Consciousness is something you can perceive, so it must have some physical presense in the universe, which must be through some fundamental property of matter, in my opinion.

The ability to be aware of consciousness itself as some process that is happening elevates it above a mere emergent property to me.

> The ability to be aware of consciousness itself as some process that is happening.

But a process is not a physical presence... A wave is made of things, but is not those things, waves emerge: why not then every process?