Dialogue on the CTMU between Christopher M. Langan and Russel F. Vaughn (excerpt)

Parts I-III out of VII

Dialogue on the CTMU (paperback edition)

Publisher’s Note

We have reprinted this interesting and productive discussion of the CTMU for didactic purposes. This dialogue took place in 1999–2000. Several brief references to third parties that were not relevant to the dialogue have been removed. There was no further correspondence until Fred posted a “critique” of the CTMU. The “critique”, including Chris’s response, has been reprinted in the last part of this book.

PART I

RFV: I’ve been meaning to begin a dialog with you that would help us both understand each other better. Bob Seitz¹ thinks most highly of you and such a friend is the best recommendation a man can have in my book. I would be foolish not to know you better than I do with you being only an e-mail away.

What I’d like before attempting any major intellectual challenge like your CTMU – that I would like to get into later after I have some background – is to compare our perspectives on various topics without the public displays and distractions of being on the list. If you have any questions about my leanings on any topic, please let fly with questions and I’ll answer them as straight-forwardly or as stupidly as I happen to hold my opinions. I would like to discuss them in such a non-confrontational way – and slowly so that it sinks in. I will be as intellectually fair with you as it is possible for me to be. I do find it easy to acknowledge others ideas but that does not mean that I have none of my own that I would deny having had before a conversation. I am personally not nearly so worried about my own ideas as I once was, but naturally we all have some level of paranoia with regard to such things. I hope we can converse in such a way that you are always convinced of my good faith in this regard. Assurances are best proven rather than stated.

CML: Of course. I share and appreciate your willingness to progress towards mutual understanding. I know that some of my ideas look somewhat strange from a conventional viewpoint, but they’re not lightly formulated, and I always welcome a chance to explain the underlying logic.

RFV: If there’s a different agenda or different approach to this one that is better, then let’s do it! But in the mean time could we investigate one of the questions that I have that seems to involve a major difference of opinion between us.

I happen to think that one cannot “know” the world without data and that our most abstractly generalized notion of the world must be based on inductive reasoning from that data. Having developed a generalized notion or theory one can then deduce specifics that are warranted (and our theory is only warranted) to the extent that these deductions map to actualities. It is my impression that you hold a somewhat different opinion or place emphasis differently within such a scheme.

Teleological arguments are not something I think should be tossed out without consideration, but I do have much more skepticism with regard to them. However, I hold (what can only be called “faith”) that the ultimate physical theoretical solution will have a “necessity” about it which is very convincing – sor[t] of Einstein’s “God would have done it this way!”

CML: I agree that we can’t know the world without data. But since we necessarily receive and interpret these data mentally, they provide important clues about our mental structure. The idea that this mental structure shapes the phenomenal world has been known since Kant; the CTMU simply pushes Kant’s ideas to their logical conclusion, dealing directly with the relationship between mind and reality.

RFV: Could we just talk about this topic quite narrowly for a beginning. That is, unless you have a question of me or a different agenda.

CML: Sure! No problem.

RFV: Thanks in advance for whatever this engenders.