I think for consciousness you need a sophisticated mental model of the world, but also a sophisticated mental model of other intentional agents and their mental processes. You need to be able to reason about the knowledge, beliefs and likely actions of others.
When this is generalised to enable modelling and reasoning about our own knowledge, beliefs and intentions, that’s consciousness. We literally become aware of ourselves, our intentions and thought processes recursively in ways we can reason about. So consciousness is a process, an activity. It’s a thing we sometimes do.
I actually don’t think most living things, even animals, are conscious. Mammals and some other higher animals possibly.
Simple organisms have simple sense/response nervous systems. Their reactions are mostly automatic, but can learn basic patterns of stimuli.
When this is generalised to enable modelling and reasoning about our own knowledge, beliefs and intentions, that’s consciousness. We literally become aware of ourselves, our intentions and thought processes recursively in ways we can reason about. So consciousness is a process, an activity. It’s a thing we sometimes do.
I actually don’t think most living things, even animals, are conscious. Mammals and some other higher animals possibly. Simple organisms have simple sense/response nervous systems. Their reactions are mostly automatic, but can learn basic patterns of stimuli.