Foundational Axioms of Truth: Existence and Consciousness
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. We 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 to reach the "bottom" of the ground, 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 authority for understanding reality. These are foundational starting points that are required to abstract more and build higher-order comprehension about reality. We build up from axiomatic foundations that are grounded in reality to construct larger conceptual frameworks, infrastructures, constructs and models. Axioms are supposed to be rooted in reality to give us firm grounding in truth and have our perceptions and conceptions aligned with reality, but that does not always happen.
What are some base foundational axioms to start from? Existence and consciousness.
Existence & Consciousness
Existence exists. You can't start building any knowledge about what exists until you accept that existence exists. Existence wouldn't be called existence if it didn't exist. It's self-evident that existence exists. Failure to recognize this axiom of truth will lead one down false paths of confusion with an inability to properly reason.
We exist, things exist, and we are aware that things exist, and are aware that we exist. 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.
This is the first axiom, the principle of the Primacy of Existence. After which consciousness can exist as the second axiom, which I call the Power of Consciousness to affect the Primacy of Existence.
To think otherwise, and imagine consciousness has primacy, is a fallacy, irrational, and objectively non-demonstrable nor verifiable. The etymology of consciousness is: *con "with" + scio "knowledge" + ness "action, quality or state".
Consciousness is a quality and faculty which perceives and identifies existents. Consciousness is being with the knowledge of recognizing one thing from another, which is the Law of Identity, the third axiom of truth discovered. One thing can't be another thing. A is A, A is not B.
You can't have consciousness to acquire knowledge of things in existence without first existence. You can't have awareness that consciousness exists without existence existing. To claim to be aware of your own existence, while denying the existence of existence itself, is a fallacy. Learn how to think properly.
An actions, 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 in emergence, not first.
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 and structure.
Existence is reality. Existence is what 'is'. For you to talk about anything presupposes the necessity of existence. For you to talk about anything also presupposes the necessity of the existence of consciousness, yourself, which is able to identify that which exists, that which 'is'.
Synonyms for existence are reality and truth. Another synonym for reality and existence, is the universe which means "turned into one" because we group all of the variability, diversity and multiplicity into one universal concept called the universe, existence, reality, or the universal concept of "truth" itself. These terms are essentially interchangeable. If everything was just "one thing", then there wouldn't be variability, diversity and multiplicity, which is not the case. The Law of Identity is an axiom of truth.
Existence and consciousness are the first two basic observational points to start building knowledge from. These two foundational axiomatic points can always be used for grounding in objective reality to derive greater understanding in all our conceptual frameworks. All other thoughts that do not lead back to these foundational axioms, can likely be regarded as pure imagination and the fantasy of ungrounded belief.
From these two foundational axioms, we can learn more about the objective universe, existence, reality and our world. We can also learn more about consciousness, our subjective "multiverse", inner-existence, inner-reality and inner-world of experience, and not confuse the two or which comes first in the primacy of epistemological knowledge and understanding.
We can proceed to understand various aspects, attributes, properties, characteristics and qualities of truth, of existence and reality. We can progress to understand morality, Moral Truth/Law, objectively, and not fall into the deluded trap of "moral relativism".
The Power of Consciousness can be developed, to evolve and derive greater comprehension of reality and truths therein. Morality is directly and inextricably linked to the term consciousness. Morality can be understood in greater degrees through the etymology of consciousness and conscience, our moral comprehension faculty for behavior and actions, and related derivations such as syneidesis and synderesis.
Philosophical understanding is directly related to psychological-psyche-mind-consciousness-self-"soul"-"spirit" processing of information about reality. This is what the Trivium Methodology is for, to learn how to learn and how to think more effectively.
Thank you for your time and attention. Peace.
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Very interesting to read, if you ask me, this should be common knowledge.
But i know from first hand, if you talk about this subject on for example a family party or work meeting, then they look like im talking Chinese.
While this information could be the light for some who walk in darkness...
Great post!
Yes, talk about philosophy to un-thinking lower consciousness people, and they don't understand. They don't value learning and growing to comprehend more about reality and self. They are walking in darkness, and the light could get them to higher order consciousness processing. Each person is their own enemy, as they judge, offend and insult themselves.
There for im mostly silence when im at parties or crowd house meetings. I know if i start to talk, then its party over.
Because i said what i have on my mind, as long if i think it's the truth, and i don't care if others like it or not, and there for i rather be silence then destroy the fake positive vibe lol, but sometimes i just can't help it and said what i think.
Like last time when there was a barbecue in the garden at my sister-in-law, some of those guys asked me if i wanted to drink beer, i said no.
He said come on drink something, then i looked at him and said.
If i know that someone don't drink, then i would never tell him to drink poison, because that's what alcohol is, it's pure poison with a sweet taste.
