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Daniel Dennett vs David Chalmers
I think that consciousness is a primitive concept, and not something that can be explained in terms of anything else. Saying that it's the 'hard problem' means exactly this: hard to explain in terms of more basic concepts. So saying we're going to attack this problem using neuroscience or physics alone is completely misguided.
The hard problem doesn't mean that consciousness is a mysterious phenomenon. It means it can't be explained in terms of anything else (it's not an effect, but exists on its own). Saying that consciousness only seems to exist because we don't know how it works yet is like saying you're not conscious while dreaming because the details of your brain activity are unknown.
One of the reasons Daniel Dennett is wrong about consciousness, is because he doesn't understand what it means to be conscious. He talks about 'qualia' as if they were some kind of detailed thing that we don't know how to measure yet with our machines. But qualia are not something you can point at and say: "that's a quality". The 'thing-itself', so to speak.
To be conscious is to have a sense of the world, and that's it. It does not imply any kind of physicality. If you can see red, or feel pain (not in the philosophical sense!), then you are experiencing consciousness.
Consciousness is not a property of the brain, it's a fact about reality. It exists on its own. And in that way consciousness can be defined as 'what it feels like to be alive'. But being alive isn't something you can point at in neuroscience either.
Consciousness is the fundamental fact of reality, and all its features can be derived from it. If you see red for instance, then this isn't something that 'exists' in your brain: it exists in the external world itself.