Information is neither matter nor energy, although it needs matter to be embodied and energy to be communicated. Why should it become the preferred basis for all philosophy?
As most all of us know, matter and energy are conserved. This means that there is just the same total amount of matter and energy today as there was at the universe origin.
But then what accounts for all the change that we see, the new things under the sun?
It is information, which is not conserved and has been increasing since the beginning of time.
What is changing is the arrangement of the matter into what we can call information structures. What is emerging is new information. What idealists and holists see is that emergence of immaterial information.
Living things, you and I, are dynamic growing information structures,
forms through which matter and energy continuously flow.
And it is information processing that controls those flows!
Information is the modern
spirit, the
ghost in the machine, the
mind in the body. It is the
soul, and when we die, it is our information that perishes, unless the future preserves it. The matter remains.