Solutions to some of the hardest problems I've had have only come after a night of sleep or when I'm out on a walk and I'm not even thinking about the problem. Maybe what my brain was doing was something different from reasoning?

This is a very important point and mostly absent from the conversation.

We have many words that almost mean the same thing or can mean ment different things - and conversations about intelligence and consciousness are riddled with them.

At the very least intermediate points of one's reasoning are grounded in reality.