Absolute truth


The CTMU is intended to constitute absolute truth. This is required for it to be a true Theory of Everything; if it did not constitute absolute truth, then its truth could be relativized to a partial context within reality at large, in which case it would not be a theory of everything.

Langan contends that a kind of absolute truth or knowledge is a requisite of our ability to sustain a perceptually consistent universe:

    To perceive one and the same reality, human beings need a kind of "absolute knowledge" wired into their minds and nervous systems. The structure and physiology of their brains, nerves and sense organs provide them, at least in part, with elementary cognitive and perceptual categories and relationships in terms of which to apprehend the world. This "absolute" kind of knowledge is what compels the perceptions and logical inferences of any number of percipients to be mutually consistent, and to remain consistent over time and space. Without the absoluteness of such knowledge - without its universality and invariance - we could not share a common reality.

The task, then, is to construct a theory of this absolute knowledge. To do this, Langan argues, it is necessary to formulate the theory as a certain kind of tautology. This is because, he contends, (1) tautologies constitute absolute truth, and (2) any reasonable definition of "absolute truth" amounts to tautology.

In logic, a tautology is a sentence which is true under every assignment of true or false to its variables. For example, "A or not-A" (the law of the excluded middle) is a tautology because it is true regardless of whether A is true or false. That tautologies constitute absolute truth, says Langan, follows from their status in 2-valued logic:

    Indeed, tautologies comprise the axioms and theorems of 2-valued logic itself, and because all meaningful theories necessarily conform to 2-valued logic, define the truth concept for all of the sciences. From mathematics and physics to biology and psychology, logical tautologies reign supreme and inviolable.

Further, continues Langan, tautologies are "absolute truth" not only with respect to logic, but with respect to the system of reality at large, where true (T) and false (F) correspond to systemic inclusion and exclusion:

    Because a tautology is an axiom of 2-valued logic, violating it disrupts the T/F distinction and results in the corruption of informational boundaries between perceptual and cognitive predicates recognized or applied in the system, as well as between each predicate and its negation. Thus, the observable fact that perceptual boundaries are intact across reality at large implies that no tautology within its syntax, or set of structural and functional rules, has been violated; indeed, if such a tautology ever were violated, then reality would disintegrate due to corruption of the informational boundaries which define it.

Conversely, to show that any reasonable definition of "absolute truth" amounts to tautology, Langan reverses this reasoning:

    Since absolute truth must be universal, it is always true regardless of the truth values of its variables (where the variables actually represent objects and systems for which specific state-descriptions vary in space and time with respect to truth value). Moreover, it falls within its own scope and is thus self-referential. By virtue of its universality and self-reference, it is a universal element of reality syntax, the set of structural and functional rules governing the spatial structure and temporal evolution of reality. As such, it must be unfalsifiable, any supposition of its falsehood leading directly to a reductio ad absurdum. And to ice the cake, it is unavoidably implicated in its own justification; were it ever to be violated, the T/F boundary would be disrupted, and this would prevent it (or anything else) from being proven. Therefore, it is an active constraint in its own proof, and thus possesses all the characteristics of a tautology.

The specific kind of tautology as which the CTMU is formulated Langan calls a supertautology, denoting the reality-theoretic counterpart of a logical tautology.

Infocognition


Langan begins by recognizing the pioneering work of Physicist John Wheeler who united the world of information theory with quantum mechanics ("It from Bit").

"All things physical are information-theoretic in origin and this is a participatory universe... Observer participancy gives rise to information; and information gives rise to physics."

In "How come existence", John Wheeler wrote:

"No escape is evident from four conclusions: (1) The world cannot be a giant machine, ruled by any pre-established continuum physical law. (2) There is no such thing at the microscopic level as space or time or spacetime continuum. (3) The familiar probability function or functional, and wave equation or functional wave equation, of standard quantum theory provide mere continuum idealizations and by reason of this circumstance conceal the information-theoretic source from which they derive. (4) No element in the description of physics shows itself as closer to primordial than the elementary quantum phenomenon, that is, the elementary device-intermediated act of posing a yes-no physical question and eliciting an answer or, in brief, the elementary act of observer participancy. Otherwise stated, every physical quantity, every it, derives its ultimate significance from bits, binary yes-or-no indications, a conclusion which we epitomize in the phrase, it from bit."

The CTMU builds upon this work by retooling the information concept to incorporate reflexive self-processing in a reality-theoretic context so as to make it "self-transducing information", where information and cognition are recursively inter-defined, their nexus point is infocognition. A quantum of infocognition is a syntactic operator or a noeon.
Quotes

"As readers of Noesis will recall, this crucial redefinition begins with a mutual, recursive interdefinition of information and cognition within a "reified tautology" called a quantum transducer. The quantum transducer, being paradoxiform by direct analogy with tautologically-based inference, models the way subjectively-tautological cognitive syntaxes transduce information in time. The universality of this model allows reality to be reduced to it, and thus to (cognitive) information. "Information" is the objective aspect of the quantum transducer for itself and for all others; it is cognition-for-cognition, equating generalistically to a cognitive identity relation on that part of reality to which it corresponds (i.e., the part containing all the transducers playing active and passive roles in it)."Langan, 1992, Noesis 76

"Because cognition and generic information transduction are identical up to isomorphism – after all, cognition is just the specific form of information processing that occurs in a mind – information processing can be described as “generalized cognition”, and the coincidence of information and processor can be referred to as infocognition. Reality thus consists of a single “substance”, infocognition, with two aspects corresponding to transduction and being transduced. Describing reality as infocognition thus amounts to (infocognitive) dual aspect monism. Where infocognition equals the distributed generalized self-perception and self-cognition of reality, infocognitive monism implies a stratified form of “panpsychism” in which at least three levels of self-cognition can be distinguished with respect to scope, power and coherence: global, agentive and subordinate.

[...]

Retooling the information concept consists of three steps. First, it must be equipped with the means of its own transduction or transformative processing. Where information transduction is (cognitively) recognized as generalized cognition, this amounts to replacing it with a dual-aspect quantum of reflexivity, infocognition, which embodies telic feedback. Second, its bit structure, a simplistic and rather uninspired blend of 2-valued propositional logic and probability theory, must be extended to accommodate logic as a whole, including (1) predicate logic, (2) model theory and (3) language theory, broadly including the theories of mathematical languages, metalanguages and generative grammars. After all, since information does nothing but attribute linguistically-organized predicates to objects in the context of models, its meaning involves the mathematics of predicates, languages and models. And third, it must be generalized to an ultimate ancestral medium, telesis, from which cognitive syntax and its informational content arise by specificative feedback as part of a unified complex…a recursive coupling of information and metainformation, or transductive syntax.

[...]

The answer is hiding in the question. Laws do not stand on their own, but must be defined with respect to the objects and attributes on which they act and which they accept as parameters. Similarly, objects and attributes do not stand on their own, but must be defined with respect to the rules of structure, organization and transformation that govern them. It follows that the active medium of cross-definition possesses logical primacy over laws and arguments alike, and is thus pre-informational and pre-nomological in nature…i.e., telic. Telesis, which can be characterized as “infocognitive potential”, is the primordial active medium from which laws and their arguments and parameters emerge by mutual refinement or telic recursion."Langan, 2002, PCID, pg. 33-35

"6) Even if CTMU were a definition rather than a theory, definitions are necessary components of theories. There is an inclusory relation, not a total distinction, between the two. In fact, the CTMU can be characterized as a THEORY of how the mind DEFINES and IS DEFINED by the universe. If you must, re-read Noesis 46 and 47."Langan, 1991, Noesis 58
Other Sources

"The similarity between the ideas of John Wheeler and other leading scientists and some ancient philosophies and scriptures are striking. [...] And as we do, let us not forget that knowledge is not all objective. Subject knowledge (call it intuitive, instinctive or revelationary) and objective knowledge (call it rational or scientific) go hand in hand. Observers, whether they be fundamental particles or human beings need to be brought into the picture too for it is them and their sensory and perceptional tools that give rise to the illusion of time. The digitization of perception in terms of bits of information may well be the way to go to complete the picture. Quite relevant to this effort are the provocative ideas contained Stephen Wolfram's book, A New Kind of Science. That is because, he has laid out the foundations for a program for a renewed understanding of all aspects of Nature recognizing that everything in Nature is ultimately digital and therefore the best tools to probe into its secrets are digital concepts and computer algorithms. This is especially appealing to the Hindu mind for it recognizes that the very first step in creation from a state of non-duality (Advaita) to a state of duality (Dvaita) is a binary process."

Causality


The CTMU describes causality in a decision-theoretic context, and explores the paradox of reverse causality and free-will in his paper, The Resolution of Newcomb's Paradox.

Langan makes a distinction between three types of determinacy:

1) Indeterminacy

2) (External) Determinacy

3a) Self-Determinacy

    3b) Intrinsic Self-Determinacy

Contents

    1 Quotes
    2 Contrasted with Probability & Statistics
    3 Relevance to Teleologic Evolution
    4 Causal Decision Theory

Quotes

"Given an object, event, set or process, it is usually assumed to have come about in one or both of just two ways: (1) its existence owes to something prior and external to it; (2) it is uncaused and sprang forth spontaneously and pointlessly in a something-from-nothing, rabbit-out-of-the-hat sort of way, as if by magic. A similar assumption is made with regard to its behavior: either it is controlled by laws that are invariant with respect to it and therefore existentially external to it (even though they control it through its intrinsic structure and properties), or it is behaving in an utterly aleatory and uncontrolled fashion. This has given rise to a dichotomy: determinacy versus randomness, or a total absence of causation versus causation by laws that are ultimately independent of the determined entity."

"Events are either causally connected or they are not, and if they are not, then the future would seem to be utterly independent of the past. Either we use causality to connect the dots and draw a coherent picture of time, or we settle for a random scattering of independent dots without spatial or temporal pattern and thus without meaning."

"Self-determinacy is like a circuitous boundary separating the poles of the above dichotomy…a reflexive and therefore closed boundary, the formation of which involves neither preexisting laws nor external structure. Thus, it is the type of causal attribution suitable for a perfectly self-contained system."

