> The point is that it's not clear at all what empirical knowledge we could acquire that would explain consciousness.

What about this: - this class of brain circuits are not not firing when the person is (unconscious, in deep sleep,a newborn/animal obviously just directly responding to outside stimuli), while obviously active when a person performs conscious activity - this class of brain circuits does not exists at very primitive species and is progressively more developed the higher the evolution chain you go