Consciousness covers wide ground.<p>Internal state is a necessary part of the machinery of consciousness, it one of the things one is conscious of.<p>McCarthy breaks consciousness down to some specifics which would be useful to robots and can be said to be useful partial descriptions of consciouness.<p>The totality of consciousness in ourselves seems greater by some indefinable essentialism - this is not the part of consciousness McCarthy is interested in for robotics.<p>After all the article title clearly states this is about &#x27;their&#x27; (the robots) mental state not &#x27;ours&#x27;.