Stevan, part of our exchange was:

DA: "there is no attempt to distinguish between human consciousness and any kind of animal 'consciousness'."

SH:  No need to distinguish: The feeling/function problem is about the fact that we feel (something), not about what we feel -- whether this or that. 

My reply:  But precisely. I am talking simply about being conscious (or 'feeling' if you like). Nothing in what I said alluded to what might happen to be the object of consciousness.  My point is that there seems to be an assumption (eg in Chalmers - and I gather you agree) that there is no important difference between being conscious as a human and being "conscious" (can we even use the same word?) as an animal. What on earth could justify this huge assumption?

Also, I'm afraid you're missing the point of my criticism of the Nagel 'insight'. I wrote:

"DA: "there is surely nothing it is 'like' to be conscious other than being conscious - which tell us absolutely nothing."

You replied: SH: First, to expose the redundancy and root out the equivocation, it's "there is surely nothing it feels 'like' to feel other than to feel." Yup: And your point is...?"

Your change of vocabulary doesn't make any material difference so I will leave that aside. My 'point' is simply, as earlier explained, that to say that something is like itself (which is what this effectively amounts to) is mere verbiage. 

I am frankly amazed.  Can this Nagel 'insight' really be the basis of analytic philosophy's definition of consciousness? I am reluctantly led to think so because I notice that it keeps getting referred to as if it were holy writ...

DA