> you have an experience.
What are "you"? And what is an "experience"? You highlight this like it's a magical phrase that cannot be explained, and your arguments suggest that you take it as a foundational assumption. But if you assume a fundamentally inexplicable nature to both personhood and experience, then you cannot possibly recognize any explanation for these, because doing so would require giving up your assumption.
I recently came across a paper arguing that consciousness as commonly referred to does not exist due to semantic issues around the term "consciousness," and your arguments reminded me of it. It's quite readable, if you're interested: "Consciousness Semanticism: A Precise Eliminativist Theory of Consciousness" by Jacy Reese Anthis. The abstract and main argument:
> Abstract. Many philosophers and scientists claim that there is a ‘hard problem of consciousness’, that qualia, phenomenology, or subjective experience cannot be fully understood with reductive methods of neuroscience and psychology, and that there is a fact of the matter as to ‘what it is like’ to be conscious and which entities are conscious. Eliminativism and related views such as illusionism argue against this. They claim that consciousness does not exist in the ways implied by everyday or scholarly language. However, this debate has largely consisted of each side jousting analogies and intuitions against the other. Both sides remain unconvinced. To break through this impasse, I present consciousness semanticism, a novel eliminativist theory that sidesteps analogy and intuition. Instead, it is based on a direct, formal argument drawing from the tension between the vague semantics in definitions of consciousness such as ‘what it is like’ to be an entity and the precise meaning implied by questions such as, ‘Is this entity conscious?’ I argue that semanticism naturally extends to erode realist notions of other philosophical concepts, such as morality and free will. Formal argumentation from precise semantics exposes these as pseudo-problems and eliminates their apparent mysteriousness and intractability.
> 3 The Semanticism Argument
> Now that terminology is established, the semanticism argument is brief and straightforward.
> 1. Consider the common definitions of the property of consciousness (e.g., ‘what it is like to be’ an entity) and the standard usage of the term (e.g., ‘Is this entity conscious?’).
> 2. Notice, on one hand, each common definition of ‘consciousness’ is imprecise.
> 3. Notice, on the other hand, standard usage of the term ‘consciousness’ implies precision.
> 4. Therefore, definitions and standard usage of consciousness are inconsistent.
> 5. Consider the definition of exist as proposed earlier: Existence of a property requires that, given all relevant knowledge and power, we could precisely categorize all entities in terms of whether and to what extent, if any, they possess that property.
> 6. Therefore, consciousness does not exist.
https://jacyanthis.com/Consciousness_Semanticism.pdf
I recommend reading it before objecting, as the author addresses a number of possible objections in section 4.