| Materialism/Physicalism | Cannot account for information as ontologically primitive | A1.3, A2.2, A5.1, A5.2, A8-A10, A11-A13, A14-A19 | Rejects A1.3: Treats information as derivative of matter, but matter requires information for definition | Rejects A2.2: Has no self-grounding principle; matter just “is” without explanation | Rejects A5.1-5.2: Cannot explain observer-dependent quantum collapse without circularity | If consciousness is just brain states, who is experiencing the brain states? Infinite regress. | Qualia, intentionality, mathematical truth, semantic content, free will, moral realism |
| Idealism | Cannot explain intersubjective regularities and shared physical world | A2.1, A7.1-7.3 | Struggles with A2.1: If all is mind, what is the substrate of information? Whose mind? | Why do minds share the same physical laws? Coincidence or hidden realism? | Cannot explain why matter appears with such stubborn consistency | If world is purely mental, why cannot we think it differently? Why pain? | Physical regularities, why evil exists in a mental world, the solipsism threat |
| Dualism (Cartesian) | Interaction problem: how do two incommensurable substances causally relate? | A4.1 (parsimony), integration axioms | Violates A4.1: Postulates two substances when one (information) suffices | No mechanism for mind-body interaction; pineal gland is not an answer | Creates explanatory gap it cannot bridge | If substances are truly different, interaction is either miraculous or impossible | How mental causation works, where interaction occurs, neural correlates |
| Panpsychism | Combination problem: how do micro-experiences combine into unified consciousness? | Partial on A5.1-5.2, A8-A10 | Cannot explain how electron proto-experience becomes human unified experience | Lacks mechanism for integration; mere aggregation is not combination | Why does combination happen at all? Why not just many separate experiences? | If everything is conscious, consciousness becomes explanatorily vacuous | Unified consciousness, why some combinations yield experience and others do not |
| Emergentism | Emergence describes correlation but not identity; leaves explanatory gap | A1.3, A2.2, A5.1-5.2, A8-A10 | Rejects A1.3: Treats information as emergent from non-informational base | Rejects A2.2: No self-grounding; emergence from what ultimate ground? | ”Emergence” is a label for the mystery, not an explanation of it | Strong emergence is either magic or reduces to weak emergence | Why emergence happens, downward causation mechanism, consciousness |
| Process Philosophy | May lose ground for objective truth; God becomes too finite | Partial on A2.2, some theological axioms | God is not self-grounding but dependent on the process | Truth becomes relative to process stages | May collapse into relativism if not carefully articulated | If all is process, what grounds the process itself? | Absolute truth, why the process has these features, divine aseity |
| Classical Theism | Most compatible; faces problem of evil and divine hiddenness | Generally compatible; faces evidential challenges | Problem of evil: Why would all-good God allow suffering? | Divine hiddenness: Why is God not more obvious? | Faith-reason tension: How much can be known vs believed? | Must reconcile divine simplicity with multiple attributes | Why evil exists (theodicy), why God is hidden, hell |
| Deism | Impersonal God is arbitrary; why create then abandon? | A5.1-5.2, observer participation axioms, providence axioms | Rejects divine-human participation; God is absent | No explanation for ongoing coherence maintenance | Arbitrary: Why would God create and then be uninvolved? | A God who creates but does not care seems internally incoherent | Ongoing providence, answered prayer, miracles, relationship with God |
| Pantheism | Loses personal God; problem of evil becomes internal to God | Creator-creature distinction axioms, moral axioms | If God IS universe, evil is part of God - divine evil | No transcendence means no judge, no redemption | Personal relationship with universe is incoherent | Divine nature includes all imperfections of universe | Moral accountability, redemption, personal relationship with God, evil |
| Panentheism | Complex position; may be unstable between theism and pantheism | May compromise divine aseity | If world is in God, does God depend on world? | May collapse into either pantheism or theism | God becoming along with world threatens divine perfection | Relationship between God and world is ambiguous | Divine independence, how world affects God without limiting God |
| Atheistic Naturalism | Cannot ground information, consciousness, or objective morality | A1.3, A2.2, A5.1-5.2, A8-A19 | Rejects A1.3: No primitive information; but matter requires information | Rejects A2.2: No self-grounding; universe is brute fact | Rejects A17-19: No objective morality; moral anti-realism follows | If nature is all, rationality is just chemistry - self-defeating | Why anything exists, consciousness, rationality, morality, meaning |
| Nihilism | Self-refuting: claims meaning in asserting meaninglessness | A3.1, A14-A19 (all meaning/purpose axioms) | Asserts “there is no truth” as a truth claim - contradiction | Claims life has no meaning, which is itself a meaningful claim | Cannot be lived consistently; nihilists still eat, plan, argue | Performative contradiction: uses meaning to deny meaning | Its own assertions, why anyone should accept nihilism, lived experience |
| Existentialism | No ground for choosing one meaning over another | A14-A16 (teleology), A17-A19 (moral realism) | Rejects objective purpose; meaning is arbitrary invention | Why is creating meaning better than not? No answer. | Authenticity is valued, but why? Smuggles in objective value. | Values authenticity while denying objective values | Why we should create meaning, why authenticity matters, moral obligation |
| Hard Determinism | Undermines rationality and moral responsibility | A5.1-5.2, A6.1-6.3, A11-A13, A17-A19 | If thoughts are determined, rational deliberation is illusion | Rejects A11-13: No genuine agency or freedom | Moral responsibility becomes impossible; praise/blame meaningless | Claims to have rationally concluded determinism, but conclusion was determined | Rational deliberation, moral responsibility, punishment justification |
| Eliminative Materialism | Self-refuting: uses beliefs to deny beliefs exist | A5.1-5.2, A8-A13 | Asserts “beliefs do not exist” - but that is a belief | Rejects A5.1: Denies observers while being an observer | Cannot coherently state its own position | Self-refuting at the most basic level | Its own assertions, science (which requires beliefs), communication |
| Functionalism | Absent qualia problem; Chinese Room; substrate matters | Partial on A5.1-5.2, A8-A10 | Functional duplicate might have no experience (zombie problem) | Chinese Room: Function without understanding | Ignores substrate; but substrate determines experience | Confuses doing with being; function is not identical to experience | Why function produces qualia, substrate independence, Chinese Room |
| Buddhist Metaphysics | No ultimate ground; cannot explain why anything exists | A2.2 (self-grounding), A1.1 partial | Dependent origination requires no first cause - infinite regress | No-self doctrine undermines who attains enlightenment | Why is there dependent origination rather than nothing? | Who is liberated if there is no self? | Why anything exists, what undergoes rebirth if no self, ground of being |
| Advaita Vedanta | If world is illusion, why does it appear? Maya is unexplained | A1.2 (distinguishability), relative reality axioms | Rejects A1.2: Ultimate reality is non-dual, distinctions are unreal | Maya (illusion) is neither real nor unreal - incoherent third option | Why does Brahman appear as world if Brahman is perfect? | Uses distinctions to deny distinctions; teaches non-duality dualistically | Why illusion appears, relationship of maya to Brahman, individual experience |