[deleted]
"Epiontic" is a useful concept indeed. I believe Paul Davies has gotten closer to this answer than anyone:
"There's this notion that there's a unique history that connects the Big Bang, the origin of the universe, with the present state of the universe. Quantum physics says that's just a load of baloney -- that there's an infinite number of histories. They're all folded in together, and if you know nothing at all about the past of the universe, you must take all of these histories. And when we make observations, what we're doing is 'chipping away' at these histories and removing some of them .... The laws start out unfocused and fuzzy, [but] eventually there's life and observers, that link back, just like in quantum mechanics, back in time, through making their observations, and help 'sharpen' those laws in a way that's self-consistent with their own existence.... You have to have this. If we're trying to explain why does the universe exist in its present form, and in particular why does it contain life and observers, obviously those life and observers have to be relevant to the laws that give rise to them. Because there's no other way you can have an explanation for the universe from entirely within it."