Primary consciousness and higher order consciousness in homo sapiens: continuity and emergencies

The author briefly illustrates Edelman's thought that primary consciousness is a product of the evolution of living systems in relation to a given ecosystem. According to Edelman's "theory of selection of neural groups", patterns of sensory neural activity coupled through "re-entry" to motor responses useful for survival, are stabilized thus giving shape to cognitive patterns capable of memory, conceptualization and learning. With the same mechanism, global maps correlating poly-sensory activation patterns are subsequently self-organized, thus giving rise to primary consciousness and, through further complexification, to higher order consciousness. According to Edelman, in this way it would be possible to explain the continuity between matter and consciousness, giving scientific solidity to the definition of consciousness as "embodied consciousness". The thesis of this work is that one can speak of continuity between primary consciousness and higher order consciousness as being explainable by the same mechanisms, while the transition from simple cognitive processes to primary consciousness, undeniable on the phenomenological level, is still simply described in its occurrence by the theory of complex systems - so we can define primary consciousness as an emerging function - but not recently explained. According to the author, the clinical relapse of this theoretical position implies a greater enhancement of the implicit dimension of the therapeutic relationship.