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I don't think epiphenomenalists are using words like "experience" in accordance with your definition. I'm no expert on epiphenomenalism, but they seem to be using subjective experience to refer to perception. Perception is distinct from external causes because we directly perceive only secondary qualities like colors and flavors rather than primary qualities like wavelengths and chemical compositions.
EY's point is that we behave as if we have seen the color red. So we have: 1. physical qualities, 2. perceived qualities, and 3. actions that accord with perception. To steelman epiphenomenalism, instead of 1 -> 2 -> 3, are other causal diagrams not possible, such as 1 -> 2 and 1 -> 3, mediated by the human cognitive architecture? (Or maybe even 1 -> 3 -> 2 in some cases, where we perceive something on the basis of having acted in certain ways.)
However, the main problem with your explanation is that even if we account for the representation of secondary qualities in the brain, that still doesn't explain how any kind of direct perception of anything at all is possible. This seems kind of important to the transhumanist project, since it would decide whether uploaded humans perceive anything or whether they are nothing but the output of numerical calculations. Perhaps this question is meaningless, but that's not demonstrated simply by pointing out that, one way or another, our actions sometimes accord with perception, right?
We not only stop at red lights, we make statements like S1: "subjectively, red is closer to violet than it is to green." We have cognitive access both to "objective" phenomena like the family of wavelengths coming from the traffic light, and also to "subjective" phenomena of certain low-level sensory processing outputs. The epiphenomenalist has a theory on the latter. Your steelman is well taken, given this clarification.
By the way, the fact that there is a large equivalence class of wavelength combinations that will be per... (read more)