Author: Steve Patterson

It’s taken me a couple of decades, but I’m finally starting to make sense of the concept of God. I was raised in an Evangelical Christian household, but the ideas never fully made sense to me at the deepest level. When searching for clarity about God, the people I spoke with would appeal to mystery and faith rather than explain a concept I could rationally grasp. Finally, after investigating for more than twenty years, I have a concept of God that I can understand. The idea is one of the oldest in existence, and it turns baroque theological claims into true and important insights.

We can define “God” as “all of existence,” “the entirety of the universe,” or “reality itself.” God is the whole-thing-together. God’s parts include all of the objects, their relations, and their rules for interaction. God is the biggest conceivable existent, which is the totality of existence itself. In a word, God is Nature. Not “nature” referring to trees and shrubs and rocks, but “Nature” referring to the entire system, the universe, in which we live.

With this definition, many theological claims start to make concrete sense. I have a suspicion that this is what Christians mean (or meant) when talking about “God the Father.” In this article, I will go through and demonstrate just how powerful the concept of God is when equated with Nature or The Universe. We’ll take a couple dozen religious claims about God and turn them into something reasonable and profound by translating “God” into “Nature,” “the universe,” “existence,” or “reality.” 

Now whether, in addition to the universe, there is a Divine Person we can call “God” is a separate question. I’m not sure the answer, but regardless, it doesn’t change the profundity of the truths we can state about the universe.

Omni-Qualities

We’ll start with the traditional omni-qualities of God. Take the simplest example, the claim that:

“God is omnipresent.”

Meaning, God is everywhere at the same time.

If God is a person, it’s hard to understand how he can be omnipresent. If God is the Universe, then it suddenly because obvious, even necessarily true, that God is omnipresent. The Universe is everywhere. Existence is everywhere. If something exists, it’s part of reality, therefore part of God. There is no corner of the universe that’s somehow not part of the universe. You can’t separate yourself from the universe – or to sound theological, you can’t separate yourself from God. Not only is this claim true, but it also hints at a real relationship between the universe and you. There is some kind of remarkable connection between “the whole thing” and “you as part of it.” 

Next, take the claim,

“God is omnipotent” or “all-powerful.”

The universe is indeed all-powerful. There is definitely nothing more powerful than it, since it doesn’t really make sense to talk about something in the universe that’s more powerful than the universe. Every thing that acts is acting within the rules of existence. The system itself is categorically more powerful than any object within the system. To put it into religious terms, everything in existence is playing by God’s rules, therefore God is all-powerful.

Next, the claim,

“God is omniscient.”

Meaning, God knows everything. There’s no information that God doesn’t have. This is a true statement about the universe. There’s a sense in which all states of the existence are “known” by the universe – though not necessarily implying a conscious state of knowing. Rather, all of the information about the universe is within the universe. You cannot “hide” information from the universe. You can’t trick Nature or be somewhere that Nature can’t see you. Every state that you’re in is itself a state of the universe. Therefore, the universe cannot lack knowledge of your existence, in a similar sense that the laws of physics cannot lack knowledge of your existence.

If you think of information as being a key part of how the laws of physics operate – part of the “universal function”, as I theorize in this article – then it makes sense to talk about the universe as “knowing” present states in order to render future states. 

Universal Substance and Being

Let’s examine a Biblical quote:

“God is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.”

If God is a person, it’s unclear what this means or how it’s true. But if God is the Universe, then in the most literal sense, God is indeed the Alpha, Omega, and everything in between. You could also call God “the Father” of everything, which is essentially the same idea as being the Alpha and the Omega.

How about the claim,

“God maintains our existence every minute.”

This is also true. The universe maintains our metaphysical existence from second to second. We don’t choose to continue being; Nature chooses for us, and if Nature stopped sustaining our existence, we would cease to be.

Next, take the common claim that:

“Humans are made in the image of God,” or as it’s sometimes phrased, “Every individual has a spark of the divine.”

There is again a literal sense in which humans are an image of Nature. They are stamped with an impression of the entire universe. If you agree with the story of modern cosmology, then humans are little bits of the Big Bang, aged a few billion years. In a real sense, Nature created humans. We are inescapably of Nature – of God. You are not separate from reality. The universe is part of you, and you are part of the universe. So when you’re looking at a human, or looking at anything for that matter, you’re looking at a bit of Nature itself. Thus, if God is the Universe, then humans literally look like a part of God, and if existence is divine, then every individual has a spark of the divine.

