I think we are talking about different things. I don't see how consciousness (which is the sense in which I am speaking of "awareness") can be a continuum; either we are conscious of our surroundings, or we are not. Of course, there are certain states - such as sleep - in which we are aware of less than at other times, but we are still sentient beings all the while.
How could you think that conciousness isn't variable? Let's stick with your definition of it being awareness of your surroundings. If we're always fully aware of our surroundings then why do we trip, slip, forget car keys, put our shirts on inside-out, leave buildings with the wrong coat or do all the other stupid things which annoy us daily? Why are we more likely to do these things in the mornings or when we're tired? Why do subliminal messages rarely get detected by us but at the same time effect our shopping habits? Are you never tricked by optical illusions?
I think you miss understand what robosteves argument. he is thinking of awareness different then you are. I will try to do this argument but will use slightly different terms. A computer can react to sight through use of a camera. but can it actually have the sensation of sight. now you may say that you need to have sensation in order to react but that doesn't really hold true. a domino doesn't need to feel someone push it to fall. now with a computer it is a lot more complicated but that doesn't mean that we should assume it is any more then action reaction. there is no reason for there to be sensation of these actions. yet we have them. you may say that is because we are more complicated but why would adding more parts to a system suddenly cause sensation. hmm there are 1024214 parts to this system, oh that is one less then is needed for sensation. there should be a point were sensation suddenly forms and there should be a reason.
That's because we're not drawing a line between instinctive behaviour and intelligent behaviour. When I'm looking at any system which produces intelligent-like behaviour I categorise the system into those two groups. Instinctive behaviour is automatic hard wiring which you may instantly attribute to the way computers conventionally work but this also applies to all animals. Insects are pretty much fully instinctive, this means when an ant picks up a leaf and walks towards its nest it doesn't stop to think about why, the insect may not be completely unaware of its actions but we can be certain that it's not necessary for the insect to be aware at all of what it's doing in order for it to do it. All animals can be found to display instinctive behaviour under certain circumstances, a quick demonstration of this can be found by poking your own eye. Even if you manage to poke your eye without flinching or blinking you'll soon be gifted an uncontrollable delivery of tears in order to clean the eye.
The point about instinct is it can portray intelligent behaviour such as squirrels burying their acorns for the winter but in reality the squirrel doesn't plan ahead and decide to save its food for later just like we don't plan our heart rates. Instinctive behaviour has nothing to do with consciousness and no computer or robot to this day (as far as I'm aware) can produce any behaviour that isn't instinctive.
However, instinctive behaviour isn't enough to produce the sophisticated behaviour that humans and a good proportion of other animals display regularly. We know that we aren't fully instinctive beings because we work from a simulated environment which grants us a form of what we call consciousness. What I mean by that is what we see isn't necessarily reality, it's actually a simulated environment which is built by our brains using the information from our eyes and other sensors so that we can make decisions by interacting with this simulation. The origin of this part of our brains (the simulator and the simulated, if you will) obviously isn't fully understood but there's no reason to believe that it cannot eventually be explained by neural scientists.
So this simulator and simulated relationship is what I categorise as actual intelligent behaviour and indeed I may have been unfair to pick out points from robosteve as it seems their discussion was more to the topic of splitting the two categories apart. Having said that though I stick to the point I made and I'd like to repeat what I was trying to say which is actual intelligent behaviour is variable and the awareness that comes from it as a result is variable.