These universalist theories of consciousness always seem to have the property that our livers should be conscious. They are pinched off from the rest of the universe just like our brains; they receive data about the state of the external world as our brains do (in the case of the liver, via chemicals in the blood); they even have a sort of model of the outside world in the sense that they try to maintain an equilibrium that is appropriate for current conditions.
Personally I think he's just trying to sugar-coat an unpalatable theory.
We can't be sure that livers and baseball's *aren't* conscious. For all
we know, they could have a merry internal life, full of laughter and
love. But still the idea seems ridiculous. By saying that they're not
conscious, they're just "proto-conscious" (and not defining what that
means), Chalmers hopes to escape derision. But there's no more reason
to believe that they are proto-conscious than that they are conscious.
It's really the same idea, just dressed up nicer.
Hal