Although assentual truth has the truth value of being true to itself, we can focus assentual truth more distinctly by adding the concept of priority. As we assent to truths of deeper priority we both broaden the scope of meaning and ground a firmer attitude of truth.
We will say that one thought is prior to another thought if the first thought causes, induces, or is in any way responsible for, either the occurrence of, or assent to, the second thought. For example: which is prior: consciousness or being? Is there something prior to both? Which is prior: being or consciousness of being? If one accepts being, then it seems to follow that being is necessary for, and thus prior to, consciousness. But to accept being is an act of consciousness.
Now we will look at the priority of awareness. Begin anywhere at all: a thought, a thing, a perception, an idea, a number or, say, a leaf; we might consider a particular leaf, if you consider a particular leaf then it could be a leaf you are thinking of or a leaf you are perceiving, in either case you are aware either of the thought or of the perception; consider instead the word 'leaf', in this case you are aware of the word.
Let us try to find an example outside of the domain of awareness, let us project that there is something beyond awareness; I suppose it would be cheating, although not entirely irrelevant, to mention that by having projected it we have thereby become aware of it. So let us imagine that we are some sort of super, I almost said awareness, some sort of super regulator outside of awareness which somehow determines the existence or otherwise confirms this thing outside of awareness: there it is, except that we do not know that it is there without being aware, but never mind, to go on with the counter example: there it is, outside of awareness, not just our personal awareness but outside of all awareness, it is, is it? This counter example declines in a steep and rocky path unless we take the one shortcut of saying something like the following: It may be out of A's awareness but it is in B's awareness. But picking either one of us, reader are writer, you or I, to be A or B? If B then the counterexample is not counter so it must be A. There is something which B is aware of which I am not aware of; that is the only meaningful result of our counterexample, unless we are inclined to follow the steep and rocky path into the deeply irrational.
Would it be possible to derive awareness from material foundations? Assume the best case: that we were able to construct an artificial intelligence, with conscious awareness, by material means. Assume that we would understand what we were doing and predict the functional reasoning and thought processes of such a being. Assume that we knew how to cause awareness to come about through a well understood procedure. Assume that we could make our creature taste thyme and that we knew all of the structure and causal processes through which the creature tasted thyme. That would explain the outline and envelope of the experience of tasting, but would not get to the core of meaning, that the thyme was experienced, that it was tasted.
It seems probable that no external foundation is necessary for awareness. If awareness is the primary and prior reality which underlies all else, then there would be no deeper thought whose comparison would illuminate awareness. While we have no ultimate and final answer for these questions of being and awareness, we can still make progress in our understanding, by finding the correct order of priorities among the phenomena, by naming that which comes first and that which comes after.
The priority of awareness has moral results. Imagine a matter based world in which consciousness and awareness are edgewise to the main thrust of being, held up by the rarest evolution of comfortable conditions, liable to dissolution upon any change in their material foundation and, in a personal sense, with the mere ticking of inevitable clock time. Now look at the world we know, where awareness is central. Awareness is, and it is an essential of our being that we partake of awareness. Our core of awareness is not called into question by any ticking clock; our awareness is prior to time. As awareness is prior even to our self, while we may slip away from personal being, if we do that, after our physical self dissolves, then our central being of awareness is not necessarily lost but may be reabsorbed into the all.
Suppose we retreat from the metaphysical priority of awareness and begin again, looking at where awareness lies with respect to our being. Suppose, for example, that we have a self and there is also the other, whether that is God, nature, other people or some unknown. What kind of connection can we have with the other that does not include or pass through awareness? It could be that there are powers from the other which determine our being or not being, without our being aware of them. Our parents, for example, brought us into being, in a biological sense, and did so before we were aware, at least in the common view. What level or status would awareness occupy in that ontology?
Awareness is a word and functions as a sign. In the case of awareness the sign or word of awareness names something closer to the immediacy of reality than the sign itself. Because of the logic of priority we can say that the phenomenon pointed to by the word awareness is essentially primary to the signification of the word itself, for if the word were not that which the word designates would still be but if that which the word designates were not then neither would I be writing nor you reading the word. The word awareness is a pointer and that which it is pointing to is of the essence. It is true that to use the word effectively as such a pointer it is necessary to have a web of preassociation in one's personal experience of language, nevertheless that web is, changing metaphors, like the shaft of an arrow of which the word awareness is the point and the intent and meaning, or at least intended meaning, is to bring the point to the target and we could say to the center of the target, except that he target in its purity has no center.
What can be prior to awareness? If we follow the inside track where whisper floats thinly above the surface of glimmering silence, the quiet and hidden ledge of awareness dropping away from its own twist and retwist, to where the fog of unknowing begins to soften the boundary, the soft feathers of cloud before mind...unnamed...