Meaning is when one structure represents another structure, and since representation seems to exist and to evolve without the need for an originating observer the way is open for considering consciousness to be an emergent out of information processing complexity, information being understood as a particularly concise and quasi-independent abstract of representation. There is certainly an exuberance associated with complexification, and not only exuberance but a spectrum of other proto-emotions that arise with the cycle of effective problem solving - encountering an obstacle which causes structures to fail and to come apart, then surprising ways in which the broken-off parts recombine into new structures in which a selection for surmounting the obstacle can be made. But consciousness emerging? What has to emerge from the system is the system's first-person point of view as grounded within itself, as independent of the system it started from, as the absolute origin of the world. If that were a natural process then it could be expected to have degrees, to be more or less, and while there are certainly degrees of the self-transparency of awareness it is not clear that there are degrees of first-personhood; a perspective either exists or not, quite apart from what fills it. Could there be a half-person point of view? Also, it could be expected that the same pattern would be found again and again in other parts of nature, since such patterns tend to be reconfigured in many different ways once they have shown any utility. Neither of these expectations is necessarily wrong. there are things we simply don't recognise at all until we have once seen them, and then we start to recognise them everywhere, right under our noses. It might be like that. Proceed as if it were true and see what you can see.