For sure, we don’t really have a formal definition for what things like thinking or consciousness are right now. So, it’s all a bit slippery as a result. :)

I do think that our minds are probabilistic engines, and what makes the whole thing work is the feedback loop. Since we have embodied consciousness, our internal simulation of the world gets constant feedback from primary reality keeping it on track. And we can see how quickly human minds go off the rails when that loop is broken when people get disorders like schizophrenia.

I kind of view consciousness as a workspace for the mind with most of the work happening within the subconscious. Consciousness is a mechanism which forces all the parallel processes within the mind to go through a single bottleneck and settle on a single course of action.

Incidentally, I really enjoyed The Society of Mind by Minsky, I am A Strange Loop by Hofstadter, and Consciousness Explained from Dennett. They do a fairly good job discussing the plausible mechanics.