The C-A Framework: Distinguishing Consciousness from Awareness as an Organisational Phenomenon

This preprint introduces the C–A Framework, an evolutionary and threshold-based model for understanding how awareness emerges in physical and biological systems. The framework distinguishes between consciousness (C) as a fundamental capacity for experience and awareness (A) as an emergent property of system organisation. Rather than treating consciousness as a single phenomenon, the model separates multiple levels of organisation, including proto-structural processes, biological regulation, and higher-order awareness. Within this framework, awareness does not arise gradually from increasing complexity alone. Instead, it emerges when systems reach critical thresholds of organisation, defined by properties such as integration, memory, and representational capacity. These transitions are consistent with phase-change behaviour observed in complex systems. The model is compatible with existing approaches in neuroscience, including predictive processing, global workspace theory, and information integration accounts, but reframes them within a broader evolutionary structure. In this view, conscious experience corresponds to the system’s integrated modelling of its environment, where perception reflects the ongoing updating of internal representations. The framework generates testable predictions across multiple domains, including transitions between sleep and wakefulness, anaesthesia, early development, and disorders of consciousness. These phenomena are interpreted as shifts in system organisation relative to critical thresholds for awareness. Importantly, this work does not attempt to explain why experience exists. Instead, it focuses on how awareness becomes structured and measurable within organised systems. By clarifying the distinction between fundamental capacity and emergent awareness, the C–A Framework provides a unified conceptual and empirical foundation for investigating consciousness across biology, neuroscience, and artificial systems. Awareness is treated not as a given property, but as a structural achievement that emerges when systems become capable of integrated internal modelling.