Consider the following simple example as motivation for my question. If it were the case that, say, the Riemann hypothesis turned out to be independent of ZFC, I have no doubt it would be accepted by many as a new axiom (or some stronger principle which implied it). This is because we intuitively think that if we cannot find a zero off of the half-line, then there is no zero off the half-line. It just doesn't "really" exist.
Similarly, if Goldbach's conjecture is independent of ZFC, we would accept it as true as well, because we could never find any counter-examples.
However, is there any reason we should suppose that adding these two independent statements as axioms leads to a consistent system? Yes, because we have the "standard model" of the natural numbers (assuming sufficient consistency).
But can this Platonic line of thinking work in a first-order way, for any theory? Or is it specific to the natural numbers, and its second-order model?
In other words, let $T$ be a (countable, effectively enumerable) theory of first-order predicate logic. Define ${\rm Plato}(T)$ to be the theory obtained from $T$ by adjoining statements $p$ such that: $p:=\forall x\ \varphi(x)$ where $\varphi(x)$ is a sentence with $x$ a free-variable (and the only one) and $\forall x\ \varphi(x)$ is independent of $T$. Does ${\rm Plato}(T)$ have a model? Is it consistent?
The motivation for my question is that, as an algebraist, I have a very strong intuition that if you cannot construct a counter-example then there is no counter-example and the corresponding universal statement is "true" (for the given universe of discourse). In particular, I'm thinking of the Whitehead problem, which was shown by Shelah to be independent of ZFC. From an algebraic point of view, this seems to suggest that Whitehead's problem has a positive solution, since you cannot really find a counter-example to the claim. But does adding the axiom "there is no counter-example to the Whitehead problem" disallow similar new axioms for other independent statements? Or can this all be done in a consistent way, as if there really is a Platonic reality out there (even if we cannot completely touch it, or describe it)?