On the Nature of Consciousness—On Consciousness in Nature

The study of consciousness has considerably increased in the last few years. Research has been mainly focused on its neurological aspects, but the intrinsic nature of consciousness is usually completely neglected. In this contribution, we present a new onto‐epistemological general metamodel that we developed to interpret complex partly autonomous systems (like living systems). Our metamodel is not based on the usual space‐time‐energy framework of mainstream Newtonian science, but involves two elemental categories: the domain of objects and the domain of relations. Furthermore, and most importantly, we show that the combination of these two aspects gives rise to the system as a holistic, self‐referential and existential entity. We will then use this onto‐epistemology to interpret the nature of consciousness, which, in this model, is a meta‐physical, meta‐relational self‐referential entity.