On naturalism and consciousness

[Mudhammam]

By metainformation, I mean information about information: where, exactly, does it come from? Why does it exist? What, if anything, does it "really" represent?
Is it really just photons entering the eye in a physically monist universe, or is the entire physical universe the idealization of raw information that itself is not part of such a framework?

There's a part of me that thinks such an "ultimate" or "ideal reality" is fundamentally unknowable, yet I'm also inclined to the notion that such a concept is also fundamentally meaningless... that "ultimate reality" really is what we discover through the our instruments, the telescope, microscope, mathematical models, etc... perhaps it is, similar to the ancient suspicions of Democritus and the Epicureans, "nothing but" a field of wavicles in perpetual flux.

It follows just fine. It means that you have accepted that the physical universe exists as something beyond experience, concept or idea, and that our perceptions are representations of information from that universe. So you must be either a physical monist or a dualist, but cannot be an idealist.

Yeah, I think I identify most with the writings of physical monists.