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This article presents MENTAL, a universal formal language, which is especially applicable to the formal sciences (computer science, mathematics, artificial intelligence, general systems theory, etc.). It is a very simple language, but extremely powerful, because it is based on archetypes of consciousness. |
| ✲ | A language of consciousness.
MENTAL is a language consisting of only 12 simple, generic concepts (and their opposites or duals). These concepts are called "semantic primitives". Because of their universal character, these essential concepts are really archetypes of the consciousness, the primary and universal archetypes present in all things, the archetypes common to the internal (mental) and physical (external) world. An archetype is an essential and profound concept of a domain that serves as a foundation for that domain. A set of interrelated archetypes makes it possible to model a field of knowledge. The archetypes of consciousness are universal and are applicable to all fields of knowledge, especially to the formal sciences, the sciences that need a formal language, such as mathematics or computer science. |
| ✲ | A discovery.
Archetypes are discovered. Axioms are invented. Archetypes are deep. Axioms are superficial. What is an invention is the syntax, the formal representation of the instances of the primary archetypes. It must be kept in mind that the primary archetypes are internal (mental) and, by their very nature, are formally inexpressible. Only particular instances of those archetypes are expressible. |
| ✲ | Learning.
Rather than learning language, it is a matter of recognizing those basic or primary archetypes that exist internally and externally. You only have to learn the syntax, which is very simple, so the language is learned in a few minutes. |
| ✲ | A universal paradigm.
A paradigm is a general view or model applicable to a field of knowledge. A universal paradigm is a paradigm applicable to every field of knowledge. MENTAL is a universal paradigm because it is based on the archetypes of consciousness, which are present in all fields of knowledge. From their respective points of view, scientists, philosophers, linguists, psychologists and mathematicians have speculated about the possibility of the existence of a universal paradigm and a universal formal language for science and even for philosophy. Numerous proposals have been made throughout history, but none have been consistent and complete. MENTAL is the answer to that search, a simple, open, flexible, creative and profound language of consciousness from which to contemplate the unity of all things. MENTAL participates, to a greater or lesser extent, in all the universalist ideas that have existed throughout history. MENTAL, the Magna Carta of possible worlds. MENTAL is the foundation of everything: of the real and of the possible. Every possible world is necessarily founded on the primary archetypes. |
| ✲ | The revolution of simplicity.
MENTAL is a language of supreme conceptual simplicity. And it is the language of consciousness because consciousness is supreme simplicity. In the deep converge consciousness, truth, simplicity, freedom, wisdom, power and creativity. In such a way that each of these concepts implies all the others. Precisely because of its supreme simplicity, language is extremely powerful, so that everything is very easily expressed. Problems are clarified, solved or simplified because the most powerful resources are available. What seemed complex at a superficial level, appears as simple from a deep level. Things that were not expressible (or were very difficult to express) can now be easily expressed. A paradigmatic example is the case of the representation of natural numbers, which moved from the complex Roman numeration to the Indo-Arabic positional numeration, much simpler and simplifying calculations. The same goes for MENTAL: everything is simplified and everything is easier. |
| ✲ | A universalist thesis.
The thesis of MENTAL is that all reality, both internal (mental) and external (physical), is grounded in and governed by a set of semantic primitives that constitute a universal formal language. These primitives are simple, intuitive and independent of each other. They are degrees of freedom, dimensions of mind and consciousness; hence the name assigned to this language: MENTAL. |
| ✲ | MENTAL, a falsifiable language.
