Finite Mind Constraint (FMC)

The Finite Mind Constraint is the mediation result that any meaningful claim a finite mind can make must be expressible within its experiential interface, so any God concept an epistemic agent entertains is tokened inside experience and cannot function as a direct external grasp of ultimacy (see Def. 1.3 and Theorem 1.1).

Book: Finite Mind, Finite God. Location in text: Chapter 1, section 1.4 (“The finite mind constraint”), and section 1.7.1 (“Theorem 1.1 (Finite Mind Constraint)”), with system-term definitions in Appendix 11.8.1 (“Finite Mind,” “Experiential Interface,” “God-concept tokening,” “Finite Mind Constraint”).

WHAT IT IS

The Finite Mind Constraint begins with the simplest feature of cognition that both theist and atheist already presuppose: whatever a finite mind can judge, compare, doubt, deny, or affirm must appear to that mind in some available form. In FMFG, that available form is named the experiential interface, meaning the totality of internal states through which anything is available to a finite mind for judgment, comparison, or assertion.

A mind is finite when its information processing capacity is bounded, which means it does not possess unlimited access, unlimited storage, or unlimited evaluation power. Finitude is not a psychological complaint. It is the structural condition of being an epistemic subject at all, because any epistemic agent only ever has what it can host, token, and process inside its own interface.

Once this is said out loud, a major theological illusion becomes visible. Even if ultimacy is real, every claim about it is made by a finite mind from within the epistemic interface. FMFG explicitly connects this to Existential Logicism’s Tripp’s Prison: whatever is known, believed, imagined, or denied arrives as a token inside experience, and there is no standpoint outside tokening from which a token can be compared to reality without using another token.

This is why FMFG treats “God talk” as interface bound in a strict technical sense. A “God” claim must be tokened as content within a finite mind’s interface in order to be asserted at all. Formally, a concept is tokened if it appears in some state s ∈ I(M). That is not a rhetorical jab at religion. It is a constraint on what it means for a sentence to be more than noise: it must correspond to something a finite agent can actually host as a determinate content item inside experience.

FMFG also states the fork that follows from this constraint. If a claim about God cannot be cashed out into anything tokenable in experience, it is not yet a claim with determinate content. If a claim about God can be cashed out into tokenable content, then it is human mediated by definition. This does not automatically render the claim false. It locates it, and it constrains what kinds of authority the claim can plausibly bear.

WHY IT MATTERS

The Finite Mind Constraint is a gatekeeper for meaning, not a weapon against religion. It tells you what has to be true for any theological dispute to be more than a ritualized exchange of slogans. If the terms do not cash out into tokenable content inside a finite interface, the dispute cannot be decided because it has not successfully pointed at a stable target.

It also blocks the most common bypass strategies. Some theological strategies attempt to escape finitude by invoking a God’s Eye view, a view from nowhere, or an appeal to mystery. FMFG’s point is that these maneuvers do not exit the interface. They are tokens too. Even an appeal to a God’s Eye view is itself a frame tokened within experience. Frames can be widened, refined, and abstracted. They cannot be escaped by stipulation.

That matters immediately for revelation, scripture, tradition, and doctrine. The Finite Mind Constraint forces a clean statement of where religious content enters human life and what humans can actually evaluate. This is why FMFG treats the constraint as a primary datum throughout the book and then turns, in the next phase of the argument, toward the Human Interface Thesis: there is no epistemic bypass around the human interface, and any revelation still enters human life through finite cognitive and social channels.

Finally, the constraint reframes the God/no God frame itself. Once you admit that every God claim is tokened inside a finite interface, the debate is no longer about whether an invisible object exists “out there” the way a planet exists. The debate becomes about what a tokened God concept is actually doing inside finite cognitive life, what kind of referent it could coherently pick out under finitude, and what authority it can legitimately support without smuggling in a view from nowhere.

FORMAL SPINE

FMFG does not treat the Finite Mind Constraint as a vibe. It states it as a theorem about tokening and mediation.

