Even medically, you're not evaluating anything about consciousness (i.e. subjective experience) directly. You're just measuring things that we think imply consciousness.
A venus fly trap is aware of it's environment and has a useful response. In many peoples books that's consciousness others want to limit things to just say it's aware but lacks consciousness.
IMO, that's the kind of divide that's prevents meaningful discussions.
Of course, there is a spectrum here, depending on the complexity and dynamicness of this internal representation of the world.
Perhaps it goes something like: absolutely zero awareness (e.g. a rock), to barely aware (a Venus fly trap), to highly aware (elephants, humans, etc). I'm sure the scale doesn't stop there, but we haven't had a chance to observe anything other than the highly aware animals here on Earth.
You could break this down further, looking at things like episodic memory, the different senses of self, and so on. But humanity has only scratched the surface when it comes to understanding these things.
It doesn't prevent discussions for the sake of it. It's simply that we don't know.
Any position you take in this matter is nothing more than unfounded speculation.