Human Interface Thesis (HIT)

The Human Interface Thesis is the constraint that anything humans treat as “revelation” or binding religious authority can only arrive and function for an epistemic agent as a tokened structure inside a human epistemic interface, meaning public religion is always a human historical artifact rather than a view from nowhere. Finite_Mind__Finite_God_Master_…

Book: Finite Mind, Finite God. Location in text: Chapter 2 (“The Human Interface Thesis”), including 2.1 (“Epistemic frame closure and why it matters for religion”), 2.2 (“The Human Interface Thesis”), 2.3 (“The Revelation Filter”), 2.4 (“Revelation as testimony, not as direct access”), 2.5 (“Nonhuman intermediaries do not bypass the interface”), 2.6 (“Language and translation, interpretation is not optional”), 2.7 (“Canon formation: who decides what counts as ‘the word of God’?”), 2.8 (“Closed revelation and the silence pressure”), 2.9 (“What this chapter secures for the rest of the argument”), and Appendix 2.10 (“Formal Derivation of the Human Interface Thesis”), culminating in Theorem 2.11 and Corollary 2.12. Finite_Mind__Finite_God_Master_…

WHAT IT IS

Finite Mind, Finite God begins by refusing the most common sleight of hand in religion talk: treating “revelation” as if it is a public object that bypasses the human condition. The Human Interface Thesis says the opposite. Even if God exists, even if revelation occurs, the only thing that ever enters the human world as authoritative religion is what can pass through a human epistemic interface and survive being carried by human tokens like speech, memory, text, ritual, and institutional pedagogy. Finite_Mind__Finite_God_Master_…

This is where the term “epistemic agent” matters. An agent A does not encounter raw ultimacy. A encounters tokened content inside its epistemic frame, through its epistemic interface. In Existential Logicism language, the interface is the structured set of internal representational states and operations by which an agent can token, evaluate, and act. If a claim cannot be tokened, it cannot function for the agent. If it can function, it is already inside the interface. Finite_Mind__Finite_God_Master_…

The Human Interface Thesis is not the same claim as the Finite Mind Constraint, and they are separated on purpose. The Finite Mind Constraint is the boundary condition on meaning and ultimacy talk in general. It says that any meaningful claim about God, reality, ultimacy, or metaphysics must be expressible inside a finite experiential interface, and you cannot bypass perspectival limitation by pure stipulation. It applies even if you never talk about religion, scripture, prophets, angels, or churches. Finite_Mind__Finite_God_Master_…

The Human Interface Thesis is narrower and more surgical. It applies that finite-mind boundary to the public epistemic object called revelation. It targets the social and historical pipeline by which “God said” becomes a usable norm for communities. This is why it introduces the Revelation Filter. The Finite Mind Constraint tells you what any finite mind can, in principle, host as a thought. The Human Interface Thesis tells you what any finite mind can, in practice, receive as public authority from a tradition, because public authority must pass through testimony, language, transmission, canon decisions, and interpretation. Finite_Mind__Finite_God_Master_…

The Revelation Filter names the composite transformation from an alleged upstream source into the downstream artifact that humans actually possess. In Chapter 2, the filter is not treated as a vague metaphor. It is treated as a structured pipeline with identifiable stages. Something is perceived or experienced by someone. That person encodes it in the resources of a language. It is transmitted through a social chain with incentives and constraints. It is stabilized in documents, recitations, and institutional practices. It is bounded by canon decisions that say “these are the texts” and exclude others. It is interpreted through hermeneutic frameworks that are never optional, because language is not a transparent tube. The result is that what arrives in the world is not raw disclosure. It is the public religious object, and that object is a human historical artifact.

WHY IT MATTERS

Human Interface Thesis changes what counts as a serious argument in theology. If the public object is a transmitted artifact, then most religious disputes are not primarily disputes about whether ultimacy exists. They are disputes about testimony, transmission reliability, canon boundaries, translation drift, and interpretive governance. The moment someone appeals to “revelation” as if it settles a matter by direct access, Human Interface Thesis forces the question: which artifact, which chain, which language, which canon, which institution, which interpretation.

It also blocks a common rhetorical move: pretending that inserting a prophet, angel, or other nonhuman intermediary upstream solves the epistemic problem. Chapter 2 explicitly treats this as a category mistake. Even if you grant a nonhuman intermediary, the public object is still received as human testimony and human tokens. The epistemic form for A does not change. The claim still lives inside A’s interface as a tokened structure whose warrant depends on the filter and the chain.

