> The problem is that there could conceivably be brains that perform all the same sensory and decision-making functions as ours but in which there is no conscious experience. That is, there could be brains that react as though sad but that don’t feel sadness, brains that can discriminate between wavelengths of light but that don’t see red or yellow or blue or any other color, brains that direct their bodies to eat certain foods but that don’t taste them. So why is there nevertheless something that it’s like to be us?

I don't think so. What even is this "conscious experience"? I hypothesize that it's an illusion. A sufficiently complex robot would indeed have the same "conscious experience". Qualia is nothing more than complex arrangements of molecules in our brains, it's an abstraction, not something fundamental to the universe. Maybe stars and planets too have some sort of rudimentary "conscious experience".

I can't prove this, but you can't prove that you have "conscious experience" either.

> that no physical property or set of properties can explain what it’s like to be conscious.

I think that it can be explained but we just don't have enough knowledge of the internal workings of the brain yet.

For some reason I get really exalted when people such as the author disagree with me on this, of all topics. I don't know what it is, maybe it makes me angry that people don't realize it. I know that sounds really arrogant (specially when author has a phd in philosophy), and I might be wrong and look like an idiot, but I can't control this feeling. I feel the same way a teenage atheist feels when he hears a religious person speak about god (I know this because I was that teenage atheist).