Tuesday, 31 March 2026

Consciousness is the self within the world

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Consciousness is an emergent property of every autopoietic (i.e. self-sustaining/self-recreating = living) system. Consciousness emerges from reduction of complexity (i.e., perception, representation) of an infinitely complex environment to the relatively few perceptions that are necessary for autopoietic self-preservation and survival. These perceptions or models also include system-internal (i.e., within-the-body) processes, thus forming a self-representation contained in the representation of the environment. This is the definition of consciousness. One of the simplest organisms that has consciousness (i.e. a model of itself inside a model of its environment, thus a perception of itself) is a single living cell.

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  • Consciousness is an emergent property of every autopoietic system — that is, any system that is self-sustaining and self-recreating, i.e., living.

  • Consciousness arises through reduction of complexity: from the infinitely complex environment, the system extracts only the perceptions necessary for its own survival and self-preservation.

  • These perceptions include internal processes: the system models not just the environment, but also itself—its internal states, functions, and processes—creating a self-representation embedded within its environmental model.

  • This is the definition of consciousness: a system possesses consciousness if it maintains a model of itself within a model of its environment.

  • Even the simplest living organisms exhibit consciousness: for example, a single cell perceives aspects of itself within its perception of the environment.



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