature; the "I" never makes an appearance in it. Since the advent of quantum theory, however, there has always been a nagging pressure to insert a first-person perspective into the heart of physics. In incarnations of lesser or greater strength, one may consider the "Copenhagen" views of Bohr, Heisenberg, and Pauli, the observer-participator view of John Wheeler, the informational interpretation of Anton Zeilinger and Caslav Brukner, the relational interpretation of Carlo Rovelli, and, most radically, the QBism of N. David Mermin, Ruediger Schack, and the present author, as acceding to the pressure. These views have lately been termed "participatory realism" to emphasize that rather than relinquishing the idea of reality (as they are often accused of), they are saying that reality is more than any third-person perspective can capture. Thus, far from instances of instrumentalism or antirealism, these views of quantum theory should be regarded as attempts to make a deep statement about the nature of reality. This paper explicates the idea for the case of QBism. As well, it highlights the influence of John Wheeler's "law without law" on QBism's formulation.
This article presents a basic concept for a comprehensive, unified theoretical framework for the mechanism of consciousness by synthesizing four cornerstone advances in quantum foundations and information physics: John Archibald Wheeler’s participatory universe and “It from Bit” paradigm [1], Quantum Bayesianism (QBism) with its participatory realism [2], Melvin Vopson’s Infodynamics (encompassing the mass-energy-information equivalence principle and the second law of infodynamics) [3,4], and Wojciech Zurek’s decoherence theory together with Quantum Darwinism, which accounts for the “loss of quantumness” and the emergence of classical objectivity [5,6]. In contrast to objective-collapse models such as Penrose and Hameroff’s Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch-OR) [7], we propose that consciousness is not a secondary emergent phenomenon arising from physical processes within an already-objective spacetime but the „primary participatory agent” that actively extracts and renders the classical, observable, and subjectively experienced reality - including particles, mass, energy, frequency, and spacetime geometry itself - from a deeper, pre-spacetime, purely informational substrate we denote as Φ. A mathematically consistent model is constructed in which consciousness functions as an information-optimizing, self-referential agent within Φ. Quantum states are interpreted as an agent’s subjective Bayesian probabilities (QBism); information entropy is dynamically minimized according to the second law of infodynamics; environmental interactions select robust pointer states through redundant copying (Quantum Darwinism); and participatory measurements actualize definite “its” (Wheeler) from underlying “bits.” The Einstein–Planck–de Broglie equivalence E = mc² = hf, which implies that every massive particle possesses an internal “metronome” ticking at the Compton frequency f ≈ mc²/h, appears only as a stabilized, experienced feature „after” this participatory extraction process. The framework preserves all empirical successes of quantum mechanics while naturally accommodating a simulation-like virtuality of macroscopic reality. We derive explicit mathematical relations, testable predictions, a detailed comparison with Orch-OR, followed by an extensive discussion of potential criticisms, and - crucially - a new extension exploring how the same mechanism may enable the emergence of consciousness in advanced artificial intelligence systems, particularly agentic large language models (LLMs). The result is a physically operational, information-theoretic vision of consciousness as the co-creator of the observable cosmos.
There are no overt lines of in?uence between the quantum-inspired dual-aspect approaches presented in previous chapters – though Pauli’s and Wheeler’s inspirations might have a common origin in some of Bohr’s ideas, and some of Bohm and Hiley’s speculations build on Eddington. But they were essentially each developed independently from one another, somewhat surprisingly converging onto numerous common features that are compared in this chapter. Connections are sought amongst their deeper philosophical foundations, especially those by Spinoza, Kant, Schelling and Hegel. Also explored is the way in which different elements of the surface structure and deep structure of meaning are positioned at the core of their metaphysical projects, along with the way in which the mind-matter connection is understood. A synoptic overview facilitates the comparison of key concepts and notions utilized in the three approaches.
Abstract This paper will deal specifically with the concept of extending some of the contentions and theories of John Archibald Wheeler into a more complete description of reality, supported in part by physical experiments. The subjects that will be dealt with are well known from quantum theory, and now lately - Nick Bostrom's simulation theory, but will be seen through a new reinterpretation that connects seamlessly, prior positions of Wheeler into a self-consistent model that defines the nature of the physical universe through the convergence of information universe models and the Everett/Wheeler hypothesis. Hints will be given, as to how the reported desires of so-called Silicon Valley billionaires to leave the simulated universe, can be fulfilled using on-the-horizon technology to accomplish time travel through the manipulation of the information based fabric underpinning reality. In whole, the following will be major points discussed: 1. J.A. Wheeler posited that even the greatest mathematical equation in the universe is missing something, the principle by which can become real. He also said, no phenomenon is a phenomenon until is an observed phenomenon. 2. Wheeler developed his theory of it from bit, explaining that the physical world was based upon information at a fundamental level 3. Seth Lloyd, taking that thought further, said that the universe acts like a giant computer processing the information contained therein. 4. Nick Bostrom posited that, in fact, our universe is a computer simulation created by our post-human descendants in the distant future. 5. Philip K. Dick science fiction writer and visionary, in his 1977 public statements mentioned, that due to to events in the past being reprogrammed, things in the present could be changed so that an alternate universe splits off. 6. The universe is participatory, not just with humans, but everything else. *Just as various events cause a variety of phenomena, in the extreme cases, the universe responds in the extreme by producing alternate universes. This process resolves many of the issues related to quantum phenomena, parallel universes and time travel* 7. The detection of a simulated universe and escape therefrom is similar but not the same as doing so with an information universe. Escape from a simulated universe is impossible just as its detection may be. However, in this paper, a series of experiments will be presented that for the first time ever, establish such a possible detection as well as the method of ultimate escape from our information based universe.