CTMU

[Anand Hudli]

On Sat, 22 Jul 2000 15:32:33 -0500, Sankaran Kartik Jayanarayanan
<kartik at ECE.UTEXAS.EDU> wrote:

>Christopher Langan, supposedly America's smartest man, was once measured
>to have an IQ of 195 (1 in 100 million), and he was profiled on TV where
>he was measured for IQ again, and this time around it was shown to be
>higher than can be measured.
>
>Langan's relevance to this mailing list is that he claims to have
>discovered a proof for the existence of God. Many points in his
>philosophical theory (which he calls "CTMU", short for Cognition-Theoretic
>Model of the Universe) are curiously close to advaita:
>
>1) God = "Self-perceptual real universe"
>2) Mind (i.e. the "cognitive syntax") = Reality
>
>It's all the more intriguing since he claims to have "proven" the above
>propositions using logic alone, in contrast to advaita which needs shruti
>:-)

 No, that is not correct. In the final analysis, advaita says that God
 is none other than the Self. And the Self does not have to be proved!
 No one doubts "Do I exist or not?". So God exists!

 If God is taken as different from the Self, then we run into the
 problem that you (mistakenly) attribute to advaita. The realistic
 schools have this problem with logically establishing God, but not
 advaita.


> He says that his CTMU theory has been circulating around for a long
>time now with no one able to disprove it thus far.
>

 Any logical proof must be based on some axioms. As long as one accepts
 those axioms and if the proof is valid, then one must accept the
 conclusion. But if one does not accept the axioms, we cannot
 convince  that person to accept the conclusion. This has to do
 with the distinction between a valid argument and a sound argument
 in philosophy. An argument can be valid but not necessarily sound!
 All that a valid argument means is: IF the premises are accepted
 to be true, THEN the conclusion of the argument logically follows.
 Given A -> B, and A, we conclude B. This is a valid argument.
 A sound argument is one that is valid AND is based on true premises.
 Given A -> B, and A, we conclude B. This conclusion is sound only if
 the rule A -> B and the statement A are both true.

 Now, any subjectivity of the "truth" of the premises makes a big
 difference. If one accepts the premises to be true and if the argument
 is valid, then one must necessarily accept the conclusion. However,
 if one manages to cast doubt on the premises, then the conclusion,
 though coming from a valid argument, is not necessarily true.


>His profile is at the URL:
>http://abcnews.go.com/onair/2020/2020_000713_iq_feature.html
>
>An introduction to his philosophy is to be found here:
>http://www.megafoundation.org/CTMU.html
>
>Just a curiosity :-)
>

 It is interesting work indeed!

Anand

--
bhava shankara deshikame sharaNam

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