Is Consciousness More Arbitrary Than Defining Life?

In the natural world, there's fuzziness at the boundary of what we consider life. Is consciousness worse on that score? I think it is worse in two ways. There doesn't seem to be a sort of inbetween condition of a little bit of an interior world. It's either like something or it's not. The inner lights are on or off. And second, there's just no way of with life. No matter how clearly we we define this thing, we just can't tell it isnt where it isn't.