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The Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe (CTMU) is a metaphysical theory of reality as a self-referential, self-generating mathematical language. It is sometimes described as a theory of everything.

Relationship to intelligent design

Intelligent design relies on irreducible complexity, the idea that certain biological traits are complex enough that they could not have evolved in incremental modifications through natural selection. The CTMU is one way for intelligent design advocates to answer the question of how biological traits of irreducible complexity come to exist. As the CTMU indicates, creation occurs through a self-replicating feature of the universe, so irreducible complexity could be generated in a top-down way. A similar line of reasoning follows for the explanation of the physical laws of the universe as part of the teleological argument.

The seminal paper published on the CTMU appeared in the journal Progress in Complexity, Information, and Design which was published by an organization associated with Christian creationism, the International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design. CTMU literature also claims that the CTMU can be used to prove God's existence. However, God as described by the CTMU is not a conventional anthropomorphic God, or a supernatural deliberate creator of the universe. As the CTMU asserts that the universe created itself, a God as a prime mover that exists outside of the universe is redundant. Rather the CTMU suggests God exists inside the universe and the universe as a whole resembles a supreme mind or intelligence. Furthermore, in the CTMU biological evolution is seen as progressing on top of self-generating processes of the universe.

Role of language

In the CTMU, reality is composed of information in the form of mathematical language. Languages progress in goal-directed ways attempting to maximize utility in specific domains. These languages are self-perceiving, self-defining, self-configuring and self-executing. They create their own rules for development and ultimately are able to interpret themselves. Preservation of perception creates information and requires cognition (as related to the name of the model). The substrate of information in the CTMU is a self-creating panconsciousness. Mind and physical reality are connected through a network of linguistic relationships as are individual minds to the universal mind. In this model, time is an emergent relationship between languages, with later languages extending earlier ones. Reality is transtemporal where things from one time can influence things in other times.

Influences and related concepts

The CTMU derives some inspiration from John Archibald Wheeler's geometrodynamics and digital physics, but also criticizes it as "informational reductionism." The CTMU shares some similar features with Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's philosophy, particularly the concept of a world-spirit that over time gains knowledge of itself and eventually reaches a stage where "thought thinks itself." The CTMU also has some similarities to Alain Badiou's attempts at using mathematical language to explain reality as a tautologically self-organizing and self-designing system. The CTMU has much in common with The Self-Simulation Hypothesis Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics as published by Quantum Gravity Research, cybernetics and systems theory. Defining reality using languages is also common in computational fields.

Unapproachability of papers published on the CTMU

Both artificial intelligence researcher Ben Goertzel and computer scientist Mark Chu-Carroll remarked that the material published on the CTMU uses terminology and neologisms in a way that makes it difficult to understand.

Notes

1. Langan, Christopher (September 2002). "The Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe: A New Kind of Reality Theory". Progress in Complexity, Information and Design. ISSN 1555-5089. Archived from the original on 2002-11-05.

References

1. ^ David Redvaldsen (31 July 2019). "Chapter 5: Charles Darwin and the argument for design". In William Gibson; Dan O'Brien; Marius Turda (eds.). Teleology and Modernity. Taylor & Francis. pp. 197–202. ISBN 978-1-351-14186-4.
2. ^ Goertzel, Ben (2015-10-19). "Langan's 'Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe'". The Multiverse According to Ben. Archived from the original on 2016-02-14. Retrieved 2019-09-25. {{cite web}}: |archive-date= / |archive-url= timestamp mismatch; 2016-02-15 suggested (help)
3. ^ Schofield, James (May 2017). Dialectical holism : the lost metaphysics of E. E. Harris (PhD thesis). New Zealand: University of Canterbury.{{cite thesis}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
4. ^ Menzler, Nils (25 July 2019). "Chapter 2: Theoretische Vorarbeiten § 2.2 »Paraphysik«, »Parawissenschaft« und »Pseudowissenschaft«". Techno-Esoterik in der säkularisierten Moderne: Überzeugungsstrategien, Apparate und die Formung des modernen Subjekts (in German). Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden. pp. 41–43. doi:10.1007/978-3-658-27303-3. ISBN 978-3-658-27302-6.
5. ^ Fusco, Mark Peter (1 November 2016). "Consciousness in the Wilderness of Mirrors: Trinitarian Kenosis and Created Difference in the Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar". University of St. Michael’s College. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Unknown parameter |degree= ignored (help)
6. ^ Irwin, Klee; Amaral, Marcelo; Chester, David (2020). "The Self-Simulation Hypothesis Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics". Entropy. 22 (2): 247. Bibcode:2020Entrp..22..247I. doi:10.3390/e22020247. ISSN 1099-4300. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |lay-url= ignored (help)CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)
7. William A. Dembski (15 April 2016). "Chapter 1: The Challenge of a Material World". Being as Communion: A Metaphysics of Information. Routledge. pp. 1–11. ISBN 978-1-317-17545-2.
8. Langi, Armein Z. R. (2013). "A theoretical foundation for engineering smart environments through PSV systems". International Conference on ICT for Smart Society. pp. 1–4. doi:10.1109/ICTSS.2013.6588091. ISBN 978-1-4799-0145-6. S2CID 11727050.
9. Langi, A.Z.R (2014). "Computing Literacy as a Foundation for Digital Learning". Proceedings of the 2014 International Conference on Advances in Education Technology. pp. 1–6. doi:10.2991/icaet-14.2014.1. ISBN 978-94-62520-44-8. ISSN 2352-5398. {{cite book}}: |journal= ignored (help)
10. C. Chu-Carroll, Mark. "Another Crank comes to visit: The Cognitive Theoretic Model of the Universe". Archived from the original on 2011-02-14.
11. Chu-Carroll, Mark (2008-02-21). "Two For One: Crackpot Physics and Crackpot Set Theory". Good Math/Bad Math.

• Metaphysics
• Intelligent design
• Panentheism