It clarifies why “interpretation is not optional” is not a slogan but a structural fact. Translation is not isomorphism between meanings. Language is a mapping with loss, distortion, and underdetermination. Once a tradition exists across centuries, dialects, and institutions, interpretive fragmentation becomes historically intelligible rather than mysterious. Human Interface Thesis explains why traditions must build hermeneutic machinery to stabilize meaning, and why that machinery becomes part of the authority structure itself.

It also exposes the pressure behind Closed Revelation and the Silence of New Revelation. Many major traditions functionally treat the public revelatory deposit as closed, canon fixed, and authoritative additions as illegitimate or subordinate. The chapter frames this as a claim about public authority, not a denial that people can have experiences. The point is that binding authority does not update in a way that is publicly verifiable and globally accessible with the clarity you would expect if the aim were universal disclosure. In practice, the binding mechanism is a historically localized artifact, not a continuously present universally legible channel. Finite_Mind__Finite_God_Master_…

The result is a constraint the manuscript later relies on repeatedly: when ultimacy is said to bind all minds, the method by which it binds them must be evaluated as a human-to-human pipeline with an upstream hypothesis attached. That does not refute theism. It fixes the epistemic situation theism must respect. Finite_Mind__Finite_God_Master_…

FORMAL SPINE

The Human Interface Thesis is formalized in Finite Mind, Finite God as a constraint about what can function as public revelation for an epistemic agent.

The relevant machinery begins with the epistemic interface. In Existential Logicism terms, an epistemic interface is the structured set of internal states or tokens by which a finite mind can represent and evaluate claims. If a claim plays a role in reasoning or practice, it must be tokened inside the agent’s interface.

The chapter then defines the Revelation Filter as the composite mapping from alleged upstream input into the public religious object, built out of stages of cognition, language encoding, social transmission, documentary stabilization, canon delimitation, and interpretation. This is the formal target: not whether God exists, but what must be true about the epistemic form of any claim that humans call revelation.

In 2.9 the manuscript states the Human Interface Constraint informally: if a revelation claim plays any role for an agent, it is represented within that agent’s epistemic frame as a tokened structure, and any warrant available to the agent is mediated by the Revelation Filter. There is no route by which the claim can function as binding public revelation while bypassing human mediation. Finite_Mind__Finite_God_Master_…

Theorem 2.11 then gives the formal version. Let δ be a doctrinal claim or revelation claim offered as binding for A. The theorem states that δ can only function for A as a tokened structure inside A’s epistemic interface, and any warrant A can have for δ is mediated by the filter and the transmission chain. Even positing nonhuman intermediaries upstream does not change the epistemic form for A. Existential_Logicism__A_Logic_B…

Corollary 2.12 then states the payoff in plain terms: there is no uninterpreted public “word of God” that can function as binding authority for finite agents. If it is public and binding, it is mediated and interpreted. If it is uninterpreted and unmediated, it is not available as public authority.

HOW IT WORKS

Start with an epistemic agent A as a finite mind. A has an epistemic frame and an epistemic interface, meaning there is a boundary between what can be tokened and what cannot. Any claim that can function for A must be tokened inside that interface as a representational state. Finite_Mind__Finite_God_Master_…

Now specify the kind of claim at issue. A public revelation claim is not merely “I had an experience.” It is “this content binds others” or “this content has authority over communities.” The moment you move from private experience to public authority, you enter the domain of testimony, artifacts, and interpretation. This is where the Revelation Filter becomes unavoidable.

Treat revelation as an upstream hypothesis attached to a downstream artifact. The downstream artifact may be a text, a recited corpus, an institutional memory, a ritual practice, or a canon boundary. Whatever it is, it is carried by tokens. It is stabilized by human pedagogy and institutions. It is encountered in historically located forms. Even a community that treats a text as uniquely authoritative still encounters that text through language and inherited interpretive practice.

Add translation and time. Once a tradition spans languages and centuries, meaning does not transport as a perfect identity mapping. Interpretation becomes structurally necessary, and interpretive governance becomes part of the authority structure. Fragmentation and boundary disputes become predictable outputs of the pipeline, not anomalies.

Finally, note what the thesis does and does not claim. It does not claim that no one has religious experiences now. It claims that public binding authority is historically localized and does not update with the universal clarity one would expect if the point were global disclosure. This fixes the epistemic situation later chapters must respect when evaluating doctrines, fairness, salvation gates, and responsibility. Finite_Mind__Finite_God_Master_…

COMMON OBJECTIONS AND REPLIES

Objection: This is just sociology of religion, not philosophy or theology.
Reply: The Human Interface Thesis is not a psychological mood claim. It is a structural constraint on the epistemic form of public authority. It specifies what must be true for a revelation claim to function for an epistemic agent, and it shows that the functioning object is always a mediated artifact. That is a philosophical constraint on what claims can coherently do in argument.

