Consciousness is that which makes us go take something to eat in the morning so we don't die of hunger, keeps us from running into cars or falling off a high place, allows us to work and be intelligent in our actions so that we cover our needs, guides us to form relations and make babies (thus replicate consciousness further).
I think we are agents with the purpose of survival and reproduction. That is only possible by adaptation to the environment, including society and nature. While we're busy at keeping ourselves alive, we have to act intelligently and learn from our mistakes. There is nothing outside the realm of physics and nature, just plain old agent+environment+learning+self-replication.
It feels like something to see blue (or to be a bat) because it is linked to survival, because we have senses and brains to create models of the world, because we have positive and negative signals (rewards) that guide our present and future actions and the value we attach to all life situations, and ultimately because life depends on it and self-replication would eliminate inefficient agents and leave those who are fit.
In short, consciousness is an adaptation mechanism in service of self replication in an environment with limited resources and competition.
I think all this dualist incredulity towards science is bullshit. Instead, the evolutionary process and the reinforcement learning process are sufficient to explain it. If we want to learn about consciousness we should not look only at the brain but at the environment and its limitations. It is the environment that shaped consciousness into existence.
I know it's not as poetic as souls and hard-problems, but it is the simplest explanation that fits.