Two individuals may develop an intimate relationship and come to believe they are experiencing the same thing at the same moment.  But even if both respondents are in close physical proximity to each other and observing the same identical phenomenon, each would be having his own unique experience.  Most of the time we do not know what is going on in another's proprietary world.  The fact that I can't know what's going on in your reality means that it doesn't exist for me.  If it exists for you, I am oblivious of that fact.  If I were to see you, or converse with you, I would know that you exist and would be inclined to accept what you tell me about your thoughts and feelings.  But this is because you are an object of my reality; that is, you occupy space in my world and I can acknowledge you as a human being with the capacity to think as I do.

Thus, while there is the potential for me to know what you think or feel in your private subjective space (and vice versa), until you communicate this to me, our private realms are known only to ourselves.  Not only is conscious awareness proprietary to each subject, it is incapable of being localized, quantified, or directly observed.  By strictly objective standards it doesn't exist.  And consciousness doesn't exist for you, either, unless you have something to be conscious of.  Of course, we always are aware of something----even if it is only the sensation of our bodily presence in the world.  But what we generally regard as being-aware is the experience of physical things and events going on around us.

There are some philosophers, and even a few scientists, who believe that consciousness is innate in the universe, and that not only biological organisms but trees, rocks, and atoms have a rudimentary kind of conscious contact with each other that makes them behave in ways that are conducive to their survival.  "I believe that consciousness and its contents are all that exists," says Donald Hoffman, a cognitive scientist; "…[I]f we assume that consciousness is fundamental then the mind-body problem transforms from an attempt to bootstrap consciousness from matter into an attempt to bootstrap matter from consciousness.  The latter bootstrap is, in principle, elementary: Matter, space/time and physical objects are among the contents of consciousness."

The problem with this theory is that, while space/time and physical objects may be universal, the contents of my consciousness are not the contents of yours. In other words, as I said before, awareness is proprietary to the individual.  Sensibility, the response to physical stimuli that we observe in single-cell organisms and plants, may be innate to life forms universally and, indeed (as essentialists believe), an attribute of their absolute Source; however, conscious awareness is not.  When we say that man is a conscious entity, we mean that his consciousness is unique to a specific physical being----in other words, to a being-aware.

Now "being-aware" is a conjunctive expression that has two connotations.  It can mean the active state of awareness, in which case "being" is simply a predicate, or it can signify a condition of "beingness" in the metaphysical sense----that is, the sentient capacity of a particular being.  I would like to begin this epistemological discussion by focusing on the latter meaning.

The human being is a conscious creature; so in that sense he is a "being-aware".  But human awareness is merely the potentiality of man----the pre-intellectual identification of awareness with its physical organism.  Thus, differentiated sensibility is well underway even before the fetus is  considered "officially" human; that is to say, a being-aware.

Henceforth, the individual's self-awareness will be significantly augmented by other cognizance----the feeding container, the mother, other persons, toys, noises, lights, and myriad happenings experienced in time and space.  Each of these phenomena represents a particular "difference" or change in the homeostatic sensibility of the infant.  And, just like the pre-natal sensation of discomfort, the happening becomes the focus of the child's awareness at that moment.  What is happening now is an intellectual negation----specifically, the negation of the static background from the dynamic event or thing that has captured the infant's attention.  The sensations responsible for the infant's new experience are coordinated by the brain and nervous system to form a cognizant image of the phenomenon.  This image or intellectualized "construct" is that of a specific being.  In effect, the child's experience of the thing or event is a negation of all but this particular being.  Epistemologically, then, experience makes being aware.

As each subsequent form of beingness is added to the child's awareness, it becomes a "parcel of knowledge" in the continuing series of experienced events (sensibilia) that are acquired by the conscious intellect.  By introspection and recall made possible by its neuro-sensory functions, the child soon learns that its reality is an arrangement of finite things in three-dimensional space, and that these things appear, change and disappear with some degree of regularity over time.  Eventually, the maturing individual is intellectually disposed to envision his or her world as an ordered space/time system consisting of a variety of differentiated objects over which he can exercise only proximate control.  This understanding is encouraged by the parents and becomes the precept of existence which, although it is proprietary to subjective experience, is nevertheless communicable as the universal objective reality.

To justify Aristotle's notion of essence, we can say that man's ability to "reason" depends on this precept insofar as his reasoning applies to objective data.  But some aspects of this process suggest that the formation of conscious awareness involves more than the experience of objective phenomena.  Primary awareness, for example, (which is the basis of all experience) is relative to the individual and proprietary in nature.  It is the awareness of being oneself, which I call 'selfness', and it is exclusively bound to proprioceptive  sensibility, that is, to the detection of bodily functions and changing psycho-somatic conditions.  The stimulus for such sensibility is difference, and the apprehension of what is changing requires the negation of the static background that doesn't change.  Since all experience is experience of being, there is no experience without negation.

In actualized existence, Essence is perceived by the cognizant subject in three different ways: experientially, intellectually, and desideristically.  Experience is the perception (qualitative sensibility) of objective beingness; Intellection is the negational abstraction of "thingness" (particular space/time phenomena differentiated by nothingness); and Desire is the psycho-somatic sense of Value (the essence of otherness).  All of these perceptual functions operate concurrently in the process of becoming-aware.  The universal appearance of existential reality that is "constructed" by these neuro-sensory functions is metaphysically intrinsic to actualized Essence.

In order to be aware, the subject delimits or negates otherness to objectify beingness, that is, to create the appearance of being as its object.  This appearance is a construct of the intellect.  The universality of knowledge derives from the fact that all experience refers to an objective world whose constituents conform to a complex universal design or template.  Proprietary awareness does not construct this universal template; its source is metaphysical and knowledge of its overall plan is inaccessible to the human intellect.  Scientific investigation can discover certain laws and principles regarding the evolution and dynamics of the physical world, but it cannot provide truths about metaphysical reality or its undifferentiated source.

Because man is autonomous, there is no "certainty" in this world.  This, too, is part of the cosmic design.  One is free to reject the concept of a metaphysical source, the proprietary nature of conscious awareness, or the negational principle of becoming-aware, just as one may choose to reject any hypothesis.  Fortunately for man, existential reality is so designed that even the most intractable nihilist can still become aware of value in the experience of finite beingness.  And even such a person, by clinging dearly to life, gives ample evidence to others more discerning that life not only has value but fulfills a purpose which transcends all otherness.