Fair enough! I'll admit, there are a number of somewhat unwieldy idioms in philosophy, but I think in a lot of cases they do serve to pick out a distinct notion.
For what it's worth, in the expression "to think that p", "p" is meant to designate any arbitrary proposition; e.g., if p is the proposition "it is raining", then "to think that p" expands to "to think that it is raining". (Likewise q is some other arbitrary proposition.) "There's something it's like to X" is a conventional way of saying that (under normal circumstances) X causes or corresponds with a conscious experience. In the quoted sentence "consciously" is a little superfluous, but the paper is dealing with phenomenology (the study of first person conscious experience), so I'm assuming the author added it for emphasis.
It's a pretty technical paper and there's a lot of terminology and assumptions of background knowledge. I definitely find myself reading sentences over and over, but I tend to assume that those issues are more the result of my lack of understanding than of clarity of writing.
For what it's worth, in the expression "to think that p", "p" is meant to designate any arbitrary proposition; e.g., if p is the proposition "it is raining", then "to think that p" expands to "to think that it is raining". (Likewise q is some other arbitrary proposition.) "There's something it's like to X" is a conventional way of saying that (under normal circumstances) X causes or corresponds with a conscious experience. In the quoted sentence "consciously" is a little superfluous, but the paper is dealing with phenomenology (the study of first person conscious experience), so I'm assuming the author added it for emphasis.
It's a pretty technical paper and there's a lot of terminology and assumptions of background knowledge. I definitely find myself reading sentences over and over, but I tend to assume that those issues are more the result of my lack of understanding than of clarity of writing.