This all sounds very irrelevant. Consciousness is clearly tied to specific parts of a substrate. My consciousness doesn't change when a hair falls off my head, nor when I cut my fingernails. But it does change in some way if you were to cut the tip of my finger, or if I take a hormone pill.
Similarly, if we can compute consciousness on a chip, then the chip obviously contains that consciousness. You can experimentally determine to what extent this is true: for example, you can experimentally check if increasing the clock frequency of said chip alters the consciousness that it is computing. Or if changing the thermal paste that attaches it to its cooler does so. I don't know what the results of these experiments would be, but they would be quite clearly determined.
Of course, there would certainly be some scale, and at some point it becomes semantics. The same is true with human consciousness: some aspects of the body are more tightly coupled to consciousness than others; if you cut my hand, my consciousness will change more than if you cut a small piece of my bowel, but less than if you cut out a large piece of my brain. At what point do you draw the line and say "consciousness exists in the brain but not the hands"? It's all arbitrary to some extent. Even worse, say I use a journal where I write down some of my most cherished thoughts, and say that I am quite forgetful and I often go through this journal to remind myself of various thoughts before taking a decision. Would it not then be fair to say that the journal itself contains a part of my consciousness? After all, if someone were to tamper with it in subtle enough ways, they would certainly be able to influence my thought process, more so than even cutting off one of my hands, wouldn't they?
You make some interesting points, but:
> Similarly, if we can compute consciousness on a chip, then the chip obviously contains that consciousness.
This is like claiming that neurons are conscious, which as far as we can tell, they are not. For all you know, it is the algorithm that could be conscious. Or some interplay between the algorithm and the substrate, OR something else.
Another way to think of it problem: Imagine a massive cluster performing computation that is thought to give rise to consciousness. Is is the cluster that is conscious? Or the individual machines, or the chips, or the algorithm, or something else?
I personally don't think any of these can be conscious, but those that do should explain how they figure these thing out.