After ~30 years of thinking about it, I am beginning to suspect that some people (e.g. Dennett) don't know they are conscious.
Gurdjieff talked about the effort "to remember oneself." Is is possible that some people have never had these moments naturally? Or don't remember them?
It would explain why they abjure the "hard problem" if they literally don't know what it is, even as they talk about it like they do. (Human p-zombies, if I understand the term correctly.)
If you're willing to entertain the idea that some people don't know they're conscious, it's not that far of a leap to say they actually aren't. You might be interested in reading about Julian Jaymes. He put forward a hypothesis that consciousness is a very recent (3000 years or so) phenomenon. This is a rabbit hole I prefer not to go down, because it just seems so absurd and solipist.
I agree that there's an almost eerie inability to grasp the idea of what some of us refer to as consciousness. This word has all kinds of linguistic baggage, so it often feels like thinkers talk past each other when talking about it. I hesitate (perhaps refuse?) to read any more into it than that.
My personal belief (to about 90%) is that there was some sort of Disaster (lit. "sundering from the stars") in the past and we are all, globally, suffering from shock in the aftermath. I don't think current conditions are normal.
I am finding that everything we say about consciousness is just an artifact of our language. If we are careful to always include the subject of the sentence as well as the unspoken assumptions then I have not come across any questions that don't have a straightforward answer. Same with morality.
If you were to examine the contents of your awareness systematically you would have "subject" after "subject", and you could make sentences about them (there are thoughts and feelings which lack names but these would still be subject to your awareness.)
But there is always this other "thing", the awareness, that can never quite be subject to language. (In other words, if you were not "aware" there is no way I could describe awareness to you. It has no qualities.)
So this is the first aspect of the "Hard Problem of Consciousness": the foundational fact from which flows the veracity of all others is this indescribable "self" that is "aware", what is it?
The second aspect is the puzzle of "why qualia?" What the heck is "red" anyway? The subjective experience of "red" (and all the others) is kind of impossible. Yet there it is.
It's like a paradox. One the one hand, there is no doubting that our organs mediate the contents of awareness. But on the other hand subjective experience seems impossible.
Anyway, all that to say, in order to make sense of people who flat out claim that the brain generates or creates consciousness, I have recently begun to entertain the idea that maybe, just maybe, they don't have the experience.
What I mean is that self-awareness is not automatic. You have to notice it, then work at it. So maybe the reason they don't see the hard problem of consciousness is that they don't see the hard problem of consciousness.
> What I mean is that self-awareness is not automatic.
Without regard to the question at hand - I think the lack of self-awareness is fairly evident in western society in general.
To extrapolate, would mean that a large portion of western society is not aware of their own consciousness or the influence it has on their day-to-day lives
Gurdjieff talked about the effort "to remember oneself." Is is possible that some people have never had these moments naturally? Or don't remember them?
It would explain why they abjure the "hard problem" if they literally don't know what it is, even as they talk about it like they do. (Human p-zombies, if I understand the term correctly.)