h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

1) Links to the original articles by Chris Langan can be found at: www.ctmu.org
2)While Chris Langan is extraordinary gifted philosopher with amazingly wide outlook and well-versed in practical sciences (it is said that his IQ score is 195,and only one person in a million happens to have such score), and he poses all the right kind of questions.
What troubles me is the absolutization of our laws of logic, thinking and theories that he affords. As a dualist I consider that there are two realities- one objective (real world of which we form a part) and one subjective(Our Perception of the (objective)reality) (and we usually postulate the existense of the objective reality- if you dont than you are a Solipsist). All our laws, and logic, and theories are attributes of our subjective reality, but such attributes that allow us to adapt to the objective world in the best manner possible.And we do not actually know what is the objective (outside) reality. So when we speak of nature and physics we do not describe objective reality per se, but explain to ourselves our perception of the objective reality( thus, we treat of the subjective reality by virtue of its definition). So, what we do is explaining subjective reality in terms of the subjective reality( a cyclicality and tautology- I acknowledge,- but in the end all logic is tautology at certain very basic level.What is True or False?-it is True and False) Indeed,we do nothing less than creating our subjective reality itself in the process! And thus we are gods unto ourselves!But such gods as are tempered by the virtues of modern schooling and educational systems that impose a kind of uniformity on our thinking (how different our subjective world would have been thousand years ago!-miracles and wonderous actions of god were not magical then they were basic unalianable reality!- and they still are to some who was untainted by the educational apparatus of modern (western) society!)- so I would not take any accusation of individualism in respect of myself. What is important is that even though our world we percieve is inherently subjective, it suits us well, we built various ingenious machinery and improve our condition so that we do not live in caves, but have houses and other conveniences(at least it is applicable to many, even if not to most. And most people ask nothing of life than that). Thus, Practice(usually taken to mean the adequate correspondence between (our peception of) objective world and our subjective world-once again tautology is unavoidable here) is the best criterion for verity and truth.
So, we live through our subjective world and usually take the existense of the objective world for granted,and then claim that both correlate in the best manner possible (this manner being definable by the course of natural evolution- once again a postulate)) This is my dualism ( which owes much to the book "The Tree of human understanding" by Varela and Maturana- Chilian-born philosophers.).
Obviously,Chris Langan, while (independently) replicating many of the ideas contained there, erronuosly (as follows from the framework above) thinks that since his subjective world (which is amazingly wide and developed)operates through language and other symbols(such as natural laws, theories etc.),so, this should entail in his view that the objective world also comprises these same symbols among its components. Thus,whilst the objective reality comprises our subjective realities as its subset(if we consider human beings as part of the objective realities), it does not follow that we should extrapolate our symbols into the realm of objective reality. In other words, it is impossible to judge and draw implications about objective world from our subjective world,- it should generally be thought that the two are not identical and that our senses(also self-awareness and thinking) are illusory,but to such an extent that makes interaction with the enviroment(objective world around us)optimal for our species. (Other animals have different subjective worlds than ours (and are not less content with them), yet the objective world is identical to itself.)
So, while I am, ofcourse, extremely insignificant and poor philosopher, and Chris Langan'subjective world is orders-of-magnititude wider than mine, I would venture to say that Mr. Langan makes the typical solipsistic mistake of thinking that: subjective symbolic world of human beings = the objective world. (At least,I am not Representationalist enough to accept such postulate, so I would have to reject the Langan's Cognitive theory of the Universe)
3)I see that many researchers on the forum simply laughed at the idea that inanimate objects could think! Personally, I find no difficulty in accepting it. Thinking is a process by which we adapt and react to the enviroment(objective world) around us. Simpler life forms(even inanimate) also adapt and react to the enviroment around us.But they might happen not to have their subjective world (I do not venture to judge with a broad brush but think that organisms possessing nervous systems generally have it though they do not have self-awareness as its components(experiments with a mirror demonstrate that self-awareness only started appearing in the evolutionary process as late as in primates and I doubt whether it is possible to have subjective world without concomitant self-awareness) and, ofcourse, their subjective world(if they have it) is not symbolic and conceptual.So such a theory as Chris Langans' could have appeared only in humans (and I know: never try to prove that which nobody doubts,- so I would better leave it at that).