Learning to Be Conscious.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences February 1, 2020 Axel Cleeremans, Dalila Achoui, Arnaud Beauny et al.
A novel framework called the self-organizing metarepresentational account (SOMA) proposes that consciousness is something the brain learns to do. The brain continuously and unconsciously learns to redescribe its own activity to itself, developing systems of metarepresentations that qualify target first-order representations. Experiences only occur in experiencers that have learned they possess certain first-order states and have learned to care more about some states than others. Consciousness is thus the brain's unconscious, embodied, enactive, nonconceptual theory about itself.