Through a Glass Darkly - Limits of Discernment & The CTMU

Time for another look into Christopher Langan's CTMU reality theory - considering the epistemological limits of logic through representation, temporal sequencing & the centrality of narrative to the human experience.

If you are new to the Band, this post is an introduction to the point of this blog that needs updating. Older posts are in the archive on the right. Shorter occult posts and other topics have menu pages above.

Comments are welcome, but moderated for obvious reasons. If you don't see it right away, don't worry. We check regularly and it will be up there.

It’s been way too long since the last post. The hiatus was unplanned – a mix of demands on our time and the labor-intensive nature of the topic. We’re due for another look at the CTMU and that is not done casually or in passing. So for the necessity of getting a post up, we’re going to address one central element at the heart of our disagreement. That would be the epistemological power of logic. 

Annunciation to the Shepherds, about 1340-1345, stained-glass, Victoria and Albert Museum, London

The title of this post is an intentional Biblical allusion. It calls attention to opposite concepts of God and Creation in what may seem to be compatible language in the CTMU and Christianity. 

We could have opted for something more secular – like "The Epistemological Shuffle" for example – and still pointed to the main issue. The applicability of logic to domains known by faith.

This is the third in our series of posts looking into Christopher Langan's CTMU - Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe - reality theory. It will be clearer after reading the other two, although the onto-epistemological issues with logic are comprehensible on their own. Here are the links to the first two if interested.

Approaching the Colossus

Assumed Realities - Framings & Foundations for the Band's Look at Christopher Langan's CTMU

The CTMU is premised on the belief that logic possesses an absolute truth value - structural isomorphy with truth - that exceeds it’s ontological position. [Click for a link discussing the Band's Ontological Hierarchy. Regular readers are familiar with it, but it's a different perspective if you aren't.] Logic is a human system of representation intended to develop and assess truthful and internally-consistent statements. But it requires a coherent frame of reference for its applicability. Langan begins with the assumption that anything not ultimately reducible to logical constraints is not classifiable as “real” – more on that in a minute. Including things external to the necessary conditions that make logic possible. That is, the stuff of which internally-consistent statements are made. This is not our interpretation. 

Since logic is the theory of truth, the way to construct a fully verifiable theory is to start with logic and develop the theory by means of rules or principles under which truth is heritable (p. 32). Note: Large quotes from the main CTMU paper we are working from will be in this font and color for clarity. Page numbers refer to that. We'll be a little quote heavy at first to set things up. Click for a link to the original paper.

As noted in the last post, Langan premises his reality theory on tautology - a foundational logical relationship. Logic as the explicit ultimate basis for knowledge of realty. The structural foundation of the whole project. Whatever reality is...

This isn't a trivial question. Langan pedestalizes logic as Truth because he defines reality in terms of modern science and perception. Whether we accept his reliance on logic depends on whether we share his assumptions.

A scientist employs empirical methods to make specific observations, applies general cognitive relationships from logic and mathematics in order to explain them, and comes off treating reality as a blend of perception and cognition (p. 12).

Tautology is essential to the CTMU because it is the most basic universal statement of comprehensive logical truth. And it also ties formal logic at the most basic sentential level to that scientific definition of reality. Consider this extended quote - emphases ours.

In fact, the validity of scientific theories and of science as a whole absolutely depends on …a fundamental syntax from which all scientific and mathematical languages, and the extended cognitive language of perception itself, can be grammatically unfolded, cross-related and validated. Tautology, the theoretical basis of truth as embodied in sentential logic, is obviously the core of this syntax. Accordingly, reality theory must be developed through amplification of this tautological syntax by adjunction of additional syntactic components, the principles of reality theory, which leave the overall character of the syntax invariant. Specifically, in order to fashion a reality theory that has the truth property in the same sense as does logic, but permits the logical evaluation of statements about space and time and law, we must adjoin principles of extension that lend meaning to such statements while preserving the tautology property (p. 14).

If unfamiliar with formal logic, this brief excerpt from an old but clearly written text will help explain why tautology is so appealing for the CTMU. 

From Patruck Suppes, Introduction to Logic, 1957, p. 16 [click for link to the full text if interested].

Tautology is often thought of as redundant, but in logic it's a path to statements of self-evident, comprehensive truth. Jumping from this to a foundation of reality theory is a sign of Langan's cognitive ability.

The last post mentioned how Langan's concept of reality to be theorized can include nothing external to it. This makes it tautological. [P → P] or [if P then P] becomes [Reality → Reality] or Reality is what's real. And because tautology is also a simple statement of universal logical truth, it expresses the defining characteristic of reality in formal logic terms.

In logic, truth is defined by means of always-true expressions called tautologies. A logical tautology possess three distinctive properties: it is descriptively universal, it is closed under recursive self-composition, and it is internally and externally consistent on the syntactic and semantic levels of reference. Since logic is the theory of truth, the way to construct a fully verifiable theory is to start with logic and develop the theory by means of rules or principles under which truth is heritable. Because truth is synonymous with logical tautology, this means developing the theory by adjoining rules which themselves have a tautological structure - i.e., which are universal, closed and consistent - and logically extracting the implications. A theory of reality constructed in this way is called a supertautology (p. 32). 

The next post may go into the specifics of Langan's adjoined rules. His work is - as previously noted - extremely dense and takes more space than a post to address in detail. For this post we want to think generally - about the fitness of logic as a foundation for a transparent theory of everything. Is it appropriate to "extend" logic to ontological domains that are external to logical relationships? Outside or beyond the constituent components from which logical assessment is derived?

The Band would describe logic as objectively true within a given frame of reference. The sentential logic that Langan commences with is based on absolute distinction. [A or not-A]. [Here or there (not-here)]. Singular or plural. Binaries where belonging to one precludes belonging to the other. Note the absence of “both”. There are existential conditions that preclude belonging simultaneously to binary, mutually exclusive, classificatory structures.

The problem is that the definitions are based on manmade categories. The tautology is that A is not B because we define A as not B. Whether or not the constituent definitions A or B apply to anything other than our own categorizing exercises is an open question. 

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, The Heavenly and Earthly Trinities, 1681, oil on canvas, London: National Gallery

This obviously excludes phenomena that defy logical categorical exclusivity. Like the Incarnation, or any interpenetration of the divine and the material.

As noted, Langan excludes any divinity external to "reality" on the grounds of tautological exclusivity and comprehensiveness. But "tautological" is a logical property and the Christian - monotheistic in general - concept of God is super-logical. Ontologically fuller. And therefore possessed of properties that don't resolve clearly into logical structures. Langan's God is an emergent property of reality and not antecedent to it.

One somewhat unexpected thing that writing this blog has driven home is the fundamental difference between representation and things represented. What we call semiotic filtering. Interestingly enough, [representation or thing represented] is a hard mutually exclusionary binary. Although even there, representations are also things-in-themselves, so the distinction depends on defining each by a single property. The point is that logic as a [manmade form of structured representation] is different from the [things it purports to represent]. It’s conditions are post-facto abstraction that depend on ascribed definitions and internal semiotic rules.

This does not deny logic its truth value. Logic is absolutely, objectively truthful… internally. And it allows objectively true statements about things that conform to logical representation. The question is whether intra-semiotic rule structures are binding on the external reality that they imperfectly represent.

Langan doesn't address representation overtly but he does incorporate the human conceptual nature of "meaning" into the CTMU. It's in the name - cognitive theoretical...  And he deals with the limits of distinction with another central concept of the CTMU - syndiffeonesis - starting on p. 16 of the paper.

