But this explanation is meaningless, there's nothing about the waves that explain why "red" is the way it is. For example, why don't I experience red as blue and vice versa? Similarly, consciousness is like that. I can have an explanation down to the quarks and follow the chain of physical phenomena that happen from the big bang up to this point and I will find nothing that would explain why there's "something" at all. In some sense, it is a coincidence that I think of "red" as red. I had similar experience when I learnt that some people don't have inner monologue; it completely blew my understanding of what "is like".
In a sense, the fact that the color "red" is the way I perceive it is merely a coincidence. I happen to experience it that way. There's no reason why it has to be that way.
You can have a kiddo who can accurately name colors on a printed page, on blocks, or any other reduced setting, and have them completely fail at the real world task
The most noticable error is the color of the sky. A kiddo who can, with 100% accuracy telling blue blocks from white blocks will, before correction, label the sky as white. It's uncanny. We often forget this correction as parents, but if you look for it, it's there.
I'll can't help but wonder how much of our color perception is stochastic parroting once the appropriate labels have been learned.
And while the existence of a motor in a car not strictly implies that it can drive, the motor still makes it more likely that it can. So the fact that you have inner monologue, experience red in a certain way instead of another, is evidence that the same holds for other people.
Of course there could be defeating evidence in the opposite direction, like reading a survey where most people claim not to have inner monologue. (In terms of colors such evidence seems hard or impossible to obtain though. How would we test for switched color experience? Perhaps physically linking brains in the future.)
I think it only suggests necessary conditions. Example: whether you are breathing is also connected to your state of consciousness, but it doesn’t follow that it’s sufficient.
not to mention the stories about people reporting seeing strange things during the Near Death Experiences, often their brain is not quite working at the time.
That's what the evidence indicates. Anything else is mystical woo-woo that can be disregarded.
That hinges on the fact that the brain, or human-like body, is related to the existence of consciousness. But there's no reason to believe that a bunch of electrical pulses as the source of consciousness. For example, had "I" existed as a plant, then it would be reasonable for me to think that other plants are also conscious and that plants are what give rise to consciousness.