My pleasure. It's a fascinating subject, around which unfortunately many misunderstandings have arisen over time, no thanks to certain self-proclaimed gurus.
Well, that is to say, I consider communication a higher form of information exchange, in which a certain symbolism is used as abstraction. The kind of information exchange I was alluding to is more generic and applies even to the exchange of electrons between atoms. That too, is an information exchange, and it's a very rudimentary one.
That too would be possible, but I was rather alluding to the very simple and elementary types of information exchange, such as a chemical reaction or crystal growth.
Well, no, I'm afraid I can't agree with that. If quantum physics has shown us anything at all, then it is that consciousness -- to be defined in this context as "the mere act of observation" -- has enough influence on a process for changing the outcome of that process, and thus, collapse the wave function. This is not just a matter of us having physical bodies and having a brain to interface our mind with our physical senses.
That list is very short: "nothing at all". Everything has a form of consciousness because everything is capable of interacting with something else. Even things we cannot see or measure in and of themselves -- e.g. dark matter -- are still interacting with the rest of the universe, and we can tell that from their gravitational effects on stars and galaxies.
I think that when it comes to scientists like Hawking, the ego comes into play. They believe (or want to believe) that they can explain everything in existence by way of the discipline they are schooled in, such as mathematics or physics. They can't, because they refuse to look beyond the physical realm.
It is reminiscent of the eternal "Republicans versus Democrats" debate in the USA. It's a senseless debate. On the one hand you've got the Darwinists and the scientists, and on the other hand you've got the religious people. Scientists reject spirituality, and religious people -- especially the fanatic ones -- reject science and see an act of a deity in everything, and even attribute that deity with very human properties, and ascribe laws to that deity which must be obeyed by mortals, lest they be excommunicated, locked up, tortured or even executed in some cases.
That step is too big, in my humble opinion. Animation of a physical body is a result of both consciousness and mind, but is not what consciousness itself is. Or to put it in computer jargon, you've got higher programming languages -- e.g. C/C++, Pascal, et al -- and lower programming languages such as assembler. But you have to break things down even further in order to understand it, namely down to the pure binary opcodes.
I know you understood. I just wanted to outline it more clearly for other readers. A lot of information in this "alternative community" field is badly distorted by misuse of the vernacular, and that's how misunderstandings arise. It puts people off on the wrong foot. The community is, as such, creating its own misinformation. :-)
I'm not so sure there is such a lack of full connectivity. I think the brain functions very well, exactly because it is structured the way it is. :-)