If beauty doesn't require God, why should morality? (Bite me Dr. Craig.)

[bennyboy]

The fact is that at least I definitely have subjective experience, and the word qualia refers to that fact, and any attempt to make it mean something else is a brute force method of begging the question.

You think you have subjective experience, with all these qualifiers about its independence that you've added, but you don't know that you have qualia as you envision it. It could be an illusion.

I don't need to envision qualia. I just have them.

As for "qualifiers about its independence" that I've added-- please link just one.

Claiming that we have two words for the separate aspects therefore they are different is a semantic non sequitur.

You can say that, but the fact is that what people are talking about when they say, "Oooooh, a pretty rainbow!" is not the same thing they're talking about when they say, "The fMRI shows increased blood flow in regions X, Y, and Z."

Casablanca is in fact just blotches on celluloid. You're arguing that because they appear different from different perspectives that they therefore are different; that doesn't wash.

--edit--
It is the existence of "different perspectives" that I was originally using to address the OP. Specifically, the existence of ANY perspective is not really compatible with pure physical mechanism.
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Sure it does. "Casablanca" is something which must be experienced to be understood. No chemical analysis of the celluloid will ever allow anyone to understand or appreciate the experiential value of the movie.

I can observe your brain function (at least in theory), but I cannot observe your qualia. Therefore, they are in fact different.

This doesn't follow. If your qualia are in fact your brain processes then I can in fact observe your qualia. That they appear different from the different perspectives does not make them therefore different. You keep making this same logical error.

Can you observe my qualia? No. You can watch my brain and convince yourself that since obviously qualia must be brain function, you are watching my qualia. But no matter how much you tell yourself that, you do not know what it's like for me to experience the drinking of some hot chocolate, or the viewing of a sunset.

You have oft repeated the claim that if qualia are my brain processes, then you cannot observe my qualia. GIVEN THIS, it follows that qualia are not my brain processes, since you cannot observe them.

The universe is not attempting to conflate things which are unlike by definition-- that's you. I know what it's like to experience things, and I know (to a degree) about the brain chemistry involved in perception. They are different at both a semantic level and an observational level.

And again the same error. Differences in appearance do not automatically imply ontological differences.

It is the appearance of experience which defines the experience. Any view of qualia which does not accept this is not a view of qualia at all. It doesn't really matter if all the content of qualia supervenes on brain function-- the point is that given system "X," only the system itself can know what it's experiencing. Remember the OP? I'm saying that intrinsic to the universe is this fact-- that it has a special capacity for some things to experience subjectively what no other system can experience objectively.

As a physical monist, you are confronted with the fact that the most important aspect of human existence-- the subjective experience-- is completely outside the objective (read: shared) observational domain.

And again. It's currently beyond our ability to identify the two as being one, but that doesn't necessarily imply the two are different.

An apple is red, and it is wet. Are you saying that redness is wetness? The view of qualia which would be most compatible with your view is that qualia are a property of either matter or its functions. To say that qualia ARE the functions is to say that redness IS the apple.

even if there's a 1:1 correlation between brain states/function and qualia, that does not mean that a brain state IS qualia

Yes, as a matter of fact, that's exactly what it means.

No. Correlation doesn't work that way. There's a 1:1 correlation between birth and death. However, only a hippie could claim that "birth is death."