Why? You are using a definitive term ("never") to something that we might achieve in a future. We might observe consciousness in a future. Who knows? Consciousness is a known unknown. We know there is something but we don't know how to observe it properly and how we could eventually copy it.

In the meanwhile, we are not copying consciousness, we have a shallow replication of its output. When cavemen replicated the fire that they observed as the output of a lightning, did they master electricity?

But we do agree that it exists. Our direct experience tells us so.

> we are forced to concede that we will never really "understand" it outside of observing its effects.

Not necessarily. A gap in our ability to observe something does not imply that (a) we never will observe it or (b) what we don't know is not worth knowing.

Throughout history, persistent known-unknowns have pushed people to appeal directly to the supernatural, which short-circuits further discovery when they stop there. But the real fallacy is saying "we don't know, and it doesn't matter". That's a far more direct short-circuit to gaining knowledge. And in both cases, a lack of curiosity is an underlying problem.