"Where a system determines its own composition, properties and evolution independently of external laws or structures, it can determine its own meaning, and ensure by its self-configuration that its inhabitants are crucially implicated therein."

"If determinacy corresponds to an arrow of causation pointing to an event from a surrounding medium, then indeterminacy corresponds to no arrow at all (acausality), and self-determinacy to a looping arrow or complex of arrows involving some kind of feedback. But cybernetic feedback, which involves information passed among controllers and regulated entities through a conductive or transmissive medium, is meaningless where such entities do not already exist, and where no sensory or actuative protocol has yet been provided. With respect to the origin of any self-determinative, perfectly self-contained system, the feedback is ontological in nature and therefore more than cybernetic. Accordingly, ontological feedback bears description as “precybernetic” or “metacybernetic”."

"Ordinary feedback, describing the evolution of mechanical (and with somewhat less success, biological) systems, is cyclical or recursive. The system and its components repeatedly call on internal structures, routines and actuation mechanisms in order to acquire input, generate corresponding internal information, internally communicate and process this information, and evolve to appropriate states in light of input and programming. However, where the object is to describe the evolution of a system from a state in which there is no information or programming (information-processing syntax) at all, a new kind of feedback is required: telic feedback."
Contrasted with Probability & Statistics

"Let us enlarge on the distinction between statistics and causality. Causality is just the most concise exact description of a set of statistical correlations, and can be regarded as the out put of an algorithm on statistical input. This algorithm, "logical induction", includes Occam's Razor and its metasyntax. What enters as "probabilistic dependency" emerges as "logical dependency"; the many-valued logic of the former, wherein probabilities are defined as truthvalues, has become two-valued by the formation of distin guishing predicates (or conversion of truthvalues to quantifiers). So logical dependency, or causality, is the inductive transform of probabilistic dependency. This transformation, being largely based on past data, can be rendered inconsistent by new data."
Relevance to Teleologic Evolution

"Teleologic Evolution (TE) is a process of alternating replication and selection through which the universe "creates itself" along with the life it contains. This process, called telic recursion, is neither random nor deterministic in the usual senses, but self-directed. Telic recursion occurs on global and local levels respectively associated with the evolution of nature and the evolution of life; the evolution of life thus mirrors that of the universe in which it occurs. TE improves on traditional approaches to teleology by extending the concept of nature in a way eliminating any need for "supernatural" intervention, and improves on neo-Darwinism by addressing the full extent of nature and its causal dynamics.

In the past, teleology and evolution were considered mutually exclusory. This was at least partially because they seem to rely on different models of causality. As usually understood, teleology appears to require a looping kind of causality whereby ends are immanent everywhere in nature, even at the origin (hence the causal loop). Evolution, on the other hand, seems to require a combination of ordinary determinacy and indeterminacy in which the laws of nature deterministically guide natural selection, while indeterminacy describes the "random" or "chance" dimension of biological mutation.

In contrast, the phrase teleologic evolution expresses an equivalence between teleology and evolution based on extended, refined concepts of nature and causality. This equivalence is expressed in terms of a self-contained logic-based model of reality identifying theory, universe and theory-universe correspondence, and depicting reality as a self-configuring system requiring no external creator. Instead, reality and its self-creative principle are identified through a contraction of the mapping which formerly connected the source and output of the teleology function. In effect, the creative principle itself becomes the ultimate form of reality.

The self-configuration of reality involves an intrinsic mode of causality, self-determinacy, which is logically distinct from conventional concepts of determinacy and indeterminacy but can appear as either from a localized vantage. Determinacy and indeterminacy can thus be viewed as "limiting cases" associated with at least two distinct levels of systemic self-determinacy, global-distributed and local-nondistributed. The former level appears deterministic while the latter, which accommodates creative input from multiple quasi-independent sources, dynamically adjusts to changing conditions and thus appears to have an element of "randomness".

According to this expanded view of causality, the Darwinian processes of replication and natural selection occur on at least two mutually-facilitative levels associated with the evolution of the universe as a whole and the evolution of organic life. In addition, human technological and sociopolitical modes of evolution may be distinguished, and human intellectual evolution may be seen to occur on collective and individual levels. Because the TE model provides logical grounds on which the universe may be seen to possess a generalized form of intelligence, all levels of evolution are to this extent intelligently directed, catalyzed and integrated."

"The CTMU has a meta-Darwinian message: the universe evolves by hological self-replication and self-selection. Furthermore, because the universe is natural, its self-selection amounts to a cosmic form of natural selection. But by the nature of this selection process, it also bears description as intelligent self-design (the universe is “intelligent” because this is precisely what it must be in order to solve the problem of self-selection, the master-problem in terms of which all lesser problems are necessarily formulated). This is unsurprising, for intelligence itself is a natural phenomenon that could never have emerged in humans and animals were it not already a latent property of the medium of emergence. An object does not displace its medium, but embodies it and thus serves as an expression of its underlying syntactic properties. What is far more surprising, and far more disappointing, is the ideological conflict to which this has led. It seems that one group likes the term “intelligent” but is indifferent or hostile to the term “natural”, while the other likes “natural” but abhors “intelligent”. In some strange way, the whole controversy seems to hinge on terminology. Of course, it can be credibly argued that the argument actually goes far deeper than semantics… that there are substantive differences between the two positions. For example, some proponents of the radical Darwinian version of natural selection insist on randomness rather than design as an explanation for how new mutations are generated prior to the restrictive action of natural selection itself. But this is untenable, for in any traditional scientific context, “randomness” is synonymous with “indeterminacy” or “acausality”, and when all is said and done, acausality means just what it always has: magic. That is, something which exists without external or intrinsic cause has been selected for and brought into existence by nothing at all of a causal nature, and is thus the sort of something-from-nothing proposition favored, usually through voluntary suspension of disbelief, by frequenters of magic shows. Inexplicably, some of those taking this position nevertheless accuse of magical thinking anyone proposing to introduce an element of teleological volition to fill the causal gap. Such parties might object that by “randomness”, they mean not acausality but merely causal ignorance. However, if by taking this position they mean to belatedly invoke causality, then they are initiating a causal regress. Such a regress can take one of three forms: it can be infinite and open, it can terminate at a Prime Mover which itself has no causal explanation, or it can form some sort of closed cycle doubling as Prime Mover and that which is moved. But a Prime Mover has seemingly been ruled out by assumption, and an infinite open regress can be ruled out because its lack of a stable recursive syntax would make it impossible to form stable informational boundaries in terms of which to perceive and conceive of reality."

"You mention Bill Dembski’s 3-way distinction between determinacy, nondeterminacy (chance) and design. In the CTMU, this distinction comes down to the 3-way distinction between determinacy, nondeterminacy and self-determinacy, the last being associated with telic recursion and the others being secondarily defined with respect to it. Telic recursion is just another term for "metacausation"; instead of simply outputting the next state of a system, it outputs higher-order relationships between state and law (or state and syntax).

Regarding the distinction between origins and evolution, not too many people are clear on it. This distinction is based on the standard view of causality, in which there seems to be a clean distinction between the origin and application of causal principles, specifically first-order Markovian laws of nature. In the CTMU, origins distribute over causes in a new kind of structure called a conspansive manifold, and are therefore not cleanly distinguishable from causality. Both are products of a higher-order process, telic recursion. To put it in simpler terms, evolution consists of events which originate in causes which originate in (teleological) metacauses. So in the CTMU, to talk about evolution is to talk about metacausal origins by ontogenic transitivity."
Causal Decision Theory

"Causal decision theory adopts principles of rational choice that attend to an act's consequences. It maintains that an account of rational choice must use causality to identify the considerations that make a choice rational.

Given a set of options constituting a decision problem, decision theory recommends an option that maximizes utility, that is, an option whose utility equals or exceeds the utility of every other option. It evaluates an option's utility by calculating the option's expected utility. It uses probabilities and utilities of an option's possible outcomes to define an option's expected utility. The probabilities depend on the option. Causal decision theory takes the dependence to be causal rather than merely evidential."

God


Langan has described God as the global processor of the whole of reality, as the Primary Teleological Operator, the primary telor-syntactor, Global Operator-Definor, the SCSPL Global Operator-Designer, and as ultimately being identified with unbound telesis.
Quotes

"In keeping with its clear teleological import, the Telic Principle is not without what might be described as theological ramifications. For example, certain properties of the reflexive, self-contained language of reality – that it is syntactically self-distributed, self-reading, and coherently self-configuring and self-processing – respectively correspond to the traditional theological properties omnipresence, omniscience and omnipotence. While the kind of theology that this entails neither requires nor supports the intercession of any “supernatural” being external to the real universe itself, it does support the existence of a supraphysical being (the SCSPL global operator-designer) capable of bringing more to bear on localized physical contexts than meets the casual eye. And because the physical (directly observable) part of reality is logically inadequate to explain its own genesis, maintenance, evolution or consistency, it alone is incapable of properly containing the being in question."

"Question: Or, alternatively, does God instantaneously or non-spatiotemporally— completely, consistently, and comprehensively—reconfigure and reconstitute reality’s info-cognitive objects and relations?

Answer: The GOD, or primary teleological operator, is self-distributed at points of conspansion. This means that SCSPL evolves through its coherent grammatical processors, which are themselves generated in a background-free way by one-to-many endomorphism. The teleo-grammatic functionality of these processors is simply a localized "internal extension" of this one-to-many endomorphism; in short, conspansive spacetime ensures consistency by atemporally embedding the future in the past. Where local structure conspansively mirrors global structure, and global distributed processing "carries" local processing, causal inconsistencies cannot arise; because the telic binding process occurs in a spacetime medium consisting of that which has already been bound, consistency is structurally enforced."

"Question: If God does in fact continuously create reality on a global level such that all prior structure must be relativized and reconfigured, is there any room for free-will?

