The Observer Who Cannot Be Described by Physics: An Argument from the Insufficiency of Physical Description

The article proposes an argument from the insufficiency of physical description: physics is necessary but incomplete. A thought experiment is used — a researcher observing the Earth from afar and convinced that only physical laws exist. He sees radio signals, motions, thermal patches, structures. All of this he can describe physically. But he does not see messages, goals, norms, persons — he sees only the correlates of meaning, not meaning itself. Meaning is not a physical property of a signal. This is the first step: physics describes the carrier, but not what is recorded on it. The second step turns to the researcher himself. Is he only a physical system? A sensor — yes. A biological organism — more complex, but still described by biology. But a researcher poses questions, discriminates, interprets, acknowledges the norm of truth, sets goals, reflects. These predicates are not physical events in the strict sense. The act of cognition is an external condition of the possibility of physics, not its internal element. Three levels are introduced: physics, biology, civilization. Each adds a new type of predicates not derivable from the previous one — an ontological jump, not emergence. Even a minimal remote researcher exhibits civilizational predicates. Consequence: EFOS as the source of all projections is all the more not described by physical laws. This is not a rejection of physics but an indication of its place in the hierarchy of levels. Three objections are examined: change of description level, the possibility of fully describing the observer by physics, and the charge of metaphysics. The answer: the act of cognition is a transcendental condition of physics, not an internal gap in it. Part II compares the argument with the approaches of Chalmers, Jackson, Levine, and List.