'''The Nagel question then, is the fact that I experience vision a certain way really an essential aspect of "what it's like to be me?"''' It is an essential as

'''The Nagel question then, is the fact that I experience vision a certain way really an essential aspect of "what it's like to be me?"''' It is an essential aspect of what it is like to be you. (However, there is an ambiguity here about temporal scope. What it is precisely like to be me now is to have precisely the experience I am having now, and what it is like to be me these days is to have the kinds of experiences I have these days, and what it is like to be me over my whole life is to have a similar pattern of experience to me over a whole life.) And it isn't an essential aspect of what it is to be you. (No one would claim that Mary becomes a different person when she sees red for the first time. This is compatible with the claim that, because of the nature of personal identity, it is impossible for a person to undergo certain very radical changes in the nature of their conscious experience.) '''Or is my consciousness a "further fact"... something running in the background of all my senses, no matter how they are wired (or rewired) over time?''' Your senses are the very faculties that allow the world to world to produce your conscious experience, so it is odd to frame the "hard problem" of consciousness in this way. In general, neuroplasticity is sort of interesting for the understanding of consciousness, but it seems arguable that in the tongue experiment you are just experiencing the same qualia you have always experienced; it isn't like seeing colors for the first time.