A serious error has been made in the modern philosophy of mind.  This error results from an interpretation of the homunculus argument (see below).   This homunculus argument is an excellent argument but it has led to the altogether erroneous conclusion that what we experience cannot be experienced or true.

The new Empiricism takes the scientific viewpoint that observation is of paramount importance.  No argument, no matter how apparently excellent, can be used to deny that what we experience is experienced.  This means in particular that representationalism and field theories are a valid approach to understanding the relationship between the brain and the mind, it also means that analyses of how the representation might view itself are permissible. 

The Description and Definition of Consciousness - Alex Green 2002

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding - John Locke 1690.  Starting from the simple ideas which we get from sensation, or from observing mental operations as they take place...

 The Homunculus Argument

Information about what we see enters our eyes, forms an image on the retina and then enters the brain.  Our experience of this 'brain image' is an experience of something projected into the space around us.  It is as if there is an image in our brains that is being viewed for a second time but if this were the case there would need to be another little person inside us, an 'homunculus', who views this second image and so on.

If observation is paramount and our experience cannot be rejected then the homunculus argument is telling us that our observation of the world cannot be entirely the result of some nineteenth century idea of signals transferring information from place to place.  In other words something in addition to the neuron model or information processing models is needed to explain consciousness.