According to Karl Popper, every scientific theory must be falsifiable, ie, that a new datum can appear that invalidates it. MENTAL is in that situation as well. If a domain appears that cannot be formalized with MENTAL, then this language would not be universal. The greater the field of application of a statement or a theory, the greater its value, but at the same time the greater the risk of being falsified. Scientific theories should be as generic as possible, so that they explain as many phenomena as possible. The highest aspiration of science is to find the "theory of everything", the universal theory that explains everything. The value of a hypothesis is measured by the falsifying potential it contains, that is, by the number of possible experiences that could lead to the rejection of the hypothesis. It is never possible to prove a theory; we only have the possibility of disproving it. Therefore there are no unquestionable theories or starting points, i.e., that are always true or absolute. There are not, nor can there be, because scientific rationality demands it. |
| ✲ | A Copernican revolution.
The Copernican system replaced the Ptolemaic system as a simpler model for the description of the motion of the planets, although both systems are equally valid, since they describe the same phenomenon. Kant brought about a "Copernican revolution" (in his own words) in philosophy, based on the categories of understanding, the categories of the internal, mental type, the central and essential reference for understanding the external world. In the same way, MENTAL implies a Copernican change by basing itself on the archetypes of consciousness, the principles common to the internal and external world. This does not invalidate previous more or less complex approaches, but the principle of Occam's razor must be applied: always choose the simplest, MENTAL. In the Copernican system, the new center is the Sun. In MENTAL the new center is consciousness. From this deep center, all things are connected, the boundaries between the different domains are diluted and everything is seen as the same thing. MENTAL is the master key that opens all doors. |
| ✲ | The importance of MENTAL.
The discovery of the universal semantic primitives or archetypes of consciousness is of enormous importance, because it grounds possible worlds and has the potential to accelerate the development and unification of the formal sciences. The importance of a scientific invention or discovery is measured by the magnitude of its impact. A theory has greater impact the more general it is. The value of MENTAL is its universality. |
| ✲ | MENTAL, a language that integrates all dualities: reductionism and holism, analysis and synthesis, quality and quantity, syntax and semantics, lexical semantics and structural semantics, meaning and denotation, ontology and epistemology, realism and idealism, language and metalanguage, theory and practice, necessity and possibility, statics and dynamics, the objective and the subjective, the operative and the descriptive, the generic and the specific, the intensive and the extensive, the absolute and the relative, the abstract and the concrete, the discrete and the continuous, the natural and the artificial, and so on.
This global union of dualities justifies that MENTAL is qualified as the "language of consciousness". Indeed, consciousness is associated with the number 3, the harmony and transcendence of opposites. MENTAL is a language of the so-called "third culture", as it unites science and humanism. |
| ✲ | MENTAL, a semantic language.
The primary archetypes (or universal semantic primitives) are orthogonal, i.e., they are independent of each other, but can be combined without restriction by the primitives themselves (lexical semantics is the same as structural semantics). The true expressive power of language lies in combinatorics. MENTAL is an expression-oriented language. Since what is important is the semantics associated with expressions, the distinction between data and code is diluted. |
| ✲ | MENTAL, a simple language foundation of complexity.
Primary archetypes are necessarily simple, because if they were not, they would not be primary archetypes, for they would be expressions of other even simpler archetypes. Through the combination of these simple archetypes, complexity is built. But complexity is only apparent, superficial, for behind the complex lies hidden at a deep level simplicity. |
| ✲ | MENTAL, a philosophical language.
The 12 primary archetypes of MENTAL are philosophical categories, the concepts that underlie reality, sought by philosophers of all times. |
| ✲ | MENTAL, a theory and model of mind.
Theories of mind attempt to explain what the mind is. Mental models attempt to explain how the mind works. MENTAL is both a theory and a model of the mind. The mind is a set of interrelated universal archetypes. The mind functions through combinations of instances of these universal archetypes. In this sense, MENTAL can be considered the hypothetical language of mind and thought. |
| ✲ | MENTAL, foundation of mathematics.
