But thats such a vague answer to me. We really don't understand consciousness at all, how it manifests and to what degree it can be recreated.

The case itself is obviously hypothetical and insinuates there is some master key to consciousness that will allow us to recreate memories, hormonal response, and genuine emotion. There is just no evidence this is even possible, I've heard about digitizing mice and worm brains to put in robots, but none of those experiments take into accounts the "consciousness" of the mouse.