“We know what conscious experience is because the having is the knowing: Having conscious experience is knowing what it is. You don’t have to think about it (it’s really much better not to). You just have to have it. It’s true that people can make all sorts of mistakes about what is going on when they have experience, but none of them threaten the fundamental sense in which we know exactly what experience is just in having it.

‘Yes, but what is it?’ At this point philosophers like to give examples: smelling garlic, experiencing pain, orgasm. Ned Block replies by adapting the response Louis Armstrong reportedly gave to someone who asked him what jazz was: ‘If you gotta ask, you ain’t never going to know.”