🚀 go-pugleaf

Chalmers:
	[There seems to be a vast explanatory gap between 
	consciousness and all the causal and behavioral facts.]
O'Rourke:
	This "seems to be" is controversial:  Dennett in particular 
	questions the vastness of the gap (in "Consciousness Explained").
Chalmers:
	Sadly, Dennett's arguments don't come to much. [...]
	[His two strategies are:]
	(a) redefine the problem: instead of explaining the experience
	of consciousness, explain various functional capacities;
	(b) deny the phenomenon: argue that conscious experience in
	fact does not exist, but is a mere illusion.

Although I am sympathetic with your view of consciousness, Dennett's
arguments have shaken my faith in that view.  I wonder if you could
address (b):  why are you so certain that consciousness, let's say
experiencing color qualia to be specific, is something above and
beyond the "disposition to react" (in Dennett's words) in certain
complex ways?
	I certainly am convinced that training can alter the content
of consciousness:  a musicologist experiences different sound qualia
when listening to certain pieces of music than does an untrained person,
despite the similarity of sensory input.  No doubt the same
is true of colors.  One can even contrive examples where identical
sensory inputs produce no quale in person A but a rich quale in
person B (and where B might be A later in time).  How does your
theory deal with the seeming dependence of qualia on various
functional capabilities?