The Information Coherence Hypothesis: A Unified Informational Framework for Reality, Consciousness, and Meaning
PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation) March 1, 2026 Den Brause
The Information Coherence Hypothesis (ICH) proposes that information—understood as a fundamental substrate of distinctions and relations, not as Shannon data—forms the primary fabric of reality. It presents a multi-level architecture of nested informational spaces governed by twenty principles, including an Information Spectrum from structural to transcendent information. Consciousness is characterized as a local metapattern of maximal integrated information. The framework introduces concepts such as informational attractors, temporal integration as an emergent property, and a Central Information Metapattern grounded in a triadic ontology. It demonstrates structural convergence with seven independent lines of contemporary research and offers 18 testable predictions across AI topology, neural integration, sleep architecture, humor, and contemplative neuroscience.