With MENTAL the true nature of mathematics is discovered. MENTAL integrates and harmonizes the three main schools of mathematics: the formalist, the logicist and the intuitionist. It is also the true language of mathematics, a simple yet powerful language with which any mathematical concept can be expressed. MENTAL clarifies Wigner's question: "The enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something that borders on the mysterious and has no rational explanation". The answer lies in the fact that mind and nature share the same primary archetypes. The universe is a particularization of the mathematical realm, which in turn is a manifestation of the primary archetypes. MENTAL is the culmination of Hilbert's dream of creating a unified mathematics by means of a metamathematics. But not in the exclusively formalistic sense (intended by Hilbert), but essentially semantic. And it goes further, because MENTAL transcends mathematics itself. MENTAL is the new "Principia Mathematica" based on 12 generic concepts and not only on one (logic), as Russell and Whitehead intended. MENTAL is the realization of Church's dream of constructing a complete formal system and a universal language to model all of mathematics. MENTAL clarifies the true meaning of Gödel's theorem: A science cannot be founded on itself. It needs a higher or deeper foundation. Mathematics cannot be founded on formal axioms, it needs a metamathematics based on generic concepts that founds it. MENTAL is the foundation of mathematics. |
| ✲ | MENTAL, a multi-paradigm programming language.
MENTAL allows expressing different programming paradigms: imperative, functional, relational, object-oriented, agent-oriented, constraint-oriented, etc., all of them expressible with the same basic conceptual resources of the language. MENTAL is an expression-oriented language, which has no keywords. It only uses symbols, so the code is very compact. However, the language allows redefining primitives and using user-defined keywords. In contrast to traditional programming languages, which require several weeks to learn, MENTAL requires no previous knowledge and can be learned in a few minutes. This makes MENTAL a language accessible to everyone. |
| ✲ | MENTAL vs. The Universal Turing Machine (UTM).
The MTU has been the theoretical foundation of general-purpose computers, because of its simplicity and its revolutionary concept of a program stored in memory. But the MTU has many restrictions. MENTAL is also a theoretical and simple language, but it is conceptually at the opposite pole of MTU: as a language of mind and consciousness, which opens it to applications of all kinds: high and low level. |
| ✲ | MENTAL, a formal language of specification.
The specification of a system refers to the "what", what the system has to do. Programming refers to the "how." Usually there are usually specific specification languages. MENTAL can be used as a specification language because the boundary between the "what" and the "how" is really blurred. What really happens is that everything is specification and that the "what" becomes "how" as the degree of detail increases. |
| ✲ | MENTAL, foundation of the Semantic Web.
The Semantic Web is an idea proposed in the late 1990s by the inventor of the Web, Tim Berners-Lee. It is a W3C project to create a new generation of the Web. The idea is to overcome the limitations of the current Web (based mainly on explicit links) and go in the direction of a Web based on meaning, on semantics. MENTAL, which is designed with universal semantic primitives, serves as a basis for the Semantic Web. Because a correspondence or analogy is established between the "mind" of machines and that of man because they share the same primary archetypes. |
| ✲ | MENTAL, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) language.
In AI there has been a long controversy about which language was the most suitable for developing applications, especially expert systems. The debate was basically centered between the followers or supporters of the Lisp and Prolog languages. Lisp is a functional language. In Lisp you have to express the "how to", the detail, the step by step, at a functional level. Prolog is a declarative, rule-based logic language. In Prolog you have to express the "what", what you know in a given domain. MENTAL is a language that integrates the essential features of Lisp and Prolog. It is enormously more powerful than Lisp and Prolog combined, precisely because it is based on primary archetypes and their combinatorial potential. MENTAL goes beyond imperative and declarative programming. And it is vastly simpler, more generic and with more possibilities. AI attempts to shed light on the nature of human intelligence. It also seeks generality and abstraction. These are precisely the characteristics of MENTAL, which is why this language is well suited for AI. |
| ✲ | The future of MENTAL.
Perhaps MENTAL will go through a process like Arthur Schopenhauer said: "Every truth passes through three stages before it is recognized. In the first it is ridiculed. In the second it is combated. In the third it is regarded as self-evident." |