[H]

I'm fairly sure subconscious or unconscious - especially citing Kahneman - are the same term, whichever is in fashion now.

Probably true, I'm not all that familiar with that source, I tend to think in the more Jungian analytical psychology ways I once knew.  The destinction being unconscious things are thing that are not readily (or even possibly) available to the consciousness, subconscious being things that aren't conscious but can be at will.

For example, breathing as subconscious, beating your heart as unconscious.

[Madness]

I'm fairly sure subconscious or unconscious - especially citing Kahneman - are the same term, whichever is in fashion now.

Probably true, I'm not all that familiar with that source, I tend to think in the more Jungian analytical psychology ways I once knew.  The destinction being unconscious things are thing that are not readily (or even possibly) available to the consciousness, subconscious being things that aren't conscious but can be at will.

For example, breathing as subconscious, beating your heart as unconscious.

Right. Freud and Jung are the province of philosophers now. I mean, you could only have been a handful of years ahead of my psychology degree but it seemed to me that psychology recently prefers to use subconscious (or whatever number of other operationally defined terms) to unconscious.

As to your example, I see what you're getting at as we can breathe consciously (though flawed as well because people can learn to influence their heart rate in much the same way) but ultimately the brain stem dictates both those processes, no consciousness necessary.

[profgrape]

FWIW, I used "unconscious" to mean "non-conscious" or "non-cognitive". 

[TheCulminatingApe]

Ascribing the sun rising to a Sun God is Meaningful; Heliocentrism, on the other hand, is not Meaningful, it just "is".

A similar concept is expressed in The Hogfather https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hogfather-Discworld-Novel-20-Novels/dp/0552167584.
Specifically this:http://www.incitingariot.com/2011/06/importance-of-belief-or-sun-is-not-ball.html "if the Hogfather does not make his rounds on Hogswatch (the Christmas equivalent), and belief in the Hogfather dissipates, then the sun will not rise tomorrow. That’s right. The fate of the world hangs on getting presents one night a year.
The entire movie revolves around this idea. They must save the Hogfather, along with appearances by a few other mythic beings, or else the sun will not rise. But, towards the very end of the movie, the meaning of this statement gets a bit of a twist. Death has a granddaughter, naturally, and her name is Susan. She asks her dear old granddad to expound on what would happen instead of the sun rising. Death tells her “a burning ball of gas would illuminate the Discworld"

[EDIT Madness: Fixed italics/bold tags.]

[TheCulminatingApe]

(click to show/hide)

Bakker shared a theory on Meaning in an article that preceded TDTCB by a few years:

http://www.sffworld.com/2000/06/why-fantasy-and-why-now/

Imagine that Meaning is the distance between Subject (irrational) and Object (rational).  So Meaning and value increase as a function of the difference between Subject and Object.  Ascribing the sun rising to a Sun God is Meaningful; Heliocentrism, on the other hand, is not Meaningful, it just "is". 

So when Kellhus describes the No-God as collapsing Subject and Object, it follows that it is also collapsing Meaning!  Which was, you may recall, how Bakker described Kellhus' mission, to bring meaninglessness to a meaningful world. 

I'm pretty sure I've an interview with Bakker where he says the task of the fantasy author is to create meaning out of something that has no meaning (or something similar) - i.e. making us care about things/ places that don't and never have/ never will exist.
So... in the Second Apocalypse, he has made meaning out of something meaningless, by way of bringing meaninglessness to something meaningful .  No wonder Kellhus went mad !

[Madness]

...

I love Pratchett. If MG were around he'd tell you that he annually watches/reads Hogfather to his daughter.

Aside, a lecture that profgrape linked to me regarding Bakker's references to Lawrence, AI, and System Zero - System Zero: What Kind of AI Have We Created?

[H]

For posterity, what I managed to transcribe (very poorly) from the Podcast @54:00 in:

Q: So it's worth mentioning, in all of this that modern neuroscience presumes that the gods do not exist, in your Second Apocalypse saga, the gods are real and sometimes do speak.  Can you provide an overview of how the gods function in a fictional universe where you put so much thought into the inner works of consciousness and philosophy?

A: Yeah, I mean, this is kind of embarrassingly simple ultimately.  The gods are the "Drive," the "heuristic module," the "sub-personal processes" that are constantly underwriting, sometimes undermining, to sometimes making possible, the workspace of conscious, which is the world, which is physical reality in my book.  The whole series is itself analogy, or allegory, for this ancient anthropomorization of the universe and the cosmos only as projected given a modern understanding of the way in which cognition works.  System two, which is reality, system one, which is all the sub-personal processes that are constantly impinging upon System two, with deliberative reality (our conscious experience) and we can crib a term from Lawrence, System Zero, which lies outside of that Inside/Outside.

[Wilshire]

For posterity:
Q: So it's worth mentioning, in all of this that modern neurscience presumes that the gods do not exist, in your Second Apocalypse saga, the gods are real and sometimes do speak.  Can you provide an overview of how the gods function in a fictional universe where you put so much thought into the inner works of consciousness and philosophy?

A: Yeah, I mean, this is kind of embarrassingly simple ultimately.  The gods are the "Drive," the "heuristic module," the "sub-personal processes" that are constantly underwriting, sometimes undermining, to sometimes making possible, the workspace of conscious, which is the world, which is physical reality in my book.  The whole series is itself analogy, or allegory, for this ancient anthropomorization of the universe and the cosmos only as projected given a modern understanding of the way in which cognition works.  System two, which is reality, system one, which is all the sub-personal processes that are constantly impinging upon System two, with deliberative reality (our conscious experience) and we can crib a term from Lawrence, System Zero, which lies outside of that Inside/Outside.