[samhain]

This sounds like you might be able to gain something from the “Do chairs exist?” video by vsauce.[1] Basically, he goes through the different philosophical reasonings of the past and then explores where each one of those fall apart. He goes explicitly into how small things can create something larger but why philosophers have struggled to make the leaps to change definition. He ends on the latest philosophical reasoning, which I think thoroughly explains your conundrum.

I’ll try to explain even if it seems less profound here than in the video. Basically, all concepts are emergent behavior of “stuff.” There really isn’t a chair, but “stuff” arranged chair-wise. And humans decide what that boundary is for both chairs and consciousness as they are concepts we apply to stuff that is “chairing” or “being conscious.” A collection of neurons may or may not be conscious by defining how they behave. And the details on where we draw the line for consciousness is no different than where we draw the line for how many atoms we can scrape away from a chair and it still be a chair.

[1] https://youtu.be/fXW-QjBsruE