A Foundational Framework for Understanding the Universe and the Self

Abstract

I propose an Empirical-Axiomatic Framework that develops a unified hierarchy connecting existence, structure, representation, epistemic activity, knowledge, truth, and consciousness. The framework begins with primitive ontological concepts and distinguishes an Abstract Regime of abstract structures from an Empirical Regime of causally interacting systems. It introduces Ontological Information Space as the space of all representational possibilities available relative to an empirical regime, thereby distinguishing structures from their representations. Within the empirical regime, a self is identified with an empirical system and may possess epistemic capacity, through which representations and traditional knowledge are actively generated. The framework distinguishes ontological logic from traditional propositional logic and treats truth as evaluative, distinguishing internal truth from correspondence truth. Consciousness is treated as an emergent property of certain organized empirical selves, distinct from knowledge and intelligence, while artificial consciousness remains an open possibility. Finally, the framework examines the limits of finite epistemic systems through epistemic saturation and the Infinite Representation Conjecture, according to which a complete representation of a consistent empirical universe may require an infinite axiomatic structure. The possibility of a genuinely exhaustive Theory of Everything therefore remains open. Since the framework itself is constructed through empirical representational resources, it is itself a representation and is consequently subject to its own requirements of consistency and representational evaluation.