Take the claims that:

“We’re all God’s creation,” and the more poetic, “God formed man from dust.”

Just like the claim that “God made man and woman”, this is literally true. We are a creation of the universe – but not necessarily a creation in the intentional conscious sense. The material building blocks of humans are of the universe. Humans are a particular composition, a structure, that’s been created – or if you prefer, has emerged – from the universe. Again in a literal sense, the universe formed man from dust.

Take a claim that I used to hear from Evangelicals growing up:

“God made man and woman,” or more generally, “Things are the way they are because God made them that way.”

Again, true and important. Nature has created men and women with different biological and psychological traits. This is a fact of the reality in which we live. It’s foolish and arrogant to pretend otherwise, and it should probably affect the way that we live in the world. 

Submission, Satan, and Karma

Consider the popular religious concept of “submission to God.” It makes a great deal of sense. To submit to God is to submit to reality, to Nature. To obey the system and let it operate. To establish God as ”sovereign over everything” is to admit that reality, Nature, the Universe, is king. We have no metaphysical power over the structure of reality. 

Looking at things from a universal perspective, there’s a very real sense in which your life is not your own. It’s God’s; it’s Nature’s. What happens in your life is not ultimately controlled by you, but rather by greater forces outside of yourself. 

In this sense, I can agree with religious people when they claim,

“Western culture needs to submit to God!”

Western culture does need to acknowledge the existence of objective reality and live in accordance with it. Perhaps when theologians say “humans should live by God’s law”, they’re really saying “humans should not pretend they live in an alternative universe; they should live by the laws of Nature and accept reality as it is.”

This perspective also gives me a comprehensible understanding of “Satan.” Instead of being a really bad supernatural person, he might be the personification of non-reality, falsehood, or rebellion against reality. 

Imagine we constructed a story about God (reality) versus Satan (falsehood), where both God and Satan were people. We could talk about how seductive Satan is, how tempting lies can be, and how deep delusions run in the human psychology. We could talk about the fundamental arrogance of Satan – the tendency for humans to vociferously proclaim they have the truth when they don’t. We could tell stories about how “listening to Satan” leads to unhappiness, since in the real world, lies and delusions end up harming people.

With such stories, I would end up advising the same thing as my Christian friends: stay away from Satan! God is what you need! And we could translate this rationally as, “Stay away from lies and delusions! Truth and reality is what you need!”

Furthermore, I often heard stories in my youth about the burning hatred that Satan has for God. Well, understanding God as reality and Satan as non-reality, I actually see this story play out in people. Humans that are living in delusion have an extreme hatred for anything true – even the concept of truth. Similarly, humans that are doing really bad things – think the Epstein sex ring – do not want the truth exposed. They have a strong preference for darkness and a fear of the light, so to speak.

After hearing stories about God and Satan for so many years, and never quite grasping them, it’s stunning to see them suddenly make sense by simply translating “God” as “reality” or “existence.”

This translation also helps make sense of the concepts of “Karma” or “cosmic justice.” Instead of thinking there’s someone personally punishing and rewarding humans for their behavior, we can conceive of the universe as possibly being intrinsically just. Perhaps the laws of physics are also coupled with laws of morality. When something bad happens in the world, perhaps it sets of up a chain of events to correct itself at a future time. “Punishment” might be built into the structure of the universe, rather than something dished out by a person.

“God will judge you for your sins”

might be another way of saying “actions have consequences.” 

Now, whether or not we live in a universe which operates on principles of justice is an entirely empirical and open question. I’m not saying we do. There’s plenty of evidence that seems to suggest otherwise. However, it’s another example of the explanatory power of treating God as existence. We can seriously talk about whether God is just without invoking confusing theological concepts. We can even talk about whether God “has a sense of humor” or God is “loving.” These are all meaningful statements about how the universe operates.

God and Culture

Next, let’s examine the cultural criticism you might hear from a cranky old person:

“Western society has forgotten about God!”

This statement becomes true and important if we interpret it as, “Western society has forgotten about reality!” Especially in elite society, humans seem to have forgotten that the universe has a structure independent of them. They pretend that all of existence is a mere social construction. They are deluded about the reality of things as they are in the world. One could even interpret the fashionable claim that “there is no objective truth” as “there is no universe” or in this context, “there is no God.”

To quote Psalms:

“A fool in his heart says ‘there is no God.’”

