consciousness is stored in the balls

Calling it a lump of fat is a bit like calling the Milky Way a very sparse field of hydrogen

Depends on what you mean by ‘consciousness’. If you mean the actual biological process that is happening in our brains - yes. If you mean something different, it is probably not a scientific meaning but more a philosophical or religious one, which is ultimately not a bad thing but you should separate this from actual science.

This gets explored a bit in The Talos Principle and it’s sequal. Working on the 2nd one now, it’s been fun

There’s a lot of water and ions (IONS!) besides that lump of fat.

“The material, sensuously perceptible world to which we ourselves belong is the only reality… Our consciousness and thinking, however supra-sensuous they may seem, are the product of a material, bodily organ, the brain. Matter is not a product of mind, but mind itself is merely the highest product of matter.” — Karl Marx

What if life’s evolutionary end point is always sentience?

Don’t sell yourself short. It’s a salty lump of fat.

If by consciousness, you just mean thinking, then sure.

But if you mean awareness — “phenomena”, if you prefer — then I don’t see why an experiential state would (or could) be entirely secondary to a physical state.

It is, after all, possible for me to write words and perform other physical actions based on my experiential state. In many ways, my mental world is more “real” than the physical world.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think rejecting physicalism necessarily requires embracing the idea of a soul. I’m an atheist, and a neutral monist, for example. But if I had to choose between only physicalism and idealism, idealism makes more sense. Before anything else, I’m conscious.

Action potential doesn’t do thinking. Thinking happens at neuron junctions and that shits chemical and analogue. The electrical part just moves the data to the next synapse. There are some gap junctions but those aren’t really associated with thinking.