In Zombies! Zombies? Eliezer mentions that one aspect of consciousness is that it can causally affect the real world, e.g. cause you to say "I feel conscious right now", or result in me typing out these words.
Even if a generally accepted mechanism of consciousness has not been found yet are there any tentative explanations for this "can change world" property? Googling around I was unable to find anything (although Zombies are certainly popular).
I had an idea of how this might work, but just wanted to see if it was worth the effort of writing.
My favorite hypothesis for consciousness skepticism is the "colorblindness" theory (advocated by one of Yvain's old profs, apparently). That is, just as some people cannot tell red from green, some people have a hard time with qualia.
Under this hypothesis, there are observable ramifications of a lack of (or difficulty with) qualia. Folks who have difficulty with qualia actually write about consciousness differently from folks with qualia. If you have qualia, you write like Chalmers. If you don't, you write like Dennett (or the grandparent) :).