Dear Gavin,
What an excellent essay! I agree with much of it. You say:
"Within living things, there is no threshold of complexity at which consciousness can be said to begin."
That is key! If there were, consciousness would clearly 'emerge'. Also, you note 'learning' and 'decision' are all the way down to the cell, while "within the human brain there are perhaps 100 trillion synapses."
So one must explain how, with no threshold of complexity, consciousness is everywhere abundant on earth, each becoming conscious without crossing the threshold. And explain how one hundred trillion synapses are 'integrated', capable of pretty well understanding other similar brains, (or even cat and dog brains!). Quantum entanglement is generally 'monogamous', occurring between two particles [if it occurs at all!] Are all the quantum 'wave packets' conglomerated to produce self-awareness and feelings of happiness, sadness, pride, shame? A field solves all of these problems [and feels right too.] You ask "what endows it with properties of mind? What endows gravity with the property "Come here now!"? You say the consciousness field is ontologically separate from matter. Not so. It is a classical field, with energy, hence E=mc**2 equivalent mass or matter. I think that ideas of "determinism inherent in matter" are confused, but this is beyond the scope of a comment. A classical field is better understood ontologically than an "underlying complexity dimension".
You discuss "value ethics". But the fact that, over millennia, across all religions, "Do unto others..." is what one would expect from a consciousness field, common to all, not from isolated, individual, 'emerged' minds trying to figure things out in a dog-eat-dog Darwinian world. In other words, a universal physical consciousness field that interacts with local biological flows [momentum density: ions in axons, vesicles across synaptic gaps] sensing and 'nudging', solves problems that are otherwise incomprehensible. The details of the physical field are scattered through the comments on my page, but for a taste of the physics involved look at The Nature of Quantum Gravity.
The idealist view that the universe is at base-level "just information" is simply confused, while Spinoza's 'substance' (that which stands beneath, under-standing) is very compatible with a consciousness field that spans the universe, as occasionally sensed directly by vast numbers of people. The primary drawback to the field today lies in misconceptions associated with the Quantum Credo, but this too shall pass.
Thank you for participating in this contest and good luck!
Edwin Eugene Klingman