Neural Replay

It is plausible the brain operates based on what does happen rather than what could have happened, unlike computation which is typically defined via counterfactuals. Imagine a case where I activate your neurons individually exogenously in the same spatiotemporal pattern as occurred in a given historical experience (but prevent those specific within-pattern neurons from firing each other; the overall pattern can still fire subsequent neurons elsewhere). Superficially, the important parts of the brain are doing the same as before and the subsequent action is the same, so the same conscious experience would likely occur, but we've removed the causal relationships that drove the original pattern, so CF would predict no consciousness.