Doug Hofstadter wrote a couple books about the nature of consciousness, "Gödel, Escher, Bach" and "I Am a Strange Loop". I think they're pretty good shots at the truth. He describes an emergent phenomenon he encountered when grabbing a stack of empty envelopes. When holding the whole stack, it felt as if there were a marble hiding within. But there was no marble. Each envelope is 2 layers of paper thick over most of its surface area,, right? But at the point where the tip of the closure flap overlaps the bottom, there's a small point of 3 layers. Compounded over the whole group, it felt like a hiding solid object.

I hope I made a somewhat understandable explanation.