Section 4.4
In section 4.4 Langan discusses the two views of causality that are assumed within the discrete and continuum models of reality; these being acausality and external determinacy. These models of causality stem from even deeper than the models themselves, they stem from the underlying philosophy, science, and even mathematics that these models were developed in and from. They are insufficient for our self contained system. To resolve this problem, Langan introduces self-determinacy. Unfortunately the naive view of self-determinacy, that of a feedback loop passed through some internal structure, is also insufficient for more or less the exact same reason: it cannot account for its own origin. So, Langan modifies self-determinacy to include ontological feedback in the form of telic recursion.
The old models of causality allowed for only two modes of determinacy: acausality and external determinism. Acausality, or randomness, says that events are uncaused, they just happen for no reason. For a picture, imagine a set of events as unconnected dots on a plane. This says events are unrelated and unconnected. I could not quite gather the fundamental issue Langan has with acausality, apart from perhaps the notion that acausality undermines our ability to make any meaningful statements about reality or even ask any meaningful questions about it. Since the entire scientific endeavor assumes that we can ask meaningful questions and make meaningful statements, adopting acausality amounts to throwing science (and perhaps mathematics as well) out the window. A more practical problem emerges as well: all evidence is to the contrary - especially in light of Occam’s razor. Bertrand Russell deals with this sort of idea in “The Problems of Philosophy” when discussing the existence of a table in the first chapter. Events do appear to be connected, and we don’t want to throw science out the window, so we may as well rule out acausality.
For a picture of external determinacy, imagine events as dots in the plane again, only this time add connecting lines between them relating them. External determinacy says that an object, event, or system is brought about and governed by laws that are invariant with respect to it. This invariance means that the laws are existentially external to the object, event, or system; if they weren’t outside the system in question they would be part of it and therefore not invariant with respect to it. This, as we’ve seen in earlier sections, is a classic error when dealing with reality as a whole. This error amounts to just laying down another turtle and saying we’ve finally solved it - but what does the new turtle stand on? Throw down another turtle! Reality must be a self-contained system so it cannot be governed by external laws.
Both acausality and external determinacy have an additional drawback: They suck for humans. Neither one allows much in the way of meaning: Either everything just exists and happens pointlessly, or everything is just the puppet of some external and indifferent power. This is problematic for both the individual and society as a whole, the philosophies people act by do tend to be influenced by the prevailing view of cosmology. Since these are both dissatisfying to humans, and neither of them work anyway, we may as well find a new model. Enter: self-determinacy.
Self-determinacy is like a dot with a looping arrow pointing back to it, it involves feedback. The naive approach to self-determinacy, however, is also insufficient, and for the same reasons as external determinacy! Feedback in the form of information passed recursively and circularly through some kind of internal structure is senseless where neither information nor that internal structure exist yet. In short, naive self-determinacy also cannot account for its own existence. The feedback must be ontological in nature.
Enter telic feedback. Telic feedback uses generalized utility as a self-selection parameter. Generalized utility is a quantifiable metric and property of syntax and state, who mutually refine each other to maximize this generalized utility. Obviously I have some questions about this generalized utility: How can it be quantifiable if it must be used to justify and originate the concept of ordinality? Langan says generalized utility is autologous, or self-descriptive. One must imagine this means self-defining as well. It’s also pre-informational. It does not assign properties to objects but rather refines the state and syntax via each other. Perhaps this means something to the effect of “It doesn’t make the ball red, rather it forces the universe to invent the terms necessary to convey a red ball”.
Langan goes on to hint at temporal feedback in this paragraph of the section, saying “the system brings itself into existence as a means of atemporal communication between its past and its future”. Generalized utility is retroactively defined, but also applied to the system's potential futures. This section is pretty tricky and I hope it’s a little bit more elaborated in sections 4.6.13 (Telic Reducibility and Telic Recursion) and 4.6.14 (The Telic Principle).
As far as I can get right now, outside reality is unbound telesis (UBT), which is a realm of zero information and so infinite potential. Somehow, the system chooses itself from this infinite potential and the choice includes a state and a syntax, but also a past and a future. Then the future chooses the past, and the past chooses the future, both according to generalized utility. The choice though, at least on the primary level, isn’t the specific configuration of the universe, but rather the configuration of the language (and theory) that the universe is expressed in. Again, hopefully it makes more sense later on.
