I take that back. God is not subject to anything at all. He can exist independently of creation. Langan calls omnipotence "self-configuration up to freedom".
You've misunderstood what Langan is saying (although it's hard to understand why since he's quite explicit). Just like numerous people before him, he is conceptualizing god as something that is not, never was and never could be independent of creation. We are all rather inside god and therefore part of what god is. Within the context of CTMU in particular, god is fundamentally a mind, and everything that exists (including us) is a part of that mind. It's essentially a sort of pantheism, or possibly panentheism given that the mind of god presumably in some sense also transcends everything it contains.
The word "sand" refers to some large number of sand grains, but use of a single noun to collectively refer to sand doesn't imply that there's some "single being" called "sand" that exists in addition to the individual grains. The word 'syntax' basically refers to how individual words in a language are combined together to form meaningful compounds. Apparently the thing Fork is quoting is using the word more broadly, to refer to something like 'parts being combined to form larger wholes'. The individual grains in a pile of sand all have spatial relations to each other. That defines the size and shape of the pile. But it's probably misleading to suggest that there's an additional something called a 'pile' that somehow "self-distributes" across all the individual sand grains to create the pile of sand. The use of the word "self" to refer to it is doubly misleading. Perfect what?? (Lotsa obscure jargon being thrown around, which is rarely a good sign in philosophy.) Wouldn't this depend on the truth of the pan-psychist conjecture that proceeded it? If it's true that everything is conscious, at least of its own being, then the total sum consciousness of everything would presumably be conscious of everything. At least arguably. We would still need to know how these hypothetical individually conscious monads become conscious of the other monads and of the relations among them. Of course, if everything in the universe isn't already conscious, if the initial panpsychist conjecture isn't correct, then the whole thing falls apart. Wouldn't all of this hypothetically self-conscious matter still be subject to causality and to logic? Even if we are talking about the sum total contents of reality, the states that collective sum assumes at each instant would arguably still seem to be determined by the causal processes occurring within it, and to the physical and logical principles that describe how those states evolve over time. I doubt very strongly whether this guy's argument tight is enough to qualify as a deductive proof. And just for the sake of argument, even if there is a valid formal proof somewhere of all of this guy's conclusions, the truth of the proof's conclusions would still be dependent on the truth of all of the totally speculative assumptions that initially went into it as axioms.
You are correct. God does not exist independently of creation. My mistake. However, He/It is not subject to anything.
”What does this say about God? First, if God is real, then God inheres in the comprehensive reality syntax, and this syntax inheres in matter." -Langan, Intro to the CTMU.
Whitehead on "God": [color=#99000]"In the first place, God is not to be treated as an exception to all metaphysical principles, invoked to save their collapse. He is their chief exemplification. Viewed as primordial, he is the unlimited concep-tual realization of the absolute wealth of potentiality. In this aspect, he is not before all creation, but with all creation. But, as primordial, so far is he from “eminent reality,” that in this abstraction he is “deficiently actual”—and this in two ways. His feel-ings are only conceptual and so lack the fulness of actuality. Secondly, conceptual feelings, apart from complex integration with physical feelings, are devoid of consciousness in their subjective forms. Thus, when we make a distinction of reason, and consider God in the abstraction of a primordial actu-ality, we must ascribe to him neither fulness of feel-ing, nor consciousness. He is the unconditioned actuality of conceptual feeling at the base of things; so that, by reason of this primordial actuality, there is an order in the relevance of eternal objects to the process of creation. His unity of conceptual opera-tions is a free creative act, untrammelled by refer-ence to any particular course of things. It is deflected neither by love, nor by hatred, for what in fact comes to pass. The particularities of the actual world pre-suppose it; while it merely presupposes the general metaphysical character of creative advance, of which it is the primordial exemplification. The primordial nature of God is the acquirement by creativity of a primordial character. His conceptual actuality at once exemplifies and establishes the categoreal conditions. The concep-tual feelings, which compose his primordial nature, exemplify in their subjective forms their mutual sen-sitivity and their subjective unity of subjective aim. These subjective forms are valuations determining the relative relevance of eternal objects for each occasion of actuality. He is the lure for feeling, the eternal urge of de-sire. His particular relevance to each creative act, as it arises from its own conditioned standpoint in the world, constitutes him the initial “object of desire” establishing the initial phase of each subjective aim. A quotation from Aristotle’s Metaphysics1 expresses some analogies to, and some differences from, this line of thought: And since that which is moved and moves is intermediate, there is some-thing which moves without being moved, being eternal, substance, and actuality. And the object of desire and the object of thought move in this way; they move without being moved. The primary objects of desire and of thought are the same. For the apparent good is the object of appetite, and the real good is the primary object of rational wish. But desire is consequent on opinion rather than opinion on desire; for the thinking is the starting-point. And thought is moved by the object of thought, and one of the two columns of opposites is in itself the object of thought; . ."--Chapter II of Part V, "Final Interpretation," of Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology, New York, Macmillan, 1929; Corrected Edition, ed. David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne, New York, Free Press, 1978.[/color]
