I mean #2 precisely.

That is, qualia - the universalised experience of 'redness', of fundamental experience, or what-have-you - is a category which we dump neural firing patterns into. At the level of patterns in the brain physiology, there are only patterns, and some patterns are isomorphic to each other - that is, a slightly different pattern in a slightly different architecture nevertheless builds up to the same higher-level result.

It is a figment of your imagination because that's an easy shortcut that our brains take. In attempting to communicate ideas - to cause isomorphic patterns to arise in the other's brain - our brains may tend to create a common cause, an abstract concept that both patterns are derived from. There isn't any such platonic concept! There's just the neural firing in my head (completely simulable on a computer, no human brain needed) and the neural firing in your head (also completely simulable, no brain needed). There's nothing that, in essence, requires a human brain involved in doing the simulating, at any point.

Hmm. Qualia's come up a few times on LessWrong, and it seems like a nonzero portion of the comments accept it. I'll have to go through the literature on qualia to build a more thorough case against it. Look forward to a "No Qualia" post sometime soon edit: including baseless speculation on why talking about it is so confusing! - unless, in going through the literature, I change my mind about whether qualia exist.