Subconscious Architecture Theory, is consciousness post hoc‽
SAT proposes ALL thought operates through Sub-conscious (not Un-conscious) "cascades" (a collection of firing neurons and engrams producing/retaining psychological content). Cascades are inherently subjective and subconscious. Phenomenal Access (qualitative experience) is an adapted feedback signal driven by emotional valence, triggered by engrams whose neural rules consistute any phasic nehrochemical release based on previous consolidation. Phenomenal access is the felt dimension of phasic neurochemical activity produced by cascade propagation. Phenomenal experience re-enters the system as stimulus, triggering further subconscious cascades through the same neurochemical activity constituting the experience itself.
Abstract:
SAT proposes consciousness evolved to moderate subconscious thought, enabling symbolic articulation through emotionally valenced cascade evaluation, with individual conscious architectures developing through environmental stimuli absorption. Cellular activity operates subconsciously (heart rhythm, digestion, immune response). Brain cells follow identical principles; consciousness emerges from subconscious neural architectures, not independently. Environmental absorption operates through subconscious processes, while consciousness functions to enhance adaptive capacity through observational mechanisms that subconscious processing alone cannot provide. Since consciousness shifts following individual perception of environmental stimuli regardless of substrate variation; such as language differences shaping cognitive processing or informational exposure informing belief formation, environmental construction could facilitate variation and be the producer of individual experience. While current gene-environment interaction models acknowledge both genetics and environment contribute, they do not specify the mechanisms by which they interact. Subconscious Architecture Theory proposes genetic substrates provide the biological capacity enabling consciousness development, while environmental stimuli determine specific architectural content. Genetic substrates allow stimuli observation, this stimuli is rationalized subjectively according to existing subconscious architectures. The produced rationale is integrated into neural rules (rationalized memory) affecting the adaptable conscious interface. This adaptive interface constitutes reflective awareness through emotionally valenced modulation of subconscious cascades, requiring cross-rationale evaluation, experimental feedback, and emotional coloring to update and achieve recorded human adaptation. While current emotional research assumes emotion is a product of experience; I suggest emotion is the adaptive driver of consciousness, providing significance signalling. Conscious experience feels qualitative because emotional valence signals adaptive significance, determining observation and modulation of subconscious processing. SAT clarifies why environmental deprivation degrades consciousness, why feral children develop non-human consciousness from alternative social environments, and how humans achieve comprehensive within-lifetime adaptation across novel domains including abstract mathematics, philosophy, and strategy.