This is the premise that any distinction between elements needs a higher order medium or set within which their difference can be formulated. Something that they both therefore necessarily belong to. And if both belong to it, their difference becomes a form of sameness on that level. Difference is a subset of relationship and relationship presumes relational medium. We are different as individuals but that difference requires a common frame of reference to express. Where we become commensurable as humans, mammals, matter, expressions of the concept of "individual", etc. Here's his diagram of syndiffeonesis as intersect of the two relends.

A few things here. Remember Langan's language model - syntax and state, cognition and perception in mutual recursive construction. If we apply the old Structuralist model of language as defined by difference between word-signs, the difference is only meaningful because the signs belong to a larger meaning-granting common set of language. The difference between Langan and Poststructuralist discourse is a massively expanded concept of language. Poststructuralist "discourse" situates meaning in the play of manmade signs. For Langan, all mutually self-constituting syntax-state relationships are essentially linguistic whether manmade or "naturally occurring". It's how consciousness operates and why human cognition is incorporated into the CTMU.

Hair Club for Men spokesmodel Jacques Derrida is also famous for his "no outside the text" quote. This refers to the inability to access a neutral position that is not itself textually mediated. This was controversial in academic midwit land but should have been obvious. All thought is representational. But representation is also relational to something, and the most complex chain of semiotic associations had to start at some point. 

Syndiffeonsis recognizes that perceptions of differences within reality implies a common reality to make them meaningful. "The synetic medium [common framework] represents diffeonic potential of which the difference relationship is an actualization (p. 17)".

Langan deals with the mediated nature of human cognition by pointing to the perceptual stability of reality. At least an aspect of the external objective reality we know through symbolic mediation must exist because what we perceive is consistent over time for multiple observers. The fact we all walk through the same door and not into the wall implies a consistent set of perceptual responses to the same physical context. 

The question is how we can collapse difference through syndiffeonsis but define "reality" as distinct without the infinite regress of higher-order syndiffeonic syntheses with [not-reality]? Langan uses syndiffeonsis as the foundation of his "infocognition" - the language structure dual-aspect monad that combines perception/information and cognition/thought. The idea being perception and cognition are different aspects of the same cognitive apprehension of reality. And that the syndiffeonic process stops at the [foundation of "reality"] level.

Syndiffeonic relations can be regarded as elements of more complex infocognitive lattices with spatial and temporal (ordinal, stratificative) dimensions. Interpreted according to CTMU duality principles, infocognitive lattices comprise logical relationships of state and syntax. Regressing up one of these lattices by unisection ultimately leads to a syntactic medium of perfect generality and homogeneity…a universal, reflexive “syntactic operator” (p. 18). 

The universal reflexive operator would be the SCSPL that transforms infocognitive potential into reality. And it has to be self-contained - and not part of yet another syndiffeonic relation because Langan defines reality as having nothing external to it and ultimately knowable by logic.

Or, as he ties it all together...

In effect, syndiffeonesis is a metalogical tautology amounting to self-resolving paradox. The paradox resides in the coincidence of sameness and difference, while a type-theoretic resolution inheres in the logical and mathematical distinction between them, i.e. the stratificative dimension of an infocognitive lattice. Thus, reducing reality to syndiffeonesis amounts to “paradoxiforming” it. This has an advantage: a theory and/or reality built of self-resolving paradox is immunized to paradox. 

Syndiffeonsis can't open to infinite regress of syntheses because reality has to self-create without external factors and Wheeler said "no towers of turtles" (p. 8). But [final unisect of designated strata in a universal self-contained but definable infocognitive lattice] is not necessitated from [need for common unisect that makes difference relations meaningful]. The terminus is imposed on a structurally open-ended process by Langan's insistence on logic as ultimate onto-espistemological determinant. 

The Band has offered a different take on the same scenario.

All definitions are relational. The concept of a self-creating universal reality presumes - by the very representational nature of thought, of ingocognition - a distinguishing concept of "not-reality". The incorporation of which into a larger syndiffeonic relation once again implies a distinguishing concept of "other". The incorporation of which into a larger...

See the issue? The problem is intrinsic to the operations of logic itself. Any set is defines against what it isn't. Even a tautology P → P implies [not P] → [not P]. Langan coins new terms like "supertautology", but his claim "we know that reality is a self-contained syndiffeonic relation (p. 18) requires the process to stop for reasons external to its own internal structure. Arbitrary reasons about the ontological applicability of logic.

The Band would argue we have to move outside of logic-perception as ultimate basis of knowledge. To something not knowable in those terms, but "within" which the domains where those terms are applicable appear.

The Ontological Hierarchy is a crude representation of how different "levels" of reality can be known. The advantage is that it clarifies where epistemological modes can operate and where they can't. Tautology, relational media - propositional logic in general - require definitions. Either perceptual or logical distinctions. Positing a distinction that isn't distinguished against some other can be done. But to claim it's logical or perceptual means asking perception or logic to do something contrary to it's intrinsic structural nature. [Universal monadic all-encompassing definition] self-detonates. Unless there is a "level of reality" unconstrained by the formative constraints of perceptual or logical processes. 

A level that is not accessible by logic or perception past its necessity for both.

We call it ultimate reality here. Creator God works equally well.

The Ontological Hierarchy also asks us to be attentive to the differences between abstract reality known logically and material reality experienced perceptually. Langan is correct defining the two as interrelated in human consciousness. Thought gives meaning to perception and perception provides the stuff of thought. But the rigorous logical distinctions that enable tautological relationships or parameterized sets are ideal abstractions that represent reality differently from how we perceive it sensorially.  

Take color for example.

Put aside what representation we use for the visible spectrum. The particular models matter less than the empirical-logical distinction.

We refer to individual colors as distinct identities. Green != Blue. Or G → ¬B as a logic statement.

But perceptually, where exactly does "Blue" end and "Cyan" or "Green" begin? It's as if the atomized absolute distinctions that logic statements depend on don't perfectly conform to an empirical world of fluid perceptual continuities. We chose the term "abstract" for the reality known by an epistemology of logic because it relates to the material world abstractly. It takes aspects of material reality and purifies them into idealized forms that can then be manipulated to uncover relationships or further understanding. Logic and observation may be related. But they aren't the same.

Langan notes the difference between continuum and discrete models in physics which is different from the above material-abstract distinction. He refers to it in relation to classical and quantum physics theorizing about reality.

Whereas continuum models are based on the notion of a continuum, a unified extensible whole with one or more distance parameters that can be infinitely subdivided in such a way that any two distinct points are separated by an infinite number of intermediate points, discrete models are distinguished by realistic acknowledgement of the fact that it is impossible to describe or define a change or separation in any way that does not involve a sudden finite jump in some parameter (p. 4) 

The difference looks like this...

What it actually describes are differences in modes of knowing-representing. Hyphenated because all knowledge is representational. It's all expressed through semiotic filters. And systems of representation have their own internal structurally-determined "rules" or parameters that determine how they encode and transmit information. We perceive reality as continuous. Zeno's paradox and so forth. But we quantify reality - represent it abstractly through mathematical formulae - discretely. Which is "correct" depends on the level you're operating at. 

It's an eye-catching paint job that works because the door is where you pass through. Everyone entering or leaving uses the door - a good example of perceptual stability between people that confirms the existence of an objective external reality. Painting the figure knocking on the wall would be pointless because no one does that. Why? Because the door is where the wall can be passed through. On the empirically-perceived material level of reality.

Abstract calculations and experimental data produced with instrumental mediation inform us that the wall is actually made up of discrete quanta. On a level we cannot perceive directly, matter isn't a continuous barrier. Irrelevant if you run into it. But if theorizing a new avenue in computing?..

Semiotic filtering. Direct perception represents the wall as a solid continuum. Abstracted reasoning represents it as a Russian doll of "particles" that behave less like visible matter the smaller they get. But neither representation is representing something you can walk through it. Faith won't either. Reality is consistent regardless of onto-epistemological level.

