I am attempting to understand some of the work that has been done by Daniel Dennet on consciousness and free-will. Not an easy task. It seems he expends a great deal of effort arguing against other positions, i.e., as you have said, what the thing is not. I enjoyed this piece and look forward to catching up on your earlier work.
Cheers.
Dennet falls under my "deflationary view" in the section on the pessimists of our time. His basic assumption is that consciousness is somehow an illusion - in other words that it really doesn't exist. The problem with his position is that it makes no sense to suppose an appearance-reality distinction in the case of consciousness, as we can all be certain that it exists. To me he is a clear case of someone who has settled for solving easier problems and given up on the hard, essential problem. If you look back to his earlier writings he was inventive and fascinated by the paradoxes surrounding consciousness, but now he seems more concerned with "dispelling illusions" than actually figuring out what the truth is.
Dennett is well worth reading on this problem. It's a big and difficult enough problem that part of defending a position is suggesting why it is superior to the suggested alternatives, and this means examining the alternatives carefully.