>" The more the current state of a system specifies its cause, the input, and its effect, the output, the more causal power the system has. Integrated information is a number that can be computed. The bigger the number for a system, the larger its integrated information, and the more conscious the system is."

I'm generally sympathetic to the idea that consciousness and "computational power" are not identical but the larger problem with all of these theories in my opinion is that they're really just stories that clarify intuitions one has about consciousness.

I think the problem with the consciousness question is really that it's hard to probe into what consciousness actually is. It's completely possible to give different accounts of conscious experience even though systems behave the same, including that consciousness doesn't exist at all, and really there's no empirical way to agree or disagree.

I've started to think of expressions about consciousness more or less the same way emotivists considers ethical statements. Emotivists argue that saying something like ""You acted wrongly in stealing that money" is equivalent to "You stole that money". The first statement does not add any true or false statement about the situation, it's merely an expression of emotional sentiment.

In the same sense I don't think "machine x does y" expresses fewer facts than "machine x does y, and it is conscious".