I'm of the position this might be correct in the specific case of humans, but not fundamental to the algorithms of consciousness. Eg we could have similar emergent phenomena in algorithmic trading bots where all the emergent constructions are defined in terms of money and financial concepts rather than spatial concepts. They live in a reality of dollar signs rather than physical dimensions. That's neither inherently better nor worse.
In fact, I'm somewhat of the position that nearly any grounding in a domain of shared objects where signalling is inexpensive would be suitable. That said, AI agents which grew up in some alien domain of shared objects would find us as unintuitive to reason about as we find quantum mechanics uninituitive to reason about. If the goal is AI that acts and talks like us, your way may be the way to go.
In fact, I'm somewhat of the position that nearly any grounding in a domain of shared objects where signalling is inexpensive would be suitable. That said, AI agents which grew up in some alien domain of shared objects would find us as unintuitive to reason about as we find quantum mechanics uninituitive to reason about. If the goal is AI that acts and talks like us, your way may be the way to go.