>we don't even know what it actually is let alone how it works

That's the core issue. Until you define what conciousness actually IS (and by "define" I mean in scientific terms that could in principle be used to make testable predictions, not in untestable philosophical generalities and ambiguities), it's redundant to attempt an explanation; you're just playing with words and hoping that nobody notices. Personally, I feel it's strongly connected to (in a complex organism may even be equivalent to) a complexity of brain function that allows it to observe and consider what and how it is "thinking" - to include at an adequate level its own "thought processes" as input data, in other words. That seems to me to be pretty much where the existence of a sense of "self" has to start. But that's just my two penn'orth.

("Brain", "organism" etc. here being simple shorthand - I'm quite comfortable with the prospect of, say, a non-organic mechanism having conciousness. Again - until you define what that IS, you most definitely can't exclude possibilities based on what feels suspiciously like pure anthropomorphic prejudice. Oh - and given the number of rather capable AIs suddenly out there - we could probably do with something approaching a definiton quite urgently. Just saying...)

(I have a similar definitional issue with "free will". Define it (in purely scientific, non-"spiritual" terms) - show me what it might actually mean scientifically for a mechanism or organism to have "free will" - and we can start talking sensibly about it.)