I can't tell whether we're arguing about the same thing.

Like, I assume that I am a neural net predicting things and deciding things and if you had full access to my brain you could (in principle, given sufficient time) understand everything that was going on in there. But, like, one way or another I experience the perception of perceiving things.

(I'd prefer to taboo 'Qualia' in case it has particular connotations I don't share. Just 'that thing where Ray perceives himself perceiving things, and perhaps the part where sometimes Ray has preferences about those perceptions of perceiving because the perceptions have valence.' If that's what Qualia means, cool, and if it means some other thing I'm not sure I care)

My current working model of "how this aspect of my perception works" is described in this comment, I guess easy enough to quote in full:

"Human brains contain two forms of knowledge: - explicit knowledge and weights that are used in implicit knowledge (admittedly the former is hacked on top of the later, but that isn't relevant here). Mary doesn't gain any extra explicit knowledge from seeing blue, but her brain changes some of her implicit weights so that when a blue object activates in her vision a sub-neural network can connect this to the label "blue"."

The reason I care about any of this is that I believe that a "perceptions-having-valence" is probably morally relevant. (or, put in usual terms: suffering and pleasure seem morally relevant).

(I think it's quite possibe that future-me will decide I was confused about this part, but it's the part I care about anyhow)

Are you saying the my perceiving-that-I-perceive-things-with-valence is an illusion, and that I am in fact not doing that? Or some other thing?

(To be clear, I AM open to 'actually Ray yes, the counterintuitive answer is that no, you're not actually perceiving-that-you-perceive-things-and-some-of-the-perceptions-have-valence.' The topic is clearly confusing and behind the veil of epistemic-ignorance it seems quite plausible I'm the confused one here. Just noting that so far that from way you're phrasing things I can't tell whether your claims map onto the things I care about )