Theorem 1.1 (Finite Mind Constraint) is stated as follows: let M be any finite mind, and let C be any concept entertained by M. Then C is necessarily tokened within M’s experiential interface. In particular, any God concept G_M entertained by M is an internal representation within experience, and it cannot function for M as a direct external grasp of ultimacy.

The proof sketch is deliberately simple, because the target is not technical difficulty but conceptual discipline. Entertaining a concept is a cognitive act of M. Any cognitive act available to M is available only through M’s presentational medium, here called the experiential interface. Therefore, if C is entertained by M, there exists some internal state of M in which C is presented or encoded for M. That is what it means for C to be tokened within M’s interface.

The second claim is proven by contradiction. If a God concept functioned as direct external grasp of ultimacy for M, then M would have epistemic access to content that is not presentable within M’s own interface. That contradicts the minimal condition for an agent having any epistemic standpoint at all, namely that whatever is available for judgment, assent, denial, or inference is available only via internal presentation. FMFG points forward to Chapter 2 for the expanded development of this mediation constraint under the Human Interface Thesis and its corollaries.

The glossary then tightens the vocabulary used in the theorem. “Finite Mind” and “Experiential Interface” are defined as system terms. “God-concept tokening” makes explicit that a God claim must be tokened as content within a finite mind’s interface in order to be asserted at all. “Finite Mind Constraint” is named as the constraint that any meaningful claim must be expressible within a finite interface and therefore cannot bypass perspectival limitation by pure stipulation.

HOW IT WORKS

Start with finitude. A finite mind is bounded in its processing capacity, so it does not possess unlimited epistemic access. Whatever the mind can work with must show up inside the mind’s experiential interface, understood as the totality of its available internal states for judgment and comparison.

Define tokening as the discipline that prevents theology from floating into empty abstraction. A claim is not just a string of words. For a finite agent, it becomes a claim only when it is tokened as a content item inside the interface, meaning it appears in some state s ∈ I(M). That is the bridge between language and actual cognition.

Apply the same rule to God. God-concept tokening says that if “God exists” is asserted by M, then some God concept G_M is already present within I(M). The content is therefore internal as a token, even if the intended referent is external. This is the crucial distinction: the constraint is about epistemic access and representational mediation, not about whether something outside the mind exists.

Now block the bypass. If someone tries to escape mediation by invoking a God’s Eye view, a view from nowhere, or mystery, FMFG’s reply is structural: that appeal is itself a token inside experience, and thus still inside a frame. Frames can be widened, refined, and abstracted. They cannot be escaped by stipulation. The result is that theology cannot grant itself an authority upgrade by pretending to speak from outside the interface that makes speech possible at all.

Finally, use the constraint as a sorting rule for the rest of the project. If a God claim cannot be cashed out into tokenable content, it is not determinate. If it can be cashed out, then it is human mediated, and the question becomes what that mediation does to authority, revelation, accountability, and the social mechanics that stabilize doctrine. This is why the constraint naturally feeds into the Human Interface Thesis and the Revelation Filter later in FMFG’s architecture.

COMMON OBJECTIONS AND REPLIES

Objection: “This reduces God to psychology.”
Reply: The Finite Mind Constraint does not claim that only minds exist. It claims that whatever a mind can assert, it can only assert through tokened content inside its interface. The distinction is between ontology and epistemic access. The constraint is about the conditions for meaningful assertion by finite agents, not a declaration that the external world is unreal.

Objection: “Revelation could bypass the interface.”
Reply: “Bypass” has to be cashed out. If revelation enters human life in a way humans can judge, report, and build institutions around, then it enters as tokenable content inside the human interface. If it does not enter in any tokenable way, then humans cannot claim it, teach it, dispute it, translate it, or enforce it as doctrine. FMFG treats this as the motivation for the Human Interface Thesis, not as a premature denial of revelation.

