I am suspicious of this normative sense of 'consciousness'. I think it's basically a mistake of false reduction to suppose that moral worth is monotonic increasing in descriptive-sense-of-the-word-consciousness. This monotonicity seems to be a premise upon which this normative sense of the word 'consciousness' is based. In fact, even the metapremise that 'moral worth' is a thing seems like a fake reduction. On a high level, the idea of consciousness as a measure of moral worth looks really really strongly like a fake utility function.

A specific example: A superintelligent (super?)conscious paperclip maximizer is five light-minutes away from Earth. Omega has given you a button that you can press which will instantly destroy the paperclip maximizer. If you do not press it within five minutes, then the paperclip maximizer shall paperclip Earth.

I would destroy the paperclip maximizer without any remorse. Just like I would destroy Skynet without remorse. (Terminator: Salvation Skynet at least seems to be not only smart but also have developed feelings so is probably conscious.)

I could go on about why consciousness as moral worth (or even the idea of moral worth in the first place) seems massively confused, but I intend to do that eventually as a post or Sequence (Why I Am Not An Ethical Vegetarian), so shall hold off for now on the assumption you get my general point.