Answer: Yes, but we need to understand that free will is stratified. As a matter of ontological necessity, God, being ultimately identified with UBT, has "free will" on the teleological level...i.e., has a stratified choice function with many levels of coherence, up to the global level (which can take all lower levels as parameters). Because SCSPL local processing necessarily mirrors global processing - there is no other form which it can take - secondary telors also possess free will. In the CTMU, free will equates to self-determinacy, which characterizes a closed stratified grammar with syntactic and telic-recursive levels; SCSPL telors cumulatively bind the infocognitive potential of the ontic groundstate on these levels as it is progressively "exposed" at the constant distributed rate of conspansion."

"So the CTMU is essentially a theory of the relationship between mind and reality. In explaining this relationship, the CTMU shows that reality possesses a complex property akin to self-awareness. That is, just as the mind is real, reality is in some respects like a mind. But when we attempt to answer the obvious question "whose mind?", the answer turns out to be a mathematical and scientific definition of God. This implies that we all exist in what can be called "the Mind of God", and that our individual minds are parts of God's Mind. They are not as powerful as God's Mind, for they are only parts thereof; yet, they are directly connected to the greatest source of knowledge and power that exists. This connection of our minds to the Mind of God, which is like the connection of parts to a whole, is what we sometimes call the soul or spirit, and it is the most crucial and essential part of being human."

"Q: Does the CTMU allow for the existence of souls and reincarnation?

A: From the CTMU, there emerge multiple levels of consciousness. Human temporal consciousness is the level with which we're familiar; global (parallel) consciousness is that of the universe as a whole. The soul is the connection between the two...the embedment of the former in the latter.

In the CTMU, reality is viewed as a profoundly self-contained, self-referential kind of "language", and languages have syntaxes. Because self-reference is an abstract generalization of consciousness - consciousness is the attribute by virtue of which we possess self-awareness - conscious agents are "sublanguages" possessing their own cognitive syntaxes. Now, global consciousness is based on a complete cognitive syntax in which our own incomplete syntax can be embedded, and this makes human consciousness transparent to it; in contrast, our ability to access the global level is restricted due to our syntactic limitations.

Thus, while we are transparent to the global syntax of the global conscious agency "God", we cannot see everything that God can see. Whereas God perceives one total act of creation in a parallel distributed fashion, with everything in perfect superposition, we are localized in spacetime and perceive reality only in a succession of locally creative moments. This parallelism has powerful implications. When a human being dies, his entire history remains embedded in the timeless level of consciousness...the Deic level. In that sense, he or she is preserved by virtue of his or her "soul". And since the universe is a self-refining entity, that which is teleologically valid in the informational construct called "you" may be locally re-injected or redistributed in spacetime. In principle, this could be a recombinative process, with the essences of many people combining in a set of local injections or "reincarnations" (this could lead to strange effects...e.g., a single person remembering simultaneous "past lifetimes").

In addition, an individual human sublanguage might be vectored into an alternate domain dynamically connected to its existence in spacetime. In this scenario, the entity would emerge into an alternate reality based on the interaction between her local level of consciousness and the global level embedding it...i.e., based on the state of her "soul" as just defined. This may be the origin of beliefs regarding heaven, hell, purgatory, limbo and other spiritual realms."

"The universe can be described as a cybernetic system in which freedom and constraint are counterbalanced. The constraints function as structure; thus, the laws of physics are constraints which define the structure of spacetime, whereas freedom is that which is bound or logically quantified by the constraints in question. Now, since there is no real time scale external to reality, there is no extrinsic point in time at which the moment of creation can be located, and this invalidates phrases like "before reality existed" and "when reality created itself". So rather than asking "when" the universe came to be, or what existed "before" the universe was born, we must instead ask "what would remain if the structural constraints defining the real universe were regressively suspended?" First, time would gradually disappear, eliminating the "when" question entirely. And once time disappears completely, what remains is the answer to the "what" question: a realm of boundless potential characterized by a total lack of real constraint. In other words, the real universe timelessly emerges from a background of logically unquantified potential to which the concepts of space and time simply do not apply.

Now let's attend to your "how" question. Within a realm of unbound potential like the one from which the universe emerges, everything is possible, and this implies that "everything exists" in the sense of possibility. Some possibilities are self-inconsistent and therefore ontological dead ends; they extinguish themselves in the very attempt to emerge into actuality. But other possibilities are self-consistent and potentially self-configuring by internally defined evolutionary processes. That is, they predicate their own emergence according to their own internal logics, providing their own means and answering their own "hows". These possibilities, which are completely self-contained not only with respect to how, what, and when, but why, have a common structure called SCSPL (Self-Configuring Self-Processing Language). An SCSPL answers its own "why?" question with something called teleology; where SCSPL is "God" to whatever exists within it, teleology amounts to the "Will of God"."

"Since the meaning of life is a topic that has often been claimed by religion, we'll attempt to answer the second part with a bit of CTMU-style "logical theology".

Within each SCSPL system, subsystems sharing critical aspects of global structure will also manifest the self-configuration imperative of their inclusive SCSPL; that is, they exist for the purpose of self-actualization or self-configuration, and in self-configuring, contribute to the Self-configuration of the SCSPL as a whole. Human beings are such subsystems. The "purpose" of their lives, and the "meaning" of their existences, is therefore to self-actualize in a way consistent with global Self-actualization or teleology...i.e., in a way that maximizes global utility, including the utility of their fellow subsystems. Their existential justification is to help the universe, AKA God, express its nature in a positive and Self-beneficial way.

If they do so, then their "souls", or relationships to the overall System ("God"), attain a state of grace and partake of Systemic timelessness ("life eternal"). If, on the other hand, they do not - if they give themselves over to habitual selfishness at the expense of others and the future of their species - then they are teleologically devalued and must repair their connections with the System in order to remain a viable part of it. And if they do even worse, intentionally scarring the teleological ledger with a massive net loss of global utility, then unless they pursue redemption with such sincerety that their intense desire for forgiveness literally purges their souls, they face spiritual interdiction for the sake of teleological integrity."

"Such is the economy of human existence. Much of what we have been taught by organized religions is based on the illogical literalization of metaphorical aspects of their respective doctrines. But this much of it is true: we can attain a state of grace; we can draw near to God and partake of His eternal nature; we can fall from God's grace; we can lose our souls for doing evil. In all cases, we are unequivocally answerable to the System that grants and sustains our existence, and doing right by that System and its contents, including other subsystems like ourselves, is why we exist. Sometimes, "doing right" simply means making the best of a bad situation without needlessly propagating one's own misfortune to others; the necessary sufferance and nonpropagation of personal misfortune is also a source of grace. Further deontological insight requires an analysis of teleology and the extraction of its ethical implications.

Now for a couple of qualifiers. Because we are free, the teleologically consistent meaning of our lives is to some extent ours to choose, and is thus partially invested in the search for meaning itself. So the answer to the last part of your question is "yes, determining the details of your specific teleologically-consistent reason to exist is part of the reason for your existence". Secondly, because God is the cosmos and the human mind is a microcosm, we are to some extent our own judges. But this doesn't mean that we can summarily pardon ourselves for all of our sins; it simply means that we help to determine the system according to whose intrinsic criteria our value is ultimately determined. It is important for each of us to accept both of these ethical responsibilities."

"In the CTMU, “what God thinks is right” is encapsulated by the Telic Principle. This principle, a generalization of the Cosmological Anthropic Principle, asserts that by logical necessity, there exists a deic analogue of human volition called teleology.

However, due to the fact that God’s Self-creative freedom is distributed over the universe, i.e. His “Mind”, human volition arising within the universe is free to be locally out of sync with teleology. This requires a set of compensation mechanisms which ensure that teleology remains globally valid despite the localized failure of any individual or species to behave consistently with it. In part, these mechanisms determine the state of your relationship to God, i.e. your soul. If you are in harmony with teleology – with the self-realization and self-expression of God – then your soul is in a state of grace. If you are not, then your soul is in danger of interdiction by teleological mechanisms built into the structure of the universe." CTMU Q&A

"What does this say about God? First, if God is real, then God inheres in the comprehensive reality syntax, and this syntax inheres in matter. Ergo, God inheres in matter, and indeed in its spacetime substrate as defined on material and supramaterial levels. This amounts to pantheism, the thesis that God is omnipresent with respect to the material universe. Now, if the universe were pluralistic or reducible to its parts, this would make God, Who coincides with the universe itself, a pluralistic entity with no internal cohesion. But because the mutual syntactic consistency of parts is enforced by a unitary holistic manifold with logical ascendancy over the parts themselves - because the universe is a dual-aspected monic entity consisting of essentially homogeneous, self-consistent infocognition - God retains monotheistic unity despite being distributed over reality at large. Thus, we have a new kind of theology that might be called monopantheism, or even more descriptively, holopantheism. Second, God is indeed real, for a coherent entity identified with a self-perceptual universe is self-perceptual in nature, and this endows it with various levels of self-awareness and sentience, or constructive, creative intelligence. Indeed, without a guiding Entity whose Self-awareness equates to the coherence of self-perceptual spacetime, a self-perceptual universe could not coherently self-configure. Holopantheism is the logical, metatheological umbrella beneath which the great religions of mankind are unknowingly situated. Why, if there exists a spiritual metalanguage in which to establish the brotherhood of man through the unity of sentience, are men perpetually at each others' throats? Unfortunately, most human brains, which comprise a particular highly-evolved subset of the set of all reality-subsystems, do not fire in strict S-isomorphism much above the object level. Where we define one aspect of "intelligence" as the amount of global structure functionally represented by a given sÎS, brains of low intelligence are generally out of accord with the global syntax D(S). This limits their capacity to form true representations of S (global reality) by syntactic autology [d(S) Éd d(S)] and make rational ethical calculations. In this sense, the vast majority of men are not well-enough equipped, conceptually speaking, to form perfectly rational worldviews and societies; they are deficient in education and intellect, albeit remediably so in most cases. This is why force has ruled in the world of man…why might has always made right, despite its marked tendency to violate the optimization of global utility derived by summing over the sentient agents of S with respect to space and time.

