Most of what i 've heard about consciousness and experience from philosophers involve arbitrary constructs such as "qualia"; one of the most prominent philosophers of mind posits that consciousness should be an ubiquitous property on top of the physical world, leading to some sort of panpsychism [1].

While charming, these sound to me as borderline serious new-age dualist contraptions. Consciousness and experience are under active investigation by neuroscientists and we have no reason to believe they won't be explained away.

Imho, the most valuable domain of philosophy is still the domain of Ethics.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness