I notice certain philosophers seem completely baffled by anyone being interested in the "hard problem" of conscious and things like qualia. A good example is Daniel Dennet. He seems to understand what qualia is but can't seem to understand why there's anything unique about the phenomena. I also see similar opinions expressed here in the comments. I've often wondered if a certain portion of the population are in some sort of philosophical zombie state and they equate consciousness with simple things like being awake and able to respond to stimuli.
For someone who only cares about utility of findings, I suppose there's little value in analysing the phenomenology of consciousness. I suspect that for a similar profile of thinkers meditation started being interesting when they saw there's some downstream utility in 'emotional well-being'. So why bother analysing an uncomfortable, hard problem when there's no clear benefit to it?
I just googled 'Daniel Dennet about meditation' and, surprise-surprise: 'Daniel Dennett acknowledged that meditation had practical value for "settling and centering" the mind. While he tried and saw benefits in practices like Transcendental Meditation, he largely discarded the mystical "aura" surrounding it, viewing the practice through his strictly materialist and evolutionary framework'