Now, in the course of employing deadly force to rule their fellows, the very worst element of humanity – the butchers, the violators, i.e. those of whom some modern leaders and politicians are merely slightly-chastened copies – began to consider ways of maintaining power. They lit on religion, an authoritarian priesthood of which can be used to set the minds and actions of a populace for or against any given aspect of the political status quo. Others, jealous of the power thereby consolidated, began to use religion to gather their own "sheep", promising special entitlements to those who would join them…mutually conflicting promises now setting the promisees at each other’s throats. But although religion has often been employed for evil by cynics appreciative of its power, several things bear notice. (1) The abuse of religion, and the God concept, has always been driven by human politics, and no one is justified in blaming the God concept, whether or not they hold it to be real, for the abuses committed by evil men in its name. Abusus non tollit usum. (2) A religion must provide at least emotional utility for its believers, and any religion that stands the test of time has obviously been doing so. (3) A credible religion must contain elements of truth and undecidability, but no elements that are verifiably false (for that could be used to overthrow the religion and its sponsors). So by design, religious beliefs generally cannot be refuted by rational or empirical means.

Does the reverse apply? Can a denial of God be refuted by rational or empirical means? The short answer is yes; the refutation follows the reasoning outlined above. That is, the above reasoning constitutes not just a logical framework for reality theory, but the outline of a logical proof of God's existence and the basis of a "logical theology"." Introduction to the CTMU
Logical Theology

"Holotheism is the theological system implied by logical theology. Its fundamental premise is that the Mind of God is the ultimate reality…that is, reality in its most basic and most general form. It is thus related to panentheism, but in addition to being more refined, is more compatible with monotheism in that its "mental" characterization of God implies that divine nature is more in keeping with established theological traditions.

What is Logical Theology?

Theology is ordinarily understood as the study of God and the relationship of God to the world, usually in the context of a specific theological system and a related body of theological opinion. It is considered to embrace the investigation of spirit, the human soul, teleology and divine qualities such as omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence.

Traditionally, its preferred methods of inquiry have been rational rather than empirical, and have thus relied on a combination of faith and logic rather than observation. Logical theology shifts theological inquiry in the direction of logic and mathematics, seeking to reposition it within the domain of modern analytical tools including model theory, the theory of formalized systems, and the logical theory of reality.

Whereas standard theology takes the existence of God as axiomatic and then attempts, often naively, to characterize the relationship between its assumed definition and a more or less concrete model of reality, logical theology explores a logical formulation of ultimate reality for any divine properties that might naturally reveal themselves; given that divine law (if it exists) would necessarily incorporate the laws of logic and mathematics on a basic level, it seeks evidence of divinity in the context of a reality-theoretic extension of logic, the CTMU. The implied convergence of theology, mathematics and science yields a reality-based theological framework with the strength and capacity to support realistic solutions to various real-world problems." Teleologic

Conspansion


In the CTMU, conspansion is the alternating process by which reality evolves. Conspansion is so called because it involves material CONtraction during space exPANSION. Material contraction is what the objects in the universe are undergoing from a global vantage (each future state is being injected into the previous state and everything is shrinking within its own boundaries along with the measurement metric for space time). Spatial expansion is what the universe looks like it is undergoing as a function of time from a local vantage. The "dual" relationship between these two vantages is called conspansive duality.

Roughly speaking, conspansion has reality undergoing a 2 step process of self creation. The first step involves reality considering all the information it currently holds and all future and past possibilities and its own values and then restructuring a "present" state from of all of that. It is a descriptive phase of reality where it manipulates the underlying language that describes reality (the SCSPL). The second phase of the process involves the present literally coming into being in some objective form that you can point at, a form in which reality PHYSICALLY contains objects. When speaking about reality as a whole these two phases are called Incoversion and Coinversion or alternatively, phases of Descriptive Containment and Topological Containment. By the very nature of constantly descriptively containing itself topologically containing itself descriptively containing itself topologically containing itself.... and so on, the material objects in the universe are shrinking INTO themselves while the boundaries of the universe remain fixed. Each future state of an object is injected INTO its previous state.

If Incoversion and Coinversion are the global processes of topological and descriptive containment, then inner expansion and requantization are those processes happening at a local level. Inner expansion involves objects (syntactic operators) hollowing out their current "insides", interacting with one another and then mutually absorbing information from each other to create future states INSIDE their individual previous states. They inject their future states into their previous ones or inner expand. "After" they are done inner expanding, everything "requantizes" and the next physical appearance of the position and properties of objects appear. The process then repeats as each new state of reality is created following the previous one.

As the objects in the universe shrink into themselves, from a universal vantage there is a contraction of all matter. However from the vantage of the individual syntactic operators, space appears to be expanding. Therefore the appearance of an expanding universe from a local perspective is the shrinking of matter and the rescaling of measurement metrics from a global perspective. Putting these two perspectives together we get conspansion.

MAP



The MAP (Metaphysical Autology Principle) is a very general philosophical principle of the CTMU.

In essence, it states that reality is self-contained, and there is nothing external to reality. In essence, if something existed external to reality, it would be existing outside of reality, which is logically impossible. Hence, there is nothing external to reality with respect to the laws of existence. Also, because reality is self contained; it must contain in itself the means for its own explanation. That is to say that every part of reality must be describable in terms of some other part of reality. For example, if reality consisted of three objects A, B and C then A may be defined in terms of B which can be defined in terms of C which can be defined in terms of A. In this way reality's definition of aspects of itself is Closed.

Although to many people this principle might seem utterly trivial, Langan argues that in fact it is not, as scientists tend to violate it often, inadvertently or otherwise. For example, M-theorists and Superstring theorists often propose a higher-dimensional space (i.e. an 11-dimensional spacetime). However, the postulation of this higher-dimensional space cannot really be external to reality, for if it were, there would be no means to identify it or theorize about it. Hence, if 11-dimensional (26-dimensional, n-dimensional, etc.) spacetime exists, it must be internal to reality.

Another example is the recent advent in science of the popularization of Everett's "Many Worlds" interpretation of quantum theory. Langan objects to the Many Worlds interpretation, arguing that if there were these infinitely many parallel quantum realities they would have to be connected to some one fundamental reality, or else there would be no connection between their existential laws, and thus it would be impossible to identify them or scientifically verify their existence.

Thus, although prima facie MAP may seem trivial, Langan argues that it is in fact far from trivial, and theorists overlooking it in their explanations often leads to grave paradoxes and logical inconsistencies.

Hology


Hology is a logical analogue of holography characterizing the most general relationship between reality and its contents. It is a form of self-similarity whereby the overall structure of the universe is everywhere distributed within it as accepting and transductive syntax, resulting in a homogeneous syntactic medium. This means that analysing any one object, the most general features of reality as a whole must be present in it. Hology is justified by the fact that the universe has nothing other than its own syntactic "coding" to double up as its own "state"/objects.

For example, suppose you hit a tennis ball with a racket. In the conventional picture, its fate—whether it will hit the net, or bounce into a wall, or fly out of the court—depends on the state of reality outside of you: the positions of surrounding objects, the wind speed, etc. But according to hology, all of this information is already present in your "syntax", or set of laws that governs you. In this new picture, what you see happen to the tennis ball is determined by your own internal processing, and all of the objects which you see as "outside" of you are actually being simulated by your syntax. Hology says that every part of reality has the structure needed to internally simulate its external environment in this way, turning the conventional picture "outside-in":

    This results in a “distributed subjectivization” in which everything occurs inside the objects; the objects are simply defined to consistently internalize their interactions, effectively putting every object “inside” every other one in a generalized way and thereby placing the contents of space on the same footing as that formerly occupied by the containing space itself. Vectors and tensors then become descriptors of the internal syntactic properties and states of objects. In effect, the universe becomes a “self-simulation” running inside its own contents.

For more on the "dual" relationship between this picture and the conventional one, see conspansive duality.

Syntactic covering

Syntactic coverings among SCSPL, HCS, S1, and S2. Each forms a syntactic covering for the ones below it.

A syntactic covering is a descriptive containment of one syntax by another.

To describe something you need a language. Every language has a syntax, or set of rules it obeys. Different languages have different powers of expression, where very expressive languages are quite close in form to the things that they try to describe.

To describe some everyday physical event you can use symbols for physical concepts and objects (force, torque, sphere etc.) and arrange those symbols into some order that reflects what you perceive is going on. If you find some particularly general pattern and you describe that in symbolic terms(the syntax of your language) you have described a law of physics. You won't really be able to get very far in describing the laws of physics and physical events without the language of mathematics. Thus, mathematics provides a more expressive syntax than that of the syntax of physics; one in which you can fit all of physics AND additional mathematical material. The syntax of physics is CONTAINED within the syntax of mathematics, so it can be said that mathematics/logic provides a SYNTACTIC COVERING for physics. If you continue on in the same vein of reasoning; the overall syntax of human cognition (the language of the human mind) is more expressive than mathematics and so the Human Cognitive Syntax provides a syntactic covering for mathematics.

The CTMU asserts that the Human Cognitive Syntax is embedded in the most expressive of all languages- the SCSPL. The SCSPL provides a syntactic covering for the Human Cognitive Syntax. The SCSPL is so expressive that a description in the SCSPL of an object IS the object itself. Using SCSPL- reality creates itself and so the SCSPL is isomorphic with reality.

Theory of Everything


In philosophy, a Theory of Everything or TOE is an ultimate, all-encompassing explanation of reality. The term originated in physics, but unless everything is physical, a theory of everything in physics would be less comprehensive than a theory of everything in philosophy. See Wikipedia's article theory of everything (philosophy) for background.

Langan calls the CTMU a TOE framework in which "everything" really means everything:

    Among the questions that are answered within the framework of the CTMU: What is the nature of humanity's relationship with God? What is our relationship with each other on individual and cultural levels? Do human beings possess free will? Is there life after death? Is there a physical basis for spirituality? Where did the universe come from? Is there such a thing as absolute good or absolute evil?

Langan asserts that a true Theory of Everything possesses three properties.

    "First, by definition, a TOE is universal; this is implied by the E, which stands for Everything."

