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I think you are right that existence cannot be separated from consciousness, or vice versa. Yet lately I have been imagining that existence may be a “restricted case” of being. That is, one can imagine existence as a spatio-temporal representation or manifestation of infinite being in a particular, finite form. Being itself is unrestricted by the categories/modalities of our “normal” space-time world. That is to say, being is eternal; but its figuration in 4D space and time – what we call “existence” – is finite. I guess this view is thoroughly Platonist.

It seems clear that spatio-temporal existence does not and cannot define “all that there is.” And yet all spatio-temporal existents seem to possess some form of consciousness, be it simple sentience or awareness, to self-awareness, all the way up to self-consciousness – which is generally thought to be the exclusive property of the existents at the very “top” of the hierarchy of being, that is, of man. For if being itself is ultimately conscious – and preeminently so – then its manifested existents will also have a form of consciousness, which enables us to see in 4D the image or likeness of ultimate reality. But what we see is not ultimate reality itself, merely a reflection of/participation in it.

If existence is “restricted” in the spatio-temporal sense, then the types of insight rational existents can have into the nature of universal being, or truth, will be correspondingly restricted. The terms being and truth are synonymous in both the classical and Christian traditions, each of which in their own way recognizes that being is divine – infinite, eternal -- and existence mortal – finite, contingent. This would especially be the case if perception is imagined to be the primary (some might say exclusive) tool of any such investigation. For direct perception deals with physically-manifested bodies only.

Yet it appears the human mind can apprehend realities that are not physically-manifested bodies, realities that transcend our 4D forms/categories. I imagine the reason for this is the self-conscious mind (operating within the existential realm) has extension in a dimension or dimensions that surpass the 4D of common experience. That is, mind can intelligibly, reasonably access the realm of being that transcends the 4D block. Mind has timeless, transcendent dimension and thus extension; similarly, existence has timeless, transcendent dimension and extension – which is called infinite being.

I am beginning to suspect that people need to think in categories/dimensions outside of 4D to come up with even a rough understanding of the world and our place in it. It seems the materialists/metaphysical naturalists want to confine their investigations to the “tip of the iceberg,” so to speak – the visible, i.e., material part of nature only. They refuse to recognize that the very structure of reality may come from depths that the eye can never perceive. (Though it seems the mind can.) Commonly when people say “perception,” what they inevitably mean is “sense perception,” or mental processing of data coming in from the outside (material) world. But it seems clear to me that the source of order/organization in the material world and of the Universe is absolutely undetectable to sense perception.

That’s part of the problem of the “observer”: There is always much more going on than he can physically observe, even within the confines of 4D spacetime alone, let alone its extension in other space/time dimensions. Of course, another key sense of “observer” is the quantum physical one, and it’s a duzey, too: the observer “decides” what to observe; and this is what causes “state vector collapse,” or the reduction of an astronomically large probability distribution of all possible events to one single outcome. I see similar transactions occurring in the macroworld, summed up in statements such as “the thinker intends the object of his thought” (i.e., decides what he will think about, leaving all other possibilities aside at the time).

Your “tree in the forest” example suggests that, for some people, if there is no one to perceive the tree crashing down, then it’s still standing up. Which is to say that if an observer wasn’t there, then the event didn’t happen. Yet it seems the most we can really say about this is, if an observer wasn’t present, there would be no way for us to learn about the supposed happenstance, or to validate it. To say more than that would be to make all of phenomenal reality dependent for its existence on a consciousness “exterior” to itself, and a human one at that. Yet the human observer is never really “external” to that which he perceives. That is an illusion, “albeit a persistent one,” as Einstein might say. For human existence is “internal” to the world process, a part of it.

And so I like the way George Berkeley, the Irish empiricist, handled this problem: He said that all the existents in the universe are what they are because God is observing them. If God were to withdraw his constant observation/perception of his creation, then immediately it would cease to exist. All of reality would instantly fall apart, dissolving into the nothingness from which it originally arose. I hear resonances to Sir Isaac Newton’s sensorium Dei in Bishop Berkeley’s insight here.

Well, so much for my maunderings. Thank you ever so much, Ronzo, for your penetrating and provocative essay!