I agree.

I also agree with the article that "consciousness" is an overloaded term. I believe you and I would agree to it as something more akin to "sentience" but that is not the case for everyone.

I feel this topic always seems to unknowingly devolve into disagreements on first principals.

Yes, that's common. But in everyone's defense, when I researched it myself, it gets as messy as itt in mainstream pholosophy. You can never be sure what a person really talks about and for five minutes it sounds reasonable, but then you meet a claim that yanks a carrying wall from your comprehension.

We sure there’s a strong actual difference between the things? If consciousness is a spectrum, it seems likely connected to intelligence at a sort of fundamental level. The more intelligent, the more obvious it is that consciousness is there, at least.