    "Second, it is self-referential; a theory of everything, being a part of the 'everything' to which it refers, must refer to itself. More precisely, a TOE must be totally recursive in a manner analogous to logic, each atom referring exclusively to other parts of the theory, and be able to refer to itself in part and in whole in order to possess full logical closure."

    "And third, because logic is the primary ingredient of cognitive-perceptual syntax, the self-referential TOE refers to logic in part and in whole and is therefore metalogical. Thus, it can incorporate a kind of ultimate truth predicate that asserts its own tautological structure and guarantees that no matter what (semantic and other) kinds of paradox may arise within the theory, they can always be resolved within the theory."

These properties correspond, respectively, to what Langan calls the "Three Cs": comprehensiveness, closure, and consistency. Langan calls a theory possessing all of these properties a supertautology. The CTMU is constructed to be such a theory.

Set of all sets


In the CTMU, the set of all sets is interpreted as reality, the set of all real objects. It is the largest set. All sets are contained by sets that are bigger than them and so we would demand that the largest set too is contained within another set. This is obviously a contradiction in terms. A way around this paradox is to see "containment" as having two aspects; topological and descriptive. Topological containment means containing something like a cupboard contains clothes. Descriptive containment means containing something the way that clothes define what the cupboard IS in the first place. Were not every aspect of the cupboard made specifically for the clothes that it was to contain, there would be no cupboard as a concept. In the same way the universe "holds" all the things inside it, but the things inside the universe define what it actually is. (The "dual" relationship between these two kinds of containment is covered at TD duality.)

Reality then evolves through a two stage process where one stage is descriptive and the other topological. In stage 1 all of the items in the universe reconsider their previous state, communicate and describe the rules and definitions for a future universe(the descriptive phase, where time operates). Stage 2 involves the physical reality coming into being where objects have boundaries that distinguish them from other objects and all of these objects are "contained" within space (the topological phase, time has become space). The name of the process given to the universe constantly topologically containing itself descriptively containing itself topologically and so on, is conspansion.

In view of this process of alternating topological and descriptive containment, reality is clearly more than just a set. Accordingly, the CTMU defines an extension of set theory incorporating these two kinds of containment, allowing them to work together to characterize reality. The name of this extension of set theory is SCSPL. Thus, in the CTMU, reality is not just a set, but an SCSPL (Self-Configuring Self-Processing Language), and elements of reality are not just set-theoretic objects, but syntactic operators. So in a nutshell:

    Reality is obviously a set (in fact the largest set), because "set" is defined as "a collection of distinct objects", and reality is a collection of distinct objects (and more).
    But reality is not just a set, because to fully characterize it requires a new extension of set theory called SCSPL incorporating topological and descriptive containment with objects as syntactic operators.

Theory


In the most general sense, a theory is just a description of something. A theory can be good or bad, fanciful or plausible, formal or informal, true or false. If the theory can be used to relate the components of its subject to other components in revealing ways, then it is said to have "explanatory power". If it can be used to make correct predictions about how its subject behaves under various conditions, then it is said to have "predictive power".

A theory which makes falsifiable, experimentally testable predictions about the world is called a "scientific theory". Langan contends that due to the problem of induction, the standard methods by which scientific theories are constructed cannot establish a truly general theory of reality.

    The problem of induction is very real; it is [...] why no general theory of reality can ever be reliably constructed by the standard empirical methods of science. Unfortunately, many scientists have either dismissed this problem or quietly given up on the search for a truly general theory, in neither case serving the long-term interests of science. In fact, the problem of induction merely implies that a global theory of reality can only be established by the rational methods of mathematics, specifically including those of logic.

In contrast to the standard methods of science, in which theories are constructed from a limited set of observations, the CTMU is established by logical properties of the process of theorization itself.

    Because all theories have certain necessary logical properties that are abstract and mathematical, and therefore independent of observation - it is these very properties that let us recognize and understand our world in conceptual terms - we could just as well start with these properties and see what they might tell us about objective reality. Just as scientific observation makes demands on theories, the logic of theories makes demands on scientific observation, and these demands tell us in a general way what we may observe about the universe.

The CTMU is intended to be a truly general theory of reality, or Theory of Everything.

    In other words, a comprehensive theory of reality is not just about observation, but about theories and their logical requirements. [...] The CTMU is such a theory; instead of being a mathematical description of specific observations (like all established scientific theories), it is a "metatheory" about the general relationship between theories and observations…i.e., about science or knowledge itself.

Conspansive duality


Conspansive duality is one of several duality principles in the CTMU.

On the surface, conspansive duality says that there is no difference between the expansion of the universe with respect to its contents, and the contraction of its contents with respect to it. This follows from the self-containment of reality. If there were an external scale by which to measure reality, the external scale would itself be real and therefore internal to reality (a contradiction). Hence the real universe has no external size; it can only be measured internally, by the size ratio of the system to its contents. Since the ratio is all that matters, expansion of the universe is equivalent to a contraction of its contents.

At a deeper level, conspansive duality relates two complementary views of the universe, the conventional geometric model and a dual generative model, by conjoining the "ectomorphism" of the former with the endomorphism of the latter.

    Cosmic expansion and ordinary physical motion have something in common: they are both what might be called ectomorphisms. In an ectomorphism, something is mapped to, generated or replicated in something external to it. However, the Reality Principle asserts that the universe is analytically self-contained, and ectomorphism is inconsistent with self-containment. Through the principle of conspansive duality, ectomorphism is conjoined with endomorphism, whereby things are mapped, generated or replicated within themselves.

In the conventional geometric model, known as ERSU (Expanding Rubber Sheet Universe), the universe is a physical dynamical system in which objects move through an expanding space. In the generative model, known as USRE (Universe as a Self-Representational Entity), nothing expands or moves "through" space; rather, objects evolve through a kind of logical substitution, with new states forming "inside" previous states. The CTMU unites these two models and extracts the implications.

Conspansive duality can accordingly be seen as spacetime-object (ST-O) duality, in which objects are dualized to spatiotemporal transducers. In this dualization, the physical universe is internally "simulated" by its material contents, and objects contain space and time in as real a sense as that in which spacetime contains the objects.

The process by which the universe evolves in light of conspansive duality is called conspansion.

"SCSPL relates space, time and object by means of conspansive duality and conspansion, an SCSPL-grammatical process featuring an alternation between dual phases of existence associated with design and actualization and related to the familiar wave-particle duality of quantum mechanics."

Closed descriptive manifold


"Syntactic Closure: The Metaphysical Autology Principle (MAP) All relations, mappings and functions relevant to reality in a generalized effective sense, whether descriptive, definitive, compositional, attributive, nomological or interpretative, are generated, defined and parameterized within reality itself. In other words, reality comprises a “closed descriptive manifold” from which no essential predicate is omitted, and which thus contains no critical gap that leaves any essential aspect of structure unexplained. Any such gap would imply non-closure."

"Now we know that the closed, single-predicate definition of the Reality Principle is actually a closed descriptive manifold of linked definitions in principle containing the means of its own composition, attribution, recognition, processing and interpretation. But this is still somewhat automatonic. What about mind? Since it is through our minds that we understand anything at all, understanding remains incomplete until we understand more about the relationship between mind and reality. So, having equipped ourselves with a MAP, we now attend to the correspondence between the MAP and the terrain."

"So now we know that reality is more than just a linguistic self-contained syndiffeonic relation comprising a closed descriptive manifold of linked definitions containing the means of its own configuration, composition, attribution, recognition, processing and interpretation. It is also a self-processing theory identical to its universe"

Reality


In the CTMU, reality is the most inclusive domain. By definition, there is nothing outside reality. This means that reality is self-contained. Everything real enough to affect reality is inside it. Langan calls this the Reality Principle: reality contains all and only that which is real. The idea that reality is self-contained is the kernel of the CTMU, the seed from which the rest of the theory is built.

Langan refines the definition of reality as follows.

    Reality is the perceptual aggregate including (1) all scientific observations that ever were and ever will be, and (2) the entire abstract and/or cognitive explanatory infrastructure of perception.

That is, reality consists of (1) perceptions, and (2) all relevant supporting structure. For example, if you see an apple fall from a tree, your perception of the apple qualifies as real by (1), while the law of gravity that caused the apple to fall qualifies as real by (2).

Langan uses "nature", "existence", and "the real universe" as synonyms for "reality". Since reality is the most inclusive domain, a general theory of reality would be a Theory of Everything. The CTMU is intended to be such a theory.

The CTMU characterizes reality as a Self-Configuring Self-Processing Language (SCSPL).

Metasyntax


"Diagram 10: In the syndiffeonic diagram, we can plainly see the containment of objects by the medium, but we cannot see the containment of the medium by the objects. Bearing in mind that the terms syntax and content are to some extent relative designations, the upper node in Diagram 10 corresponds to the global medium (global syntactic unisect or “metasyntax” of reality), while the lower node corresponds to the objects therein (syntactic operators contained in the medium); each is a multiplex unity. Coherence flows from global syntax into local content by way of global topological containment, thereby enforcing unity across diverse locales, and back to global syntax in multiple entangled streams generated by cross-transduction of content. Syntax becomes state, and state becomes syntax (where “syntax” is understood to encompass an “ectosyntactic” distribution of syntactic operators). The universe thus remains coherent and consistent in the course of evolution." - Langan, 2002, PCID, pg. 24

"It is instructive to experiment with the various constructions that may be placed on LS and LO. For example, one can think of LS as “L-sim”, reflecting its self-simulative, telic-recursive aspect, and of LO as “L-out”, the output of this self-simulation. One can associate LO with observable states and distributed-deterministic state-transition syntax, and LS with the metasyntactic Telic Principle." - Langan, 2002, PCID, pg. 46

Telon


A telon or "telic attractor" is a potential state of high utility for one or more telors.

