> But it is not the same question as: how is it possible that we have any experience at all?
You're right, it's not the same question. Dennett answers that question too though: you don't have conscious experience, you only think you do.
Thus, the questions he and these authors address are the only ones worth investigating. In time, exploring these questions will reveal the illusion behind consciousness, just like the progressive elaboration of the biochemistry of life revealed the fiction people tried to spin around how living matter simply had to have something different than non-living matter ("elan vital" in vitalism).
You're right, it's not the same question. Dennett answers that question too though: you don't have conscious experience, you only think you do.
Thus, the questions he and these authors address are the only ones worth investigating. In time, exploring these questions will reveal the illusion behind consciousness, just like the progressive elaboration of the biochemistry of life revealed the fiction people tried to spin around how living matter simply had to have something different than non-living matter ("elan vital" in vitalism).