Awareness-First Theory: A Variational Framework for Coherence, Physics, Inference, and Phenomenology

The Free Energy Principle (FEP) and active inference unify perception, action, and learning within a single variational framework, yet they remain silent on why there is phenomenal experience at all. Awareness-First Theory (AFT) proposes an ontological inversion: rather than deriving consciousness from non-experiential dynamics, it takes awareness as ontologically primitive—taken as the base datum rather than something to be explained by physical states—and formalises it as a differentiable field of awareness, denoted (A, g_A). A Coherence Principle—expressed as the variational stationarity condition “delta A = 0”—governs lawful differentiations within this field and preserves the core phenomenological invariants of unity, binding, temporal continuity, and reflexive presence. The familiar variational laws then appear as embedded projections: “delta S = 0” (least action) for physics and “delta F = 0” (free-energy stationarity) for inference. Subbeings (local bounded centres of coherent differentiation), defined by Markov blankets, are local equilibria of the global coherence field; their inferential activity sustains rather than produces awareness. A Qualia Mapping Function links differentiations in awareness to measurable information-geometric structures. AFT predicts lawful dissociations between coherence (“delta A”) and inference (“delta F”) - as in dreaming, illusion, psychedelics, and meditation, where phenomenological unity persists despite inferential error. It thereby unifies phenomenology, physics, and cognition within a single variational hierarchy (delta S and delta F as subsets of delta A), dissolves the explanatory gap by grounding experience in its own coherence, and resolves the combination problem by making unity fundamental, a variational calculus of Being underlying all appearance.