Semiotic filtering and the representation-reality difference is so obvious with a moment's thought. But for many, thought is tedious and a moment can be an awfully long time. Because it seems to puzzle people - even a lot of smart people. Every aspect of our consciousness is representational. We don't even have access to “things-in-themselves” through brute sensory perception because perception itself is a process of internal representation. This raises Langan’s rejection of Kant's concept of the noumenal – the “real reality” which our perceptions represent mentally but lies beyond direct access. His claim that this is to remote or inaccessible for logical consideration is true. But the conclusion [the noumenal or reality-in-itself] is therefore not a part of reality only follows if you’re  invested in defining reality in terms of human apprehension. 

We're using the word apprehension for the combination of perception and cognition in Langan's infocognitive concept of consciousness.

We need a convenient term for what we can grasp within our limits of discernment.

Whether or not "reality-in-itself" is accessible to us - can be apprehended by us - is only relevant if you start by defining [reality] as [the aspects of ontology that are accessible to us]. If you predetermine [our capacity for apprehension] as determining the nature of the larger context that we and our apprehension were born into. Now when you consider that all apprehension is necessarily representational - that is, inherently not what it represents - a different tautology comes into view. Define reality as [our capacity for infocognitive representation] and [our capacity for representation] becomes theoretically isomorphic to it. Which Langan does. Pointing to two possible alternatives...

1. He is  discussing reality as we can apprehend it because that’s all we can really attempt to analyze within our finite limits of discernment. 

The Band does similar when we limit the Ultimate Reality level of the Ontological Hierarchy to an epistemology of faith. As this post should indicate, we believe a "level of reality" beyond our apprehension is logically necessary, but it's nature is by definition beyond our apprehension. We limit logical and perceptual commentary to those things that they apply to. That we can know by them.

This accepts our finite fallen nature but doesn't allow for logic to posture as the ultimate vehicle of Truth. Or for fusing self-generation in hermetic closure.

Or

2. Our ability to apprehend - inversely the limits of our discernment - determines the parameters of the reality that precedes us. 

That we are belatedly born into and inhabit and that makes up the stuff of our representations of it. Given Langan's emphasis on totality and closure, the latter is the more likely answer. At this point we are dancing along the edge of the “we determine reality” that is dogma for every inversive from Satan to postmodernism. But not quite...

To be fair, Langan is smarter than that. He acknowledges an external reality that exists independent of us that we don’t “create”. But setting our apprehension as defining the fullness of reality – including his concepts of the metaphysical and even God – is at least a partial inversion of our understanding.

And since the biological process of perception objectively assures that our apprehension isn’t the same thing as even the material existence we inhabit, our apprehension can’t be absolutely ontologically determinative. It can be functionally good enough for basic being-in-the-world. But that can't be the defining parameter for a totalizing vision of reality that admits no external influence. Unless there is an alternative physiology that replaces mental imaging with actual participation in the thing imaged. And what that would look like is... well... beyond representation.

It has to be. All we can do is represent. Whether mental pictures in the brain or second order semiotic representations of those.

Langan has referred to reality as a self-simulation. A "true" representation of itself. But his theory - a mental representation - is defined as structurally isomorphic to reality as [self-contained totality] and not [the aspects of it that are apprehensible to us].

We realize the potential morass of quibbling over what Langan “really means”. We can’t read his mind and he’s way smarter than we are. A few introductory remarks on the universal applicability of logic leads into complex speculation on what we can know and how we can know it, and how those pertain our being-in-the-world. Whatever that is. So stay simple. 

Any worthwhile discussion of reality theory has to start by defining “reality”.

On one level, this is the crux of the whole disagreement. We define or conceptualize – they’re essentially the same – reality as different things. If the concept of “thing” can be applied to the totality of things that is reality. We've already pointed out that Langan assumes a fusion of mental processing and the external universe that conforms to the infocognitive processes of modern science. That is, something ultimately reducible to sensory perception and logical operations.

Note. The limits of finitude are a pain when contemplating ultimate reality. We’re inside trying to grasp what is [outside the conditions necessary for "grasping"]. Language is inadequate because it's ontologically downstream from us. We can only articulate what we have already grasped in some capacity. And we can only grasp what we have the capacity to apprehend. So there’s a ton of “know what I mean?” implied in any such discussion.

We’ve called this precedent-antecedent sequence ontological priority order in the past. Which is clear enough conceptually if those words are familiar. But [levels of reality] is really hard to have to explain from zero, especially to metaphysical Flatlanders who can't think past the material.

Semiotic filtering and ontological limits account for the recurring tendency to act as if some fusion of subjective and objective impressions is all there is.

Pretending [Creator] is an immanent principle of [Creation] happens when subsequent figments of that Creation fabricate God in their own image.

The thing about the CTMU is that it is so well thought out. It’s what makes the information density so formidable. It builds continuously. So it’s not just following, it’s remembering sufficiently going along. The paper is an astonishing experience to read. Any thought of internet ankle-biters’ “questioning Langan’s real intelligence” were insta-dispelled. If we sound unusually respectful – even gushing – it’s because… well… the IQ gap is real. But the glimpse of his reciprocal florescence repeating across existence that we are capable of is beautiful. It’s an awesome in the Victorian sense testimony to the power of human intellection. We get why he’s convinced himself. And – we think most importantly – we’re very aware we may be failing to grasp something correctly. We’re cautious because of that.

It's one of the things that makes the butthurt gamma resentment of Langan such a self-revelation. The mewling of non-entities is usually not worth comment, but in this case it is instructive. Langan's intellectual firepower is instantly self-evident in the construction of his work, but only if the reader is sufficiently intelligent to recognize it. It's one thing to take issue with his assumptions or conclusions. That's what we're doing. But the [what is the source for thinking he's so smart] line of self-pwning is pure Dunning-Kruger. And impossible to explain to those of insufficient intelligence to just see it.

The cartoon comes from a brilliant comedic exploration of twisted gamma psyches - and the full range of other common types - called Hypergamouse [click for a link]. It's remarkable how consistently resentment and perpetual dishonesty lead to behavior indistinguishable from idiocy.

We’ll just put things down plainly. Things to consider. We can’t challenge his reasoning, given his tautological starting point. But we disagree that logic is sufficient foundation for a metaphysics of ultimate reality. That's already apparent if you've read this far. Here's why.

Langan recognizes what we are calling logic and empiricism - epistemological modes appropriate to material and abstract realities - as separate parts of the same larger whole. Cognition and perception, interpretation and observation are word-pairs that fit that structure as well. They’re parts of what he calls dual-aspect monads - mutually and reciprocally self-constituting parts of a single thing. A singular “entity” with two distinguishable defining characteristics preserves the either-or distinction of logical classification while acknowledging their interaction. This graphic from the last post shows the interplay of dual-aspect monadic structures in the CTMU.

It is true that cognition and observation are mutually interdependent. Perception triggers thought and thought is built of perception. Their distinction within a deeper connection is a central example of the syndiffeonsis we mentioned earlier. Two definitionally different processes with a reciprocal self-creating relationship that presumes commensurability at the same time. But are they perpetually simultaneous, or is there an ontological priority order in their geneses? 

The Band also recognizes perception and cognition as different and linked. Their reciprocal self-generation is what we call consciousness. We just perceive it as more ontologically limited.

Consciousness is one of those concepts that can be hard to define. Mutually-defining interaction of perception and cognition in a dual-aspect monadic relation is a pretty good summation. 

