Well yes, you could construe any physical object as having conciousness by having a sufficiently detailed/complex schema that assigns 'meanings' to each of its

Well yes, you could construe any physical object as having conciousness by having a sufficiently detailed/complex schema that assigns 'meanings' to each of its states. But we all agree a rock is not conscious, so this definition doesn't pass the common sense test. One mistake is then claiming that this usage of the word conciousness can be substituted for the commonplace usage in all situations. E.g. why don't we feel the same ethical obligation to a potentially conscious rock that we do to animals, humans and, arguably, seemingly intelligent entities? For a nice exposition of this one can read chapter 2 of Gary Drescher's book 'good and real'.