Is insisting on calling “consciousness” a real thing appropriate? Someone who likes to ask rhetorical questions on the internet once questioned whether it was appropriate to describe “consciousness” as a reification since in one sutta (MN 43) it is said that consciousness and wisdom/enlightenment were conjoined: If consciousness is a Reification, how does a Buddha attain the Truth?

An apparent contradiction arises when looking at another question offered by the same person: Why did the Lord Buddha criticize natthikavādaṃ (moral nihilism)?

The OP seems to like the answer to the second question which stated:


  “When … consciousness exists, because of grasping consciousness and insisting on consciousness, the view arises” of moral nihilism.”


Could it be that this “insisting on consciousness” as an objective real thing leads to unethical behavior (moral nihilism) just as the Buddha warned and others concurred: https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/a/26814/13375
Theravada Buddhist answer.


  Is insisting on calling “consciousness” a real thing appropriate?


It is not.

Consciousness (Citta) exists only as a taker of objects. If one has to characterize it as anything, it is rather a "knowing, cognizing or processing" of an object and not a real thing. 

Here is a quote (my highlights) on the nature of Consciousness from the book "Comprehensive Manual of Abhidhamma", by Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi:


  "Consciousness: The first chapter of the Abhidhammattha Sangaha
  is devoted to an examination of citta, consciousness or mind, the first of the four ultimate realities. Consciousness is taken up for study first because the focus of the Buddhist analysis of reality is experience, and consciousness is the principal element in experience, that which constitutes the knowing or awareness of an object. 
  
  The Pali word citta is derived from the verbal root citi, to cognize, to know. The commentators define citta in three ways: as agent, as instrument, and as activity. As the agent, citta is that which cognizes an object (arammanam cinteti ti cittam). As the instrument, citta is that by means of which the accompanying mental factors cognize the object (etena cintenti ti cittam). As an activity, citta is itself nothing other than the process of cognizing the object (cintanamattam cittam). 
  
  The third definition, in terms of sheer activity, is regarded as the most adequate of the three: that is, citta is fundamentally an activity or process of cognizing or knowing an object. It is not an agent or instrument possessing actual being in itself apart from the activity of cognizing. The definitions in terms of agent and instrument are proposed to refute the wrong view of those who hold that a permanent self or ego is the agent and instrument of cognition".
  
  -- Comprehensive Manual of Abhidhamma, Chapter 1: Compendium of Consciousness, Guide to §3, p. 27.