Welcome • User Guide
ToS • Privacy • Canary
Donate • Bugs • License

©2026 Poal.co

http://knowledgebase.ctmu.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Langan_CTMU_0929021-1.pdf

...the CTMU describes reality as a Self-Configuring Self-Processing Language or SCSPL, a reflexive intrinsic language characterized not only by self-reference and recursive self-definition, but full self-configuration and selfexecution (reflexive read-write functionality). CTMU

The CTMU describes reality in such a way that a more basic or generic process is impossible to develop, at least given the known laws of physics.

I should add that without reference to the text's main body, the Abstract portion of the CTMU may be impossible to decipher and that Langan's writing is very difficult to quote directly without also generating a wall of text. The above quote is about as simple as the CTMU gets. Langan uses neologisms, yet these are always clearly defined in the text and accord to generic principles as outlined in the CTMU text.

A cursory search for the CTMU on Googlelag returns a bunch of self-righteous science "fan boys" attacking the CTMU, yet not a single one makes any formal arguments against the CTMU. Without their own "theory of reality" (basis) to argue from, CTMU critics seem only capable of outright naysaying, while promoting themselves or their favorite celebrity scientists as the only possible solution to scientific inquiries.

http://knowledgebase.ctmu.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Langan_CTMU_0929021-1.pdf >*...the CTMU describes reality as a Self-Configuring Self-Processing Language or SCSPL, a reflexive intrinsic language characterized not only by self-reference and recursive self-definition, but full self-configuration and selfexecution (reflexive read-write functionality).* CTMU The CTMU describes reality in such a way that a more basic or generic process is impossible to develop, at least given the known laws of physics. I should add that without reference to the text's main body, the Abstract portion of the CTMU may be impossible to decipher and that Langan's writing is very difficult to quote directly without also generating a wall of text. The above quote is about as simple as the CTMU gets. Langan uses neologisms, yet these are always clearly defined in the text and accord to generic principles as outlined in the CTMU text. A cursory search for the CTMU on Googlelag returns a bunch of self-righteous science "fan boys" attacking the CTMU, yet not a single one makes any formal arguments against the CTMU. Without their own "theory of reality" (basis) to argue from, CTMU critics seem only capable of outright naysaying, while promoting themselves or their favorite celebrity scientists as the only possible solution to scientific inquiries.

(post is archived)

You are currently inside a comment thread.
Click here to see all the comments (15).
[–] • 0 pt

Very fascinating. This does contain many elements we have been discussing.

It strikes me that a distinction has to be made - between distinctions. There is nature/supernature, and reality/unreality. I would say, traditionally, God is "separate" from creation only insofar as He is supernature, while His creation is nature, while He is not separate from reality insofar as He is the One reality, and His creation participates in this. So God is transcendent and immanent.

So in that sense I would say I do not take issue with Langan's assertion that there is no "external" creator, since he is speaking in the context of reality, not "nature"-traditionally conceived, and so God is obviously not "external" in that case.

In June of 2019, he presented and published a reinterpretation of quantum mechanics within the CTMU framework. It was first published in the Proceedings of the Foundations of Mind VIII and the journals, Bionoetics and Cosmos & History.

I would like to get my hands on this. Based on that page reference, I bet it would accord well with Smith's own perspective. This "new kind of causation" referenced whereby "the system brings itself into existence as a means of atemporal communication between its past and future whereby law and state, syntax and informational content, generate and refine each other across time to maximize total systemic self-utility" is inseparable from Smith and Borella's vertical causation, which is how Smith resolves the Quantum Enigma in the first place. This Langan's "new causation" is likewise atemporal, I sense they are talking about the same thing, especially with the way he refers to "telors" - i.e., people:

observer-participants in the ongoing creation of reality. Telors possess independent volition and constructive, creative intelligence or "sentience". In the CTMU, the distributed laws of physics do not fully determine reality; they are supplemented by "meta-laws" created by telors as reality evolves. This ability of telors is constrained by factors including locality, interference, and the probabilistic limits of the laws of physics.

which is what I have been stressing to ARM about the "non-natural" causal significance of the free will - Dennett's "cop-out" just does not suffice.

I also find his thoughts on unbound telesis to be basically untenable without the Trinity:

Because UBT is a medium of pure potential, everything is possible within it. This means that anything which is able to "recognize itself" as existing, will in fact exist from its own vantage. However, the requirements for doing so are, asserts Langan, more stringent than is normally supposed. Because UBT is unstructured, the only possibilities which can actualize from it are those with sufficient internal structure to create and configure themselves. So in the CTMU, reality, rather than being uncaused or externally caused, is self-caused, and constrained by the structure it needs to create and configure itself, that of SCSPL.