Consider what happens when a person desires to do something in the most general terms. They consider consciously or unconsciously

    the point/utility/drive behind the action. This point/utility function/drive can be described as a relationship between various objects/feelings etc. relevant to the desire. Without the desire/purpose nothing will happen.
    rules relating their plans to the outside world- how stuff works "out there".
    rules relating their plan to the inside world of their minds - how their brain actually performs mental operations
    putting 2 and 3 together into a dynamic framework that gives a space within which to carry out the action sequentially.

Everything from 1 to 4 could be described more formally in terms of a language (like mathematics,logic etc). That language would have a syntax, or set of rules it obeys. A Telon refers to a syntax/state relationship that provides the purpose and meaning for an operation. It comes first, then the rest of the physical and mental syntax in reality is utilised to bring the goals of the Telon into existence.

So in a human plan- the formula for the pre planning desire/drive phase of the plan is an example of a low level Telon. A high level/global Telon would be the drive phase of Reality before it changes itself according to the values/relationships/rules in the Telon.

The reason that what is going on in the human brain has a Global analogue is because according to the CTMU, reality operates in accordance with principles of cognition. Generalized cognition is already the means by which reality configures itself and since human beings are a part of reality- it is no wonder that they operate on the same (but more local/constrained) principles.

Problem of induction


The problem of induction refers to the lack of justification for generalizing from the part to the whole in the empirical realm. Observation and experimentation, the standard empirical methods of science, may tell us that "all X observed so far are Y", but they do not allow us to then conclude that "all X are Y (across the whole universe)". Because of this problem, we cannot prove universal laws of nature using the scientific method, but only provisionally confirm or falsify them.

Langan's approach with the CTMU is to circumvent the problem of induction by using deduction instead. That is, he proposes to use the deductive methods of logic and mathematics to draw conclusions about reality. Instead of starting with a limited set of empirical observations and provisionally theorizing about them, he starts with logic, adjoins certain analytic truths (see below), and extracts the implications for the whole of reality. Among the results he claims to have mathematically deduced are "nomological covariance, the invariance of the rate of global self-processing (c-invariance), and the internally-apparent accelerating expansion of the system".

The keys to Langan's approach are the three analytic principles which he uses to relate logic to reality. These principles are associated with three properties which a theory of reality must inevitably possess: closure, comprehensiveness, and consistency. The principles in question are supposed to be true of reality as defined on the model-theoretic level, i.e. on the level of the general correspondence between a theory of reality, and reality itself. For more information about these principles and properties, see the Three Cs / Three Ms.

As a final note, Langan does not claim that at the current stage of its development, the CTMU can be used to demonstrate every empirical truth, and he acknowledges the role that empirical methods may play in refining his theory. Since those methods remain subject to the problem of induction, it is perhaps better to say that the CTMU transcends the problem, rather than doing away with it entirely.

Duality principles


A duality principle expresses a duality, or situation where there are two aspects of a process going on where each aspect is in a certain sense opposite or contrasting to the other aspect. The duality principle allows the process to be viewed from either of these dual aspects, and by merging the symmetric halves of the resulting picture, meaningful implications can be extracted.

The most famous example of a duality principle in the CTMU is that of conspansive duality. This duality describes the two opposite ways in which the same process (the evolution of the universe) can be viewed. From the local vantage, the universe expands as a function of time. From the global vantage the universe remains constant in size and matter contracts into itself (along with all intrinsic measurement scales) as a function of time. Expansion and contraction are dual aspects of the same process and so form a conspansive duality. (The reason the universe can't "actually" be expanding into nothing is precisely because there is nothing outside of reality for it to expand into.)

Other duality principles important in the CTMU are topological-descriptive duality (TD duality) and constructive-filtrative duality (CF duality).

Inner expansion


Inner expansion is the generative phase of conspansion. For the selective phase, see requantization.

According to the CTMU, space and time are simulated inside syntactic operators. To clarify, this means that space and time do not exist except as a relation between syntactic operators that are communicating with one another. In order to evolve, the universe goes through a two step process (conspansion) which on the local level is as follows;

    step 1 (inner expansion) ; syntactic operators enter into a wave form and lose the "fixedness" of their being. Their internal SCSPL coding starts to rearrange and they begin to interact with one another as their quantum wave forms entangle. Time passes.

    step 2( requantization) ; the wave form collapses into the discrete phase of existence and a new event is formed along with all the spatial relations of the objects.

When syntactic operators are entangled and interacting, mutually absorbing each others information and processing it, they form what are known as Inner Expansive Domains or IEDs in step 1 outlined above. The global analogue of inner expansion is coinversion.

The above two phase process is not just a convenient theory in which spacetime can be reformulated but actually a logical necessity.

Sum Over Futures


Sum Over Futures (SOF) is the CTMU interpretation of quantum mechanics. In SOF, quantum phenomena are not random (acausal), but obey higher-order causal invariants. These invariants tend to maximize generalized utility as the universe evolves. Langan observes that due to quantum uncertainty,

    The last states of a pair of interacting particles are generally insufficient to fully determine their next states. This, of course, raises a question: how are their next states actually determined? What is the source of the extra tie-breaking measure of determinacy required to select their next events ("collapse their wave functions")?

The answer, he writes, is neither "randomness" nor distributed laws of causality, but rather higher-order causation, involving nonrandom temporally-extensive relationships not wholly attributable to distributed laws. In this picture, the universe sums over timelines to extract the utility of possible futures and selects the most utile configurations for actualization. This "sum over futures" is enabled by the Extended Superposition Principle (ESP) under the guidance of the Telic Principle.

Sum over futures involves an atemporal (existing or considered without relation to time) generalization of “process” (from past participle stem of procedere "go forward"), telic recursion (before determining the next state, Reality takes all of the past and future into account and then chooses a particular state on the basis of its own values), through which the universe effects on-the-fly (as time passes) maximization of a global (over all of Reality) self-selection parameter (measurement), generalized utility (what the universal Desire hopes to achieve).

Generalized cognition


Generalised cognition refers to those aspects of the mind and mental functioning that reality itself uses to evolve. The human mind consists of aspects which presumably serve no more general function than survival benefit and as such have been engineered by evolutionary forces e.g. the perception of smell, the emotion of fear. However there are other aspects of mind which ,according to the CTMU, have been inherited from the more general mental functioning of the universe as a whole e.g. logic . Those aspects are known as generalised cognition. Generalised cognition forms and processes the distributed syntax of the SCSPL.

In fact, all information processing in reality can be regarded as generalized cognition. This is because the CTMU is a theory of reality as mind, and cognition is just the specific form of information processing that occurs in a mind.

MU


The principle of MU (Multiplex Unity) is a very general philosophical principle of the CTMU. In essence, it states that reality is consistent, in the sense that it is stable with respect the laws of perception and cognition. If reality were not consistent, you would be both simultaneously perceiving it and not perceiving it, which is impossible (either that, or you would literally branch off and occupy two different realities, as is proposed in multiverse theory). More specifically, MU states that inasmuch as objects, processes, and events differ with respect to each other, they are fundamentally the same in the very general sense of sharing the same existential medium (reality). The MU could be stated quite simply in the phrase "different but the same".

Human Cognitive Syntax


In the CTMU, the Human Cognitive Syntax (HCS) (or Human Cognitive-Perceptual Syntax) is the set of structural and functional rules obeyed by the human mind. The HCS can be partitioned or stratified according to the nature of the elements incorporated in the rules. In particular, Langan names four classes or "subsyntaxes" of the HCS:

    space-time-object syntax (STOS), rules governing the fundamental trio space, time, and object (see also triality).
    logico-mathematical syntax (LMS), the laws of logic and mathematics. Langan also denotes these laws by S1 and denotes the laws of physics by S2. S1=LMS forms a syntactic covering for S2.
    qualio-perceptual syntax (QPS), the perceptual qualia in terms of which we define and extract experience.
    emo-telic syntax (ETS), feelings and emotions integral to the determination of utility.

Since humans are real, human cognition is embedded in the generalized cognition of reality. At the same time, for us to be able to cognitively refer to reality, it must conform to our cognitive categories (i.e., to the HCS). Hence there is an isomorphism between human cognition and generalized cognition, and this implies that they are mutually consistent aspects of a single global form of cognition, namely SCSPL self-processing.

Telesis


In the CTMU, telesis is the universal substance from which reality is refined. Telesis is the raw material of cosmogony, the ultimate ancestral medium from which the universe originates.

Telesis can be bound or unbound. Unbound telesis (UBT) consists of pure ontological potential, characterized by nil constraint, zero information, and total freedom. When bound, telesis becomes infocognition, the structured, dual-aspect substance of which reality consists. To be clear:

    CTMU monism says that the universe consists of one “dual-aspect” substance, infocognition, created by internal feedback within an even more basic (one-aspect) substance called telesis.

Thus, whereas UBT consists of infocognitive potential, a specific reality (SCSPL) consists of infocognition. Once bound in a primitive infocognitive form that drives emergence (the MU form), telesis continues to be refined into new infocognitive configurations as reality evolves.

Distributed syntax


Distributed syntax means the universal laws of nature.

Consider a tennis ball. To perceive a tennis ball as a discrete entity quite a lot has to go on. One has to perceive all the qualities of the tennis ball that separate it from the surrounding space such as it's roundness, greenness etc. However, there is more than just the visible features of the tennis ball going into your eyes that are required for the act of perception. The numerous invisible laws of nature have to continue to be in operation. They are invisible because they are acting everywhere and anything that is everywhere just gets taken for granted in the background.

It can be said that these "everywhere" laws are "distributed" across all of the universe. Now, where the laws of the universe can be described as linguistic(in general terms)- this language has a syntax, or set of rules it obeys. So some aspects of the syntax are local-such as the greenness of the tennis ball and other aspects are distributed across all of reality(e.g. maybe a fundamental force,or the laws of thermodynamics or logic) . The latter is known as "distributed syntax".

Tautology


In the CTMU, tautology is used in a broad sense to refer to various kinds of logical necessity or circularity. In particular, Langan distinguishes three definitions of "tautology". In decreasing order of strength:

    1. The self-referential sentential tautologies of 2VL;
    2. Less general analytic statements like "daisies are flowers";
    3. Any statement that is repetitive or redundant.