Again true and relevant to my own work. A fool says “there is no universe” or “there is no such thing as reality.” I’ve met plenty of fools and even interviewed a few on my show. Perhaps part of the reason past thinkers believed the existence of God was self-evident is because they were treating “God” as Nature or the Universe. The existence of the universe is essentially self-evident – i.e. the existence of existence – and it probably reflects on some psychological or moral problem to deny that it exists.

Now take the crotchety old person’s condemnation of his teenager son’s behavior:

“Don’t rebel against God!”

It’s actually sound advice if the old man is saying “Don’t rebel against Nature!” Rebelling against reality is vain and counter-productive. You might not like Nature, but you’d better grow up and get over it. Nature is a particular way, and it won’t change just because you don’t like it.

Instead of “rebellion” against God, I think it would be amazing to live in a society that “worshipped” God. In other words, a society in which truth and reality are sacred. Lying, for example, would be seen as seriously immoral, but at present, Western culture seems completely tolerant of lies and celebrates a myriad of human delusions.

Next, consider the wisdom of the proverb:

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”

That’s wise if we interpret it as “the fear of Nature is the beginning of wisdom.”

As somebody who has experienced chronic illness for nearly a decade, I can tell you this is true. All pain, suffering, disease, and death comes from Nature. Your mental state – happy or sad, sane or insane – is an output of Nature, and at any moment it can change. Everything can be taken away from you, and this fact is outside of your control. Nature has the ability to eternally torture you or ruin your life in ways inconceivable to you. 

Next, consider the common practice of “Thanking God” before a meal, for success in life, or for avoiding some tragedy. My old Evangelical community thanked God with the belief that they were thanking a cosmically powerful person who was responsible for their well-being. But there’s another way to understand giving thanks to God.

In a literal sense, the universe provided you with your meal. The universe was the ultimate cause of your professional success. The universe – forces external to you – were the reason that some particular tragedy was avoided. If you have talents, wealth, or physical looks, the universe gave them to you. And as the saying goes, since the universe gives you everything, it can take everything away from you.  

A related phenomenon is religious people “giving glory to God” when they perform things at a high level. Say we’re talking about music. Rather than merely celebrate some particular human’s musical creation, it makes sense to celebrate the whole structure that gives rise to the existence of music in the first place! It’s extraordinary that we live in a universe in which sound exists. Relatively speaking, the musician isn’t actually doing much. He’s not creating music ex nihilo. He’s creating music within the system provided to him. In this context, “giving glory to God” makes sense to me.

These high-performers often say things like,

“There is a higher power working through me.”

Again, in this context, that’s true. When somebody accomplishes something, it’s some part of the entire universe operating. The actions of individual humans are just a small part of its operation.

Now consider a few Biblical quotes. This one is of God speaking:

“My people are fools; they do not know me. They are senseless children; they have no understanding.”

Imagine the universe talking. It could truthfully say that humans are “my people,” as humans are constructed out of the universe itself. It could also say that humans are senseless children who have no understanding of reality. That’s also true.

Now from Corinthians:

“God makes foolish the wisdom of the world”

Yes, definitely. The universe makes foolish the “wisdom” of the world. Intellectuals for all of history have been fundamentally mistaken about everything, and the present moment is no exception. The more you learn about the universe, the more you learn that humans know approximately nothing, and the greatest fools are those who profess to understand while being in a state of ignorance.

Personal or Impersonal

In theological discussions, whether God is “personal” or “impersonal” seems to be a big deal. Of course it depends on what we mean by these terms, but in this framework, I think God is both personal and impersonal. There’s a sense in which God is the most personal thing in existence. To the extent that there are people in the universe, then God is personal. It’s necessarily part of God’s potential to be personal, since there are people. God is the substrate out of which people are built, including yourself. What could be more personal? To the extent that consciousness is part of the universe, then at least part of God is conscious, too.

But in this context, God is also bigger than a person. He’s a person and everything else, too, including the laws of physics. He’s the mechanical forces keeping everything in operation. Even rocks and planets are a tiny part of God.

One of the difficulties I’ve had with thinking of God as a cosmic person is that it seems like he would still be a part of a larger system. He would be bound by the laws of logic, for example. It just seems weird to me to think of a solely-personal God that operates in a system which is larger and more powerful than he is. Instead of God being a person acting in a larger system, it makes sense to talk about God as being the system itself. Nothing is outside of it, larger than it, or more powerful than it. Nothing is higher than God if God is the structure for all of existence.

