What is "you"? That's the question of consciousness. Sure, maybe you entire internal and sensory existence is a play that your mind is watching. It's well known that a robot can be built to measure your decisions before you are aware that you mean. That doesn't answer the core question: What is the "you" that is aware of (the rest of your brain's) decisions, that is observing your thought process?

> What is "you"?

You is the thing (or, more accurately, the process) that is conducting this conversation.

> What is the "you" that is aware of (the rest of your brain's) decisions, that is observing your thought process?

But that is the whole point: you aren't actually aware of the rest of your brain's decisions. You think you are, but you're wrong. That is Dennett's thesis.

> there's experimental data to back it up

To back what up, exactly?

Dennett's thesis.

The thesis that there is no hard problem, or the thesis that we don't understand our own consciousness?

If you really want to know the answer to that, read the book. Life is to short to argue with anonymous trolls.

I ask a simple question and you call me a “troll”. Do you always get offended when someone presses you for details?

"Trust me" pretty much always means "don't".

In this case it's just a figure of speech. You don't actually have to trust me. You can read Dennett's book and see for yourself.

Dennett is becoming more and more part of the "old guard". Things are shifting towards other approaches. Of course, popularity doesn't necessarily mean anything, but keep that in mind when referring to him as an authority.

> Dennett is becoming more and more part of the "old guard". Things are shifting towards other approaches.

What evidence do you have of this? In fact, the majority of practicing philosophers are actually physicalists (56.5%):

https://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl

I didn't refer to him as an authority. I just said his thesis resonated with me (but at 53 I guess I'm part of the "old guard" too). YMMV of course.

Is there an easy read where I can get a gist of where things are shifting?

panpsychism

If that's true – and I don't know if it is, even though panpsychism resonates with me personally – can you explain how panpsychism would conflict with the idea that consciousness is an illusion?

It seems like it'd be the next logical step: if consciousness is simply what (sensory) computations feel like "from the inside", then it stands to reason that other computations can also "feel like" something from the inside, regardless of the substrate they run on, no?

Everyone without much direct experience of what consciousness is will continuously become the "old guard."

Everyone who is not brain dead has direct experience of what consciousness is. It's the only thing that is directly experienced, in fact. Everything else is second-hand.

Everyone who has a computer has the same level of understanding about what a computer is? Mental.

You're missing the point so badly, I'm not even sure where to begin.

And I felt the same about your comment, but I still tried my best to explain where I think you're delusional.