Statements meeting definition 1 above are called logical or syntactic tautologies, while those meeting definition 2 are called analytic or semantic tautologies. Syntactic tautologies are true by virtue of their logical form, while semantic tautologies are true by virtue of the meanings of their constituent terms.

The CTMU is based on logical tautology, together with three semantic tautologies known as the Three Ms. By adjoining these three principles to logic, a theory of reality becomes a supertautology.

Telic Principle


The Telic Principle says that reality has to "select itself" for existence. This is because by definition, there is nothing outside of reality that is real. Therefore, everything reality needs to sustain and explain itself must come from within. It's quite clear therefore that reality creates itself. In creating itself in one particular form as opposed to many others reality is making a choice. Whatever the values this choice is based on, it is clear that whatever they are must be selected by reality from itself (for want of anything external to reality). This universal drive towards self selection, self actualization, self expression then is called The Telic Principle.

The Telic Principle is so called because the universe must self select itself from a realm of boundless potential(Unbound TELESIS). Telesis is the unreal raw ontological potential that becomes refined by reality in reality's self creation/configuration.

Triality


In the CTMU, triality refers to the universal possibility of consistently permuting (per- ‘through, completely’ + mutare ‘to change’) the attributes space, time, and object with respect to various structures.

Space can be defined in terms of objects e.g. the relation between the objects. Similarly objects can be defined in terms of space. This is space - object or S-O duality. Time can be defined in terms of objects and spaces e.g. objects moving with a space. Space and objects can be defined in terms of time. This is time - space/object or T-S/O duality. These concepts when added together form the concept of a triality whereby space, time and object are inextricably linked and can be described in terms of each other. Therefore all across the universe various structures can be pointed at and described in terms of space,time and object.

Triality leads to another duality: spacetime-object or ST-O. This takes the form of objects moving around in a 4 dimensional space time manifold in the Theory of General Relativity. However when we look at spacetime-object duality from a Conspansion point of view, objects are actually internally simulating the physical universe including spacetime and actually in a state of perfect stasis. See conspansive duality for more information.

Triality can be seen as expressing the following identities:

    space = object = time
    class = instance = instantiation
    processor = product = process
    input = output = functional syntax
    chooser = chosen = choice

Syntactic operator


A syntactic operator is a coherent SCSPL processor capable of or responsive to telic recursion.

The universe is made out of one essential substance (infocognition) having two aspects ; information and cognition. It could not be made of information alone as without a syntax to process that information in, it means nothing. Consider a full stop on its own without a language which contains a meaning for it e.g. "symbol for separating sentences". A syntactic operator is an entity in the universe which is able to process information by virtue of being able to read-write SCSPL syntax. The Global Syntactic Operator is God, there are agent level syntactic operators (humans) and tiny microscopic quantum syntactic operators that form the unit of perception called Noeons. When a syntactic operator is driven by purpose through telic recursion (at any level, global or otherwise) it becomes known as a Telor.

Telor


A telor is an agent infused with purpose and driven to bringing the goals of a telon into existence. Telors can be high up or low down in the universal hierarchy of agents (where reality as a whole is the ultimate Agent, God, and human beings are higher up than rocks but less than God).

Telons are utile syntax state relationships that provide a point or meaning for an action. See the article on Telon for an explanation.

Supertautology


A supertautology is a theory of reality constructed in a way which guarantees that it is true.

There are different levels of truth. Truth is usually about the inclusion of something in a set. There are superficial ways in which the truth is relative and really depends on the definition of the set that inclusion is being considered in e.g. whether cleptomania is a mental illness. Then there are deep truths that underlie all perception and without which nothing perceptible could exist. Those kind of ultimate or absolute truths are called Tautologies and a theory extracting the implications of Tautologies is a Super tautological structure.

When a tautology is violated or a theory is constructed that purports a statement in violation of a tautology, we can know a priori that that statement cannot be true or real. For example, to postulate that there is a God outside of reality is a priori false because according to the principle of syndiffeonesis (which is a tautology) ; if two objects are separate, they are separated by a medium. But if they are separated by a medium then they have the medium in common with one another and so are not separate ultimately and in fact part of the same reality. Therefore, God cannot be separate from the universe/reality if God exists.

The CTMU is a super tautological structure that extracts numerous useful implications about the ultimate nature of reality and our minds from tautologies.

Teleological consistency


"In the CTMU, “what God thinks is right” is encapsulated by the Telic Principle. This principle, a generalization of the Cosmological Anthropic Principle, asserts that by logical necessity, there exists a deic analogue of human volition called teleology.

However, due to the fact that God’s Self-creative freedom is distributed over the universe, i.e. His “Mind”, human volition arising within the universe is free to be locally out of sync with teleology. This requires a set of compensation mechanisms which ensure that teleology remains globally valid despite the localized failure of any individual or species to behave consistently with it. In part, these mechanisms determine the state of your relationship to God, i.e. your soul. If you are in harmony with teleology – with the self-realization and self-expression of God – then your soul is in a state of grace. If you are not, then your soul is in danger of interdiction by teleological mechanisms built into the structure of the universe." Moral Laws

Mind


Mind is the faculty by which reality undergoes cognition and perception. Langan contends that mind and reality are linked in mutual dependence at the most basic level of understanding. The CTMU is essentially a theory of this relationship. In particular, the CTMU is a theory of reality as mind.

    In explaining this relationship, the CTMU shows that reality possesses a complex property akin to self-awareness. That is, just as the mind is real, reality is in some respects like a mind. But when we attempt to answer the obvious question "whose mind?", the answer turns out to be a mathematical and scientific definition of God. This implies that we all exist in what can be called "the Mind of God", and that our individual minds are parts of God's Mind.

The Mind Equals Reality Principle, or M=R, is one of the three metalogical axioms of the CTMU.

Syntax


Syntax is the set of rules obeyed by a language. Each language has its own syntax. For example, a natural language like English has one syntax, while a programming language like Lisp has another syntax. See syntax at Wikipedia for background.

In the CTMU, according to the Principle of Linguistic Reducibility, reality itself is a language. Reality therefore has a syntax, consisting of the set of structural and functional rules governing its spatial structure and temporal evolution. In particular, reality is a Self-Configuring Self-Processing Language (SCSPL) whose syntax includes the laws of mathematics (S1) and physics (S2).

Human cognition and perception can also be viewed as languages, whose syntax is the Human Cognitive-Perceptual Syntax or HCS.

Principle of Linguistic Reducibility


Reality is a self-contained form of language. It fits the definition of a language:

    Uses representation of (object-like) individuals, (space-like) relations and attributes, and (time-like) functions and operations
    Uses a set of “expressions” or perceptual states
    Uses a syntax consisting of
        logical and geometric rules of structure, and
        an inductive-deductive generative grammar identifiable with the laws of state transition

This principle settles the issue to whether or not reality is the language or is some content of the language by asserting that it is both: reality equals reality theory.

Telic recursion


Telic recursion is the process by which Universal Free Will is exercised. Before the universe determines its next state; it takes all of reality and every past and future contingency into account and then chooses a particular state on the basis of its own values ( the exercising of a generalized utility function); this is known as Telic Recursion.

Generalized utility


Generalized utility is the quantity which reality exists to maximize. Crucially, it is defined entirely within reality itself.

To understand this, consider that the universe is evolving and events are happening. They happen one way as opposed to any number of other ways. Taking reality as a whole because there is nothing outside of reality "real" enough to do anything to it, it must create itself. Given that it has total freedom of what to create itself as - why does it choose one form as opposed to any other? The answer is that one state, versus another, carries more self defined "utility" for reality. The most general formulation of this utility "drive" across the whole universe is called "Generalized Utility Function".

If a human being was asked about his motivation for doing anything- the "why?" behind his actions, he would point to a desire of some form. The global analogue of this desire, what the universal Desire hopes to achieve is "generalized utility".

Teleology


Teleology is the idea that nature has a purpose.

The CTMU espouses teleological pantheism. The CTMU says that the universe is externally unconstrained and so reality is capable of taking on any form and evolving in any way. The particular evolutionary path it chooses to take and the values that that choice is based on is known as Teleology.

UBT


In the CTMU, UBT (unbound telesis) is the ground-state of existence arrived at by stripping away the constraints of reality. Since there are no distributed constraints to limit its content, UBT is all-inclusive, infinite potential, and the source of all freedom.

Reality is created by filtratively emerging from this potential by the process of telic recursion. Since reality has a self-defined informational boundary distinguishing it from its complement (unactualized potential or unreality), it has recognizable content and structure. On the other hand, UBT is "a realm of zero constraint and infinite possibility where neither boundary nor content exists."

Teleologic Evolution


Teleologic Evolution refers to the purposeful evolution of the universe. The universe self selects its state on the basis of a generalized utility function and through a process called telic recursion.

Teleologic evolution is occurring at multiple levels because all these levels are embedded within reality as a whole (which is maximising utility).

Distributed solipsism


Distributed solipsism is a type of solipsism in which one self is distributed over all individuals. Generally, solipsism is the idea that only one's own self exists. In conventional or individual solipsism, this self is tied to a single individual, e.g. a particular person, whose cognition and perception then forms the conscious experience of the sole self. By contrast, in distributed solipsism, the sole self is not tied to a single individual, but shared among all individuals, and variously experiences the cognition and perception of all of them.

In the CTMU, distributed solipsism is embodied by the universe, as described by SCSPL. Reality is the intersect of the individual realities of its observers, and "individual solipsism becomes distributed solipsism through the mutual absorption of SCSPL syntactic operators, made possible by a combination of distributed SCSPL syntax and shared teleology".

Noeon


"Paul F. Kisak I have read the term "Noeon" as coined and described by you. I like it. Could you go beyond the definition of ' a quantum of knowledge' and give an example of a noeon that both denotes and connotes the heart of its 'mission'. Specifically, is it your desire that a 'noeon' occupy a fundamentally reductionist role in the scheme of epistemology?

