Consciousness is associated with thought, emotion, and sensation. Yet as neuroscience progresses, I think we will eventually functionalize thought, emotion, and sensation as biological processes.
Some may argue that our mental processes are fundamentally differently perceived from our external senses. But as a human being, we have internal sensations as well. We can feel internal pain and stomachaches. These have a fundamentally different sensation from the sensations that can be externally induced in us. Extrapolating further, we can say that thinking and feeling and other mental activity are mere sensations of the consciousness induced by the brain.
Before physics, there was a large role for divinities in the world. Gods and the Abrahamic God ruled Nature and Fortune, the parts of the world that we do not understand. But as human beings gained mastery and confidence over the external world, the domain of divinities shrank and shrank. We now attribute causes of phenomena to the natural world, rather than divinities; divinities used to be the natural law of the universe, today they have to be content with the supernatural.
Regardless of the philosophical justifications of consciousness, I see it going the way of divinities. The popularity of consciousness will wane as mental functions and mental states and cognition are understood. Societies will begin to use neuroscientific explanations to justify perception and behavior that provide actionable innovation and correction instead of attributing them to black-box consciousness.
When that happens, the idea of consciousness will, I think, seem as absurd as divinities.