Self-causation is one of those laughable philosophical ideas...unless you're talking about God Himself. Atheist philosophers try to argue that the universe is self-caused, but this is totally ridiculous, because they perceive the universe to exist independent of, or rather, without God. But unless the object of self-causation is exactly what classical theism asserts God to be, the very notion of self-causation is an absurdity. As EMJ says, "it would have to exist before it existed!" But there is no "before" with God; He is eternal. But His creation is not; or rather, His creation, with time, emerges out of the unbound telesis through His recognition of Himself. And so only with a Being, a One, a Mind that is God could such a term be meaningfully used - and it would have to be used in a Trinitarian sense, where God is, and knows Himself as an image of Himself, and also is this knowing, this self-reference, this self-causation (insofar as this knowing is both eternal and within time.

I love that he jettisons the relativistic / context-shifting cop-out also. This is what moderns do to get around Aquinas - they deny the first principles themselves. But as Langan rightly notes, insofar as a principle is first and necessary, it is also self-evident - meaning it is the definition of insanity to reject it.

Metaphysical Autology Principle - reality is closed with respect to all internally relevant operations. In other words, everything essential to reality, including everything needed to describe or explain it, is contained in reality itself.

So as the Meister, and Aquinas, and many Catholic saints all affirm - God is the One, He is reality.

Mind Equals Reality Principle - mind and reality are ultimately inseparable to the extent that they share common rules of structure and processing. In particular, (a) reality is comprehensive with respect to mind (our minds are part of reality), and (b) reality conforms to the categories of mind.

I think this axiom is the underlying theme of most of what you've been saying for the past year. I also think it accords with anthropic realism, and what I've been saying about how the universe exists for us. Thus Gibson's ecological perception, and non-bifurcationism, likewise come into play. Basically, qualia are not evolutive accidents; they actually exist, since they are actually perceived - there is no mind-world duality, no bifurcation.

Multiplex Unity Principle - reality is consistent by virtue of the mutually inclusive relationship between itself (unity) and its contents (multiplicity). Each part of reality contains a description of the whole, in the form of a common set of structural and functional rules.

Reality is One and many; One insofar is has only One source, One cause, One principle, and insofar as all creatures relate to the One; and many insofar as there are a multiplicity of creatures, as there are many nothings, many negations, many emanations. The Meister says that we must negate the negations in order to peel away the multiplicity and find the one.

Thank you @Zerothic for posting about the CTMU. Much food for thought.

@KingOfWhiteAmerica

[–] • 0 pt

I’m a couple pages into the .pdf, and it struck me; “Chris, I’ve got this thing I’ve been working on for a few years, and I think you might be interested” ... It’s a Base-100 alphanumeric representational system, which is unique from all others in that the symbolic structure of the system is informed according to the prime factorization of 100, so two squared times five squared. The numeric system thereby has sufficient symbolic complexity to construct a useful syllabography.

As far as I can tell, it’s a writing system which has the “maximum unambiguous semantic capacity” possible. I suspect it’s possible other representational systems may have equal unambiguous semantic capacity - but none greater.

In other words, it’s a system designed to pack as much unambiguous meaning as is theoretically possible into each symbol.

I’ve developed a system to render English words and phrases using these characters, but it’s apparent one would do well to develop an entirely new set of words themselves constructed around the features of this system. I don’t personally have time for that.

Anyway, the switch that turned that on in my brain was when Chris mentioned using language to represent Absolute Reality in that pdf. It occurred to me I may have a tool uniquely up to the task. I’ll have to run it by him.

@CHIRO @PS @Zerothic

[–] • 0 pt

Oh one more thing:

http://www.cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/viewFile/788/1422

This is a link to his QM paper. So far it’s pretty good; I like how he insists QM is not an ontology. I spent a lot of time between ontology and phenomenology myself, so I appreciate that sort of thing.

@CHIRO

[–] • 0 pt

Thank you! I'll give this a read later.

[–] • 0 pt (edited )

I think we have a few interesting things to tie together here, which would be enjoyable anyway. But we have a few examples now both modern and more or less ancient that are echoing basically the same fundamentals.

I think it's all coming together.

I also noticed that his causal framework was atemporal. If you look at the image that @Zerothic included in his initial comment, you can actually see that causation - as we would perceive it - in any event space would be horizontal with respect to the direction graphically that the events are 'projecting' through the superpositions. So you could say there really is vertical causation which that Minkowski diagram shows by taking an axial view down the Y (time axis), generating the venn diagram. The vertical perspective is what generates the venn diagram.

There is more I want to say, but I don't have time at the moment. I think this CTMU framework could be something very useful for further discussion generally, because we now essentially have the Scholastic/Neo-Platonist mode in addition to two modern ways of discussing this, in Smith/Borella and CTMU. The more useful analogy we have the better.

I am particularly interested in how Langan's conspansion theory ties in with Kabbalistic cosmology. Langan would want to describe these layers as stacked self-simulation, but it strikes me this meshes nicely with emanation through the Sephira, and I'd be interested to work with how Langan's cognitive-physical depiction speaks with the spiritual properties of Kabbalah. Of course, they're interested in different ontological domains, but I'm tempted to see the former as a continuation of the latter.

@KingOfWhiteAmerica

Also King, I have no idea what your new language is all about, but it sounds interesting. I'd like to know more about why it's supposed to maximize the ability to express meaning.