I quite enjoyed The User Illusion (the author has a great way of looking at the world). I think its chapters on consciousness are mostly about what consciousness gets to see. Building up from the idea that there is a very limited amount of information (as in Shannon) going to consciousness per second, plus some other experimental evidence (e.g. Benjamin Libet's experiments), to his thesis that consciousness is essentially a "user illusion".

But if I recall correctly, the book doesn't touch the question of how consciousness can arise to begin with, other than making a passing reference to GEB's strange loops.

I can see some value, for example, in the idea that consciousness (maybe I should rather say subjective perception or awareness) somehow emerges out of a reasonably complex system. But that wouldn't explain what it is in our universe that allows awareness to emerge to begin with.

I think some fun questions to think about are:

* Can we create awareness in a circuit by making it complex enough? What are the requirements?

* If we simulate a universe, does it inherit the ability to create awareness from our universe?

* How the heck do you validate any of these answers?

Well, I'm confused now, consciousness is too hard. Sorry if I sound like gibberish.

EDIT: This isn't meant to be a criticism of the book, which I can only recommend to anyone.