RF: "For what it's worth, here's my tuppence-worth: consciousness is nothing more nor less than a point of view...."

DA: But this surely won't do, will it? To begin with, it would not allow us to distinguish between animal and human consciousness (assuming we can sensibly apply the same term to both). A cat stalking a bird has a 'point of view' (I imagine).

As has already been said in this thread, the philosophical problems of consciousness concern what any and every instance of it have in common. The so-called hard problem has nothing to do with the contents of consciousness, what any conscious entity might or might not be conscious of. A thing is considered to be conscious if it is the subject of experience, but the nature of that experience is irrelevant in this particular context.

DA: Second, having a 'point of view' is surely just one of the possible experiences of a conscious person - along with not having a point of view, thinking about something, not thinking about anything in particular, feeling passionate about something, feeling apathetic, looking forward to tomorrow, not caring if tomorrow never comes, and so on. These are among the umpteen things a conscious person can do, but none of them tells us what (human) consciousness is.

You seem to be interpreting "point of view" as "opinion". I'd have thought what I said there, especially concerning geographical location, would have made it obvious that's not what I meant, but obviously not. What all these things you mention have in common is "aboutness", or intentionality (my view on that is quite close to Dennett, 1987). My "point of view" concept, which is very broad, is intended to encompass intentionality. Subjectivity, consciousness and intentionality are extremely closely related. Where there is a subject, there is a point of view, but every geographical location in the universe is a potential view point, and what distinguishes what we would consider a subject, at a particular time and place, from the case in which that particular time and place is empty, is just the physiological and psychological characteristics of the relevant entity. In other words, nothing metaphysical.

Of course, there is a very great deal more to it than that. I've written several tens of thousands of words, though I've nothing in print as yet. Maybe that's why I'm trying, despite all the evidence of futility, to explain it in an Internet forum!

Daniel Dennett, The Intentional Stance, MIT Press, 1987 (from memory).