Origins
Questions like "why and how does reality exist?" and "why does this reality exist instead of some other reality?" are typically answered in one of two ways:
- Reality "just exists", and no further explanation is needed or can be given.
- Reality exists due to the influence of something outside of it, an external creator.
Langan opposes both views, arguing that were reality to lack an explanation, it would lack the structure needed to enforce its own consistency, whereas for an external creator to create reality, the creator itself would have to be real, and therefore inside reality by definition, contradicting the premise.
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The CTMU treats the origin of reality in the context of freedom and constraint. Concepts are defined by constraints specifying their structure, and structure requires explanation. Consequently, Langan argues, every concept requires explanation except the "terminal concept" with no constraints, and no structure to explain. In the CTMU, this terminal concept or "ontological groundstate" is called "
unbound telesis" or UBT.
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Because UBT is a medium of pure potential, everything is possible within it. This means that anything which is able to "recognize itself" as existing, will in fact exist from its own vantage. However, the requirements for doing so are, asserts Langan, more stringent than is normally supposed. Because UBT is unstructured, the only possibilities which can actualize from it are those with sufficient internal structure to create and configure themselves. So in the CTMU, reality, rather than being uncaused or externally caused, is
self-caused, and constrained by the structure it needs to create and configure itself, that of SCSPL.
The above reasoning, holds Langan, resolves the
ex nihilo or "something-from-nothing" paradox. The paradox arises when "nothing" is taken to exclude not just "something", but the
potential for "something". Because exclusion of potential is a constraint, "nothing" in this sense requires its own explanation, and cannot serve as an ontological groundstate. But when "nothing" is viewed as unconstrained potential or UBT,
[34] asserts Langan, reality arises inevitably from it.
-CTMU Wiki,
Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe - CTMU Wiki
Reality is said to retroactively configure itself in the CTMU. Time flows backwards and forwards in it. This is a reasonable conclusion since we are no longer thinking in terms of a localized or object-level perspective, but a holistic one.
The success of this theory reflects mankind's desire to know his origins and the much deserved recognition of the Quantum sciences, which only recently blossomed into an ontological framework.