The relation between consciousness and reality has inspired more words than we care to consider over the millennia. We do affect the world around us through observation and participation and our definitions are extensions of the inherently representational nature of our being-in-the-world. At the same time, the world exists objectively and external to us. The perceptual stability of perception over time and between subjects that Langan observes is sufficient evidence of that. Without bothering with the inane unverifiability-unfalsifiability of those "how do you know you aren't a figment of my imagination" scenarios beloved of adolescent gammas.

Let's put the consciousness-external reality relation in syndiffeonic terms...

[We] and [the external universe] belong to a common larger "reality" within or against which both can be conceptualized as distinct.

This allows us to define ourselves and the universe separately - as we are - while acknowledging that the relationship is interactive. The nature of the world we inhabit is much stranger and more interactive than any Cartesian object-subject relation. Observer-participancy is a real phenomenon. As is the necessity of conversion into representation for anything to be meaningful to human consciousness. It is also way beyond the scope of a blog post to try and work through the details. It's sufficient for our purposes to note that we agree with Langan that the universe exists outside of us and is partially fixed by us. 

While we are dubious of Langan's elevation of John Wheeler as arbiter of onto-epistemological Truth, some of his ideas are compelling. His famous graphic of the universe as a "self-excited circuit" shows how obsever-participancy emerges as the universe grows more complex in time and then retroactively imparts a meaningful reality to the past by observing and questioning. If interested, click for the source text - and a number of Wheeler's thoughts.

Where we part ways is on whether the [syndiffeonic relation between consciousness and material reality] is ontologically comprehensive or the Creation of "something" ontologically antecedent and beyond it. Whether or not we and the universe are mutually self-configuring is orthagonal to whether the self-configuring dual-aspect monad had to be brought into being somehow.

Visualize. Langan provided a representation of syndiffeonsis that we posted up above. Take the text out and leave the graphic as a conceptual template. It should clarify some of these points on consciousness and reality.

Syndiffeonsis is a really fascinating way to conceptualize composite relationships within higher-order framings. It's stackable too - we are a syndiffeonic relation and our being-in-the-world inserts us into another one.

As we've noted, Langan uses a self-perceiving universe and the syndiffeonic infocognitive isomorphy between that and us to build the CTMU. Where this becomes a problem is when the tower of lower-order syndiffeonic relations within higher-order ones runs into the requirement that reality be limited to the range of our apprehension. At that point there can be no "relational medium". We'd say we've hit a limit of onto-epistemological discernment. Langan declares that the relational medium must somehow be an emergent property from the unisecting entities. It defines them as they generate it. What Langan might call paradoxiforming. 

We already raised the issue of infinite regress with syndiffeonsis - that [possibility of distinction presumes a more basal sameness] has to stop at a universally closed Reality to avoid the tower of turtles. This means reality alone has to be defined differently from every other representation. It may be conceived as a dual-aspect self-fashioning monad on the same structural lines as Langan's "language", but there can be no “medium” within which it’s aspects are defined. Other than itself. 

We've already pointed out the problem with postulating something by way of a logical structure that the something doesn't conform to. But there are problems that emerge from origin and temporality as well.

SCSPL self-configuration is atemporal because the future predetermines the direction of the past according to a generalized utility function.

The key word is function. Langan combines formal logic and set theory to expand their capacity for representation. A function distributes "evenly" over the entire set it parameterized and so is universally applicable throughout it. The same logically applies to the infocognitive SCSPL function and its distribution over the unisect reality it defines (and is produced by). And since time is an aspect of reality, it's included in the functional parameter. Langan proposes an ontological feedback loop in his process of telesis from [future SCSPL realization of infocognitive potential] to [past SCSPL realizing of infocognetive potential]. Reality is forming according to its future form.

Note - this is a simplification of the explanation. Langan opens the CTMU paper with a more thorough description of his conclusions that he then works to. If interested, these quotes better sum up the future-guided atemporality of his self-refinement process.

The currency of telic feedback is a quantifiable self-selection parameter, generalized utility, a generalized property of law and state in the maximization of which they undergo mutual refinement (note that generalized utility is self-descriptive or autologous, intrinsically and retroactively defined within the system, and “pre-informational” in the sense that it assigns no specific property to any specific object). Through telic feedback, a system retroactively self-configures by reflexively applying a “generalized utility function” to its internal existential potential or possible futures. In effect, 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. This defines a situation in which the true temporal identity of the system is a distributed point of temporal equilibrium that is both between and inclusive of past and future. In this sense, the system is timeless or atemporal (p. 6).

He later works through his reasoning, before concluding...

this scenario involves a new interpretation of quantum theory, sum over futures. Sum over futures involves an atemporal generalization of “process”, telic recursion, through which the universe effects on-the-fly maximization of a global self-selection parameter, generalized utility (p. 28).

Here's the thing. We don’t consider the teleological pull of the general utility function sufficient to transform the empirical reality of temporal sequencing into true self-contained and self-generating atemporality. And the only reason Langan needs true self-generating atemporality is because he insists logic alone can fully account for reality. And logic operates through sequential operations. So his tautological closure without towers of turtles is an intrinsically sequential process that has to account for the onset of its own sequence.

Mariusz Lewandowski, Fourth Dimension, 2017

We view what we can apprehended of reality is an extension of “something” that can’t be apprehended by us. Beyond the last limit of discernment. Because of this, event sequencing in Creation presents no problem for us. It just originates from “somewhere” outside our scope of apprehension. Where the idea of "sequence" itself has no meaning. The only question is whether we can refer to this as an aspect of “reality”.

We do. We call it ultimate reality and can’t say any more through observation or logic other than it must exist. For reasons we hope will be clear by the end of the post. 

We also have a semantic category for God in the Ontological Hierarchy. It’s ultimate reality. Past the limit of final discernment we only have faith. Faith that Creation is God’s will extending into domains we can apprehend. Langan posits tautology as foundational quality of a reality is completely apprehensible by logical terms. Completely logically transparent. With no aspect beyond the reach of human cognition.

This presents problems because intrinsically-sequenced human cognition is unable to account for the origin of a sequenced material reality without infinite regress or external Creation. Without imaginary processes that have no analog in any other human thought or experience and are unverifiable or falsifiable as a result.

There is no shortage of "the universe came from nothing" articles floating around the internet. What these have in common is defining "nothing" as [spatially-conceivable condition with describable properties that can generate particles of matter in certain ordered circumstances]. And when asked how the conditions - particle-less space, quantum fluctuations, etc. - originated? The answers boil down to things like [something outside current physics to explain] or [it was always like that]. The former is external creation and necessarily an act of faith. The latter has no mechanism to explain how or why a timeless state began sequentially self-creating. Again, an act of faith.

Of course human cognition – and logic – are capable of imagining things that don’t materially exist. Negative numbers are obvious logical necessities with practical applications but cannot be pointed to or observed directly. Logic is a powerful form of representation that originates in material observation but quickly goes past material limits. It's an abstracted description with its own internal rules that can be manipulated into formations that don't correlate to observable material phenomena. Any logical structure that defines material processes is empirically verifiable. Like time dilation or loss of mass in conversion to energy. The formulas are abstract descriptions, but they consistently describe observable empirical things. If they don't, their material applicability is unknowable and therefore irrelevant to material causality. And material causality is another way of describing the sequence that leads back to Creation.

We would call abstract reasoning a “higher” form of epistemology in that it’s less material and more tied to objective Truth than observation. But this doesn’t make it more materially authoritative unless it can be shown to be applicable. It’s how the scientific method used to work.

Imagine the world resting on elephants atop a cosmic turtle. We can use mathematical abstractions to calculate the necessary relative sizes & masses, the binding forces needed, even potential material properties. This could be accurately plotted against movement patterns. But no matter how perfectly internally consistent the calculations - no matter how carefully derived from real material phenomena - it doesn't prove the existence of the turtle and elephants.

Unreal starting premises expressed in logical terms yield unreal conclusions. GIGO.

