Hi Brian, What you're talking about is called "the Knowledge Pardox" and is described by Rosenberg (who quotes Shoemaker) in his book "A Place for Consciousness" (pg 119).  If physicalism is false, and if the world is causally closed under physics, it appears as if there is no room for p-consciousness to make a causal contribution to brain events. But clearly, our knowledge claims about p-consciousness (e.g. "I know that I am conscious right now") are driven by physical brain events. If p-consciousness is irrelevant to the causal dynamics of the brain, then, it seems that it can play no role in producing our knowledge claims about it. In short, it seems as if our knowledge claims about p-consciousness should bear no relevance to the phenomenon itself; we should have no way to really know that we are p-conscious, even though we claim that we are.
(Ref: http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=68357 )

Most philosophers claim that the phenomenal event and the physical event are simply one in the same so naturally, there is no paradox. See for example Kim, "Mind in a Physical World" who argues mental events (ie: phenomenal consciousness, qualia) don't cause physical events. Per this view, the statement* that we perceive red coincides with the phenomenal events, but are not caused by these phenomenal events. 

Problem I see is that if phenomenal events are truly subjective and can not be objectively discerned, there is no way, even in principal, to determine if phenomenal events occur or what they might be. I would subscribe to the knowledge paradox and suggest that the world can not be causally closed under the physical.  

*Any statement or behavior that we associate with a phenomenal event is an objectively measurable occurrence.