When inquiring into aspects of truth and reality, there are limits to the degree of verification we can employ to trace something back to its roots in the grounding of reality. You can only regress back so far to trace something and know it as a valid truth. These root foundations of understanding are called axioms. You can’t infinitely regress forever to try to prove everything based on something else. At some point you reach a foundation layer which is an axiom of self-evident truth.
Axioms are self-evident propositions and principles that can’t be further reduced to be proven valid. They become points of foundational authority for understanding reality. These are foundational starting points that are required to build higher order comprehension about reality. We build upon this axiomatic grounding in reality to construct larger conceptual frameworks, infrastructures and models that aim to accurately represent reality. Axioms are supposed to be rooted in reality to give us a firm stance or grounding in truth; to have our perceptions and conceptions aligned with reality. But that doesn’t always happen.
To keep ourselves grounded in reality, the starting axiom is existence. The second is consciousness. We are each a consciousness, or have consciousness. We exist. We are aware that we exist and that other things exist. All of that which exists forms the general grouping order of existence.
Existence and consciousness are the first basic observational points to start building knowledge from. These two foundational axiomatic points can always be used for grounding to derive greater understanding in all our conceptual frameworks. All other thoughts that don’t lead back to these foundations can be regarded as pure imagination or an unreality until otherwise proven to be real.
Technically, something can exist in the external objective reality of existence, or exist in the internal subjective reality of our consciousness. But when speaking of things that exist and existence in a general way, it references what is in the shared external existence, reality, or universe, not the individual particular internal consciousness that is unique to each of us.
The subjective internal reality is a multiverse where we can create and destroy inner-worlds through our thoughts and imagination. The objective external reality is the universe where we don’t have the power to create and destroy with thought and imagination alone. Action is required to create effects to affect the external reality we share. Consciousness is the perceiver which perceives and gains knowledge of the outward reality that exists independently of the existence of any consciousness. Existence, reality or the universe exists independently of consciousness. A mental or intentional process in consciousness can’t erase an existent or truth.
To be consciously aware (verb) of something (noun) requires something to exist for us to be aware of it. A verb requires a noun first. First comes the noun, existent things in existence, then comes the verb, awareness of those existents. First comes existence, then comes consciousness that can possibly be aware of existence. Our consciousness emerges from the existence of our bodies. Without a body, we don’t exist. Consciousness emerges from existence. This is the demonstrable order of progression.
The first axiom is the principle of the Primacy of Existence. This is the logical progression of tracing things back to a base foundational axiom. If one posits consciousness comes first, that it is primary, then existence emerges from consciousness. That is an idea, a belief. It’s not demonstrable.
We can’t have consciousness to acquire knowledge of things in existence without first existence. We can’t have awareness that consciousness exists without existence existing first. An action, quality, state or faculty can’t operate and not exist at the same time, therefore consciousness must exist for consciousness to function at all, and existence itself is a prerequisite for consciousness to exist within it. Hence the primacy of existence axiom, which places consciousness as secondary.
We created the word consciousness as a representation of an aspect of who we are at a core inner level of being. Consciousness (con “with” + scio “knowledge” +ness “action, quality or state”) is being with knowledge of recognizing one thing from another (the Law of Identity). Consciousness is a quality and faculty which perceives and identifies existents in existence.
Existence etymologically means to “stand forth, come out, emerge; appear, be visible, come to light; arise, be produced; turn into”. Existence sets up, places, sets down, makes firm, sets forth and causes to stand forth the extant objects within its framework, model or structure. Existence is reality which consists of variable, diverse and multiple extants.
Existence is what ‘is’. For us to talk about anything presupposes the necessity of existence. For us to talk about anything also presupposes the necessity of the existence of consciousness, ourselves, as we are capable of identifying that which exists, that which ‘is’.
Instead of being a flat page, existence props up objects for us to discover and unveil hidden universals that many particulars in reality share. Existence is what is, consciousness is aware of what is, and identity is whatever something is.
From these two foundational axioms, we can learn more about the objective universe, existence, reality and our world. We can proceed to understand various aspects, attributes, properties, characteristics and qualities of truth, of existence and reality. We can progress to understand moral truth, objective behavioral consequences that operate according to the law of causality.
When we come to know reality in greater degrees of accuracy, when we are consciously aware to greater degrees, we become conscious of more things. This state of being “with-knowledge” (consciousness) leads to developing a sense of right, a moral sense, the faculty of conscience. We gain knowledge of the world and ourselves; of our interactions with the world, specifically other beings like humans and other animals.
A primary purpose of evolving consciousness is to develop an understanding of moral truth (morality), the objective truth regarding the difference between right and wrong behavior in reality in order to progress along a positive evolutionary pathway together. For what purpose does any knowledge have to serve us if it leads to our self-destruction? In the end, all that knowledge is worthless, and results in evil due to the absence of objective moral understanding.