The point is that logic is an artifact of human interaction with the world. We’ll get into priority order in a moment, but logic - like observation - requires being-in-the-world to reveal knowledge of anything. It’s in the conjunction. "Of" something. Which is just rephrasing an old phenomenological premise that consciousness is consciousness of something. This matters because thought and perception might be mutually constitutive aspects of consciousness as Langan claims, but their origins are sequential. And sequencing raises issues of temporality.

Sequencing

This is something we’ve considered a lot lately. It is a way to think about the temporal nature of empirical material reality without dealing with immaterial consequences of abstract semiosis.

The empirical perception of time is a sequential, mono-directional flow – sometimes called the arrow of time. To be clear, we aren’t commenting on any abstract description, measure, or theory of time as it's treated in physics. There are ways to manipulate equations into representing the potential for time to reverse direction. But this is another abstract-material reality distinction. Until someone actually reverses the flow of time on observable material objects or environments, it's not a property of the reality we bodily inhabit.

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, Fantastic Four #5, 1962

It's easy to imagine travelling through time. Here's an example from an old comic book where the heroes return to their present from the distant past.

There's an ontological difference between actually doing this and showing how quantitative representations of space-time appear to reverse temporality in conditions that can never be objectively experienced.

The sequential nature of empirical experience so simple that it can be easily missed. We're just talking about one thing necessarily and irreversibly following another. We don't even need a compelling definition of time to perceive that one-after-the-other sequences don't occur in reverse order. It's a one-way trip.

It's this simple.

1. You have to pull the cord - or engage whatever starting mechanism - before the mower starts.

2. You have to start the mower before it cuts the lawn.

Consider. Time dilation is a real phenomenon and human relations to time seem varied. But we aren't referring to measurements or theorizations. Just sequence. Even if an imaginary traveler moving near the speed of light would perceive the mowing as being over in a blink of an eye, the mower has to be started before the lawn is cut.

What we don't see is the lawn cutting then the mower turning on. Things occur in sequence, regardless of the interval consistency. 

This is the empirical notion of temporality contra the abstract numerology of Science! Math is a subset of logic and is therefore not empirical beyond basic roots in the quantification of material objects.  Time in the material world is simply sequencing of events, with methods of measuring the relative durations. What time “is” - existentially or mathematically - is irrelevant to the simple material reality that events happen before or after each other.

The Band is familiar with the notion of time as a “Fourth Dimension”. This surmises what we perceive as sequenced experiences are  limited glimpses of what is a simultaneous totality in its home higher dimension. We have no objection to this thinking, beyond noting that higher material dimensions are empirically unverifiable. And that their abstract postulation has no impact on our material apprehension of the material world we actually inhabit.

Note - the Band despises the [you can’t rule it out so it must be true] school of theorizing that is endemic in the House of Lies. This takes an account that doesn’t contradict a phenomenon and pretends it’s the conclusive explanation for it. This no more materializes a geometric 4th Dimension than writing "4th Dimension".

This is a place where tautology is highly applicable - unverifiable speculation is unverifiable speculation. Claiming anything further reveals more about whoever is proposing it.

But the material relevance of abstract higher dimensions is irrelevant to [sequencing as material temporality]. Thought experiment. Even if we assume that what we perceive as time sequencing is higher-dimension simultaneity, it only kicks things down the road. Because 3rd-dimensional sequences may be 4th-dimensional unities, but 4th-dimensional unities relate sequentially in the 4th dimension. And if these 4th-dimensional sequences are just 5th-dimensional simultaneities? 5th-dimension entities relate 5th-dimensionally in sequence. And so forth. [Higher dimensional unity appears temporally] collapses into an infinite regression of sequencing. 

Note - infinite regression is another one of those differences between abstract and material reality. There is no actual infinite regression in the physical world. It's a purely abstract - logical - concept. Even this picture gets smaller for a finite number of iterations before the image technology lacks the resolution to continue. At that point it becomes a black dot that imaginatively represents the idea of infinity without materially being it. Abstract reality.

The Band is aware that when we work up our ideas up, the transitions between levels of reality in the Ontological Hierarchy needs work. The syndiffeonsis relation and infocognition are useful ideas from reading Langan that we're really thinking about.

The point is that any material reality that we can conceptualize is comprised of things that happen before or after each other. And if something precedes something else, it’s sequenced. Our experience of the world is sequenced. Logical operations like the CTMU are sequenced. And, since  Langan tells us his concept of reality is isomorphic to the CTMU, it's sequenced too. So either material reality extends infinitely back in time or it needs a point of origin. The apparent expansion of the universe suggests a starting point. As does the absence to true infinities in an entropic material universe. So we’re going with the point of origin option. And that's Limit of Discernment's music...

Langan addresses the expansion of the universe with his concept of conspansive duality or conspansion. That the universe remains the same “size” because there is nothing “external” to it to expand into. What looks like expansion to us is really accumulating telic fixing - think iterations of SCSPL creating more entities in the universe.

Remember - Langan uses a parameterized set as a metaphor for reality - reality as ongoing production of elements by determining function. Material universe as parameterized iterations of SCSPL telically fixing potential into reality. As the number expands, the relative “size” shrinks – conspansion – and they seem further away.

Now, set aside Langan’s framing terms and note his process. SCSPL operations, functional iterations, simultaneous expansion and contraction… These are all sequenced processes. The move from UBT to perceptual reality involves one thing following another. And in the material world, if we have sequence, we have some version of time. Langan deals with the problem of Creation in a sequenced universe with telic recursion and conspansion. Because reality is totally self-creating and self-actualizing, it differs from every other instance of Langan’s reciprocal self-constituting process. It has to be its own syndiffeonic infocognitive transducer. That's where atemporality comes in.

SCSPL is evenly distributed across space-time like a parameter. It's perpetually creating itself. Writing the pure telic potential of UBT into the infocognitive reality that it is made of. So atemporality is the same self-generative dual-action monadic relation extended temporally. 

[what we perceive as the future] determining [what we perceive as the past] forming [what we perceive as future]... 

Langan calls it a telic feedback loop. That recursive application of generalized utility principle that guides SCSPL reality generation.

We’ve mentioned before that true atemporality isn’t the interpenetration of past and present. It’s the complete absence of any form of sequencing at all. Total simultaneity of everything at once. A state impossible to further describe or even conceptualize because description and thought are sequenced processes. It's why representations of onto-theological progression - also a sequence - invariably end in some blur of light, black dot, or other representation of the impossibility of further representation.

This should be obvious. Thinking and describing consist of ideating or saying one thing after another. Sequences. 

We've noted that Langan’s classification of “reality” is unique among concepts because it can only proceed from itself. When he calls CTMU theory - which proceeds from him - isomorphic with reality, he isn't calling them the same. He's speaking structurally, in that the logical structure of the CTMU mirrors reality. Or that reality as we can know it is a self-simulation with the stame logic structure as the CTMU. Reality "is" the recursive SCSPL functional operation that the CTMU describes.

Isomorphic logical processes share the same inherently sequential operational structure. Connecting this to the starting assumptions that this post opened with and we get this developmental... sequence.

1. Define reality as self-generating & directing without a point of temporal origin.

2. Theorize a self-generating & directing process without temporal origin .

3. Theory & definition are isomorphic.

Future guidance retroactively guiding actualization of UBT potential is still a process where one thing follows another. If time somehow “loops backwards”, it's still sequenced. We've noted Langan's isomorphic representation uses past and gerund tenses to describe things happening. Consider – we don’t see time collapse. We don’t see things move backwards to earlier positions in their temporal sequence. Whether guided teleologically or not, whether tautological or not – self-transduction is still a sequential process. 

