What's the point of philosophy any more?

[Whateverist]

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?

Well, the 'feel' seems to be a combination of the information and the emotional response to that information. The emotional response is the 'flavor'. And it seems pretty clear why the flavor was added from an evolutionary viewpoint: in makes it easier to remember and recall. It also makes it easier to act on in emergencies.

Do you question whether your dog is conscious? Isn't it clear?

Yes abundantly clear and I suspect that it is a common thing way down line toward animals far simpler than my dogs.  But it isn't clear whether any of the others (with the possible exception of some apes, whales and maybe elephants) engage in the conscious weighing of alternatives in the abstract manner we do it, incorporating a concept of time and making use of language.  I assume by information you are referring to memory and making links from past experience to current circumstances which I assume happens for all animals possessed of even a rudimentary for processing sensory input, even though for most may amount to little more than a preconscious stimulus/response capacity which they lack the capacity to step beyond.

But yes the emotional response and feeling is the flavor, and appeals to our existence as a complex set of chemical actions as opposed to our existence as information processors.  Since we come to the hard question of consciousness from the information processing direction it is important to bear in mind that there is more to what we are and do than that.  Our chemical existence may well inform emotion and go toward explaining things like compulsion and fight/flight response as well as being the secret sauce of happiness, something no idea can replace.