Consciousness is the word we use to describe the feeling of being alive, and, well...conscious. No matter how we try to rephrase it, eventually we must use a recursive term in order to finish the expression. Any serious study of phenomenology (mentalese, inner life of mind, introspection, etc, the list is as long as it is frustrating), defined as subjectively experienced (or logically inferred) neuromnemonic events and their causes, soon encounters such referential roadblocks, which are revealed by recursive short-circuits in their abstract grammatical descriptions. It is as if our attempts to compose working descriptions exposes us to runtime 'bugs' emerging from somewhere within language itself.

Cunning linguist and liberal-left ideologue Noam Chomsky's analysis of programming language hierarchies placed everyday speech at the very top, labelling them as 'context-free' grammars. The brilliance of his technical tour-de-force was subverted by its extreme level of etymological fuzzy-headedness. Chomsky, arguably the worlds most successful sufferer of Aspberger Syndrome (high-function autistic spectrum disorder, a.k.a. high fu), must have forgotten to turn his laser-focus function to the 'off' position when asked to name the levels in his eponymous hierarchy .

The problem is the term 'context-free'. It is strictly true in a narrow sense when describing the left hand part of the grammatical level equation. At the topmost, context-free zeroth order, there is no restriction on the elements on the left and right sides. Any combination of terminals (lexical root symbols) and non-terminals (combinations of root-level symbols, eg phrases, which exist in extra-diagetic counterpoint to the linguistic content itself) are allowed by the grammatical rules. Therefore if a given symbol (vocab/lexical literal = 'consciousness') is on the LHS, as it must be in any explicitly definitional statement structure, there are no guarantees that this self-same symbol will not also appear on the RHS, thus preventing any direct attempt at a closed form solution. 

If there is one thing that human language has in spades, it is its reliance on context to resolve ambiguity. Frequently, without context, inferring semantic intent from syntactic content is literally impossible. These are not fringe cases- more often than not, shared context between speaker and listener is the only way to relate syntax (what is said) to semantics (what is meant). This is the very opposite of the communicative predicament that Chomsky analysed.

The inventor of Global Workspace Theory of consciousness, Bernard Baars, describes the problem using the following exemplar- he first defines an apple directly, in a single statement, and then tries to do the same thing indirectly, using multiple statements of percept class membership, in the hope that the intersection of overlapping sets (remember Venn diagrams) will constrain the desired semantic solution (in the listener's mind). Then playing devil's advocate, he asks us what happens if the indirect method, using multiple constraints, is the only descriptive procedure available. This is clearly the case with Consciousness, and other related examples of phenomenological delinquency. Now remember, we haven't even started to see what the science tells us about consciousness. We must first resolve this etymological impasse, otherwise we will not be able to resolve the many views of the same thing that specialist science yields [1].

GOLEM theory comes at the problem, but sideways. Consciousness is not just a word, it is the feeling that that word describes, an embodied sensation which has two key points of difference from most other 'low-level' percepts-
1. It is intentional, ie it provides informaticity (=a consistent supply of timely and relevant data, analogous to electrical power, and needed to ensure steady flow of resources so as to maximise operational governance). The term 'intentional' describes sensory inputs which are specifically 'about' something in the world or our body. So, putting it in simpler, less technical terms, here we have a feeling which occurs as a result of the arousal or quiescence of some inner metabolic service or sub-system, YET whose purpose does not directly involve or concern those inner metabolic workings. For example, lets say you have not done the required reading for an exam, and now you are so anxious, that you feel it in your body, as if something HAS gone wrong in your locomotion, digestion or respiration zones.
2. It is both complicated and complex ie it has multiple measures, but their dimensions (eg their measurement units, as well as their directionality) are not only not all at the same level importance or consequence, but neither are they all acting individually. Rather the dimensions seem to group together to form operational and functional assemblages, and it is these larger order groups which map sub-system behaviour to use-case teleology. We have surely seen this pattern of activity many times before on a daily basis. Each morning when we arrive at work, as we take the lift to our own floor and our own desk, we must engage on two levels-
I. with the social complications of stable, viable employment, looking 'professional', staying focussed, watching your back.
II. with the complex demands that professional provision of speciality services places upon us. As we get the day going by making phone calls, introducing ourselves anew or closing deals, to colleagues inside the bureaucracy and also outside its boundaries, we expand our mental roadmap of the microworld we glibly call 'work'.

So what is the 'take home message'? Just this, that the autonomic apparatus within us, whose basics we share with most vertebrates, doesn't need to be any more complex than a two-position GO-or-WHOA, fight or flee vs eat or mate. In the binary 'GO' position, hormones and some neurons speed up those organs and networks that prepare us for energetic processes like thinking about difficult problems or running across busy streets and narrow corridors.  In its binary opposite 'WHOA' position, the antithetical, slow-down effects are produced. Yet, over evolutionary time, we have overloaded our autonomous metabolic preparatory (REV) and restorative (REST) systems so these sub-systems must handle relatively many external as well as comparatively few internal events and programs.

So now we must ask why. The answer is that the autonomic processes for handling our metabolic affairs are ancient, and therefore TRIED TRUE AND TESTED- simple neural wiring that routes but a few 'primary colors', if you will, gives immediate conscious signalling FAST, COMPELLING (ie hard to ignore, even in busy places). Scaling up this scheme to deal with the busy outside world results in a win-win outcome: simultaneous having and eating of one's metaphorical cake. The trick behind this triumph is the hierarchical data structure (HDS) produced by evolution's clever construction contractors & crew. Hierarchies are communication pyramids which unite complex, repetitious/ambiguous gossip and confusion at the frustrum (base) with high-level policies at the apex (peak), such as those centred around principles of simplicity, significance (need-to-know=good-to-go) security and sanity.

1. The blind elephant put it like this: "what beats me is why they put so many philosophers into the same f%^&*g room as me"

2. The neologism 'informaticity' is distinct from the term 'information'. Informaticity is information commodified, reduced to a resource that must be supplied in a timely fashion like food or water.