I am finding it hard to escape the conclusion that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe that manifests in localized systems that feed back on

I am finding it hard to escape the conclusion that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe that manifests in localized systems that feed back on themselves. I have seen convincing evidence that consciousness is illusory based on experiments where it can be induced to make testably wrong feelings. But then you are right back to what it means that there's anything to perceive something even incorrectly, or the idea of an illusion without a thing having the illusion. I suppose this requires some sort of leap of language and understanding of the world, and I'm not clear you could do anything useful with that knowledge since it's impossible to experience anything as a human except subjectively. Arguing against consciousness seems to me like a religious person arguing that something had to create the universe or it wouldn't exist, to a scientist. The scientist can just say "I don't have to entertain explanations for why it shouldn't be here because the fact of its existence settles at least that much." this isn't an argument against studying consciousness or limiting theories about it, but it's not something that can be declared nonexistent.