Anthropic principle: because it does. If it didn't feel like anything, it wouldn't. But it does, so it does.
Explain the first part of this sentence.
If we had all those animals, especially those around the time of the cambrian explosion to experiment on as they developed it would probably make more sense in the 'but it does' department. This is also why your math teacher wants you to show your work.
Consciousness is an attention mechanism. That inward regard, evaluating how the self reacts to the world, is attention being payed to the body's feelings. The outward regard then maps those feelings on to local space. Consciousness is watching your feelings as a kind of HUD on the world. It correlates feels to things.
Orchestrated objective reduction or just an emerging proeprty of:
Our 86 billion neurons, every single one deafeningly complex molecular machine with hundred million of hundreds of different receptor types, monoaminoxidae, (reuptake)transporters, connections to other neurons.