the cognitive-theoretic model of the universe as the nexus of spirituality and cosmology: an...

8/14/2019 The Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe as the Nexus of Spirituality and Cosmology: An Interdisciplinary Ap

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The Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe as the

Nexus of Spirituality and Cosmology:An Interdi sc ipl inary Approach to Real i ty

1. General Introduction

Since the dawn of our species, human beings have been asking difficult questions aboutthemselves, the universe and the nature of existence, but have lacked a unifiedconceptual framework strong and broad enough to yield the answers. Enterthe Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe (CTMU).

Scientific theories are mental constructs that take objective reality as their content, withthe scientific method putting observation first and letting explanation be determined byexperiment. But because all theories have logical properties that are abstract andmathematical, and therefore independent of observation - it is these very properties thatlet us recognize and understand our world - we could equally well start withthem and seewhat they might tell us about objective reality. Just as scientific observation makesdemands on theories, the logic of theories makes demands on scientific observation, andthese demands tell us in a general way what we can observe about the universe.

In other words, a comprehensive theory of reality is not just about observation, buttheories and their logical requisites. Since theories are mental constructs,and mentalmeans "of the mind", this can be rephrased as follows: mind and reality arelinked in mutual dependence on the most basic level of understanding. It is this linkageof the abstract and the concrete, the subjective and the objective, the internal and theexternal, that constitutes the proper focus of a Theory of Everything (TOE). Since realityforever retains the ability to surprise us, the task of scientific observation can never becompleted with absolute certainty, and this means that a comprehensive theory of realitycannot be based on scientific observation alone. Instead, reality theory must be based onthe logic underlying the general process of making and interpreting scientificobservations. Since observation and interpretation are predicated on the relationshipholding between mind and reality, the Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe deliversan account of that relationship.

For the most part, ordinary theories are linguistic and mathematical descriptions ofspecific observations. In contrast, the CTMU is a metatheoryabout the generalrelationship between theories and observationsi.e., about science, knowledge andcognition themselves. In explaining this relationship, the CTMU shows that realitypossesses a complex property akin to self-awareness; just as the mind is real, reality is insome respects like a mind. But when we attempt to answer the obvious question"whose mind?", the answer turns out to qualify by reasonable standards as a

mathematical and scientific definition of God. This implies that we all exist in what can becalled "the Mind of God, and that our individual minds are parts of this UniversalMind. As such, they are directly connected to the greatest source of knowledge andpower that exists. This connection of our minds to the Mind of the Universe, which wesometimes call the soulor spirit, is the most essential part of being human.

In its exciting development of these and other ideas, the Cognitive-Theoretic Model of theUniverse helps us to understand not only the nature of reality, but the integral role played


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by human beings in the creation and maintenance of the world they inhabit. In theprocess, the CTMU enables us to comprehend the psychological, metaphysical, and ethicalramifications of the relationship between man and the cosmos, and thus what it means tobe human.

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 onindividual and cultural levels? Do human beings possess free will? Is there life afterdeath? Is there a physical basis for spirituality? Where did the universe come from? Isthere such a thing as absolute good or absolute evil? These are just a few of the manyburning philosophical dilemmas that mankind has pondered since its infancy. When thesedilemmas are finally considered in the advanced conceptual framework of a true TOE likethe CTMU, their answers fall into place as though under the influence of an attractiveforce. The mystery melts away, but not the wonder.

In its role as a comprehensive theory of reality, the Cognitive-Theoretic Model of theUniverse serves as a firm basis for the unification of science and theology, leading usinevitably in the direction of intellectual enlightenment and a collective spiritual

awakening. The traditional Cartesian divider between body and mind, matter andthought, science and spirituality is penetrated by logical reasoning of a higher order thanordinary scientific reasoning, but no less scientific than any other kind of mathematicaltruth. Accordingly, it serves as the long-awaited gateway between science andhumanism, a bridge of reason over what has long seemed an impassable gulf.

