Quantum consciousness...

[Whateverist]

You sometimes seem to forget that I don;t think that we -are- conscious.  

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You ask questions that sound like superstitious gibberish to me, and when I answer them from the POV you ask (my own)...you insist that some other superstitious gibberish is more likely, or true.  When I agree, you disagree with my agreeing, and when I disagree, you disagree with my disagreement.  

Honestly, after all the times we've had this convo, how can you still not know what I think?

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I could use some elaboration here.  What about consciousness do you think we lack and what is it you think everyone who says consciousness is undeniable are actually talking about?

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Plants appear to "get their smarts" via a sophisticated sensory apparatus, networks of cells with action potential, distributed chemical computing, swarm behavior, and an unfathomably large amount of direct mechanical stimulus and response structures.  Many mindless things both within the organisms and in colonies of the organisms amount to what we call, in animals with nervous systems and brains, behavior.

Sure, it's "in their genes", at least insomuch as their genes determine that they are organisms bestowed with all of the structures necessary to support the above.  

The contention of reductivists is that our brains are no different in that regard, yes.  The interaction of many mindless things both within ourselves and between ourselves that are expressed as behaviors.  We call these behaviors (and their underlying mechanisms) consciousness in our case..but rarely extend the designation far beyond our own closest genetic relatives or organisms that seem to be "like us" in ways taken to be meaningful.  It's easy to see why we do this, even from a reductivists POV, in that the report of how something feels is inherently authoritative to the subject.   The mistake, they contend...is interpreting that as equivalent to an authoritative report about how something -is-.  In their view, "consciousness" doesn't arise at all.  It's a non-entity.  A mistaken description of something else or of alot of something else's.  From that POV, questions about it's evolutionary origin or advantage are incoherent.  They're questions about something else, at best...and nothing, at worst.

But what strikes me as the most glaring mistake is the glib assumption that our conscious capacity to carry on an internal narrative is the owner or ruler of our consciousness.  But even if consciousness arises from a multitude of innocuous bits in the end we are aware of feeling states and perceptions and ideas, all of which contribute to the first person subjective experience which I think is central to what we mean by consciousness.  If you don't agree with that, again, what do you think is the real subject of discussion where consciousness is concerned?