Consciousness Is a Consensus Mechanism

Heh you are right :) Consciousness really needs a three-part explanation because of the hard problem question. The debate usually goes like this:

A: Consciousness is X B: But why must X feel like anything. A: Erm..

That's mean posed as the Hard Problem of Consciousness - why does it feel like anything?

I'll argue there's also the Invisible Problem of Consciousness -- who is feeling it? that virtually no one asks because their theories are so imprecise and not computationally defined that it's impossible to even fathom we are close to asking that question. But we are.

Coming back to the conclusion as axiom: What this is getting at is that X (the consciousness explanation) really has to do a couple of things because there are no turtles all the way down.

X has to offer a model of consciousness, X has to explain who experiences it, and X must also explain why this results in something we (the answer to the 2nd part) recognize as feeling or inner life.

So the bullet-list really is an answer to the 2nd and 3rd parts of the question here. Who's feeling it, and why does it feel like anything? The "I" and the "It" emerge together, so there's something neat to having the axiom prove itself for the first part of this question. The longer answer is in the book!

I find this criticism not well founded. If I told you "In the plane, the inner angles of a triangle always add up to 180°, because...", would you be justified to interrupt me at that point saying "your conclusion shouldn't be your first axiom"? (answer 'yes' if you want to be fun at parties).