"...the thingness of something becomes apparent when it is no longer functioning as it did before or it becomes dysfunctional or if it appears in an unexpected place..."
Paul Draper, a philosopher at Purdue University, says that consciousness isn’t produced by the brain but the brain makes use of consciousness, just as bodies and plants make use of sunlight and evolve accordingly.
In this view, consciousness was already there before brains existed, like an all-pervasive ether. He calls this psychological ether theory or aetherism.
What does it remind you of?