There is a striking pattern in the debate over the theory of (phenomenal) consciousness. The pattern consists in disputants agreeing, on the one hand, with the Nagelian conception of consciousness (NC), viz. that a mental state is conscious if and only if there is something it is like to be in that state, and disagreeing, on the other hand, over which states are conscious on the NC. The pattern of agreement and disagreement has two interesting properties. The first is that individual parties in a dispute over a given case are frequently incredulous with respect to the each other’s verdicts on a case, such that doubt begins to creep in over whether they are both operating under NC after all. The second is that the range of cases over which dispute occurs is wide: the disputes that arise encompass both the atypical pathological and ordinary non-pathological. This paper employs a meta-analysis in an attempt to get at the bottom of this. In the end, I argue that we have a presumptive reason in favor of thinking that the disputes are in some sense largely verbal, even if not 'merely' so: despite agreement on NC, disputants agree and disagree over what falls under the extension of NC in virtue of (typically tacit) agreements and disagreements on the semantics of ‘what it is like’-sentences.