On applying the right intuition

One very important source of confusion in this area, I find, is the erasure of the distinction between consciousness per se, and what might be called "linguistic consciousness", or what I refer to below as self-consciousness. I do believe that self-consciousness can only arise as a result of language -- in large part because the notion of a "self" is a creation of language -- but that's no doubt an issue for another time. The important point here is simply that there can be awareness - qualia, feels, experience, etc. - without necessarily language or even "thoughts", and certainly without awareness of the awareness. Of course, whenever we think about this kind of thing, we're necessarily being self-aware -- i.e., meta-aware -- and so there's an understandable tendency to merge these two quite distinct levels or even kinds of awareness -- but we should resist that. One technique for helping to do so, and keep our intuitions focused on the right level, is to imagine the world from an animal's perspective, say a dog or a cat. (There may be some who would deny conscious experience to animals, but if so the best argument against them would be to recommend they get a pet.)