Abstract
Identifying the neurobiological and cognitive mechanisms of consciousness is one of the biggest challenges of modern science. This task is difficult because we need to simultaneously describe the mechanisms that enable access to conscious content and cause the subjective nature of the experience of this content. Previously proposed scientific models of consciousness seem to be limited to visual perception and focus on investigating the threshold of (most often visual) awareness rather than the problem of the subjective character of conscious experience. Thus, despite a growing number of experimental studies of consciousness, there is still no widely accepted, wide-ranging theory that describes these mechanisms’ underlying access not only to visual content, but also to other types of conscious content (i. e., related to all kinds of perception and memory). There is also no widely accepted theory that addresses the problem of the subjective characteristics of conscious content. It seems that a theoretical model is needed that will compromise the philosophical and neurobiological approaches that are trying to address both issues. Here, I propose that this could be achieved with a unification of theories and methods proposed in the context of (neurobiological) cognitive studies of consciousness and I offer a new hierarchical model: a dynamic level interaction hypothesis that proposes an integrative view on the subject.
