A new way to understand yourself
Not spirit.
Not supernatural.
Informational.
For thousands of years, humans have used words such as spirit and soul to describe something real but difficult to explain: memory, identity, thought, agency, inner experience and continuity. The Informational Self asks whether these phenomena are better understood not as a supernatural substance, but as information embodied and processed by living systems.
Discover the informational self →
A secular perspective on identity, meaning and continuity.
The phenomena are real. The supernatural explanation may not be.
Life. Memory. Identity.
The central idea
The central proposal is a reclassification: many phenomena historically attributed to spirit or soul may be better explained as embodied informational processes. DNA carries information across generations; brains encode and reconstruct memory; learning changes neural networks; language and culture transmit information between people and across time. No supernatural entity is required by these explanations.
Continuity without supernaturalism
We are part of a continuing informational history.
Every person is a living continuation of billions of years of accumulated and selected biological information, joined to generations of accumulated cultural information and a lifetime of personally acquired information.
We are information inherited.
We are information becoming.
We are information transmitted.
We inherit it. We embody it. We process it. We change it. We transmit portions of it onward.
This is not immortality of consciousness. It is continuity without supernaturalism.
Death ends the integrated information-processing life of the individual. But it does not erase all the information that constituted and was produced by that person. Biological information, ideas, knowledge, creations, relationships, memories and effects on other people can continue.
We are not merely things that eventually leave information behind.
We are already part of its continuation.
Follow the questions
A different way to see yourself.
Begin anywhere. Each question opens a path through the essays and conversations behind Informational Self.
01
What is the informational self?
A living person remembers, learns, feels and acts. The informational perspective connects these capacities to the patterns and processes of the brain and body.
02
Why did we imagine a spirit?
Thoughts and memories are real, yet we cannot hold them like objects. Explore how the language of information can clarify experiences long described as spiritual.
03
What makes you, you?
Your identity develops through memory, temperament, relationships and action. The living organism that sustains these processes is part of the self.
04
What continues beyond a life?
Genes, ideas, skills and influence can pass between people and generations. These forms of continuity can outlast the individual who carried them.
05
Where does meaning come from?
Love, curiosity, creativity, care—and for many people, creating and raising children—can give a life direction. Reproduction is a distinctive form of informational continuity: biological information crosses generations while language, knowledge, culture, habits and values can be transmitted, transformed and carried onward. It is one path to continuity, not an obligation and not the only path.
Life, continuity & reproduction
What passes through us can become something new.
A child develops a new self through inherited information, learning and relationships. Parenting, teaching and creating are different ways of contributing to lives beyond our own.
Informational continuity gives us a way to value that contribution without promising personal immortality or making parenthood an obligation.
About the project
A naturalistic philosophy.
An open inquiry.
Informational Self is a philosophical project by Daniel Lachance, exploring identity, meaning and continuity through the organization of living systems.
The starting point is concrete: biological information is physically embodied. The broader interpretation of the self is a philosophical proposal, open to criticism and refinement.