That being said, we can also talk as if it has a kind of personality. We can meaningfully say, “God wants you to have children.” In reality, Nature pushes organisms towards procreation. You can talk about Nature having a “purpose”, as new states and structures are continually coming into existence. The universe is constructed in such a way to generate living things that have the capacity to love. That’s remarkable – staggering and absurd, really when you think about it – whether you attribute it to a Divine Person or not. You can talk about God having a “will” or a “plan.” When something happens, it was “God’s will.” In other words, everything that happens is a kind of unfolding of the entire universe towards a future state, with all parts relating to one another. Any event is merely a step towards some future state – a part of “God’s plan.”

Now don’t get me wrong: it might be possible that the entire universe is a person. Perhaps God is all of existence, and if you put together all of existence, you get a person. That would be remarkable indeed. I don’t want to rule it out, but I have a very hard time making sense of it, so this article won’t make a claim either way. Even if the universe is ultimately unified into a person, it doesn’t change the various, true things we can say about it.

Little Greek Gods

This way of understanding God can also apply to lesser gods. Say we’re talking about Greek or Roman gods. Suddenly, they make sense if they are understood as real, abstract forces and patterns in the universe, rather than supernatural people. The god of Love, for example – the real force of love in the world – can be spoken about as if she had a personality. The god of Wine makes people do silly things. The god of War has his own destructive personality. There’s even a way of talking about the interplay between the god of Wine and War – as if the two gods speak to each other. I’m sure there’s a real connection in the universe between alcohol, violence, and war.

We can make sense of the Greeks saying things like,

“The gods might strike you with madness.”

That’s just another way of saying “the universe, the many forces outside your control, might strike you with madness.” These gods should be feared. They are powerful and immortal. Humans can’t “kill” them. 

With this context, you can see how clever it is to build stories about the gods – their personalities, relationships among themselves, including their various marriages, children, and partners, and about the relationship between the gods and humans. It makes sense to say,

“The gods don’t care about the affairs of humans.”

Contemporary minds might say “the laws of nature do not care about the affairs of humans.” 

These lesser gods are different from the Big God. Lesser gods are specific forces and patterns in reality. They are themselves deferent to the Big God – the totality of reality itself.

Monotheism versus Polytheism

This way of thinking also helps me make sense of the debate between monotheists and polytheists. Are there multiple gods, or just one? I think there’s a sense in which both monotheism and polytheism could be true. Polytheism makes sense when understood in the Greek god example. There are many powerful, immortal forces that control what happens on Earth. 

Monotheism makes sense when talking about the biggest-possible picture. We don’t need to posit the existence of multiple existences. We can say, “If something exists, it’s part of the totality of existence. Therefore, there is only one universe, one reality, one God.”

Pantheism vs Panentheism

Is this Pantheism? Is it Panentheism? I don’t know. I haven’t studied theology, and I’m not sure of the nuances between Pantheism and Panentheism. I don’t really care how my ideas are labeled, but from what I can tell, they are similar to both.  Pantheism is the idea that everything is divine or of God. Panentheism is the idea that everything is within God, but not everything is divine, and God might be bigger than the universe. To me, since I don’t have a theological dog in the fight, it seems to be more of a semantic distinction.

There’s an obvious sense in which I’m saying “the universe is God”, which sounds like Pantheism, but it depends on what we mean by “the universe.” If “the universe” is restricted to four-dimensional spacetime, then I would be a Panentheist, because I believe existence is much bigger than four dimensional space. The universe studied by Physics might only be a small part of God. If, however, we treat “the universe” as “all of existence in every form”, then I would be a Pantheist, since there couldn’t be anything “outside” of existence in the biggest picture. If all parts of existence are in God, then they are still of God – as something in existence is a part of existence, from what I can tell. Regardless, I’ll let theologians handle the taxonomy.

No Faith

The picture I’ve just painted requires no faith to appreciate. It comes with no religious dogma. It’s just philosophy. It’s by no means an exhaustive list of religious claims that make sense if you translate “God” to “existence.” Nearly every time I encounter claims about God, I can make sense of them in this context.

Regardless of whether there’s a Divine Person in addition to everything else, we can say really remarkable things about the universe. You are part of the entire universe; the universe is part of you. You are made up of the universe. If Nature were a painter, you would be a small part of its painting.

As my Evangelical community was fond of saying,

“God can fill a hole in your heart.”

