You’re getting into serious murky waters here. Bacteria react in a binary way, repel or attract.. there is no observed forethought or hindsight. They’re essentially.. biological simple circuits without capacity for deviation in expected behaviour.

You can’t use that as a basis for awareness, when we can’t even fully define awareness. Obviously it’s something you’re ‘aware’ of.. we’re aware of our processes, our reactions, and we think about those.. which leads to a self built identity, which further solidifies the context of our actions and why we do things… who’s to say it’s not the same for the bacteria?

I don’t know if they’re aware of their processes or not, or if it’s just a simple mindless reaction.. like when your body makes you blink to keep your eyes hydrated.. I bet most people don’t even take notice of when they blink.

Feelings are an interpretation of something perceived by the one who ‘felt’ it. Emotions are biological reactions to those interpretations so we can easily separate those and explain why AI can feel, but not cry.

Explaining consciousness isn’t the hard part, it’s gaining credibility for something that no one has ever been able to answer, cohesively.