I don’t think that Bernie Baars — in “The Biological Cost of Consciousness” — has succeeded in explaining the biological function of consciousness — i.e., what is it for? what does it do? what could not get done without it, and why? He has simply reaffirmed that consciousness is indeed there, and correlated with a number of biological functions — so far inexplicably.
The problem (a “hard” one) is always the same: How and why is some given biological function executed consciously rather than unconsciously? It is “easy” to explain why and how the function itself (seeing, attending, remembering, reporting, etc.) is biologically adaptive, but it is “hard” to explain how and why it is conscious, hence how and how it is biologically adaptive that it is conscious.
In considering consciousness Bernie also falls into the very common conflation between (1) the accessibility of information and (2) consciousness of the information. Information is just data, whether in a brain or in a radio, computer, or robot. To explain the function of the fact that information is accessible (hence reportable) is not to explain the function of the fact that the access is conscious access.
What — besides accessibility — is the “mark” of information being conscious? The fact that it is felt: it feels like something to have access to some information. And it feels like nothing to have access to other information. The information to which a computer or robot has access, be it ever so useful to whatever it is that the computer or robot can or does do, is not conscious. It does not feel like anything to have access to that information. The same is true for the information to which our cerebellum has access when it keeps our balance upright, or the information to which our medulla has access when it keeps us breathing, or keeps our hearts beating, especially while we are in deep (delta) sleep. When we are awake, sometimes some of that information does become conscious, in that we feel it, and then usually some further functional flexibility is correlated with it too (including reportability, in the human case). But the question remains: why and how are some states of informational access felt and some not? and what further functional benefit is conferred by the fact that the felt ones are felt? What is the causal function of the (unexplained) correlation?
Limited resources are limited resources, and resource costs are just resource costs. The fact that our brains can have access to — and can process — only a limited amount of information and not more is not an explanation of why and how having and processing (some of) that information is felt. Access and processing limitations, in and of themselves, have nothing to do with consciousness — except that they are correlated with it, so far still inexplicably.
That was the fact that was (and still is) to be explained.
Harnad, S. (2011) Minds, Brains and Turing. Consciousness Online 3.
Harnad, S. (2011) Doing, Feeling, Meaning And Explaining. In: On the Human.