Nothing in this essay addresses the single most prominent question of contemporary philosophy of mind, which is the hard problem of consciousness. It only addresses the soft problems, which everyone agrees are solvable "merely" with enough time, funding, and initiative. Nothing about the "beast machine" addresses how qualitative experience arises from physical phenomena, or as Chalmers puts it, "Why are we not philosophical zombies?" Of course the hard problem, by its nature, is likely irreducible, so expecting it to be solved is unreasonable.
The point is books and passages like this are only compelling if you've already accepted a hand-wavey answer to the hard problem. In this case the author's accepted answer seems to be the ever popular, "consciousness is an illusion," but that particular explanation to the hard problem is no more valid (or any less vague) than any other. Stating it with authority and not acknowledging it as a "faith-based" axiom undermines the work.
The point is books and passages like this are only compelling if you've already accepted a hand-wavey answer to the hard problem. In this case the author's accepted answer seems to be the ever popular, "consciousness is an illusion," but that particular explanation to the hard problem is no more valid (or any less vague) than any other. Stating it with authority and not acknowledging it as a "faith-based" axiom undermines the work.