2. The CTMU and Physics

The avowed goal of physics is to produce what is sometimes called a "Theory ofEverything" or TOE. As presently conceived, the TOE is thought to consist of one equationdescribing a single "superforce" unifying all the forces of nature (gravity,electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces). But this is actually an

oversimplification; every equation must be embedded in a theory, and theoriesrequire models for their proper interpretation. Unfortunately, the currently availabletheory and model lack three importantproperties:closure, consistencyand comprehensivity. That is, they are not self-contained;they suffer from various intractable paradoxes; and they conspicuously exclude or neglectvarious crucial factors, including subjective ones like consciousness and emotion. Sincethe excluded factors fall as squarely under the heading everythingas the included ones, areal TOE has no business omitting them. So as now envisioned by physicists, the TOE ismisnamed as a "theory of everything".

The CTMU, on the other hand, is a TOE framework in which everything reallymeans everything. Whereas the currently-envisioned TOE emphasizes objective reality at

the expense of its subjective counterpart (mind), the CTMU places mind on the agenda atthe outset. It does this not by making assumptions, but by eliminating the erroneousscientific assumption that mind and objective reality can be even tentativelyseparated. To do this, it exploits not just what we know of objective reality the so-called everything of the standard TOE but also what we know of the first word in

TOE, namely theory. In other words, it brings the logic of formalized theories to bearon reality theory.


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Although this is a mathematically obvious move, it has been almost completelyoverlooked in the physical and mathematical sciences. By correcting this error, the CTMUwarrants description as a theory of the relationship between the mind of the theoristandthe objective reality about which it theorizes, completing the program of subjective-objective unification already inherent in certain aspects of the formalisms of relativity andquantum mechanics. In the process, it also brings the quantum and classical realms of

physics into the sort of intimate contact that can only be provided by a fundamentallynew model of physical and metaphysical realitya model truly worthy of being called a

new paradigm.

Fundamental to this new model are revisions of basic physical concepts including space,time, matter and motion. Space, once a featureless medium aimlessly proliferatingthrough cosmic expansion, becomes a distributed syntactic structure iteratively reborn ofmatter and subject to conspansive evacuation and rescaling. Time, previously envisionedas a quasi-spatial linear dimension along which the cosmos hurtles like a runawaylocomotive, becomes the means by which the universe self-configuresan SCSPL-grammatical symphony of logico-linguistic transformations played by the self-creatingcosmos. Lumps of matter, no longer the inert pawns of external laws of physics, become

SCSPL syntactic operators containing within themselves the syntactic rules by which theyinternally process each other to create new states of physical reality. And motion, onceseen as the passage of material attribute-ensembles through adjacent infinitesimal cellsof empty space displaying them as content, becomes an iterative, self-simulativesequence of endomorphic self-projections by moving bodies themselves.

3. The CTMU and Mathematics

Mathematics, like the empirical sciences, requires protection from subjectivecontamination. Just as the scientific method is designed to exclude bias from science, theaxiomatic method is designed to specify an initial set of definitive or self-evidentprinciples and exclude all further assumptions from the deductive process. Accordingly,

mathematical entities are objectified by mathematicians in the same way that physicalentities are objectified by scientists; they are considered to reside outside the subject,concealed in objective reality as hidden programming or secreted away in an idealPlatonic realm beyond the reach of the senses. Rejecting these notions in absence of amodel of reality explicitly relating the mathematical and material worlds, others choose tobelieve that mathematics is a feature or even an invention of the human mind. But sinceany meaningful explanation can be logically formalized, and since logic is an essentialingredient of mathematics, subjectivizing mathematics within a (Cartesian) dualisticframework would again seem to leave the essential regularities of nature without anobjective explanation.Replacing Cartesian dualism with an advanced form of dual-aspect monism, the CTMU

treats the abstract and mathematical, and the concrete and physical, as coincidentaspects of the same reality. Reality becomes a self-distributed hological system whoseessential structure is replicated everywhere within it as mathematical rules of self-recognition and self-processing. Hology, the central attribute of any self-recognizing,self-processing entity, is a logical species of self-similarity according to which such anentitydistributes over itselfas rules of structure and evolutionrules that inhere in, andare obeyed by, every interacting part of the system. Thus, what the system becomes isalways consistent with what it already is(and vice versa); its causal integrity is


