What is language? There are many different languages: English, Mandarin, and Arabic, to name a few. What do these have in common? They are all the collective products of various civilizations' systems to relate clusters of symbolic meaning and truthfully and usefully describe the world around them, parameterized according to the utility of their language users. This paradigm is why, for example, the Eskimos have 50 different words for snow, while in English, we only have one. It's not helpful to us to draw these fine distinctions. Chris Langan says, "Natural languages' evolve naturally' in real-world communities of language users, often in coupling with their cultures and conventions." And yet, more interesting than the differences among languages are their similarities. I've taken Spanish and Hebrew in school; my first language is English. Of course, despite having little evolutionary contact since the proto-Indo-European tongue, these languages are about 80% the same. This is because they all describe the same Reality, with the same standard linguistic structure and processing, which has an endomorphic mirror in the human Mind through which they make common contact. Language = Mind = Reality.
As we discussed in our video on An Introduction to Mathematical Metaphysics, Reality as a whole can, with unlimited precision, be characterized as a metalinguistic metaobject. It is a meta-language by all definitions of the word meta-: it is "beyond" language in the sense that it goes beyond any particular human language in its scope and power, and self-referential/higher-order in the sense that it not only describes Reality but creates and instantiates the Reality it describes. Reality's logical/linguistic and geometric aspects are inseparable and self-dual to one another. By the former, the Universe has internal coherence and functional meaning; by the latter, it has physical extension and tangible Reality. It is thus called a Self-Configuring, Self-Processing Language (SCSPL) because it processes and configures the Universe, which instantiates and parses it.
Even though all human languages are relands of the SCSPL language-model-universe, the symbol for Universe – until Langan – had been omitted from the formal definition of natural language, written out L = (𝚺, 𝚪, SΣ), meaning L (language) consists of 𝚺, a finite alphabet of letters which combine to form words and expressions, 𝚪, which is the grammar which determines which combinations of letters, words, phrases, etc. are included in a language, and SΣ, the surface structure of the language, the set of strings which 𝚪 determines. According to Langan, the dualism between language and the Universe in this natural language definition is unacceptable. The Universe has a syntax by which it recognizes and identifies itself. It is self-memorizing, self-perceiving, and self-learning. How could it do this except by way of a language that faithfully mirrors the structure of human language? Humans are microcosms of the Universe, and our minds provide syntactic information which can be recognized and processed by the Universe, taking our minds as telors and syntactors for the Universal Mind, the Mind of God.
Chris Langan thus writes in his 2018 paper, The Metaformal System: Completing the Theory of Language, "the capacity of language to accurately represent the external Universe is far too reliable and extensive for this unequivocal kind of dualism to hold. It is not that we are always successful in predicting factual observations from language alone; rather, it is the very possibility of bringing language into conformance with Reality (and vice versa) that dualism cannot explain. If dualism were justified, and language and Reality were truly separate and independent, then there would be no basis for bringing them together, and neither science nor any form of human experience would be possible. The above definition, L = (Σ, Γ, SΣ), is therefore misleading in the way that its parentheses, like impermeable walls, isolate human cognitive language from the Universe it so effectively but improbably represents."
The question the CTMU metalanguage answers is "the unreasonable effectiveness of natural language in reality at large." Why do our descriptions of Reality correspond to objective properties thereof?
Langan continues: "where any degree of intelligibility is given, structure must already be shared between mind and external reality; mind must be equipped with a cognitive identity language L through which U can be recognized, and in a complementary way, U must have the capacity to display content recognizable to L…dualistic language theory excludes everything that makes language telic or dynamic."
Language is taking a start symbol, the abstract concept to be expressed, relating clusters of symbolic meanings/excitations of the language's syntax and using that to construct a sentence that faithfully mirrors its start symbol. Suppose we generalize this to the intrinsic language of the Universe. In that case, it means that objects and physical relations can be understood as terminal excitations of the non-terminal, infinite, expansive domain, transforming the essentially linguistic substrate of the profound Reality, telesis (the ultimate "stuff" of Reality in the CTMU), into a Reality Self-Simulation, where secondary images of the SCSPL (sensor-controllers/secondary telors such as humans) can interface with the SCSPL universe and derive meaning and value from it. At the level of Reality, language functions as an identity, the identity of a universe.
Chris Langan says that how he would explain the CTMU to a child is as follows: "Well, every part of the world talks to itself and to other parts, and the CTMU is the language that it uses! Right now, I'm using the language called 'English'... to talk to you and tell you what I mean. You can understand me because you understand English (etc.) the same way I do. When the world (cosmos, Universe,…) talks to itself, it uses the CTMU"! SCSPL is the identity of Reality, meaning Reality can be described as a language (SCSPL) that talks to itself about itself for its purposes.
The Universe is not fundamentally composed of point particles or objects, but instead, self-dual linguistic and physical objects called syntactic operators, which can transform the SCSPL to instantiate a physical object or process. Thus, the entire syntax of Reality is contained in every local entity, which is why Reality is intelligible to itself and mutually intelligible among its various parts. Syntactic operators transform the syntax of the Reality language according to the global and agentive volition of telors, which Langan describes as "structurally complex syntactors which can "factorize telesis" or actualize ontic potential, and have sufficient complexity to consciously generate internal representations of themselves and their relationships with the external environment. There are two strata of telors: 1) the Global Operator Descriptor (G.O.D.) of the SCSPL Reality Self-Simulation, a constructive, creative intelligence whose ability and power we are unable to circumscribe from within His Creation, called the Mind of God, colloquially, 2) secondary images of the G.O.D., namely observer-participants in the Reality Self-Simulation such as human beings and other complex life forms which may arise in the history of the Cosmos.
