> As a side note, just out of interest, do you really believe there are humans without subjective inner experience?

I do. I also believe the other minds problem is unsolvable in principle, so I can't ever be certain, but I've come to lean strongly on that side.

I haven't always thought so. It was that essay by Jaron Lanier I linked above that started me on that path. I read it a few years ago and started to warm to the idea. Lanier once described that 1995 essay has having been written "tongue firmly in cheek", that he believes in consciousness "even for people who say it doesn't exist", and he also has a sort of moral belief that it's better pragmatically if we fall on the side of assuming humans are special, but, he has also teased over the years[1] since that deniers may just not have it, so it's hard to tell exactly where he falls. I may be the only one walking around today taking the idea seriously....

For me, I feel like it's the culmination of things that have been percolating in the back of my mind since my teen years. Taking that position brings clarity

The main point for me, as referenced, is that it clarifies the "talking past" issue. People do mental gymnastics to rationalize that both sides are talking about the same thing in consciousness debates, yet appear to be talking at cross-purposes. They always start these discussions by saying "We all know what it is", "It couldn't be more familiar", etc But do we all know? What if some don't, and they lead us into these doomed arguments? Sure, one can take up any goofy position for the sake of argument and try to defend it as sport, but people like Dennett are so damn consistent over such a long time. He himself is saying "I don't have it" [and nobody does] so maybe we should just believe him? Maybe it is true for him?

I also can't wrap my head around why it doesn't bother some people! I've been plagued by the consciousness problem since my teen years. And before that, I recall first having the epiphany of there being a problem of some sort in middle school; I remember catching up with a friend in the halls on a break period between classes and telling him about how I came to wonder why does pain actually hurt (and him just giving me a what-are-you-talking-about look). I'm sure it was horribly uneloquently phrased, being just a kid, but the gist was....why should there be the "actual hurt" part and not just....information, awareness, data to act on?

Some people just don't think there's more, and don't seem to be on the same page on what the "more" is even if you have long, drawn out discussions with them trying to drill down to it. It would make a lot of sense if they can't get it because it isn't there for them.

I also realized that we take consciousness of others as axiomatic, and we do this due to various kinds of self-reinforcing circular arguments, and also due to politeness; it's just mean and scary to suggest some might not have it (back to Lanier's pragmatism). I call it "The Polite Axiom". I think we're free to choose a different axiom, as after all axioms are simply....chosen. I choose to go the other way and choose some-people-don't-have-it based on my equally foundation-less gut feelings and circular self-reinforcing observations and musings.

Lastly, I'm basically a Mysterian a la McGinn etc, because I don't see any possible explanation for consciousness that would be satisfactory. I can't even conceive of what form a satisfactory explanation would take[2]. I also came to realize in the past few years that even neurons shouldn't have authority in this issue. Why should it be in there compared to anywhere else? (Why do sloshing electrolytes make it happen? If I swish Gatorade from glass to glass does it get conscious?). And, unlike McGinn, I don't think we know that it's in there and only there. Nope! We know[3] that it's one mechanism by which consciousness expresses itself, and if we're being disciplined that's the most we can say.

Bonus incredibly contentious sidenote: Penrose's idea, though often laughed off as quantum-woo-woo, has the advantage that it would solve the issue of Mental Privacy in a way that computationalism fails at (the difficulty of coherence would keep minds confined to smaller areas)

[1] One example: I absolutely love this conversation here from 2008, the bit from about 20:00 to 30:00, where Lanier at one point taunts Yudkowsky as being a possible zombie. A lot of the commenters think he's a mush-mouthed idiot saying nothing, but I think it's just brilliant. On display is a nuanced understanding of a difficult issue from someone's who's spent decades chewing over all the points and counterpoints. "I don't think consciousness 'works' - it's not something that's out there", and the number line analogy is fantastic, so spot on re:computationalism/functionalism....just so much packed in that 10 mins I agree with. Suppose people like Yudkowsky gravitate to hardnosed logical positivist approaches because they don't have the thing and so don't think there's any thing to explain?

[2] The bit in the video where Lanier just laughs off Yudkowsky's suggestion that "Super Dennett or even Super Lanier 'explains consciousness to you'". It is "absurd [....] and misses the point". There's just nothing such an explanation could even look like. There's certainly no Turing machine with carefully chosen tape and internal-state-transition matrix that would suffice (nor, equivalently, any deeply-nested jumble of Lambda Calculus. I mean, come on)

[3] "Know" under our usual axiom, at that! We assume it's there, then see it the "evidence" of it there, but we've axiomatically chosen that certain observations should constitute evidence, in a circular manner....