Do you have a pet dog or cat? It's obviously conscious. I guess my construct breaks down if we consider things like plants, they obviously respond to their environment.
No, thats exactly wrong inverse-style.
Simply producing outputs from inputs is not consciousness. Being actively aware you exist is the whole and being of consciousness: Absence of inputs and outputs we can understand invites us to say "not conscious, no evidence of consciousness" but thats subject to validation.
I don't personally believe plants are conscious, but I'm open to somebody demonstrating a sense of awareness. It probably won't be a mirror-test.
I guess I probably see plants like fish not exactly conscious though they certainly respond to their environment. Plants are quite noisy if you pet them, the audio is just outside our hearing range but we have devices that can track that sort of thing now. And some fish actually like to be pet, my great grandmother apparently had some fish she would pet, never met her just know of the stories. Probably everything that can grow has some level of it.
Also fun fact worm memories are stored outside the brain, their are some trained worm studies you can Google that are interesting too.