The Primacy of Information Over Matter

In this episode, host Michael Egnor continues a conversation with Dr. William Dembski, a senior fellow at Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, about the relationship between the mind and the body. Dembski argues that if information is considered fundamental rather than matter, it dissolves the mind-body problem. He suggests that information is not constrained by the speed of light and can be exchanged through correlations, as seen in quantum mechanics. Dembski also discusses the concept of free will and how materialism denies its existence. He explores the idea of information as a fundamental concept in the natural world, analogous to energy, and discusses conservation of information and its relevance to Darwinian evolution. Dembski concludes by suggesting that an informational realist perspective is more open to a spiritual or theistic worldview than materialism.

Additional Resources

• Minding the Brain: Models of the Mind, Information, and Empirical Science
• The Design Inference by William A. Dembski and Winston Ewert
• Michael Egnor at Discovery Institute
• William A. Dembski at Discovery Institute