I think much of this is just a language problem leading to endless communication problems and debate.

If you are going to say consciousness has degrees then what about degrees of unconsciousness?

It doesn't make sense to be more or less unconscious.

When we say conscious though we don't really mean the opposite of unconscious most of the time. Usually it is the opposite of unconscious + many other things. Then we debate what those other things are.

To me this is exactly a language philosophy problem and imprecision in our language causing philosophical problems.