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tautologically preserved. In the CTMU, these rules the syntax of the language spokento reality by reality itself - are understood to be largely mathematical in nature.The theoretic vantage of the CTMU is essentially logical, with an accent on modeltheory. Its perspective is associated with the mathematical discipline governing theformulation and validation of theories, namely logic, with emphasis on the branch of logic

which deals with the mapping of theories to their universes, namely model theory. Thiselevates it to a higher level of discourse than ordinary scientific theories, which are simplycompact mathematical descriptions of observational data, and even most mathematicaltheories, which are compact mathematical descriptions of mathematical objects,structures and processes. This is reflected in the name of the theory; CTMU is just away of saying the metatheory that describes a model, or valid interpretation, ofthe theoryofcognition, including logic and mathematics, in the real universe (and viceversa).Since the elementary categories of cognition and perception can be viewed as syntacticelements of cognitive and perceptual languages, cognition and perception can be model-theoretically treated as mappings of cognitive and perceptual languages onto their

respective dual universes, and can thus be related by the CTMU within a single monicuniverse. Because mathematics and science are based on cognition and observationrespectively, the CTMU is naturally equipped to address the foundations of bothmathematics and science. The CTMU reposes mathematics in reality, and reality inmathematics, in a way that puts each at the others immediate disposal for solvingfoundational problems and resolving paradoxes.

4. The CTMU and Cosmology

A curious child often asks why questions, and when an answer is given, immediatelyasks another why question about the answer. Such a child is unsatisfied with superficialexplanations, craving instead an ultimate rationale for existence. Example: Why is grass

green? Chlorophylls green. Why does grass have chlorophyll? Because it needs tophotosynthesize. Why? Because it gets its energy from the sun. Why does the sunmake energy? Because its a huge fusion reactor that takes energy from atoms. Whydo atoms have energy? Because, as a man named Einstein showed, matter is energy.

Why? Because thats the way the universe is made. Whats the universe and whomade it? At this point, the weary adult has exhausted his scientific knowledge and mustbegin to deal with the most general and philosophically controversial abstractions in hismental vocabularyor give up.

Stephen Hawking is among those who have proposed a way out of the regress. Incollaboration with James Hartle, he decided to answer the last question - what is theuniverse and who made it? - as follows. The universe made itself, and its structure is

determined by its ability to do just that. This is contained in the No Boundary Proposal,which Hawking describes thusly: This proposal incorporates the idea that the universe iscompletely self-contained, and that there is nothing outside the universe. In a way, youcould say that the boundary conditions of the universe are that there is no boundary. Tomathematically support this thesis, Hawking infuses the quantum wavefunction of theuniverse with a set of geometries in which space and time are on a par. The fact thattime consists of a succession of individual moments thus becomes a consequence ofspatial geometry, explaining the arrow of time by which time flows from past to future.


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Unfortunately, despite the essential correctness of the intrinsic cosmology idea (to makethe universe self-contained and self-explanatory), there are many logical problems withits execution. These problems cannot be solved simply by choosing a convenient set ofpossible geometries (structurings of space); one must also explain where these geometricpossibilities came from. For his own part, Hawking explains them as possible solutions ofthe equations expressing the laws of physics. But if this is to be counted a meaningful

explanation, it must include an account of how the laws of physics originatedand thereare further requirements as well. They include the need to solve paradoxical physicalconundrums like ex nihilocosmogony(how something, namely the universe, can becreated from nothing), quantum nonlocality(how subatomic particles can instantaneouslycommunicate in order to preserve certain conserved physical quantities), acceleratingcosmic expansion (how the universe can appear to expand when there is no externalmedium of expansion, and accelerate in the process to boot), and so on. Even in thehands of experts, the conventional picture of reality is too narrow to meaningfully addressthese issues. Yet it is too useful, and too accurate, to be wrong. In light of thefundamentality of the problems just enumerated, this implies a need foradditional logicalstructure, with the extended picture reducing to the current one as alimiting case.