What we mean is clearer in an extended quote on telesis. We added bold text to highlight the inherently sequential language Langan uses. Also a few notes to point out the difference between Langan's "atemporality" as recursive sequencing and our atemporality as a state where spatial-temporal sequences don't exist.

In other words, telesis is a kind of “pre-spacetime” [hold on to this idea for a minute] from which time and space, cognition and information, state-transitional syntax and state, have not yet separately emerged. [note - conceptualized as one thing after another]  Once bound in a primitive infocognitive form that drives emergence by generating “relievable stress” between its generalized spatial and temporal components - i.e., between state and state-transition syntax – telesis continues to be refined into new infocognitive configurations, i.e. new states and new arrangements of state-transition syntax, in order to relieve the stress between syntax and state through telic recursion (which it can never fully do, owing to the contingencies inevitably resulting from independent telic recursion on the parts of localized subsystems). As far as concerns the primitive telic-recursive infocognitive MU form itself, it does not “emerge” at all except intrinsically; it has no “external” existence except as one of the myriad possibilities that naturally exist in an unbounded realm of zero constraint. [note - whether something emerges intrinsically or extrinsically is of no consequence as to whether the process description is sequential] 

Telic recursion occurs in two stages, primary and secondary (global and local). In the primary stage, universal (distributed) laws are formed in juxtaposition with the initial distribution of matter and energy, while the secondary stage consists of material and geometric state-transitions expressed in terms of the primary stage. That is, where universal laws are syntactic and the initial mass-energy distribution is the initial state of spacetime, secondary transitions are derived from the initial state by rules of syntax, including the laws of physics, plus telic recursion. The primary stage is associated with the global telor, reality as a whole; the secondary stage, with internal telors (“agent-level” observer-participants). Because there is a sense in which primary and secondary telic recursion can be regarded as “simultaneous”, local telors can be said to constantly “create the universe” by channeling and actualizing generalized utility within it (p. 36). [note - simultaneity as overlapping and mutually forming processes, not instantaneity of all things]  

Langan describes the universe as essentially selecting itself from unbound telesis or UBT, "a realm of zero information and unlimited ontological potential, by means of telic recursion, whereby infocognitive syntax and its informational content are cross-refined through telic (syntax-state) feedback over the entire range of potential syntax-state relationships, up to and including all of spacetime and reality in general" (p. 38). This is done by the recursive application of a generalized utility principle - "a generalized global selection parameter analogous to “self-utility”, which it then seeks to maximize in light of the evolutionary freedom of the cosmos as expressed through localized telic subsystems which mirror the overall system in seeking to maximize (local) utility" (p. 38).

Put this in terms of the implicit sequencing.

Generalized utility [future] shapes UBT [past]. 

UBT [past] forms Generalized utility [future] 

But one is becoming the other. Where does the "pre-spacetime" [from the annotated block quote right above] come from? If it's just part of a recursive infocognitive monad, where do infocognitive monads come from? We are remined of the something from nothing theories that credit "quantum fluctuations" for forming the universe but doesn't account for the genesis of quantum fluctuations. We find the lack of answer unsurprising because the answer ontologically exceeds our infocognitive tools. But we aren't invested in setting human explanatory ability up as absolute Truth. We can speculate on where the drive for recursive back formations come from, despite the absence of any material evidence of their existence. They're artifacts of consciousness.

Consider consciousness. It’s a common topic in philosophical speculation that's already come up a few times and needs a closer look. We aren’t getting into definitions. Readers’ understanding of the term is sufficient for this point. Langan mentions the Cartesian dualism at the heart of the post-Enlightenment concept of the term. 

Descartes took thought as proof of self-existence but fractured the interdependence of human existence and external reality. Langan, like a slate of postmodern and quantum theorists want to repair this and reintegrate the interdependence of human consciousness and reality. The Band is sympathetic to this. 

But here's the thing with learned discussions of consciousness. They tend to treat it like a fixed phenomenon. Consciousness as a static thing that is either separable from or interrelated with the world around it. But in actual material reality, consciousness develops temporally, through sequenced processes. It is antecedent to the reality it perceives or conceptualizes. And it changes. The capacity to think, self-awareness, awareness of an “external world” all develop over time.

Human reality begins when we are conceived - realizations of the genetic potential inherent in our parents’ unions.

Prior to that, the world existed but we didn’t. And somewhere after that act of conception, consciousness forms. First the material world, then us, then consciousness.

Consciousness of something...

Take the dual-aspect monad that corresponds to consciousness - infocognition or perception and thought.

We don’t need an interest in early childhood development to know that infant cognition is different from an adult. Physiological change and pedagogical processes transform human capacity.

Perception develops as well, but stick to cognition for the moment. Langan doesn't treat logic and cognition as precisely the same but they do take analogous positions in syntax-state / information-cognition syndiffeonic dual-aspect monadic structures.

So let's sum up the inherently sequential nature of human consciousness on the material reality level. Developmentally, cognition is posterior to conception and conscious self-awareness is posterior to simple sensory perception. It's an irreversible progression, like growth and aging. 

It looks like this.

But once cognitive ability appears, it is able to conceptualize things that we can’t perceive directly. That lack material existence. That are beyond perceptual reality. That are unreal. This means that material reality precedes us sequentially. Our individual existence is constrained by the limits of existence in general. But our thoughts are not. We can conceptualize leaping out a window and flying to safety, even if such a thing is not actually possible in reality.

And it’s not just fancy that is materially unconstrained. Logic isn’t either. Math is a good example, since it is a form of symbolic logic. There are all kinds of basic mathematical concepts and identities that are absurd to consider as material entities. 

Quick - physically point out a negative quantity of material things to us. Not a description, analogy, or mathematical sentence. An empirically perceptible negative number of things.

We can observe what 3 cars look like. Show us -3 actual cars somewhere... 

And yet, we would be idiots to argue negative numbers aren't "real" in some capacity. They're logically necessary, but within logic as an abstract semiotic system with it's own internal rules determining necessity. The Ontological Hierarchy would distinguish them as abstractly real but not materially. 

The point is this...

Our development is observably, objectively, indisputable sequential and one way. All the deja vus, Mandela effects, and historical echoing don't change the fact that no one begins de-ageing or finds themselves physically transporting to an earlier calendric time. It's materially a one-way trip.

But…

Cognition allows for abstract thought constructs that are not bound by the constraints of material existence. That are materially impossible. Including the world before we came into it. And that means material time may be one-way, but we can cogitatively travel backwards in time. Even create our origin stories. 

We can analyze our own origins - something we can never materially go back and see - cognitively. Through abstracted representational practices. Our past is obviously real, but knowledge of it requires mental "reconstruction" of something materially beyond us.

You can see the difference...

Representationally anyhow. This is important. Remember that all consciousness, cognition, infocognition, etc. is representational. 

Then consider. Even our creation myths are sequenced. 

They have to be. We conceptualize the world before us the same way we understand the world around us. Through representation. And representations - including logical ones - are sequenced.  

And this comes to the last big point of the post. 

The way we understand our past - perceive it as a meaningful sequence of events unified by their pertinence to us - is as narrative.

Here's a slide from an online slideshow with a simple definition of narrative that captures the usual understanding and our expanded use.

Most discussions of narrative refer to authorial creations. Fictional or non-fictional tales written by someone in text or other semiotic medium. "Narrative structure" theorizing like "the Hero's Journey" refer to these books, movies, etc.

We're thinking of the [causally-linked action unfolding over time] and not a scripted story.

