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Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe

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The Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe or CTMU (pronounced "cat-mew") is the collected work of a blue-collar self-described genius Christopher Michael Langan. The CTMU rose to media attention in 1999, buoyed by interest in Langan's extremely high IQ. Among Langan's claims for the theory are that it constitutes absolute truth, provides the logical framework of a Theory of Everything, and proves the existence of God.

History

Of limited means and largely self-taught, Langan created the CTMU in the mid-1980s while working as a nightclub bouncer on Long Island. His first paper on the theory, "The Resolution of Newcomb's Paradox", appeared in the December 1989–January 1990 issue of Noesis, the journal of the Noetic Society, a high-IQ society to which Langan belonged. Over the next decade Langan refined his work, continuing to publish and discuss it in high-IQ journals.

For most of the 1990s, knowledge of the CTMU was limited to high-IQ societies. Wider recognition for Langan and his theory began in 1999, when Esquire magazine published a profile of Langan and other members of the high-IQ community. Billing Langan as "the smartest man in America", the article's account of the weight-lifting bouncer and his Theory of Everything sparked a flurry of media interest. Articles and interviews highlighting Langan and the CTMU appeared in Popular Science, The Times, Newsday, Muscle & Fitness, and elsewhere. Langan was featured on 20/20 and interviewed on Errol Morris' First Person.

By 2002 the CTMU had drawn the attention of the intelligent design organization ISCID, the International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design. Langan was made a fellow of the society and in September 2002 published in its online journal a 56-page paper, "The Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe: A New Kind of Reality Theory". Langan's paper "Cheating the Millennium: The Mounting Explanatory Debts of Scientific Naturalism", relating the CTMU to existing theories of causality, appeared in the 2004 anthology Uncommon Dissent. The scientific community considers the advocacy of intelligent design to be pseudoscience or junk science.

Langan has maintained an extensive online presence, debating the CTMU in forums across the Internet and posting papers on his Web site. He also claims to have written an unpublished book about the CTMU called Design for a Universe.

Overview of CTMU

Unlike scientific theories, which rely on observation to establish their correspondence with reality, the CTMU is a scholastic treatise that is supposed to apply apodictically, in all possible worlds. In fact, claims Langan, "any other valid theory of reality will necessarily equate to the CTMU up to isomorphism; whatever it adds will come by way of specificity, not generality". Verification of the CTMU is made "largely rationalistic" by its claimed tautological nature, so that "much of the theory has to be proven like a math theorem rather than confirmed on a lab bench".

Langan argues that reality has an explanation through causality. Similar to the teleological argument he believes that "something" outside of reality has created it, and is relevant to reality. Reality, Langan argues, requires as a condition of its existence not merely logical consistency, but also "teleological consistency".

In the CTMU, reality is a dual-aspect monism consisting of one substance (infocognition) with two aspects (information and cognition); space is a configuration of syntactic operators, and time is the activity of these operators as they process themselves and each other. The CTMU therefore supports a kind of panpsychism.

Reception and Criticism

Despite its extensive coverage and prominent placement in high-profile media sources, the CTMU has received no notable, reputable attention. Unsurprisingly, in view of its bold claims, the theory has not however escaped controversy on the Internet, where anonymous discussion-board participants range from supporters hailing the CTMU as a major breakthrough and praising its author for his brilliance, to critics hurling scorn and invectives at Langan and pronouncing his theory incomprehensible and blatantly incorrect on a number of grounds, to neutral bystanders preferring to reserve judgement until the publication of Design for a Universe.

Langan believes that theoretical physicists use "unverifiable mathematical conjecture" to overcome what he considers to be a lack of information about the subatomic and and cosmic realms, and says that they should consider the logical implications of what they are doing before formulating cosmological theories (Quain, 2001). Langan does not address the fact that mainstream theoretical physics and physical cosmology have successfully predicted a host of empirical results, such as the existence of positrons, Neptune, and cosmic background radiation, to name but a tiny few. There is also an extensive literature on the logical and categorial foundations of mathematical physics, which casts some of the pronouncements made by Langan in the Popular Science article about him in a different light.

Further reading

The most comprehensive paper on the CTMU is the 56-page "A New Kind of Reality Theory". A shorter explication, but still quite detailed, is the "Introduction to the CTMU". For people seeking a gentler introduction, there are questions and answers.

References

  • Brabham, Dennis. (August 21, 2001). "The Smart Guy". Newsday.
  • Langan, Christopher M. (December 1989–January 1990). "The Resolution of Newcomb's Paradox." Noesis No. 44.
  • Langan, Christopher M. (1999). "Introduction to the CTMU". Ubiquity Vol. 1, No. 1.
  • Langan, Christopher M. (2002). "The Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe: A New Kind of Reality Theory". Progress in Complexity, Information, and Design 1.2–1.3.
  • Langan, Christopher M. (2004). "Cheating the Millennium: The Mounting Explanatory Debts of Scientific Naturalism". In Uncommon Dissent: Intellectuals Who Find Darwinism Unconvincing, edited by William Dembski. ISI Books.
  • McFadden, Cynthia. (December 9, 1999). "The Smart Guy". 20/20.
  • Morris, Errol. (August 14, 2001). "The Smartest Man in the World". First Person.
  • O'Connell, Jeff. (May 2001). "Mister Universe". Muscle & Fitness.
  • Quain, John R. (October 14, 2001). "Wise Guy". Popular Science.
  • Sager, Mike. (November 1999). "The Smartest Man in America". Esquire.
  • Wigmore, Barry. (February 7, 2000). "Einstein's brain, King Kong's body". The Times.

External links

Notes

  1. McFadden 1999. 20/20 gave Langan an IQ test and reported that "his score was off the charts, too high to be measured. Neuropsychologist Dr. Bob Novelly was astounded", saying, "Chris is the highest individual that I have ever measured in 25 years of doing this." Sager 1999, Wigmore 2000, and Brabham 2001 also make much of Langan's IQ.
  2. Langan 1989–1990.
  3. ^ Sager 1999.
  4. ^ Quain 2001.
  5. ^ Wigmore 2000.
  6. ^ Brabham 2001.
  7. O'Connell 2001.
  8. ^ McFadden 1999.
  9. Morris 2001.
  10. Langan 2002.
  11. Langan 2004.
  12. National Science Teachers Association, a professional association of 55,000 science teachers and administrators in a 2005 press release: "We stand with the nation's leading scientific organizations and scientists, including Dr. John Marburger, the president's top science advisor, in stating that intelligent design is not science.…It is simply not fair to present pseudoscience to students in the science classroom." National Science Teachers Association Disappointed About Intelligent Design Comments Made by President Bush National Science Teachers Association Press Release August 3 2005
  13. "Biologists aren’t alarmed by intelligent design’s arrival in Dover and elsewhere because they have all sworn allegiance to atheistic materialism; they’re alarmed because intelligent design is junk science." H. Allen Orr. Annals of Science. New Yorker May 2005.Devolution—Why intelligent design isn't. Also, Robert T. Pennock Tower of Babel: The Evidence Against the New Creationism.
  14. Langan 2002, p. 53, n. 6.
  15. Langan 2002, p. 21.
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