That's not meant as a philosophical question as much as a physiological one. And it's not an inapplicable question, as we seek to make people unconscious — via anaesthesia — on a regular basis. But what's really happening there, and how can we be sure it's working? And if it's something we can physiologically detect and suppress, what does that then, in turn, mean philosophically?
What Anesthesia Can Teach Us About Consciousness
Going under for surgery raises a surprisingly thorny philosophical issue.
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It's totally not a physiological question, at least as we currently understand physiology. Notice that the article says they are looking for neural correlates of consciousness, not for consciousness itself. That's because they can't even agree on what consciousness is yet. Once we find some neural correlates of consciousness, then we'll be able to start investigating it more scientifically, and perhaps constructing a scientific theory of consciousness. But for now, we're trying to understand what kind of thing it could possibly be, and that's a conceptual question, which is philosophical rather than physiological. It may be possible to ask for a physiological definition of "conscious" someday, but I think we're still a long way from that level of understanding.