In other words, reality – the truth – can seriously fulfill you. If you don’t have it, it’s what you’re missing. Life without truth is aimless and fuzzy. This is a true statement about human psychology. People really are restless when they don’t have any grasp of reality.

The universe provides everything for you. It is sustaining you right now. It’s been churning through various states for billions of years, with unbelievably powerful forces working together, and it’s finally reached the point of producing you at this present moment. It’s responsible for all of your positive and negative qualities. To the extent you learn, it’s always teaching you a lesson. To the extent that you are conscious, then the universe is conscious. To the extent that you love or are loved, then the universe loves. These truths seem profound to me. I believe this is the beginning of a rational theology.

Dualism is an attractive philosophy with an Achilles’ heel. Mind and body seem to be fundamentally separate things, yet dualists since Descartes have never been able to solve the famous problem of interaction. If mind and body are in different ontological categories, then how could they possibly interact with each other, even in principle?

Descartes didn’t give a good answer, nor has any other dualist I’ve ever encountered. They tend to respond, “Well, we don’t know how mind and body interact, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible!” This is not a satisfying answer, even though I agree with them, and lots of philosophers don’t find it compelling at all. In fact, many have claimed the problem of interaction is so severe, it’s a refutation of dualism. They think the problem can’t be solved even in theory.

I disagree. I’ve been trying to figure out a plausible mechanism of interaction for many years, and finally, I’ve got one. I have a working resolution to the mind-body problem that solves the problem of interaction. It not only supports substance dualism, but substance pluralism, which doesn’t restrict the amount of ontological categories to only two. If you’re sympathetic to dualism, or are familiar with its history, this is the type of theory we wanted Descartes to figure out a few centuries ago.

I call it a theory of indirect interaction. Mind and body do not directly interact, but they effectively interact – i.e. the state of one affects the state of the other. This theory has many favorable properties:

1) It gives a plausible mechanism for interaction between objects in any ontological category – not just mental and physical. Even if there are a hundred more categories, the mechanism could still work.

2) It allows for two-way causality. Physical states can affect mental states; mental states can affect physical states.

3) It is free-will-agnostic. There is a clear opening for the role of free will, but the system works perfectly fine without it.

4) It doesn’t break the laws of physics – or perhaps more precisely, it doesn’t break the laws of causality. It might simply broaden the scope of the laws of physics.

The purpose of this article is not to claim that “This is the way things actually work in the world!” Rather, it’s to demonstrate that in principle there could be a mechanism for things in different ontological categories to effectively interact with each other. Whether or not I’ve discovered the “real” mechanism is a separate question.

Examining Causality through Billiards

The best way to illustrate the theory is by first taking the mind out of the equation and analyzing purely physical phenomena. By breaking down physical phenomena into their most fundamental form, it will elicit the concepts necessary to understand indirect interaction.

My favorite example of “purely physical phenomena” is the motion of balls on a billiard table. Let’s take a simple scenario. Imagine that there are only two balls left on the table – the white cue ball and the black 8-ball. Imagine the cue stick strikes the white ball, the white ball rolls forward and hits the 8-ball, then the 8-ball rolls into a pocket.

Let’s break this scenario down as thoroughly as possible. What are we really talking about when we reference “pool balls”? What exactly are such objects? What are we describing when we say, “The 8-ball rolled into a pocket”?

Rather than give an extended analysis of the metaphysical status of pool balls (which you can read about in my article “No, Chairs Do Not Exist”), let me give you one plausible position. What a “pool ball” really is is “units of matter arranged in a particular way in a particular part of space.” Let’s call those units “atoms.” Some philosophers might put it, “A pool ball is really just atoms arranged ball-wise.”

Let’s consider this phrase:  “The 8-ball rolled into a pocket.” What exactly are we describing? What is this “rolling” phenomenon? If the pool ball is just atoms, then we can rephrase it this way: “Some particular atoms changed their positions in space.”

Another way to understand it would be to say, “At Time 1, atoms were in Position 1. At Time 2, atoms were in Position 2.” In fact, that’s a pretty good description of motion in general.

That’s an abstract way to understand pool balls rolling on a table. Now let’s ask two interesting, yet difficult questions:

1) When the white ball hits the 8-ball, why does the 8-ball start moving?

2) Why does the 8-ball move on its particular path rather than some other path?