The CTMU takes the reflexive self-containment relationship invoked by Hawking and someof his cosmological peers and predecessors and explores it in depth, yielding the logicalstructures of which it is built. Together, these structures comprise an overall structurecalled SCSPL, acronymic for Self-Configuring Self-Processing Language. The naturalterminus of the cosmological self-containment imperative, SCSPL is a sophisticatedmathematical entity that possesses logical priority over any geometric explanation ofreality, and thus supersedes previous models as a fundamental explanation of the universewe inhabit. In doing so, it relies on a formative principle essential to its nature, the TelicPrinciple. A logical analogue ofteleology, the Telic Principle replaces the usual run ofontological hypotheses, including quasi-tautological anthropic principles such as weperceive this universe because this universe supports our existence, as the basis of

cosmogony.

5. The CTMU and Modern Philosophy

20th century philosophy has been dominated by the linguistic and logico-analytic schools,whose joint program was to convert concepts and observations to language, and scientificand philosophical reasoning to the logical analysis of language. As long as language wasby assumption held apart from reality, this program had the inevitable and unfortunateeffect of demoting philosophy to the status of an irrelevant word game. In consequence,philosophers have lapsed into a pervasive cynicism that eats away at the foundations ofhuman knowledge like a slow cancer, looking resignedly to scientific materialism to solve

problems that science itself has frankly admitted are philosophical and empiricallyunsolvable. Perceiving themselves as hopelessly beaten in the name of philosophy, thevast majority of modern philosophers have dejectedly become traitors to their cause.

The CTMU ignores philosophical defeatism and takes the obvious next step in the logico-linguistic tradition, which is to subject the problematic relationship between language andreality itself to logical analysis. When this is properly done, it turns out that reality andlanguage are not so easily held apart. In fact, it turns out that they can ultimately betreated as identical for purposes of philosophical and scientific reasoning...that they can
http://www.ctmu.org/CTMU/Articles/nexus.html#teleologyhttp://www.ctmu.org/CTMU/Articles/nexus.html#teleology


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be melded in a single self-similar medium, SCSPL, which is everywhere both real andlinguistic, i.e., monic in CTMU dual-aspect sense (as distinguished from the separativedualism pervading the sciences). This restores philosophy to a position from which it caneffect the resolution of scientific paradox, which is just what the CTMU does in its capacityas reality theory.

More specifically, because it comprises a higher-level metalanguage of the language ofphysics, the CTMU is technically a theory ofmetaphysics in the formal sense (ametalanguage is a higher-level language in which one can talk about the structure of alower-level language and its correspondence to whatever it describes). Thus, it hasbearing on the traditional ingredients of metaphysics including cosmology(the study ofthe origin and composition of the universe), ontology(the study of being),and epistemology(the study of the nature and limits of knowledge). The CTMU is thusclosely related not only to cosmological science, but also to the burgeoning philosophiesof mind and language.

6. The CTMU and Theology

Basically, the Scientific Method says that science should be concerned with objectivephenomena meeting at least two criteria: distinguishability, which means that theyproduce distinctive effects, and replicability, which means that they can be experimentallyrecreated and studied by multiple observers who compare their data and confirm eachothers findings. Unfortunately, God nowhere fits into this scheme. First, God isconsidered to be omnipresent even in monotheistic schemata, which means distributedover reality as a whole and therefore lacking any specific location at which to be

distinguished. Second, there is such a thing as being too replicable. If something isdistributed over reality, then it is present no matter where or when it is tested, and onecannot distinguish what is being replicated. And then, of course, we have the Creatoraspect of God; if God is indeed the Creator of reality, then He need not make His works

replicable by mere scientists. Thus, the God concept is unavoidably ambiguous in bothspatial and temporal location, and no amount of scientific experimentation can overcomethis logical difficulty.

