Research into the enigma of consciousness has been proceeding with increasing intensity and momentum over the last 45 years.  However, the preponderance of this research has focused on the issue from an outside-in perspective, with little success.  In this article I advance an ‘inside-out’ explanation for the phenomenon of consciousness, predicated on the identification of a higher-order organ of perception as the causal agent that gives rise to consciousness (herein, ‘the ma

In his book Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, renowned Swiss psychoanalyst and psychiatrist, Carl Jung, observed that “[C]onsciousness presupposes a differentiation into subject and object and a relation between them. Where there is no ‘other’, or it does not yet exist, all possibility of consciousness ceases.”

So far no satisfactory solution to the so-called ‘hard’ problem of consciousness has been brought to light.  This paper offers an explanation of the emergence of consciousness as being rooted in the internal systems of meaning-sound relations that underlie all natural (i.e. human) languages.  

If we are to truly understand consciousness, we have to account for the subjectivity of Self, the sense that we all have of being separate from others, from our own bodies and from the physical environment that surrounds us.  How is it that I 'know' that I am not you, my body, the doorjamb, or the trees outside my window?