Plato's "Receptacle" or "the Khora": "Khôra (Khora or Chora; Ancient Greek: χώρα) is a philosophical term described by Plato in Timaeus as a receptacle, a space, or an interval. It is neither being nor nonbeing but an interval between in which the "forms" were originally held. Khôra "gives space" and has maternal overtones (a womb, matrix). Key authors addressing "khôra" include Heidegger who refers to a "clearing" in which being happens or takes place (Nader El-Bizri, 2001, 2004). Julia Kristeva deploys the term as part of her analysis of the difference between the semiotic and symbolic realms, in that Plato's concept of "khora" is said to anticipate the emancipatory employment of semiotic activity as a way of evading the allegedly phallocentric character of symbolic activity (signification through language), which, following Jacques Lacan, is regarded as an inherently limiting and oppressive form of praxis. Julia Kristeva articulates the 'chora' in terms of a presignifying state: 'Although the chora can be designated and regulated, it can never be definively posited: as a result, one can situate the chora and, if necessary, lend it a topology, but one can never give it axiomatic form.'[1] Jacques Derrida uses "khôra" to name a radical otherness that "gives place" for being. El-Bizri builds on this by more narrowly taking "khôra" to name the radical happening of an ontological difference between being and beings (Nader El-Bizri, 2004, 2011). Derrida argues that the subjectile is like Plato’s chora, Greek for space, receptacle or site. Plato proposes that the chora rests between the sensible and the intelligible, through which everything passes but in which nothing is retained. For example an image needs to be held by something, just as a mirror will hold a reflection. For Derrida, "khôra" defies attempts at naming or either/or logic which he attempts to "deconstruct" (see deconstruction). See also Derrida's collaborative project with Architect Peter Eisenmann, in Chora L Works: Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman. The project proposed the construction of a garden in the Parc de la Villette in Paris, which included a seive, or harp-like structure that Derrida invisaged as a physical metaphor for the receptacle-like properties of the chora. The concept of the chora, distinguished by its elusive properties, would have become a physical reality had the project been realised. Following Derrida, John Caputo describes khôra as: "neither present nor absent, active or passive, the good nor evil, living nor nonliving - but rather atheological and nonhuman - khôra is not even a receptacle. Khôra has no meaning or essence, no identity to fall back upon. She/it receives all without becoming anything, which is why she/it can become the subject of neither a philosopheme nor mytheme. In short, the khôra is tout autre [fully other], very."--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khôra
Not just obscure, but sometimes invented. One of the biggest criticisms of Langan's work is that parsing it is difficult, if not impossible. Not only does he have a ridiculously large vocabulary, he is often co-opting and even inventing terminology. As such, it seems clear that he's put more effort into trying to be impressive than he has into trying to be understood. I mean, why state that CTMU is so conceptually simple that even a layperson can understand it (which he does on his website) but simultaneously effectively obfuscate all the juicy details? Is it intentional? Is he using his intellect to hide from scrutiny? Because really, I bet you don't need an IQ of 195+ to engage in an effective critical analysis of the key conceptual components and supposed "proofs" in his CTMU. So I'd say that until he decides to start communicating his ideas more clearly, there's not a whole lot to discuss.
No it isn't, and no it doesn't. Who is this Langan? If he is an academic, I pity the poor students who have to suffer this claptrap.
And you know this how? Doesn't matter who he is. What matters is his proof which is logically constructed. Open your eyes and you will see. The days in which God could not be known and thought to be beyond us are gone. I've read enough of the CTMU and had enough personal experience to conclude that God is real. You cannot see God on a regular basis, you have to be at one with Him, a single Being.
We have not got complete understanding of even one cell in a blade of grass. We are comparatively clever monkeys. No more than that.
How dare you call him a nutcase! According to his wiki entry, he is the "cleverest man in America", and his IQ couldn't be measured because it was off the scale. He even taught himself to read, aged 4. He left college because his lecturers had nothing to teach him. He works as a Bouncer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Langan
Nature is also non-separated. Only our language separates things into discrete entities. What is spirit?