The Metaformal System can be reduced to a master equation, which briefly describes the metamathematical structure of the Universe.
M = LINT = Ls | Lo = (Σ = {N, T}, ΓMU, SΣ)
M is a metalanguage, or equivalently, the metalinguistic or metaphysical identity of Reality, which is equal to LINT, an intrinsic language through which the Universe exists and evolves. SCSPL and Reality are two ways of referring to the same thing. Reality is a recursive (self-calling) language that is fractal and natural and reflective of the structure of heaven and earth at all levels. LINT breaks down into two semi-languages, Ls and Lo. L.S. is the intention of the SCPSL, the internal content of the conspansive manifold, a metamathematical structure that represents the fundamental nature of Reality as it evolves. The teleodynamics of this manifold determines how the Universe evolves. L.O. is its logical complement, the linear ectomorphic semi-model, the extension of SCSPL, namely, its instantiation in the Universe studied by physics, consisting of physical objects and relations whose trajectories are locally external to themselves.
M = (Σ = {N, T}, ΓMU, SΣ) is very close to how we defined a natural language. What can we say about the SCSPL Metaformal System language? Instead of using letters to concatenate strings of symbols, it uses telors and syntactors to provide linguistic and metaphysical information through which it can form intelligible sequences of states. Its "alphabet" is (N, T), representing telors and syntactors. There are two levels of telors, the primary telor (the G.O.D.) and secondary telors (observer-participants, like humans), and three levels of syntactors. Primary and secondary syntactors are also telors, but tertiary syntactors (like syntactic operators) are not because they have no volition or creative power except by instantiating the teleology of telors. M evolves by identifying itself with the structure of its secondary images and refining and strengthening its identity. The purpose of the Reality Self-Simulation, consisting of tertiary syntactors, is to have a "playground" whereby the G.O.D.'s secondary images can exist and evolve with one another and freely choose to instantiate the teleology of the G.O.D., or M. M's grammar, the MU-morphic grammar ΓMU, which attaches God to His secondary images, and is the grammar which determines/generates the evolution of Reality from one state to the next. Its subscript is M.U., standing for multiplex unity (many-place unity), because its state-transition syntax is consistent and embedded in every object in the Universe, determining the evolution of the SCSPL Reality Self-Simulation. The surface structure or the "strings" concatenated by the Metaformal System is SΣ, which is the equivalent of the actual sentences formed in a language as opposed to the deep structure of its grammar, syntax, and composition, in the case of SCSPL, representing the tangible Universe.
Cosmologist Max Tegmark once prophesied that all the equations to describe a master theory that explains all of spacetime and its mathematical structure could break into a finite description short enough to fit on a t-shirt.
Let's try it.
Part 1: generically couple language and Universe into an ontic identity which contains its own Universe and identity language: M = LM | UM, equating the global property or intension of Reality L.M. to the physical Universe U.M. or extension of Reality.
Part 2: formally identify and define the metaformal system, M = LINT = Ls | Lo = (Σ = {N, T}, ΓMU, SΣ). This equation says there is one Ultimate Identity of Reality which factorizes into two strata of telors, that the Universe evolves through an intrinsic language to generate its surface structure, that this same grammar connects the G.O.D. to its secondary images, allowing Reality to exist and develop in a Reality Self-simulation with two complimentary semi-models, and that the purpose of this SCSPL Reality Self-Simulation is the self-identification of M, the Metaformal System, thus generically equating M with the actual Universe and its existence and evolution.
Part 3: Quoting Chris Langan: Bring the entire CTMU metaformal system "to rest on a single 'closure meta-axiom,' the Analytic Reality Closure Principle (A.R.C.), which is also called the "CTMU Identification or (Intelligibility Axiom") It can be expressed as a logical generalization of Einstein's Equation, with a medium on one side and its content on the other):
realityINT =* realityEXT
The "equals" sign is the same as the MU-morphism, which attaches God to His Creation and secondary images.
Reality's intension, meaning its generic identity as the Ground and Source of Being, is a descriptor; its extension, the SCSPL Universe, is an operator, thus defining the G.O.D. as a coupling of the two. All three equations are G.O.D. equations because they are metaformal definitions of the Global Operator-Descriptor, the Identity of Reality.
On the left is the medium, and on the right is the content.
The A.R.C. can also be formulated as a logical supertautology, the same way that the CTMU as a whole is formulated, or as I mentioned in my video on Divine Simplicity: a generalization of God's name he tells Moses in the Book of Exodus: Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh, I AM THAT I AM.
Ehyeh is derived from the Hebrew verb Hayah, which means "to be." The text repeats the word that denotes existence as an attribute. Asher is an incomplete noun that another noun must complete, so it's a subject of the predicate. The phrase means that the object described and the attribute by which we describe Him are the same in God.
When applied to theology, the A.R.C. expressed this structure of God's Being, that God's intension (His identity) and extension (His Creation) are syntactically equivalent to isomorphism. The A.R.C. is the first and most fundamental principle of the CTMU. It means that any predicate ascribed to God is a synonym for the fullness of His Being, so you cannot have a "complex" God with various faculties and parts, but rather the simple, undivided substance of the Ground of Source of All Being, whose every aspect is a synonym for the fullness of His Being.
The A.R.C. is the most powerful and general tautology, roughly equivalent to the statement "existence exists," logically speaking. Absolutely unbreakable yet deceptively powerful.
The medium-content relationship can also be reformulated in terms of the CTMU Reality Principle: Reality contains all and only that which is real, i.e., its medium contains no content not internally recognizable to itself.
Pretty nifty t-shirt, right? And when there's a flood, you will need an A.R.C.
Let the light shine forth in the darkness. May the peace of our Father in heaven be upon you. Like and subscribe. Peace.