What about this:

Let us classify the information processing along two axis: a) low-level (evolutionarily ancient), direct stimuli-response, vs high-level (involving prefrontal cortex) b) processing stimuli from the outside world (sound, light) vs internal stimuli (tactile/pain ... all the way to internal stimuli originating in brain - 'thinking about thinking')

Note that both are continuous scale, not binary.

The consciousness would then be the high-level processing of internal signals. Obviously, consciousness also results being on continuous scale.