a) Consciousness depends on affect
b) Affect is real, and not simply an imagined experience.
In other words, question the validity of the above. Are they in fact true? How do we know them to be true? Why is a feeling given more credence than hallucinations? What if all feelings are an imagined experience, one that is "programmed" into birth by the genetic material? Just because an imaginative experience is encoded genetically it shouldn't make it any more real, should it? How would humans look like to some alien species that is capable of cognition and consciousness (without being robotic, as our species' scifi literature imagines) but not affect and identity? Wouldn't they see us all acting as if suffering from some mass delusion?
I indicated that affect, not consciousness, is imagined. Furthermore, I indicated (which you entirely overlooked) that consciousness is independent of affect. Take that as a working theory, and you just might discover something new.
Discard whatever you've read in the last 10-15 years, and start afresh; otherwise, you'll just be rehashing the same old same old.