Consciousness as a self-organizing process: an ecological perspective

The evolution of consciousness is seen in the context of energy-driven evolution in general, where energy and information are understood as two sides of the same coin. From this perspective consciousness is viewed as an ecological system in which streams of cognitive, perceptual, and emotional information form a rich complex of interactions, analogous to the interactive metabolism of a living cell. The result is an organic, self-generating, or 'autopoietic', system, continuously in the act of creating itself. Evidence suggests that this process is chaotic, or at least chaotic-like, and capable of assuming a number of distinct states best understood as chaotic attractors.