[vidarh]

I tend to prefer the term subjective experience for what you describe as a meta-ability.

Consciousness is too overloaded by conflicting definitions.

We could at least imagine the possibility of something coming across as conscious in every way without having a subjective experience of self.

Even a fully deterministic view of consciousness can be compatible with a possible split between entities that act-as-if but without a subjective experience, and those with.

The problem is that there is no reasonable way to prove a subjective experience - we're stuck self reporting. We can't even prove other humans have subjective experience.

It is also not clear that it matters of such entities can act identically.