[n4r9]

When I experience deja vu, I can never place the time or location that I actually had a previous similar experience. Nor can I predict in advance any occurrence, despite it seeming so inevitable when it does occur. It is simply a dreamlike quality of familiarity. Having done some reading about it, this seems to be the typical state of affairs.

Given this, the simplest and most compelling explanation is that the brain has somehow short-circuited itself into invoking a sense of familiarity. Otherwise I'd expect, at least some people, some of the time, to be able to either link the two experiences or make predictions. The claim that exactly the same experience has actually occurred twice is the more remarkable, both in terms of evidence and plausible mechanism.

Whilst I do appreciate that experiences are highly subjective beasts, it doesn't feel like this really challenges the linked article. Besides, if one is so wedded to the subjectivity of experience, they might as well just say that nothing can objectively explain consciousness because it's subjective, end of.