In short, while the God concept may be amenable to empirical confirmation, e.g. throughthe discovery of vanishingly improbable leaps of biological evolution exceeding availablegenetic information, it is by definition resistant to scientific verification. God, likeconsciousness, is a predicate whose extended logical structure, including a supportingconceptual framework, exceeds what science is presently equipped to analyze. This, ofcourse, means that arguments for or against God cannot be decided on empiricalgrounds, all but precluding a working relationship between the scientific and religiouscommunities. Even the sincerest attempts to foster dialogue between the two camps are

obstructed by the unrealistic expectations of each regarding the ability of the other tomeet it on its own ground; whereas the obvious first step towards meaningfulcommunication is a basis for mutual understanding, no amount of encouragement ormonetary incentive can provide it for those whose languages stubbornly resisttranslation. Since this describes the relationship between science and religion, the firststep toward reconciliation must be to provide a logical bridge between their internallanguagesa master language in which both languages are embedded. The CTMU,conceived as the most general and comprehensive of logical languages, is designed toserve as that bridge.


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It has been written that God is dead. This might more accurately have been writtenabout faith. Mankind is creating an increasingly complex and mechanized world, and theessence of complexity and mechanism is not faith, but logic. So the time for a logicalapproach to theology is nigh. Accordingly, the CTMU does not begin with a preconceiveddefinition of God; rather, it determines within the extended logical structure of reality howthe properties most often attributed to God are logically related, reserving the title for the

relationship actually educed. In this way, it avoids the circular, faith-driven explanationsto which religion so often resorts, and at which science so often revolts. And meanwhile,by eliminating the barrier between subjective and objective reality, it permits recognitionof the subjective dimension of the universe as a wholethe dimension by virtue of whichthe universe can truly be described as the Mind of God.

7. The CTMU and Teleology

Historically, the Telic Principle can be understood as a logical analogue of teleologyincorporating John Archibald Wheelers Observer Participation Thesis (approximately,

man participates in the ongoing quantum-scale creation of reality by observing it andthereby collapsing the wavefunction representing its potential). More directly, the Telic

Principle says that reality is a self-configuring entity that emerges from a background ofunbound potential as a protean recursive construct with a single imperative: self-actualization. In other words, existence and its amplification is the tautological raisondtre of the cosmos. The phrase raison dtre has a literal significance; in order toexist, a self-contained universe must configure itself to recognize its own existence, andto configure itself in this way it must, by default, generate and parameterize its own self-configuration and self-recognition functions. This describes a situation in which theuniverse generates its own generalized utility: to self-configure, the universe must have a

self-actualization criterion by which to select one of many possible structures orfutures for itself, and this criterion is a generalized analogue of human utilityits raisondtre.

In addition to generalized utility and generalized volition (teleology), the universe alsopossesses generalized cognition (coherent self-recognition). By any reasonable definitionof the term mental, this makes the universe mentalin a generalized sense, where

generalized means that these attributes conform to general functional descriptions ofwhat humans do in the process of volition, cognition and mentation. The coherent self-recognition feature of reality appears as an explicit feature of conspansive spacetime, amodel-theoretic dual of the expanding cosmos. Whereas the expanding cosmos issimplistically depicted in terms of a model called ERSU, short for Expanding Rubber-SheetUniverse, conspansive spacetime is depicted by a model-theoretic dual of ERSU calledUSRE, short for the Universe as a Self-Representational Entity. While ERSU is a productof Cartesian mind-matter dualism that effectively excludes mind in favor of matter, USRE,which portrays the universe as a self-simulation, is a form of dual-aspect monism

according to which reality is distributively informational and cognitive in nature.

