The Primacy of Existence vs The Primacy of Consciousness

Existence is the most fundamental axiom in all of philosophy. Accordingly any error to do with this axiom is deadly to a philosophy: by poisoning the root you poison also every derivative from that root. The most deadly and popular among such errors is the fallacy of the primacy of consciousness—the view that consciousness–mere thoughts–have metaphysical primacy over existence; that if you merely think something to be the case then it is the case.

First and foremost, the primacy of consciousness is an example of the stolen concept fallacy: to be conscious means to be conscious of something, the concept “consciousness” relies upon the prior concept “existence”. It is simply meaningless to discuss the concept “consciousness” as being something that can float on its own.

The primacy of existence is not an independent principle. It is an elaboration, a further corollary, of the basic axioms. Existence precedes consciousness, because consciousness is consciousness of an object. Nor can consciousness create or suspend the laws governing its objects, because every entity is something and acts accordingly. Consciousness, therefore, is only a faculty of awareness. It is the power to grasp, to find out, to discover that which is. It is not a power to alter or control the nature of its objects.

The primacy-of-consciousness viewpoint ascribes precisely the latter power to consciousness. A thing is or does what consciousness ordains, it says; A does not have to be A if consciousness does not wish it to be so. This viewpoint represents the rejection of all the basic axioms; it is an attempt to have existence and eat it, too. To have it, because without existence there can be no consciousness. To eat it, because the theory wants existence to be malleable to someone’s mental contents; i.e., it wants existence to shrug off the restrictions of identity in order to obey someone’s desires; i.e., it wants existence to exist as nothing in particular. But existence is identity.

The above is to be taken not as a proof of the primacy of existence, […] Proof presupposes the principle that facts are not “malleable.” If they were, there would be no need to prove anything and no independent datum on which to base any proof.

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If existence exists, then it has metaphysical primacy. It is not a derivative or “manifestation” or “appearance” of some true reality at its root, such as God or society or one’s urges. It is reality. As such, its elements are uncreated and eternal, and its laws, immutable.¹

The primacy of existence is fundamentally an Objectivist innovation.