Towards a Unified Theory of Awareness

We are fooled by our brain and do not know it. We are not who we think we are. We never decide, and we can only know events in retrospect. Any act (including any thought) that we find ourselves launched upon is a commitment to the unknown because the act is unconscious until completed. It pops into existence. We cannot know whether we will successfully pick up a cup of tea or spill it, walk or trip, stand up or stumble. We do not, cannot, know what we are doing, only what we have already done. Life at every moment is an adventure! There is much more. Person-to-person communication is not possible. Our brain does not allow it. Awareness of our environment is a chimera. Self-knowledge unachievable. This may strike the ear as fatalistic, or self-defeating, or hopeless, but paradoxically it is the foundation of our freedom and responsibility. Neuroscience has finally freed us from the burdens of guilt and shame, while simultaneously providing an entirely new and exciting perspective on our identity. In the mid-19th century, Darwin outlined the controversial Unified Theory of Biology. Since Einstein's 1915 Relativity Theory and the development of Quantum Theory in the 1920s, physicists have established GUT (grand unified theory) and are now working towards TOE (the theory of everything). But other fields of knowledge are also advancing. Currently, neuroscience is making unprecedented strides in understanding the workings of the brain. In this book, Hughes picks up on these traces to speculate upon a Unified Theory of Awareness which looks to transform our self-understanding as much as Relativity has changed our perspective on the cosmos.