Narrative as story production doesn't only apply to [things people produce for others to consume for information or entertainment]. Consider what we've been calling human being-in-the-world. We chose that term to capture that we are individual subjectivities inhabiting a perceptually-stable common universe. Langan builds a two-level telesis- universal SCSPL and individual - into the CTMU to account for this simultaneous contribution and containment. Then read the quote at the bottom of the slide. A "meta-code" for transmitting messages about the "nature of a shared reality" is communication between individual consciousnesses in a perceptually-stable common universe.

But narrative processes encompass even more than communication with others. They're how we understand ourselves as individual lives unfolding in time. 

It's not just an expression, although it's that too.

It's intrinsic to the temporally sequential and semiotically filtered nature of our being-in-the-world.

“Understanding” presumes meaning. That there's meaning to be understood. Our existences unfold as sequences of events within a vast world where most of the incalculable number of occurrences have no direct relevance to us. Each life history is a made up of a miniscule sub-section of the total number of things that happened in reality during our lifetime. Connection to us - contribution to our life history - is the meaning that singles that sub-section out from everything else as meaningful. By existing, we provide the unifying meaning to the sequence of events that comprise our existence. And meaningful sequence is narrative. 

Now there are important differences between narrative as it is usually thought of and narrative as fundamental structure for self-definition. In a fictional story, the author determines what is included in the narrative on the spot. They make up the structure of the plot from scratch. In our lives, the things that are important to the narrative are really only apparent in hindsight.

Narrative structure - like these two common basic examples - refer to fictional stories. Because the author makes up the plot, he can organize things however he wants. He isn't dependent on what unforeseen thing happens next the way things happen in real life.

Take something like Chekhov's Gun. In fictional story, the author decides what objects will be mentioned so you know what will prove important. In real life, you see all the objects in the room - there is no author deciding what you will be made aware of. Therefore the important things in real life only becomes obvious when you look back at what proved significant. It's a retroactive plot. Your future retroactively determines what - of all the countless things that exist in every past moment - will make up the internal logic of your life narrative.

 

The difference refers to how the plot is constructed. This article about story and plot from the internet does a good job describing what plot is [it's a simple read if new to this stuff]. It breaks narrative into two parts - "the content of a story and the form used to tell the story". The story is what happened and the plot is how that content is structured by the author. According to Merriam-Webster, plot as “a series of events that form the story in a novel, movie, etc.” So narrative structures like the Fichtean curve govern how the story is plotted. What is chosen and how it's sequenced. Because the author makes it all up, the plot adheres to its own internal logic. But it does not have to conform to the actual material reality we inhabit.

Aristotle discusses narrative plotting in his Poetics, a seminal work on literary mimesis in the West. It's worth a brief look, even though he's referring explicitly to tragedy, the prestige form of dramatic narrative in his late Classical Greece. Seeing how plot works in the most structured form lets us apply it to the different context of defining one's own past history. 

This is from Book 6 of the Poetics. Click for a pdf of the full text. It's something anyone interested in the foundations of the arts of the West should read at least once.

Aristotle describes tragedy as the imitation of an action - in his terms [imitation of action] is the proper end of tragedy. Its telos, to refer back to Langan. But this imitated action is unlike events in reality because it is a creation structured around its own internal logic. The art is in the transformation of human activity into a more perfect form. Plot is "the arrangement of the incidents" that together imitate the action.

Plot is the arrangement of the incidents - the series of events - that make up a narrative. The things that are included are chosen and ordered by the author to convey the narrative. Like the aforementioned Chekhov's gun. No sense wasting time and space describing things that are irrelevant. So what does this mean for self-definition and understanding through narrative forms? How is a life story plotted when it is unfolding in real time? 

We've already answered it. up above. The plot of our life story emerges in hindsight. It's not really clear where we are going at the time. Even sure things can have surprising consequences.

But when we look back, we see which of the countless events that make up the past proved meaningful in getting to our present. 

Our life narrative is a retroactive plot. Our lives consist of a structured series of events - they have to because our existence is the cumulative effect of temporal sequencing. But the outcome is unknown at the time. Only from the looking back perspective of our present - the looked back on events' future - can we see how we got here. Something that seemed earth-shatteringly important at the time may prove irrelevant. Some small overlooked detail may bear prodigious fruit. 

The "opportunity of a lifetime" that fails to amount to anything. The chance encounter that becomes the love of a lifetime...

But looking back and narrating didn't cause the material events to occur when they did. It only imputes meaning on them through structured representation.

This means our real-life Chekhov’s guns only become clear after the fact. In the present, we see everything on the table - ultimately irrelevant or important - and not just what the author mentions. But in time the important milestones come out. Milestones is a great metaphor because they trace out our narrative thread. We can even imagine alternative histories where we zigged instead of zagged. 

History is the same thing – narratives with retroactively determined milestones. Storytelling, where the events actually happened. As best can be determined anyhow. [We wrote a post on history as storytelling. Click for a link]. Be clear. This isn’t saying history isn’t truthful - at least in theory. But that a truthful account is... an account. A narrative.

This means we are ascribing meaning to potentially significant things in the past based on our narrative construction in the present. Looking "back in time" logically and abstractly to ascertain which of and how potentials became meaningful sequence to us. Future outcomes determining what is significant in the past sounds familiar. We know it's been a long post, but think about that for a moment...

Why, that's the CTMU's music!

We provide meaning and understanding to our lives, our identities, our being-in-the-world by configuring - by plotting - narrative sequences out of unformed raw material. The shape of the future determines the direction of the past. Just as the demand of future outcomes determines the production of reality from UBT by SCSPL self-transduction. In both cases a future looks back to plot the sequence leading to its own outcome. 

In our case, we use our future knowledge to retroactively narrate our own pasts. To narrate ourselves. To create our own origin stories. At least until the "scientific" creation myths crash and burn on the need to account for their own genesis. 

 

The CTMU claims reality does the same by retroactively narrating its own creation. Only without anywhere to take place in because Langan insists on reality being absolutely closed and complete. So the reality "narrating" itself out of telic potential includes creating the space-time that comprises its material form and gives terms like past and present meaning.

It might be a bit flip to call his structure an ouroboros...

But it’s not flip to say it’s sequenced. 

The point is that the CTMU and its SCSPL is “atemporal” in the way any material entity employs post-facto logic to build explanatory origin narratives. Constructing abstract - even logical - representational sequences of events to explain how we got here. Even using inherently-sequential logical relations to account for the creation of the potential for temporal sequencing. Which would be fine were logic not also presented as pure expression of ultimate truth. It can't be both [ur-truth of reality] and [contingent on reality] at the same time.

We are running into the epistemological consequence of ontological difference between abstract and material reality. Being able to devise an internally consistent trans-temporal logical structure doesn't make it material fact.

We can cast our thought-representations back in time. But temporal sequences don't go backwards in any material experiential way.

This is because representative systems - and all human thought and communication is representational - have two aspects. The first is their relation to the things they represent. This is why they are used in the first place. But it's also why there is such a tendency to treat representations as totally synonymous with the things they represent. The problem with this comes is due to the second aspect. Representational systems also have their own  internal rules that are not themselves externally mimetic. How they represent, not what. What Langan calls syntax. Rules and content are symbiotic, but they're not the same thing.

Detail of a sarcophagus relief with Muses and theatrical masks, around 200 AD, Altes Museum, Berlin

The unities of tragedy are an example of these internal rules. They are not ways to make the representation of action more "realistic". They're defining characteristics of tragedy as a representational mode that distinguish it from other forms of expression.

The internal consistencies of logic have a similar relationship to empirical material reality. We've already noted how logic-based representational systems of math are internally consistent given their starting premises. But we've also seen how this can be developed into expressions - "narratives" - that no longer correspond to anything materially extant. Logical expressions are no more intrinsically determinative of material reality than tragic unity. That's backwards. The measure of a representation is how well it captures what it refers to, not its power to force reality to accommodate its semiotic rules.

