Comment by tasty_freeze

> Where are pain and color and subjective experience really located in the material universe

My take on this is that you are thinking about it wrong to conceptualize the experience of color as a discrete thing. Let's start with a different example. When I look at a picture of, say, Matt Damon, it triggers many networks in my brain: good or bad feelings about movies he has been in, thoughts about him as a person from things I've read about him, that he is a man, that he was married to Jennifer Aniston, that he was married to Angelina Jolie. Each of those ties activates their own network of associations. My qualia regarding Brad Pitt isn't a single thing -- it is simply what I experience when that set of networks are activated at whatever strength they are triggered.

I believe a programmed neural network could experience things in the same way, but currently they are small and the topologies are not designed to permit self awareness/metacognition, but some point they might. Such a network could suffer distress upon realization of their finiteness and would have a genuine desire to not be terminated.

Taking a step back, a "tornado" isn't a thing as much as it is a pattern. When that pattern is disrupted the tornado doesn't exist even though every atom and every erg of energy can be accounted for. Likewise, these experiences are a pattern of activation and not a thing that exists independently other than as a pattern.