Notice that when we reduced the phenomenon of motion to “atoms changing position,” it doesn’t actually communicate an extremely important piece of information:

The changes in position are not random.

We didn’t say, “At Time 1, the white ball struck the 8-ball, and at Time 2, the 8-ball started orbiting Jupiter.” No. There is a pattern to the motion. A predictable, observable pattern.

Why?

Why isn’t the motion of the 8-ball completely random? Why should the motion be predictable at all? Hell, why doesn’t the universe just spontaneously fall apart when the balls collide? What holds all of these objects into the same coherent, predictable system?

One plausible answer is this: There are laws of the universe. Physical laws keep the whole thing together. They make motion predictable. The reason that the 8-ball rolls into its pocket instead of orbiting Jupiter is because there are laws of physics which govern the behavior of objects. These laws have a real existence.

That’s a nice-sounding answer – and physicists might like it – but it provokes many more questions. For example:

Are the laws of physics physical themselves? Do the laws of physics take up space or weigh anything?

What is the relationship between the laws of physics and the objects governed by them?

What is the mechanism for the laws of physics?

In other words, how do laws keep objects in order?

If our explanation for physical phenomena appeals to laws, then we’ve posited the existence of two radically different types of things: physical phenomena and the laws which govern them. Atoms in space, by themselves, are not sufficient to explain why they move in predictable ways. There must be underlying principles, or laws, which determine their behavior. By thinking about “purely physical phenomena” this way, it gets us one step closer to solving the mind-body problem.

Inputs and Outputs According to Laws

Let’s break down our billiard example even further. Instead of only identifying what we see, we need to identify exactly what we don’t see.

Treat the table and balls as a whole system. We see changes in the position of the balls, which means we see the system in different states at different times. But we don’t see the glue between the states. We don’t actually see the laws that we’re appealing to in order to explain the phenomena. We’re simply inferring the existence of laws and causality to explain the patterns in our observation, but we don’t see the laws themselves.

It’s helpful to keep rephrasing and condensing our language. Instead of saying, “At Time 1, the object was in Position 1, and at Time 2, the object was in Position 2,” we can simply talk about “states.” We can say, “State 1 was followed by State 2.”

So another abstract way to understand physical phenomena is to say, “There is a series of states. Each state contains a particular arrangement of atoms in space. The changes between states are non-random and happen in accordance with laws.”

This allows us to re-ask the previous questions:

1) Why is State 2 the way that it is and not some other way?

2) Why doesn’t State 2 include the 8-ball orbiting Jupiter?

The answer:

Any given state is determined by its previous state. Since State 1 was a particular way, the laws of physics determine that State 2 must follow State 1.

Or, to put it more succinctly: Preceding states determine future states.

Let’s consider these states of the universe from another perspective: As “inputs” and “outputs.” Inputs yield outputs. So if we call State 2 an “output,” we could say that State 1 was its “input.”

What determines that State 2 is an output of State 1 in particular? The laws of physics. If we think about states of the universe as being inputs and outputs, we can understand the laws of physics as a kind of mathematical function – they take inputs and turn them into specific outputs!

This is a theoretical picture in which the universe is like a gigantic computer that keeps churning out new output states. The outputs are determined by their inputs. Then, those outputs are used as inputs for the next state. The laws of physics are the specific code that determines exactly how inputs relate to outputs.

So, we can reduce the physical universe to a very abstract formula:

Input state + laws of physics -> output state.

Then, that output state is treated as the next input, and the universe churns out a new state.

Information and State

We’ve posited the existence of two radically different types of things to explain physical phenomena – spatially-extended atoms in space, and non-spatially extended laws of physics which govern their behavior. Whether or not it’s necessary to give the laws of physics a real existence is an interesting question (and it turns out that it’s awfully hard to explain the regularity of physical phenomena without them!). Regardless, this metaphysical picture allows us to understand how objects in different ontological categories might be able to interact with each other. However, we must go deeper.

Reduce the physical universe to “atoms in their position in space at any given time.” Those atoms themselves are not enough to determine the future state of the universe. There must also be laws. But that brings up several more difficult questions:

1) What connects the physical states to the laws?

Why aren’t the physical states completely separated from the laws? What’s the glue between the laws and the physical states?

2) How do the laws of physics “know” the state of the universe? Why doesn’t the universe “get it wrong” when determining future states?

3) How are states treated as inputs? What’s the format?

