Yes, the epistemological challenges with distinguishing between ground-truth qualia and qualia reports are worrying. However, I don’t think they’re completely intractable, because there is a causal chain (from Appendix C):
Our brain’s physical microstates (perfectly correlated with qualia) -->
The logical states of our brain’s self-model (systematically correlated with our brain’s physical microstates) -->
Our reports about our qualia (systematically correlated with our brain’s model of its internal state)
.. but there could be substantial blindspots, especially in contexts where there was no adaptive benefit to having accurate systematic correlations.
Yes, the epistemological challenges with distinguishing between ground-truth qualia and qualia reports are worrying. However, I don’t think they’re completely intractable, because there is a causal chain (from Appendix C):
Our brain’s physical microstates (perfectly correlated with qualia) --> The logical states of our brain’s self-model (systematically correlated with our brain’s physical microstates) --> Our reports about our qualia (systematically correlated with our brain’s model of its internal state)
.. but there could be substantial blindspots, especially in contexts where there was no adaptive benefit to having accurate systematic correlations.