>They're relying on a purely behavioral understanding of consciousness
They're relying on the fact that consciousness has physical manifestations in behavior. The alternative is epiphenomenalism. While it may be a philosophically interesting position, its useless scientifically and so its fair to assume consciousness has some physical artifacts in a scientific context.
I don't think we're forced to choose between behaviorism and epiphenomenalism.
But my point is more internal to the paper. They make claims about the physical basis for consciousness and seem to believe they've generated evidence for it, but they also explicitly say they've only gathered evidence about responsiveness.
EDIT: To be clear I'm objecting to the semantics (which I consider important), not the potential value of the research.
They're relying on the fact that consciousness has physical manifestations in behavior. The alternative is epiphenomenalism. While it may be a philosophically interesting position, its useless scientifically and so its fair to assume consciousness has some physical artifacts in a scientific context.