Selection as Ontological Primitive: Toward a Post-Physicalist Metaphysics

Contemporary metaphysics faces a persistent impasse between physicalism, which struggles to accommodate consciousness and semantic content, and various forms of dualism or panpsychism, which struggle to establish causal relevance. This paper introduces Selective Reality Theory (SRT), a novel ontological framework that proposes selection as the fundamental primitive underlying both physical matter and phenomenal experience. Drawing on Whitehead’s process philosophy, quantum decoherence theory (specifically Quantum Darwinism), and information-theoretic thermodynamics, we develop a tripartite ontology consisting of the Potential Domain (L0), the Manifest Domain (L1), and the Convergence Domain (L2). We posit that "existence" is not a static property of substances but a dynamic artifact of selection processes anchored by a "Ghost Operator" (G). This framework dissolves the hard problem of consciousness by re-describing it as a category error—mistaking the selection process for its output—and offers a unified, formalizable mechanism for how "bits" of information become "its" of physical reality (Wheeler's It from Bit). We conclude by demonstrating how SRT resolves the tension between causal closure and mental efficacy through the concept of "Ontological Friction."