Alternatively, one could point out an imaginary number. Or an empirically observable negative quantity...

Note that narrative accounts of origins or identity are necessarily teleological. They are back-formed from the future to account for how the future was arrived at. Like writing a story to fit a conclusion, only the conclusion is you or your reality. Or something structurally akin to telesis, where all potential outcomes along the sequenced events are retroactively preselected by what they will become. But this is not the negation of temporal sequence. It's an artifact of the difference between material reality and abstract intellection or representation.

We can use abstract narrative representations to imagine how they could. Literary ones like time travel stories. Quantitative, logic-based ones like physics equations. Ontologically back-formed ones like telesis. Any representation of the past will account for how we got here. They're teleological. Just not materially real how the one-way sequential nature of events is. Because no matter we represent backwards, temporally sequential events don't reverse themselves. And  yes, Wheeler's "self-excited curcuit" is merely the innate human process of understanding the past through teleological narrative construction.

The article where we found the Back to the Future car is a good example of the sloppy and deceptive mix of logical representation - mathematical equations - and material human reality that is self-evidently impossible to the point of retardery.

Incidentally, beast Science! is an abject midwit joke. Imagine the actual material conditions where this is empirically credible human activity in the manner presented here.

Langan is obviously smart enough not to blather psychotically about constructing wormholes and zipping through spacetime. The CTMU projects future outcomes "back in time" logically as the actualization of past potential by future results [quotations because time is itself a product of CTMU reality formation - it's why we refer to sequential processes rather than any formal definition of time]. That is, the way humans retroactively ascribe meaning to the past through historical narration. Not exactly the same. The analogy is complicated by Langan's overvaluing of logic and concomitant rejection of a Creator. Unlike a human narrator, we have to pretend that the narrative is writing itself. But we still have a man-made theory where past meaning is created retroactively, as all man-made origin stories do. They have to – they’re artifacts of our fundamentally teleological narrative cognitive processes.

Langan notes that nature - the cognitive-perceptual reality we inhabit - requires no external logician to apply the rules of logic. That the laws of nature that provide the syntax of observable reality run without an author or transducer (p. 15).

It is sufficient to point out the watch analogy without having to speculate on the unknowable discrepancies between a truly atemporal Providential Creator and the temporally bound finite human apprehension of His creative act.

One of the first issues that came up in posting on the CTMU was the meaning of reality theory. In Langan's terms, theory is a product of cognition plus perception - cognitively accounting for things perceived. A meaning-making artifact of human consciousness. Making it narrative plot. And in the case of past origin stories, that means retroactive attribution.

Like all human creations, theories add human meaning to the stuff we are surrounded by.  But they lack the spark of divinity. They have to - as human creations they're downstream from the ontological preconditions that allow for humans to create.

The notion that human creativity is "boundless" is a self-aggrandizing lie. Endless variety, perhaps, but bounded by our ontological parameters as temporally sequenced beings operating through representations of human perception and cognition. Universes of colors with singular defining points of origin.

We called this post "Through a Glass Darkly" to reference the epistemological limits of logic's clear truths. We've enjoyed Langan's work and have a healthy respect for his enormous intellectual gifts. Some of his concepts are fantastic - infocognition as the mutual constitution of thought and perceptual information is so elegant. And we're fascinated by syndiffeonsis to the point where we're making syndiffeonsis graphics. But he overvalues the ultimate value of his logical approach.

There are two viable paths from the CTMU's presumptions.

William Blake, Newton, 1804-05, monotype print, Tate Britain  

One is recognizing infocognition as the limit of what can be accomplished through our mental powers. 

Blake's titanic geometer distils the inchoate depths of creation into profound representations. But they're still representations.

This means acknowledging that ultimate reality is beyond human apprehension and knowable only through faith and revelation. The CTMU then becomes a uniquely insightful treatment of what we can know inside that ultimate limit of discernment. But this also means giving up the insistence on total closure and self-containment on accepting some"thing" beyond that limit to serve as Creator or ontological ground. The noumenal object of our representational existence. The absolute atemporality against which any logic or perception-based sequence - including syndiffeonic infinite regress - is defined.

William Blake, The Ancient of Days, 1794, relief and white-line etching with color printing and hand coloring, British Museum 

The other is an absolutely comprehensive closure that includes ultimate reality or "God" but recognizes human apprehension is limited. 

Blake's idiosyncratic representation of divine creative power also holds compasses like his Newton. These are an old symbol of the logical ideal in the order of creation that's been subverted in some circles [click for an occult post]. But the Newton shows human logic as a limited representation of the metaphysical. In the "hand of God" it's an extension of it.

But this path means abandoning logic as the measure of truth and infocognition as ontological foundation. As this post has shown, they are not sufficient to account for their own genesis in a intrinsically sequential material universe. Whether or not their own sequenced narrative representations can be described as isomorphic.

Either apprehension of those aspects of reality where logic and perception are applicable. Or the fullness of reality where some escapes our apprehension. You can't have both.

We've opted for the second with the Ontological Hierarchy - shown below in an earlier form. This version includes the difference between the unidirectional sequenced temporality of material reality, the freedom from temporal constraints in abstract reality, and the unsequenced true atemporality of ultimate reality.

There is no "outside" of it, but the inside includes a "place" for that ultimate reality that exceeds our human modes of knowing. This can be frustrating, but it's also consonant with our fallen finite existence in a reality that precedes and exceeds us. 

It does have its limits. It's not fully elaborated and the transitions between levels are frustratingly vague. But it conforms to what we can know and how we can know it. And the division between levels of onto-epistemological reality has continued to be immensely useful in our own mental world. Despite Langan's intellectual superiority, we instantly recognized that his acceptance of Science! and overestimation of logic were problems. Long before we started working out why. 

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, Statue of Sir Isaac Newton, 1995, Piazza of the British Library

The modern Science! version of Blake's Newton does away with the metaphysical fullness and keeps the limited human apprehension. Representation without meaning. A perfect metaphor for the arrogant inadequacy of secular transcendence - the cornerstone of the House of Lies that we've explored in many posts. 

Here are a few other immediately obvious observations that recognizing onto-epistemological limits allows for. Things that elude many extraordinarily intelligent people. Things that would have eluded us before we worked through the Ontological Hierarchy...

Thoughts != Material reality

Imaginative projection (ante-jection?) != Empirical experience

Understanding != Immanence

It's obvious when you think about it. So why pretend they do?

The answer to that lies outside this post. We'd suggest it relates to the enduring appeal of secular transcendence. Of producing our own reality. Of being our own gods. Projected onto the natural human practice of narrative self-generation. We could say godlessly projected. Because that pattern is Luciferian. 

To be clear, we are not calling Langan a luciferian. We don't know enough about him for that sort of charge. It's a structural echo of the [future outcome shapes past formation] process of human narrative self-creation in the recursive "atemporality" of SCSPL telesis. It's not that Langan claims to create the universe. It's that his logical mechanism is akin to how humans retroactively define their own existence. And since his God is a product of his mechanism, when you think about it, he is creating God in man's image. And that is an inversion of God and Creation in a Christian sense.

It is notable that Langan's morality does appear basically Christian in structure. At least in the limited acquaintance we have with his opinions outside of his reality theorizing. And this makes the CTMU all the more seductive. We've even heard the phrase "proof of the existence of God" bandied about it. But the only relation between [whatever SCSPL is pulling itself out of the UBT by it's recursive bootstraps] and [the Christian God] is homonymic. Because logical representation that replaces [the Providential sequence from Creation to Revelation] with [manmade narrative recursivity LARPing as atemporality] isn't Christian. It's the opposite. And while cyclicality is literally a road to nowhere, inversion is best just avoided altogether. 

Infinite Recursion, digital art