Objection: “Mystery means God is beyond our categories.”
Reply: FMFG allows negative theology and humility about language, but it rejects the ineffability move when it is used as insulation. If “beyond categories” means there is no tokenable content, then there is no determinate claim. If it means there is tokenable content but it is limited, analogical, or partial, then it is still human mediated and must be evaluated as such, without smuggling in a view from nowhere.

Objection: “This makes theology impossible.”
Reply: It makes a certain fantasy of theology impossible: theology as an interface-free tribunal that can pronounce on ultimacy without mediation. FMFG’s point is that theology can still exist, but it must be honest about where its claims live, what tokens they consist in, and what kinds of authority can be built from those tokens without contradiction.

Objection: “But humans can know objective truths.”
Reply: The constraint does not deny objectivity. It denies a specific definition of objectivity as “access from outside all interfaces.” Under finitude, objectivity must be operational, meaning framed by the interface but stabilized by coherence, cross-checking, and convergence across agents. The Finite Mind Constraint is compatible with stronger epistemic discipline. It is incompatible with pretending discipline is unnecessary.

HOW TO USE IT IN DEBATE

Move Card: Force tokenability
Claim: If a claim is meaningful for a finite mind, it must be expressible within that mind’s experiential interface as tokened content, not as an untouchable stipulation.
If they say: “God is beyond comprehension, so you cannot ask for content.”
You respond: If there is no tokenable content, there is no determinate claim to accept, reject, obey, or build institutions around. If there is tokenable content, then it is interface bound and open to evaluation.

Move Card: Block the God’s Eye shortcut
Claim: Appeals to a God’s Eye view or view from nowhere do not bypass finitude because the appeal itself is a token inside experience, hence still a frame.
If they say: “But God can see directly.”
You respond: The question is what humans can legitimately claim. Human claims arrive as tokens inside the human interface. Even if God has direct access, humans do not inherit that access by asserting a sentence about it.

Move Card: Separate referent from access
Claim: A God concept can aim at an external referent, but the only way it exists for a finite agent is as an internal tokened representation, which cannot function as direct external grasp of ultimacy.
If they say: “So God is just a concept.”
You respond: No. The claim is about mediation. Your access is through concept tokens. That constrains authority and method even if your intended referent is real.

Move Card: Reframe authority
Claim: If a claim can be cashed out into tokenable content, then it is human mediated by definition, which constrains what kinds of authority it can plausibly bear.
If they say: “This doctrine is absolute.”
You respond: Absolute authority requires an interface bypass. The constraint says there is no bypass for finite minds. So the doctrine must either show its tokenable content and defend it, or admit it is not an evaluable claim.

CONNECTIONS TO OTHER PAGES

Connects backward to: God/no God frame. The Finite Mind Constraint explains why treating “God exists” as a standard object claim is structurally unstable under finitude, even before evidence disputes begin.

Connects backward to: Tripp’s Prison. FMFG explicitly imports EL’s frame closure insight to show that theological claims, doubts, and denials occur as tokens inside experience, with no operative standpoint outside tokening.

Connects forward to: Human Interface Thesis. Once the Finite Mind Constraint is accepted, revelation and authority claims must be analyzed in terms of how they enter the human interface, which is the pivot FMFG makes in Chapter 2.

Connects forward to: Revelation Filter. If all religious content is interface bound, then language, transmission, institutions, and interpretive disputes become structurally central rather than optional side issues.

Connects forward to: Existential Ground and Collapse Proof. When “God” fails to function as a stable object level referent under ultimacy readings, the analysis returns to the non optional ground floor and asks what remains after the frame dissolves.

TERMINOLOGY INDEX

Finite Mind (System term)
Experiential Interface, I(M) (System term)
Finite Mind Constraint (System term)
God-concept tokening, G_M (System term)
Token, tokening (technical use)
Epistemic subject, epistemic agent, M (formal role)
Tripp’s Prison (EL system import into FMFG)
Human Interface Thesis (System term)
Epistemic interface (System term)
God/no-God frame (System term)
Ultimacy (standard term, specialized use)