When we attempt a model of consciousness (with any attendant neurophysical structures), there is an unintentional tendency to separate the conscious from the sub-conscious. Focussed attention from something else.   And we particularly aim our research into Mind at neurophysical structures which enable or produce or make-prominent the focussed-awareness aspect of consciousness. (Baars, eg)

        Subsequently, it is unavoidable to note, as Dennett and others have done, that there is a wealth of information processing that goes on in intervals between alert awareness. In that netherworld region which co-engages but doesn't interfere with alert-awareness. This is the domain of cicads, subliminal messaging, etc. The domain of faster-than-thought. And so, some conclude, alert-awareness isn't actually necessary. Survival and activity are possible without alert-awarenes, and that we are, in essense, "zombies", where alert-awareness is a happenstantial frill.

        That is possible, but not proper, I think.   The perceptual bias of territorial and power structure dominance is inappropriate when applied here.  It is wrong to extend to such sub or between activites of consciousness any quality of being isolatedly independent, or as being lesser or inferior or sub-stantial, in any way. Doing that is an improper extension of the english etymological pre-fix "sub".  That part of our physical/experiential brain/mind is subliminal, not sub-quality or sub-capacity.  Dynamic activities go on there all the time. We rely on them. We depend on them. It's that part of our information processing which we turn to each and every instant of alert-awareness, without break, without cessation. It's not off-line or hidden, but running forever in accessible parallel. So the better term is autonomic consciouness, not sub anything.    Autonomic Consciousness  is the global ongoing vibrancy which supports alert-awareness. As crucial as any other (physiological) part of our autonomic nervous system. It processes, searches, evaluates, chooses, focusses, quite well - automatically. It is not a separate behavior-entity but a co-processor, functionally integrated with alert-awareness capacities that are otherwise attentive to energy and information derived from the ever present external environment.  

        Autonomic Consciouness is the bulk of a person's consciouness.   We should no more relegate it as inferior or lesser than we do the control metabolisms which unswervingly produce heart beats, moment by moment, through the whole of our lifetimes.  Neither should we assume that qualitative differences infer material differences or mechanistic isolation.   It may only be a threshhold difference -- information sufficiency -- which distinguishes Autonomic Consciousness from Alert Awareness.  Hippocampal and related brain regions may produce the conditions (relationships permitted by and enacted by attendant neurophysical structures) which result in alert-awareness, but the bulk of cerebral/cortical matter is pervasively active, processing all the external, internal, inferred, and created, information.  They are not isolated from each other, neither does one operate in lieu of the other.

        Autonomic Consciousness is substantially sub-tabla, so the proper metaphor is indeed that of floating ice.  It doesn't matter if there is a sliver of ice, a chip of ice, a cube, a block, or a massive berg. There is always a portion below the surrounding fluid and a portion above, representing different information environments, differentially supportive, interactive but equally important. Just so with consciousness ... whether a life form is comparatively simple, or massively integrated and complex with capacities to handle more wave-bands and relational information ... there will always be autonomically conscious capacities (& requirements) and alert-awareness (externally interactive) capacities. Fleshing out the attendant neurological components is worthwhile research, but only so long as the thematic recognition is maintained that these are synergistic components of integral systems,  each contributing to the integrity of the whole.   Globally & competently.

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