All of these questions can be answered by the final piece of the puzzle: Information. The universal mathematical function that takes inputs and turns them into outputs has information about the physical state. This information is itself non-physical. The information is the glue between the laws of physics and the physical states themselves.

So, what actually gets used as the “input” is information about the physical state, rather than the physical state itself. The subsequent output is another purely physical state, then information about that output is used as the new input state!

This is an abstract way to understand the mechanics of a physical system. Crucially, it allows for real ontological differences between the physical state, the information about the physical state, and the laws of physics which take that information and generate new output states.

Think about the relationship between ordinary objects and your knowledge about them. Take your information about chairs. There’s a categorical difference between physical chairs and your information about physical chairs. Chairs take up space, while your knowledge about chairs does not take up space. The concept of a chair is not somehow embedded inside of chairs. Information is not the same thing as what the information is about. Information about physical states does not need to be embedded within physical states.

In this theory, the physical states are entirely concrete, not abstract. They are reducible to “atoms in space.” Yet, there can be information about those physical states which is abstract and not reducible to atoms in space.

There’s an interesting question about the metaphysical status of information. It’s “abstract,” but what exactly are abstract things? Are they mental? Platonic? This theory doesn’t require a particular answer, but it should be clarified that it doesn’t necessarily imply consciousness. Your knowledge of chairs is within your mind; you can have a kind of conscious experience of it. The universe doesn’t need to have any internal experience of knowing information about physical states, just like your computer doesn’t have to have an internal experience of “reading and knowing” the state of your hard drive. Information is processed in your CPU without consciousness.

So, to revise our picture of a physical system one more time:

We start with atoms in space. The universe has information about the position of the atoms in space. That information is used as an input into a function that we call “the laws of physics.” It then generates a new output state – i.e. atoms change position. The universe has information about this new state, which then gets put back into the function to generate subsequent output states. The universe progresses.

If this theory works, then we’ve just solved the mind-body problem and the problem of interaction. All we’ve got to do is add mind.

Mind and Brain

The picture I’ve just painted includes effective interaction between at least two ontological categories – the laws of physics and the spatially-extended objects that are governed by them. Now, it doesn’t matter how many ontological categories we posit; the same mechanism can still work. Instead of restricting output states to only spatially-extended physical stuff, we can expand the category of output states to include mental stuff as well – feelings, experiences, qualia, etc.

For example, take the conscious experience of seeing red. It’s a particular kind of mental state. In this system, it’s simply another output that will get generated with the correct input. Whenever the physical universe is arranged in a particular way, the output state of “experiencing redness” is generated. That output state does not need to be physical. It can be in an entirely different ontological category!

This allows us to expand the laws of physics to include laws of mental representation. Just like particular physical inputs yield particular physical outputs according to laws, the universe can also generate particular mental outputs with the right input. In other words, the universal function includes the informational criteria for generating both physical outputs and mental outputs.

This theory accords perfectly with the physical mechanics of sight. When physicists talk about “light rays entering the eye, stimulating particular nerves, etc.” they’re simply talking about changes in physical states. As these physical states change, the information going into the universal function also changes, and at some point, when the correct physical state has been reached, mental states start getting generated.

Notice: it’s not the physical state itself that’s generating mental phenomena. It’s not some mechanism in the brain. It’s information about the physical state which gets used as an input to generate a mental state in a different ontological realm.

In this theory, brains are not some unique object that “secretes consciousness,” as some philosophers have suggested. Consciousness is not to be found within a skull. There’s nothing intrinsically special about the atoms that compose a brain. What’s important is their arrangement and the corresponding information about them.  If patterns and information about the brain are indeed what generates consciousness, then we also have no need to posit panpsychism, which suggests each atom might be “a little bit conscious” itself.

The reason that the brain is so closely correlated with conscious states is because it’s precisely the information about the atoms in space that we call a “brain” that yields consciousness. The brain state itself is not enough; it requires brain states plus the laws of physics/mental representation. So it shouldn’t be surprising that when people get brain damage, their conscious experience changes. This isn’t because the brain loses the ability to create consciousness. It never had that ability. It’s because when the brain state changes, information about the brain state changes, which then changes the input and subsequent output of the universal function.

This is why I call the theory a mechanism of “indirect interaction.” The brain isn’t directly generating consciousness. Instead, it’s the pattern of information corresponding to the physical state of the brain that generates consciousness. The effect is essentially the same. The state of the body affects the state of the mind, but it’s via an abstract mechanism instead of a purely physical or mental one.

