Consciousness as Emergent Property of the Interaction between Cognitive Levels

The search for possible neural correlates of consciousness is a particularly complex issue. Nonetheless it appears ascertained that consciousness is the result of the simultaneous interaction between several brain areas. At a cognitive level, consciousness can be represented as an emergent structure typical of superior animal species that manages and coordinates different cognitive levels. However, the subjective characteristic of the conscious experience does not seem to be fully explained either by neural correlates or by a cognitive interpretation. The paper presents a formal solution of the so-called “hard problem” that takes as its starting point the important works of D. Hofstadter, G. Spencer-Brown and F. Varela.