Phil Christman:

When I finish reading James on Spencer, as when I finish reading Robinson or David Bentley Hart on Dawkins or Tallis on Dennett or Midgley on everybody, I appreciate again the infinite variety of consciousness, the plurality of its ends. Its excessiveness. 

And James's last point reminds me why people like Hart and Robinson and Tallis and Midgley keep having to do this over and over again: it's about desire. Some people want the mind to be a machine, and they will jerry-rig the worst arguments together in order to have it so, and they will patch those arguments as many times as they need to. It's a longing to be unburdened from consciousness, to just be chemicals again. Some people desire this, as some people think Maria the robot from Lang's Metropolis is hot. I don't get it, but it's clearly a real thing that people feel. The facts, however, do not care about their feelings, any more than Maria the robot does.