Abstract

Homo deceptus is a book that brings together new ideas on language, consciousness and physics into a comprehensive theory that unifies science and philosophy in a different kind of Theory of Everything. The subject of how we are to make sense of the world is addressed in a structured and ordered manner, which starts with a recognition that scientific truths are constructed within a linguistic framework. The author argues that an epistemic foundation of natural language must be understood before laying claim to any notion of reality. This foundation begins with Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and the relationship of language to formal logic. Ultimately, we arrive at an answer to the question of why people believe the things they do. This is effectively a modification of Alfred Tarski’s semantic theory of truth. The second major issue addressed is the ‘dreaded’ Hard Problem of Consciousness as first stated by David Chalmers in 1995. The solution is found in the unification of consciousness, information theory and notions of physicalism. The physical world is shown to be an isomorphic representation of the phenomenological conscious experience. New concepts in understanding how language operates help to explain why this relationship has been so difficult to appreciate. The inclusion of concepts from information theory shows how a digital mechanics resolves heretofore conflicting theories in physics, cognitive science and linguistics. Scientific orthodoxy is supported, but viewed in a different light. Mainstream science is not challenged, but findings are interpreted in a manner that unifies consciousness without contradiction. Digital mechanics and formal systems of logic play central roles in combining language, consciousness and the physical world into a unified theory where all can be understood within a single consistent framework.