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It has been suggested that this article be merged into Christopher Michael Langan. (Discuss)

The Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe or CTMU (pronounced "cat-mew") is the work of Christopher Michael Langan. The CTMU rose to media attention in 1999, buoyed by interest in reports of Langan's 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

Langan created the CTMU in the mid-1980s. He published his first paper on the theory, "The Resolution of Newcomb's Paradox", in the December 1989–January 1990 issue of Noesis, while acting as editor of the journal of the Noetic Society. 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. The article's account of a weight-lifting bouncer with an extraordinarily high IQ sparked a flurry of media interest in Langan and his CTMU. The CTMU appeared in Popular Science, The Times, Newsday, Muscle & Fitness, and elsewhere, while Langan himself was featured on 20/20.

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 He also claims to have written an unpublished book about the CTMU called Design for a Universe.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. In what some see as a new twist on the cosmological argument, he believes that reality must be defined in such a way that it is self-generative. Reality, Langan argues, requires as a condition of its existence not merely logical consistency, but also "teleological consistency". This, he claims, forces on the world a certain structure that he calls "Self-Configuring Self-Processing Language".

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 sporadic coverage by a handful of reputable media sources, CTMU critics maintain that it has received no notable attention. They also maintain that because it has been published in venues associated with ideas that are currently unpopular within the academic community, particularly Intelligent Design, it is suspect by association.

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). Some critics maintain that this ignores the successes of empirical science and the extensive literature on the logical and categorial foundations of mathematical physics.

Critics of the CTMU often point to the fact that it has received no assessment outside of the popular media, asserting that since the CTMU has not been submitted to and properly criticized in what they consider to be reputable academic journals, it can be neither notable nor correct. They evidently believe that if it were correct, academia would already know all about it; on the other hand, if academia has not yet actively discussed it, then notability and correctness are out of the question. That is, they believe that academia is the sole arbiter of correctness and notability.

It is not clear whether the critics regard the correlation between academia and important new ideas as a logical implication, the outcome of empirical induction, or a definitional premise. In any case, the academic community has on many occasions discussed and developed a favorable consensus on theories that were ultimately found to be erroneous or incomplete (for example, the luminiferous aether of classical physics). Similarly, academia has sometimes failed, for considerable periods of time, to properly note and discuss correct theories which were duly submitted to it (e.g., group theory, which was introduced by Evariste Galois but long neglected due to various unfortunate circumstances and snafus).

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

• Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe official site
• Christopher Langan biography at ISCID

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. Langan 2002, p. 53, n. 6.
10. Langan 2002, p. 21.

• Metaphysics
• Intelligent design
• Panentheism