A somewhat unpopular but strictly pragmatic view on human non-specialness and what that means for consciousness is eliminative materialism, where the qualities we attribute to consciousness are actually illusory, like other sensory illusions. This puts it strictly within the bounds of known physics, no magic.

This paper is a good, accessible overview of how this would work in neuroscience:

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2116933119