The philosophical answer that explains the subjective sensation is harder to come by.
Subjective sensation of perceiving a photo is explained by an event in your brain of perceiving the photo in the same sense e-mail with a photo of an elephant is explained by the elephant. With e-mail and the elephant, the map-territory distinction is easy to make. With experience of perception and perception itself, it’s harder, because the same neurons in the same brain are involved in both, over overlapping periods of time. Change the elephant analogy to a crowd of people, all of which are taking pictures of each other and e-mailing them to each other’s phones.
Subjective sensation of perceiving a photo is explained by an event in your brain of perceiving the photo in the same sense e-mail with a photo of an elephant is explained by the elephant. With e-mail and the elephant, the map-territory distinction is easy to make. With experience of perception and perception itself, it’s harder, because the same neurons in the same brain are involved in both, over overlapping periods of time. Change the elephant analogy to a crowd of people, all of which are taking pictures of each other and e-mailing them to each other’s phones.