What's the point of philosophy any more?

[Whateverist]

Well, yes, the first person experience isn't discernible to me because their brain isn't my brain. But I would know that they are feeling pain, or in the case of the bat, sonar. I would be able to describe, probably in some detail, *what* they are experiencing. But yes, it is not my brain that is experiencing it all.

But I fail to see why that is such a deep issue to so many people. When my computer gets some information, and processes it, your computer may not get the same information or it may process it slightly differently. That seems, to me, to the sole difference in 'first person' versus 'third person' descriptions.

The problem isn't missing information. The problem is, even when every single piece information is accounted for, something is still missing.

That is the essence of the mind/body problem, and that is the great riddle of consciousness.

Of course, some will say it's really no big problem at all, which is why super empirically-minded folks seem comfortable with functionalism. I'm not one of them though. Something about the mystery of consciousness intrigues me. Looking at it one way, it almost seems more fundamental than any other metaphysical problem. Looking at it another way, its a simple distinction that (if made like the functionalists make it) is really no problem at all.

It is interesting to wonder whether there is a way that it feels to be an X for any organism X whatsoever.  Being able to express what it feels like to be an X as propositions is entirely a different question, of course.  Framing propositions is something (just?) we do to capture and communicate what we are feeling.  But there is a way it feels to be thirsty, to be lost, to recognize from facial expressions how another feels, and so on.

What gives rise to these subjective states?  Why do our brains bother with adding a 'flavor' to so many functions?  Is it because of our capacity for consciously weighing alternative interpretations and actions?  Perhaps the need to form abstractions to represent alternatives for the sake of consciously choosing between them makes our subjective experience distinctive.  Most of us know what it is like to operate more spontaneously, being in-the-moment, as when immersed in a task for which our expertise allows us to just flow.  Maybe my dogs spend more time in flow (lucky bastards) so that, while there is still a way that if feels to be a dog, what that is would never become a subject of wonder or speculation for them.  

We are probably the only organism on this planet to question how/why the brain adds flavor to experience.  The rest of them experience it but don't or can't isolate it as something apart from what motivates what they are doing.  The motivation they experience and the response it engenders may be something we can hypothesize about but is probably not something they themselves can reflect on.  Abstraction and deliberate, strategic planning may be something we alone engage in and our doing so allows us to isolate experiences as subjects which an animal in flow need not be aware of.  There are probably both advantages and disadvantages to that.

Maybe the important question isn't why experience has a flavor, but rather why is this one organism (us) trying so hard to understand what its flavor is, why it arises and why it even interests us?  Is there anything to be gained?