The Consciousness Deniers

Perhaps the problem here is not so much that anyone denies consciousness, but in the narrow, rigid way in which you predefine it. From that position, others proposising diverse possibilities and more flexibility seem easy to dismiss.

What are these "diverse possibilities"?

It seems to me the problem is the rigid definition of the material/physical lacking any mental properties but also being the only fundamental stuff out of which said properties arise/emerge. 

I accept the possibility of Hylozoism (that matter has some life essence), or the possibility that the objects of the world are both primal substance and property conferring "Platonic" Forms, or that what we call "matter" is really just a set of events that have an internal subjectivity + external objectivity, that it's all really "Information" (depending how that's defined), etc.

But when the physical is defined as lacking any aspect of the mental, this leads to the conclusion that physicalism is false.

And it isn't just me and other immaterialists who see the problem ->

Chomsky, a noted atheist who's previously said he thinks mind arises from the body, nevertheless recognizes the issue and notes the oddities that arise when trying to solve the body problem, let alone the mind/body one.

Rosenberg, and other physicalist/materialist/naturalists who are "eliminativists", accept the offered definition of the material/physical and thus conclude we cannot have thoughts. Personally I think this would be the argument from absurdity against physicalism but one can only lead a horse to water and all that...