It is important to understand that the CTMU does not arbitrarily project humanattributes onto the cosmos; it permits the logical deduction of necessary generalattributes of reality, lets us identify any related human attributes derived from thesegeneral attributes, and allows us to explain the latter in terms of the former. CTMUcosmology is thus non-anthropomorphic. Rather, it uses an understanding of thecosmological mediumof sentience to explain the mental attributes inheritedby sentientorganisms from the cosmos in which they have arisen. Unlike mere anthropomorphic


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reasoning, this is a logically correct description of human characteristics in terms of thecharacteristics of the universe from which we derive our existence.

8. The CTMU and Consciousness Studies

Modern science seems to offer many intriguing clues about the nature of consciousness,

mainly involving the structure and dynamics of the brain. But for all its success andsophistication, science is ill-equipped to turn these clues into an ultimate explanation ofconsciousness or any other subjective property. Among the reasons are its empiricism,which means that it prefers observation to introspection; its objectivism, which meansthat it deliberately excludes subjective contamination from that which is observed; andits physical reductionism, which means that it tries to account for all scientificobservations strictly in terms of matter and energy distributed in space andtime. Unfortunately, this perspective is innately opposed to the study of anything that issubjective by nature, i.e., any property not directly observable except by the mind thatembodies it. In its zeal to eliminate subjective contamination, science unwittinglydiscards the baby with the bath water.

As an example of the scientific perspective, consider the Turing Test, a version of whichsays that the humanoid consciousness of a machine intelligence can only be tested byletting it hold an anonymous conversation with a real human. If the human is fooled intothinking that he is conversing with another human, then the machine is taken to possesshuman consciousness. But in fact, all that such a machine has demonstrated are certainobjective effects usually associated with the property consciousness, but which mayhave been mindlessly produced by a set of logical instructions executed by inanimatehardware. The only thing that knows whether the machine is truly conscious is themachine itself, and only if it is truly conscious at that. For its own part, science lacks theconceptual apparatus to even make this distinction.

Unfortunately, philosophy the mother of science appears to have abdicated its

parental responsibility, failing to tell science how to enlarge its horizons to accommodatesubjective phenomena. The CTMU fills this breach, using advanced logic to expand ourconceptual framework in a way that permits the meaningful analysis of subjectiveproperties. It does this by enlarging and deepening the relationship between the mostfundamental ingredients of scientific analysis - ingredients like space, time, and objectand developing the implications in a mathematical and scientific context. Theexplanations that emerge not only possess an unprecedented degree of logical structure,but are automatically integrated with science and compatible with all of its best insights.

9. The CTMU and Intelligent Design

Among the most exciting recent developments in science are complexity theory, the

theory of self-organizing systems, and the modern incarnation ofIntelligent DesignTheory, which investigates the deep relationship between self-organization andevolutionary biology in a scientific context not preemptively closed to theologicalcausation. Bucking the traditional physical reductionism of the hard sciences, complexitytheory has given rise to a new trend, informational reductionism, which holds that thebasis of reality is not matter and energy, but information. Unfortunately, this new form ofreductionism is as problematic as the old one. As mathematician David Berlinski writesregarding the material and informational aspects of DNA: We quite know what DNA is: itis a macromolecule and so a material object. We quite know what it achieves: apparently


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everything. Are the two sides of this equation in balance? More generally, Berlinskiobserves that since the information embodied in a string of DNA or protein cannot affectthe material dynamic of reality without being read by a material transducer, information ismeaningless without matter.

