Black Holes, Modal Collapse, and the Recycling of Possibility: A Metaphysical Reinterpretation of the Information Paradox

The Black Hole Information Paradox arises from treating information as a physical property instantiated by matter. This paper offers a metaphysical reinterpretation that preserves all empirical commitments of contemporary physics while dissolving the conceptual tension. I argue that information is best understood as structured possibility—a pattern of distinctions across a modal space—rather than as a physical substance. Physical systems instantiate this modal structure by actualising one state from a range of possibilities. Black holes locally collapse this modal range to a single allowable state (MV1), eliminating informational distinctions at the level of the infalling system. However, this local collapse does not threaten global informational coherence: the black hole recycles the collapsed modal residue—defined as the minimal structural trace that preserves global modal relations—re-expanding modal richness through Hawking radiation. This framework is compatible with unitarity, holographic intuitions, and the Page curve, while offering a deeper ontological account of why information is globally conserved. Entanglement is reinterpreted as a shared modal structure; when one particle enters a black hole, the shared modal structure is no longer jointly instantiated, ending correlations without invoking nonlocal signalling. Black holes thus function as regulators of modal structure rather than destroyers of physical information. The paradox dissolves once information is understood as modal rather than material.