I think the author is conflating two every different notions of consciousness here, more specifically by not quite getting what the 'hard problem' of consciousn

I think the author is conflating two every different notions of consciousness here, more specifically by not quite getting what the 'hard problem' of consciousness refers to. The easy problem, which is what most of the article is about, is just self-monitoring—having some 'meta' processing. It's not hard to conceive of a system structured (roughly) like this: you start with a first order brain that just reacts to external stimuli, then you layer another system on it that monitors its state and calculates new inputs for it based on what was observed. The hard problem isn't a scientific problem at all. It relates to immediate experience: what it's like to actually feel cold, or the experience of the color red, etc. It's basically accounting for 'qualia'—and it has nothing to do with what's usually called 'conscious thought.'