Laurence,
One logical attribute of fundamental is that it is not fully definable within the confines of its emergent properties. Which would seem to be one of the problems of understanding consciousness.
The logical fallacy of monotheism is that a spiritual absolute would be an ideal of knowledge and judgement from which we fell, yet the fact is that it would be the opposite: The essence of sentience from which we rise. More the new born babe, than the wise old man. Though religion is more about social order, than spiritual insight, so it is better to frame it around wisdom, than raw awareness.
If I may, I would describe reality as a dichotomy of energy and form. Energy manifests form, as form defines energy. Proof of this as useful description is that after a few billion years of evolution, we developed a central nervous system to process form, aka information and the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems to process the energy to manifest that form.
Now we associate consciousness with the central nervous system and that processing of information, yet consider what that entails: There is significant energy flowing around us and carrying what amounts to enormous amounts of information, from which we extract momentary flashes of cognition, in order not to be overwhelmed and have a cognitive whiteout.
So what framing devices does this process assume? Sort of like a geocentric cosmology assumes our point of view as the center of reality, when it is only our center of reality. We still see the sun as rising in the east and setting in the west.
When we reconstruct reality from those flashes of perception, we naturally tend to think of this sequence of events as fundamental, much as a geocentric cosmology seemed fundamental, but consider whether time is really the point of the present, "flowing" past to future, or is it change turning future to past? As in tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth turns.
Going back to energy and form, as energy is dynamic, it is constantly changing form, such that the energy goes from prior to succeeding form, as these forms coalesce and dissolve. Thus energy and form go opposite directions of time. Energy past to future, form future to past.
Consider how this permeates our reality, such as between processes and entities. Think of a factory, where the product goes start to finish, while the production line points the other direction, consuming material and expelling product.
Life is similar. The individual goes from birth to death, being in the future to being in the past. While the species goes the other direction, onto new generations, shedding old, past to future.
Then consider as well the relationship between consciousness and thoughts, these perceptions we extract from the dynamic of reality. As consciousness goes from one thought too the next, past to future, thoughts go future to past.
As such, consciousness is like an energy and the process of thinking is its particular manifestation, particularly for those organisms which specialize in processing information, rather than more physical endeavors.
The current scientific assumption seems to be that it is the processing of information which effects consciousness, as with artificial intelligence, yet it would seem consciousness is the medium, rather than the message.
More the light shining through the frames, than the images on them.
