Trying to simplify my Consciousness hypothesis

[Angrboda]

It seems that qualia, as in the case of the bat, is tied to the type of sensory systems that an organism has.  It makes no sense to extend that insight into organisms and systems that have no sensory apparatus.  It is a leap to suggest that you can have qualia without senses.  What evidence are you drawing upon to suggest that qualia can exist without senses?  It makes as much sense to suppose that a bat doesn't have qualia for sonar, the link between senses and qualia is that strong.

Well, what's a sense?  At its most basic, it is a system which can take in energy from outside itself, and use this to inform a behavior.  An electron can absorb a photon, and its increased energy causes it to vibrate more.  Has the atom "sensed" the electron?  This might sound silly, but you'll have to determine at what stage of organization something "senses" if you are going to arrive at the "critical mass for qualia" I've been talking about.

I'm not an expert in physics, but it seems to me the observer effect demonstrates that even simple particles are capable of reacting to aspects of their environment.

You yourself give the answer. It is a 'system'. Given the differences in behavior between animals and plants (and other living things without nervous systems), it's reasonable to conclude that by sensory apparatus we are implying a representational system by which coherent bundles of information can be managed. This is more than a simple change in state. Plants change state, but they don't represent the environment to themselves as coherent, ordered bundles of information. Plants, etc. lack the systems necessary for making and managing environmental information in this way. You're attempting to extend the term 'sensory' to electrons and photons by way of an analogy, but the way animals manage representational information is not merely a metaphor, it's a real difference between them and an electron. An electron doesn't 'store' the location of a photon, it simply reacts to the photon. So, no, in my view an electron hasn't 'sensed' the photon. Do you see any behavioral evidence for qualia and representational systems in plants or anything else without a nervous system?