This theory seems to be discussing the divide between the scientific materialist approach and the phenomenological approach to understanding consciousness, no? The scientific materialist would focus on neuronic activity, neural networks, brain structures, protein/genetic/cellular level interactions in the nervous system. The phenomenologist would try to understand how these activities are actually felt by the subject. Phenomenologists are interested in the introspective impressions of the subject from their cognitive self-reflections. It seems to me the "hard problem of consciousness" is the great divide in the two approaches. You can have a mechanism explain the function, but the question still remains how some neurons, or perhaps, patterns of firings of neurons, are subjective consciousness.

I still don't think this question has been properly answered, however. I fail to see how things such as qualia, or simply our subjective experiences, don't exist, any real way. Perhaps it is just my failure to understand Dennett's claim. I still do not see how Dennett concludes subjective experiences do not exist, or are not real. I just don't see he explains away the phenomena of subjective experience. How can my internal representations, my thoughts, and observations, and direct experiences of the world, "be" neurons?