The relationship between physical and informational reductionism is a telling one, for it

directly mirrors Cartesian mind-matter dualism, the source of several centuries ofphilosophical and scientific controversy regarding the nature of deep reality. As long asmatter and information remain separate, with specialists treating one as primary whiletacitly relegating the other to secondary status, dualism remains in effect. To this extent,history is merely repeating itself; where mind and matter once vied with each other forprimary status, concrete matter now vies with abstract information abstractlyrepresenting matter and its extended relationships. But while the abstractness ofinformation seems to make it a worthy compromise between mind and matter, Berlinskiscomment demonstrates its inadequacy as a conceptual substitute. What is now requiredis thus what has been required all along: a conceptual framework in which the relationshipbetween mind and matter, cognition and information, is made explicit. This frameworkmust not only permit the completion of the gradual ongoing dissolution of the Cartesian

mind-matter divider, but the construction of a footworthy logical bridge across theresulting explanatory gap.

Mathematically, the theoretical framework of Intelligent Design consists of certaindefinitive principles governing the application of complexity and probability to the analysisof two key attributes of evolutionary phenomena, irreducible complexityand specifiedcomplexity. On one hand, because the mathematics of probability must be causallyinterpreted to be scientifically meaningful, and because probabilities are thereforeexpressly relativized to specific causal scenarios, it is difficult to assign definiteprobabilities to evolutionary states in any model not supporting the detailedreconstruction and analysis of specific causal pathways. On the other hand, positing the

absolute improbability of an evolutionary state ultimately entails the specification of an

absolute (intrinsic global) model with respect to which absolute probabilistic deviationscan be determined. A little reflection suffices to inform us of some of its properties: itmust be rationally derivable from a prioriprinciples and essentially tautological in nature,it must on some level identify matter and information, and it must eliminate theexplanatory gap between the mental and physical aspects of reality. Furthermore, inkeeping with the name of that to be modeled, it must meaningfully incorporatetheintelligence and design concepts, describing the universe as an intelligently self-designed, self-organizing system.

The CTMU is exactly the model required. It describes reality as a Self-Configuring Self-Processing Language, an ultimate kind of self-organizing, self-emergent system consistingof "infocognitive" syntactic operators at once material and informational in nature. It is a

rationally-bootstrapped model-theoretic extension of logic that shares its tautologicalstructure, approximating an answer for Berlinski's question what brings a universe intobeing? Owing to conspansion, a distributed evolutionary process by virtue of which theuniverse can be described as a Universal Self-Representational Entity, it unites mind andmatter in a self-configuring, self-processing system endowed with a species of coherencesubstantiating its possession of higher-order sentience. And last but not least, it putseverything under the control of a logical analogue of teleology called the Telic Principle,conspansively adjoining to the laws of physics an "extended superposition principle" that


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provides irreducible and specified complexity with a mechanism they would otherwisehave continued to lack.

10. Summary: The Bottom Line

To summarize, the CTMU is a theory of reality-as-mind, in principle spanning all of sciencewhile permitting a logical analysis of consciousness and other subjective predicates (thisdoes not mean that it has solved all of the problems of science and the philosophy ofmind, but only that it has laid the preliminary groundwork). It provides the logicalframework of a TOE, yielding an enhanced model of spacetime affording preliminaryexplanations of cosmogony, accelerating cosmic expansion, quantum nonlocality, thearrow of time, and other physical and cosmological riddles that cannot be satisfactorilyexplained by other means. The CTMU penetrates the foundations of mathematics,describing the syntactic relationships among various problematic mathematical conceptsin a reality-theoretic context. It is the culmination of the modern logico-linguisticphilosophical tradition, reuniting the estranged couple consisting of (rationalistic)philosophy and (empirical) science. It provides an indispensable logical settingfor Intelligent Design. And perhaps most importantly, the CTMU enables a logical

description of God and an unprecedented logical treatment of theology, comprising ametaphysical framework in which to unite people of differing faiths and resolve religiousconflicts.

1998 - 2000 by Christopher Michael Langan (All Rights Reserved)
http://www.ctmu.org/

the cognitive-theoretic model of the universe as the nexus of spirituality and cosmology: an...

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