Chris Langan Essentially, "noeon" is a synonym for something called a "syntactic operator". A syntactic operator is the fundamental entity in SCSPL (self-configuring self-processing language). It can also be described as "a quantum of infocognition" or self-transducing information. Since the CTMU is an infocognitive monism, a "noeon" is a fundamental construct."

Holotheism


Holotheism is the theological system implied by logical theology. Its fundamental premise is that the Mind of God is the ultimate reality…that is, reality in its most basic and most general form. It is thus related to panentheism, but in addition to being more refined, is more compatible with monotheism in that its "mental" characterization of God implies that divine nature is more in keeping with established theological traditions.

Extended Superposition Principle


The Extended Superposition Principle is a principle based on conspansive duality, which puts separated events in space and time in immediate contact with each other. Instead of simply applying superposition to individual relationships like the state of a pair of particles (as in conventional quantum mechanics), the CTMU proposes that superposition applies to more general concepts such as space and time as a whole. Some of the proposed benefits of this principle is that it affords an explanation of quantum nonlocality and the mechanism of wavefunction collapse.

Syndiffeonesis


    “Saying two things are different implies that they are reductively the same”

Universe as a Self-Representational Entity


According to Langan, conventional physics and cosmology uses the "ERSU" model of the universe (i.e. Expanding Rubber Sheet Universe). Presumably, Langan is referring to the four-dimensional curved spacetime of general relativity. In this picture of the universe, gravitational masses curve spacetime, much like placing bowling balls on a rubber sheet.

However, Langan seems to take issue with this representation of the universe, because, according to him, it is not sufficiently "self-contained". According to the CTMU, it requires a kind of external "background" space in which objects change their state of motion. In ERSU, the expansion of the universe is represented by an expanding balloon with dots drawn on it. Space expands "intrinsically". However, Langan takes issue with the notion of "intrinsic expansion", claiming that it is self-contradictory on its face, and that if the universe is expanding, it must be expanding into something. This is central to thesis of conspansion, which claims that the universe is not actually expanding, but only appears to be from our local viewpoint.

Motion based on "ERSU", as Langan calls it, is based on something called "ectomorphism". Ectomorphism is the view that objects change their state of motion relative to some fixed background space. However, because the universe is self-contained, Langan claims that motion is actually represented by "endomorphism", a kind of motion that Langan purports does not contradict the Self-Containment criterion of reality.


In a radio interview, when Langan asked "what travels fastest in the universe?", Langan responds that from an ectormophic viewpoint it would be light, but that you have to "formulate motion so that it's mathematically correct." Clearly, by "ectomorphism", Langan is referring to the four-dimensional curved spacetime model of the General Theory of Relativity, which he calls the "Expanding Rubber Sheet Universe." Prima facie, he believes that on some level it must be paradoxical, violating the Self-Containment Principle of Reality.

Constructive-filtrative duality


"Any set that can be constructed by adding elements to the space between two brackets can be defined by restriction on the set of all possible sets. Restriction involves the Venn-like superposition of constraints that are subtractive in nature; thus, it is like a subtractive color process involving the stacking of filters. Elements, on the other hand, are additive, and the process of constructing sets is thus additive; it is like an additive color process involving the illumination of the color elements of pixels in a color monitor. CF duality simply asserts the general equivalence of these two kinds of process with respect to logico-geometric reality.

CF duality captures the temporal ramifications of TD duality, relating geometric operations on point sets to logical operations on predicates. Essentially, CF duality says that any geometric state or continuous transformation is equivalent to an operation involving the mutual “filtration” of intersecting hological state-potentials. States and objects, instead of being constructed from the object level upward, can be regarded as filtrative refinements of general, internally unspecified higher-order relations.

CF duality is necessary to show how a universe can be “zero-sum”; without it, there is no way to refine the objective requisites of constructive processes “from nothingness”. In CTMU cosmogony, “nothingness” is informationally defined as zero constraint or pure freedom (unbound telesis or UBT), and the apparent construction of the universe is explained as a self-restriction of this potential. In a realm of unbound ontological potential, defining a constraint is not as simple as merely writing it down; because constraints act restrictively on content, constraint and content must be defined simultaneously in a unified syntax-state relationship." - Langan, 2002, PCID, pg. 26-27

Self-determinacy


According to Langan, traditional views of causation are based on a dichotomy. This dichotomy consists of "extrinsic causation" (determinacy) in which objects are determined by some prior and/or external cause, or randomness, in which objects are seemingly brought into existence without any prior cause. There is, of course, that view that randomness is simply ignorance of the causal factors at work with respect to some phenomena, but Langan seems to think that this isn't really randomness in an objective sense. In fact, Langan seems to express the view that the idea of "objective randomness" (i.e. randomness independent of any external and/or prior cause) is simply ridiculous. Thus, Langan proposes self-determinacy, in which an object determines its own cause from within itself. This is central to Langan's thesis that the universe is a self-deterministic system, and it is not the result of determinacy, randomness or any combination thereof.

Self-selection


Self-selection is a necessary consequence of reality having only itself to create itself out of and only itself to describe its own purpose in relation to. Reality is not "forced" to be in the form that it currently takes, however it chooses freely to be that way according to its own values. With these values in Mind (pun intended) , reality takes the raw essence of Being (unbound potential/ telesis) and self selects/creates its form out of it.

Three Cs / Three Ms


The Three Cs are three properties that a theory of reality must inevitably possess, and the Three Ms are three principles respectively associated with those properties. The Three Cs and Three Ms are:

    closure — Metaphysical Autology Principle (MAP)
    comprehensiveness — Mind Equals Reality Principle (M=R)
    consistency — Multiplex Unity Principle (MU)

These properties and principles are intended to relate logic to reality. When adjoined to logic, they form a theory which has the truth property in the same sense as does logic, but permits the evaluation of statements about reality. Langan calls such a theory a supertautology.

The Three Cs and Three Ms can be viewed as "axioms" of the CTMU, with the caveat that they are not meant to be independent assumptions, but rather to be true a priori and analytically implied by each other.

Topological-descriptive duality


"Because states express topologically while the syntactic structures of their underlying operators express descriptively, attributive duality is sometimes called state-syntax duality. As information requires syntactic organization, it amounts to a valuation of cognitive/perceptual syntax; conversely, recognition consists of a subtractive restriction of informational potential through an additive acquisition of information. TD duality thus relates information to the informational potential bounded by syntax, and perception (cognitive state acquisition) to cognition.

In a Venn diagram, the contents of circles reflect the structure of their boundaries; the boundaries are the primary descriptors. The interior of a circle is simply an “interiorization” or self-distribution of its syntactic “boundary constraint”. Thus, nested circles corresponding to identical objects display a descriptive form of containment corresponding to syntactic layering, with underlying levels corresponding to syntactic coverings.

This leads to a related form of duality, constructive-filtrative duality." Langan, 2002, PCID pg. 26

Self-multiplexing


Self-multiplexing means the generation of multiple possible ways for reality to evolve, within reality itself. When one of these possibilities is chosen to be actualized, that is called self-selection.

The universe contains many objects but all of those objects have the universe from which they originate in common. The universe enforces some general rules on all of the objects within it as it topologically (physically) contains them. But it can also be said that the objects in the universe contain the universe because without all of the objects and their specific event histories/interactions, there would be no specific description of the universe to speak of. So the universe topologically contains its objects, which descriptively contain the universe.

Self Multiplexing refers to the universe creating objects out of itself to give it a specific description, however this is a specificity that is emerging still within the constraints of a global syntactic medium.

Self-Configuring Self-Processing Language


Self-Configuring Self-Processing Language or SCSPL is the meta-mathematical structure to which the universe is isomorphic. SCSPL is the language of the universe, a language so expressive that the universe creates itself and evolves through using it. The universe is in every way, everywhere, identical to SCSPL.

Normally, languages are considered to be in the minds of people and they work on the basis of moving symbols around mentally, where said symbols represent things in the "outside world". By attempting to represent things in the "outside world" with language, one gets closer and closer in accuracy of description to the things one attempts to describe the more expressive/powerful the language is. What would happen if a language was so expressive that it contained every piece of information on the thing it wishes to describe, to the highest resolution possible? You would have the SCSPL "coding" of that object in the universe, which is identical to the object itself. Thought about in another way, if one asks themselves "what does the SCSPL coding of a tennis ball look like?"; the answer is the tennis ball itself!

Other languages that SCSPL provides a syntactic covering for (see description of syntactic covering and Human Cognitive Syntax) include; the laws of physics, the laws of mathematics, the expressions of the human mind or HCS.

M=R


The Mind Equals Reality Principle is a very general philosophical principle of the CTMU, and despite its seemingly important sounding name, is not particularly controversial at all. M = R is essentially just the principle that inasmuch as reality exists, it conforms to certain laws or categories of cognition and perception. In other words, the universe exists in such a way that we can apprehend its existence through sensory perception, including the five sensory modalities. This is pretty much just a restatement of the age-old thesis of empiricism - that we can know the world through the senses, and in that sense, it may be the most common-sense and simplistic of the CTMU principles.

The M=R principle does not state that you can simply think something into existence, or that the world doesn't exist when you're not looking at it, or anything ridiculous like that. It simply states that the universe possesses general laws that conform to the categories and laws of cognition and perception (i.e. sensory perception and thought).

Unisection


Unisection refers to the process of finding what "things" (objects, expressions etc.) have in common. By finding out what they have in common with one another, you discover the medium from which they emerge as separate objects. In the CTMU, this common medium is called the unisect of the objects. If you start anywhere and start "unisecting" you'll eventually come to the most general elements of perception that you know e.g. space, time etc. The ultimate relation then between all these things is Reality itself.

The process of unisecting is really the process of abstracting.

Requantization


Requantization is a process of conspansion that changes Planck's constant by applying an internal scaling factor to spacetime nestings. This rescaling (which is identified with the rate of inner expansion) holds the contents of the universe invariant. One objection among readers may be that there are no observable changes in fundamental constants (such as elementary charge or electron mass) that would be expected from invoking the cosmological scaling of conspansion. However, this objection isn't really valid because one must remember that all measurements will be inherently limited by the scaling itself.