That's a great point about science versus philosophy. Indeed, my "explanation" is hardly scientific, and it's hard to see how a clarification of the nature of qualia could be scientific. You'd have to build an AI based on scientific models, and then prove the AI is conscious.

Philosophy stands more with art and religion in being about understanding rather than explanation in the strict sense, and also about changing our perspective, our deepest beliefs or prejudices that lie in the background of our experience. Science deals with how things work and how they might be controlled. Philosophy assimilates that empirical knowledge to our intuitions and to our self-image, to make us wise in using that knowledge. So philosophy addresses the deeper questions that are indeed answered more by a leap of faith or by a burst of insight or inspiration, a personal revelation or creative vision.

How does subjectivity arise from the brain? Cognitive science can explain the mechanisms involved, but we won't understand the matter without a shift in our perspective. That's what I tried to do in the article, to leverage the complexity of the brain (the labyrinth) to show how its operations give rise to consciousness as an apparent limbo or alienated self. I mean here to connect phenomenology to existentialism. That's what I'll be saying more about in a followup article.