[meekmind]

I do appreciate the consistency of that perspective, it is interesting. I must respectfully disagree with those definitions.

I think that consciousness ought to imply some element of choice. A rock cannot choose to get out of the way, nor in any way deliberately respond to sound waves. It is inert.

To me, the ability to establish relationships between things is a consequence ipso facto of the ethical framework required by the physical form. In other words, what we see is limited by evolutionary, genetic, and knowledge constraints. I'm defining intelligence as (g) factor in psychometrics [0] or roughly the upper-bound capacity of an entity to apply it's ethical framework consistently, and/or with any degree of accuracy, and/or across multiple potentially disparate domains of knowledge.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics)