Sure. Another level of conscience. Materialism accepts that things are neither white nor black, but gray; the world is more complex than what we want it to be; simplifications take you only so far.

Rabits are more conscious that amoebas, and less than men. The consciousness of the US is probably not comparable to the consciousness of men - they are basically different things, with some common properties.

So yes, the US is conscious, for some definition of consciousness.

I think the author of that paper is leaning more on the 'phenomenological consciousness isn't true' case than the 'united states is conscious' case.

I land in the max tegmark 'information probably is the same as consciousness' camp. It makes sense that a guy who studies simultaneity would ascribe magical properties to information that is partitioned like spacetime.

But I can't argue with the critics -- we don't yet have a measurable physical quantity for consciousness, much less a definition. Dave Chalmers says the 'hard problem' is why we have qualia. I think the hard problem is even more fundamental -- it's really hard to formulate questions about consciousness in a way that communciates the problem to someone who hasn't already thought of it.

You can say the behavioral evidence (i.e. measurable quantity) for consciousness is that we're having a conversation about it, but that feels like a copout.