Objection: Personal revelation bypasses your filter.
Reply: Personal experience may be immediate for the subject, but the moment it is offered as binding for others it becomes testimony, and testimony is downstream of encoding, transmission, and interpretation. The thesis is about public authority, not the impossibility of experiences.

Objection: God could guarantee perfect preservation and perfect translation, so the filter is irrelevant.
Reply: Even if you posit a guarantee, the guarantee itself is a doctrinal claim that must be tokened, transmitted, and interpreted by finite agents. The epistemic form for A remains the same. A still encounters a tokened artifact and a testimony structure, and the claim of perfect preservation becomes part of the same pipeline it is trying to exempt itself from.

Objection: Scripture is the literal word of God, not a human artifact.
Reply: Public scripture is encountered as text, recitation, manuscript tradition, canon boundary, and institutional pedagogy. The chapter’s point is not that texts are invented in bad faith. The point is that finitude makes scriptural authority inseparable from social authority, because the canon and its maintenance are human normative acts carried by tokens and institutions.

Objection: Nonhuman intermediaries like angels or prophets fix the problem.
Reply: Positing a nonhuman intermediary upstream does not change the epistemic form for the receiver. The agent still must perceive, remember, encode, and transmit. Theorem 2.11 explicitly treats this as invariant. The interface is not bypassed by adding a supernatural node in the story.

Objection: This makes revelation useless.
Reply: It does not make revelation useless. It makes revelation accountable to the epistemic conditions under which it is actually received. The thesis does not remove the possibility of binding norms. It specifies the only way binding norms can exist for finite minds: as mediated artifacts that must be evaluated with the tools appropriate to testimony, language, and transmission.

HOW TO USE IT IN DEBATE

Move Card: Fix the epistemic object
Claim: What believers actually have is a public artifact, not raw divine access.
If they say: “God revealed it.”
You respond: Fine. Show me the public object that carries that revelation, and we are now discussing testimony, transmission, canon, and interpretation, not direct access.
What this forces: They must move from metaphysical slogans to the actual pipeline the claim requires.

Move Card: Apply the Revelation Filter
Claim: Any alleged revelation becomes public only through cognition, language, social transmission, documentary stabilization, canon delimitation, and interpretation.
If they say: “But it was clear when it happened.”
You respond: Clarity at the source does not survive unchanged into the public artifact unless you argue for each stage of the filter, and that argument is itself interface bound.
What this forces: They must defend the chain, not just the origin story.

Move Card: Block the intermediary escape
Claim: Adding angels, prophets, or miracles upstream does not bypass the interface for downstream agents.
If they say: “A prophet heard God directly.”
You respond: Even if true, what I have is still human testimony and tokens. The epistemic form for me is unchanged.
What this forces: They must stop treating “supernatural relay” as a bypass for finite cognition and public mediation.

Move Card: Neutralize the “uninterpreted word” posture
Claim: There is no uninterpreted public word of God for finite agents.
If they say: “The text speaks for itself.”
You respond: Text never speaks without an interpreter, a language, and a tradition of usage. If it binds publicly, it binds through interpretation.
What this forces: They must admit interpretive governance and social authority are built into the claim of scriptural authority.

CONNECTIONS TO OTHER PAGES

Connects backward to: Finite Mind Constraint. That page establishes the general boundary that any meaningful God talk must be expressible inside a finite experiential interface. Human Interface Thesis takes that boundary and applies it to public revelation and public authority.

Connects backward to: Tripp’s Prison and epistemic frame closure. Human Interface Thesis uses the same closure logic: there is no operative “outside” standpoint, so any authority claim must cash out as tokened content inside a frame.

Connects forward to: The Fairness Clause and the Salvation Paradox. Once revelation is fixed as a historically localized artifact rather than a universal channel, downstream questions about responsibility, access, and belief gates become unavoidable rather than optional.

Connects forward to: Religion as translation layers and the steelman hermeneutic. If traditions are interface bound artifacts, then the right way to evaluate them is through the strongest coherent interpretive lens that still respects finitude, transmission, and drift.

TERMINOLOGY INDEX FOR THIS PAGE

Human Interface Thesis
Revelation Filter
Human Interface Constraint
Epistemic agent
Epistemic frame
Epistemic interface
Token
Tokened structure
Doctrinal claim δ
Testimony
Transmission chain
Canon formation
Closed Revelation
Silence of New Revelation
Language and translation
Interpretation is not optional
Steelman hermeneutic