A conscious being is a system that experiences (feels) something. To build an artificial conscious being we must deal with what is to feel something. This something is the content of conscious experience. As a working hypothesis we propose that experiencing something is a kind of causal relation with that something. What kind of causal relation? We propose a particular kind of process (elsewhere called reciprocal causation, mutual causation, or co-causation). Ontologically speaking the process is prior both to the existence of the object and of its representation. Represented and representing entities are two different ways of looking at the process of becoming of what can be later described as a subject or as an object.
By applying the same kind of rationale, the same kind of indivisible process is responsible for all conscious representations by means of the ontogenetic development of the brain. We suggest that every external event, we are conscious of, has taken part in the developmental history of our brain. Be conscious of something means to be a particular process. The ontogeny of the subject is the sum of these processes. A process that takes part in the constitution of the subject is called onphene (ontos + phenomenon) since it defines both what there is (the ontology of the world) and what is perceived (the phenomenology of the world. Ontogenesis and ontology are the two sides of the same coin. Representation and existence, mind and world, subject and object are different perspectives on the becoming of reality. There is no more need of a dualistic vision of reality. Reality is one.
An artificial conscious being is a system whose structure is totally built by these onphenes. Its development is driven by these onphenes triggered by physical reality. An onphene is a process in which the occurrence of an event creates the conditions for the occurrence of an event of the same kind (if I am impressed by a landscape, I will try to repeat that experience). Then the design of an artificial conscious being is based on an architecture capable of letting external events to provoke the repetition of events of the same kind. In a developing artificial conscious being, this attitude to repeat events can be named a motivation. An artificial conscious being is a system capable of developing new motivations on the basis of its experience.