And i know that you have a alcohol problem, and there for i would never get a drink from you, i would rather tell you to stop drinking because you are a friend. Then on that moment it became very silent, and everyone looked at me and then i said, you better smoke some a joint and then i lit my joint in front of everyone. I thought what?? If they can drink here poison, then what is a joint what is used to relax my mind?
The looks on there faces were priceless lol
Always love with your posts Sir @krnel, very nice. every day I learn something new from you, happens to be in this steemit I am focusing on the nature and photography, but after reading your article I am so excited to review the knowledge. Today I learn Axiom from you, hopefully in the future I can learn more from you Sir. Thank you for your post, very useful. ;) upvote and resteem.
Awesome! Glad you like to learn, and glad I am able to help you enjoy learning new things! That's what I like to hear :) The joy of learning more and understanding more :)
It exists as a concept. Not as we and objects exist. To believe that it literally exists as a Form of some sort is Platonic Idealism. It's not clear whether that's what you're implying.
I thought, as I was reading, you would go for the rules of logic as primary. But you went for existence and consciousness instead. That's fine I guess, but keep in mind that you're using a kind of logic in order to convince us about the primacy of existence and consciousness, so it's like a loop. I'd at least add the rules of logic to the group, if not supplant it. And I guess you did that later with the Law of Identity.
Also, maybe objects/existence come first, consciousness second, but when we start thinking, we begin from consciousness. The objects could, for all I know, not exist. I could be dreaming them, I could be a brain in a vat, lots of things. So I think in a way, on the 'certainty' level, consciousness comes first. "I think therefore I am" is the first thing I can be sure of, Descartes said, and then he built from there (an edifice that didn't stand, tbh). But realistically, if what we see around us is real, existence comes first, objects being the substrate that holds up consciousness.
Also, etymology is interesting, and I always enjoy it, and sometimes it's spot on about certain facts - but in itself it's not an argument. Humans made those words, and they could be wrong in the associations they implied when they crafted them.
Your posts are always interesting. But you post so many a day it's inevitable I'll miss 90% of them. Can I convince you to post just one a day, so I can keep up? No? Well it was worth a shot!
I've done other posts on how things can exist in themselves as primary substances, or in others conditional properties, as well as the particular or universal level. There are grouping order constructs that are used to convey the universals, like color does't exist as a thing itself, but green is a spectrum of light that does. Yet color exists as a universal grouping order construct to reference an understanding about what exists: colors. Existence, reality, truth and universe can apply that way as well. They are grouping order constructs that reference an understanding about reality. Many things exist, yet don't exist as a thing itself. I can't keep repeating the same things about every point in all my posts, it would just be too long ;) As you say, there are many posts lol.
Language is imbued with meaning reflected from reality, and root words convey those original reflections that can bring greater clarity and light to understand a words meaning. Deeper connections about how words were created help us understand why some words have the same roots. Thanks for the feedback ;)
I get the idea you're talking about submodalities, ala NLP.
I know of NLP, but not the term submodalities. This is philosophical metaphysics. Aristotle spoke about it long ago :)
Submodalities are the "dimensions" if you will of sensory perception. They're the individual qualities that we can perceive within a sense. For example, some of the visual submodalities are: color, motion, location, focus, etc.
These are in turn a part of what NLP calls our representational system, which represents ideas and knowledge.
Any correlation?
Yeah, similar, but for example focus is based on the perceiver, while color is there regardless of someone perceiving, motion too, etc. Color, motion, location, are accidental properties. They exist in the categories of being as possible to exist in substances, but don't exist in themselves.
In other words, the perceiver must have color vision in order to see color? :)
Well that's true... but what I'm saying is that focus is not a quality in the thing your looking at. Color, motion, location are qualities of the other things, and of perception like you say. I was just making the distinction about how some things are similar, but one is a model of perceiving what exists, while the other is about what exists, what is perceived.
You are the universe, you created different beings who think they are individuals. All this because you want to experience existence from different angles.
i will lose my hair because of you @kernel hhhhhh
Haha! Too much to think about? :P
That was well worth my time for reading, thank you.
Good writing, very useful. Thanks @krnel.
i get some information of your post.thanks sir for your post
Objective reality or objective truth is still far beyond our understanding. There are many mystic/ esoteric organisations which claim that they actually knows the one and only truth. Yet this "truth" is diffrent from each other and it's still just their interpretation. But what I'm trying to say is that we don't have an access to the objective reality because we have diffrent understanding of abstractions. Eg. What is love, where it starts and where it ends. What does it mean to feel pain, anger, joy? Ask 100 people and you'll have 101 answers. Not only emotions are completely abstract, same goes with senses and physical feelings. All we can do is compare that someting is more like this than that and compare our point of view to the other's interpretation. Do you think it is possible to reach the same insight in 100% from two diffrent perspectives?