This isn't really a counter argument. The article is pretty weak but it does differentiate between consciousness and intelligence. Everything you describe is intelligence.
The author seems to assume that experiencing the world is somehow separate from the mechanisms of that experience. Just because he feels like a little homunculus doesn't mean he is. If we had nerve endings in our brains allowing us to feel the thoughts we were having separate from thinking, then I don't believe this artificial distinction would be as prevalent.
For me it was the opposite. It was one of the only redeeming qualities of the article.
>It's a false dichotomy to assume that consciousness and intelligence aren't the same thing, if one cannot meaningfully articulate how they differ.
I think the difference can be articulated clearly. Intelligence is the capacity to create structures and processes that are isomorphic to the world "out there". It's the capacity to grasp the world. Consciousness is the phenomenological space of experience. It might turn out that it's a false dichotomy but it's a logically valid distinction. It's much easier to logically talk about the former than the latter. We can build logically consistent models of the former while only providing hand wavey explanations of the latter.