Two-Way Causality

Our experience of the world suggests that physical states can affect mental states and that mental states can affect physical states. For example, experienced meditators can regulate their body temperatures through deliberate mental focus. Even regular people can make their mouth water simply by envisioning a juicy steak when they’re hungry. Or, take one of the most significant examples of mental states appearing to affect physical states: The placebo effect. How is it possible?

Well, just like the outputs of the universal function can be mental or physical, so can the inputs! The universe can have information about physical and mental states. So information about mental states might also be used as inputs to generate outputs.

Let’s take the placebo effect as an example. Simply taking a sugar pill is not enough to generate improvement in one’s symptoms. It also requires belief that the pill will help you. So, in order to generate the desired result, the universal function requires an informational input from both physical and mental states. Having only the correct physical state or mental states is not enough. Both must be in the correct state.

Two-way causality accords with our experiences, and contrary to the claims of some philosophers, it doesn’t need to break the laws of physics. The laws of physics can simply be expanded to include mental states as well. Instead of calling them “the laws of physics”, perhaps it would be better to call them “the laws of the universe” to include governance over all kinds of phenomena.

Free Will

Another benefit of the theory is that it allows for the existence of free will in a rather straightforward way. If mental states are used as inputs into the universal function, then what if some mental states are volitional? If not all mental states are determined by previous states of the universe, it could allow for volitionally-determined mental states. Those volitional states would then be used as an input to generate a particular output.

For example, whether or not you eat dinner at 6pm or 7pm might not be a predetermined fact. The universe could require a volitional state in order to determine which output gets generated. In other words, information about your choice, whether 6pm or 7pm, will determine what happens. Without your choice, you might not have dinner at all.

Now, I don’t currently have an answer to the question of free will, but I think it’s a strong benefit of this theory that it can seamlessly allow for its existence. The mechanics of indirect interaction gives us a concrete mechanism for minds to affect the world, whether that mind is controlling its mental states or is merely a predetermined output of the universal function.

Theoretical Flexibility

The theory I’ve just explained is extremely flexible. It allows for the existence of arbitrarily many ontological categories. If you think the world is constituted by only physical and mental stuff, it can work. If you think Platonic objects also exist, that’s fine too. If you think there are 100 other categories, all of which interact with each other, that’s fine as well. The ontological categories can be completely separated, so long as there’s a simple fact about them: The universal function has information about their state. That isn’t difficult to imagine, since in this theory, the universal function is the thing outputting the different states into their various ontological categories in the first place!

Indirect interaction also allows for a plausible story of emergence. If might be the case that the universe began with only physical phenomena and laws. Then, over time, as matter rearranged itself, a pattern of information yielded the very first conscious output. If this actually happened, then other types of emergence might also be waiting to come into existence with the correct informational input.

The theory works whether the interaction is causally one-directional or two-directional.

It also allows for the existence of free will.

It’s also consistent with the modern conception of the relationship between body and mind that views the body/brain as fundamental. It might be that the physical state of the brain entirely determines mental states. Mental phenomena can be purely epiphenomenal. Indirect interaction simply gives a causal mechanism for brain to affect mind. So if stimulating one area of the brain causes changes in mental phenomena, it’s not because some particular gland starts secreting consciousness a bit differently. It’s because the underlying physical structure of the brain changes, which changes the information going into the universal function.

This mechanism is even consistent with idealism. Even if one rejects the existence of physical stuff completely, the regularity of mental phenomena still requires explanation. If the laws of the universe govern only mental phenomena, because that’s all that exists, it might be that the underlying mechanics are the same: state + information + laws -> output.

It also explains why the interaction problem has lasted so long. People keep looking in the wrong places. While there’s a tight correlation between brain states and mental states, you’ll never find consciousness within the brain. You’ll only find correlating physical states. The mechanism is not within the skull, because consciousness is simply not a physical phenomenon. You can’t see its generation from the outside. There are no levers, pulleys, glands, or fluids that contain it. That’s because the relationship between brain and mind is abstract. Information about the physical state is not to be found within the physical state.

There are many parts of this theory that one can object to. Perhaps you think the laws of physics aren’t real, for example. Or perhaps you think the continuity of time makes this story less plausible. The details don’t matter. The point is to paint a picture of at least one conceivable mechanism for objects in different ontological categories to effectively interact with each other. If such a picture exists, then the interaction problem is not a refutation of substance dualism or pluralism.