Phenomenal-Functional Correlational Evidence
Overview
What we experience and feel seems to track various functional explanations and interventions. Such correlations are more plausible if phenomenal consciousness is in fact identical with such functions.
For instance, with cochlear implants, when we implement the function (e.g. spectrotemporal analysis), users report recognisably auditory qualia that track functional resolution limits. As algorithms improve, phenomenology improves. Brain interventions in empirical neuroscience have identified parts of the brain, such as place cells, where phenomenology and function line up naturally.
Finally, the advent of 'mind-reading' technology has allowed AI to 'decode' brain activity via neurotechnology like implants, EEG or fMRI. These include translating the 'inner voice', patterns from the visual cortex to reconstruct what people are seeing, elements from dreams and the activation patterns associated with volition.
Some authors have used these correlations to argue that this constitutes an empirical demonstration of the functional identity of the mind and the brain (Bor, 2012). Phenomenal consciousness is assumed to be reducible to these functions.
Responses
It is possible that 'mind-reading' correlations obtained technologically are tracking preconscious information processing which is only later surfaced into conscious experience.
Current 'mind-reading' technology mostly translates activity in the cortex. However, some newer theories propose that consciousness emerges from subcortical regions of the brain (e.g. Freeman's PFT). If this is so, then the function-tracking cortical correlations tell us very little about the systems generating phenomenal consciousness, which might or might not be adequately captured in algorithmic functions.
The cochlear implant example works better in reverse: the technology is widely understood as improving pre-conscious information processing inputs, rather than generating conscious experience directly.
Non-functionalists about mind do not deny that there are lots of functions involved in brain activity that shape what we experience, they deny that those functions account for the entire phenomenon of consciousness. More generally, we should be scientifically cautious about inferring a full causal structure from correlations that come from only a partial subset of the target system.
Even close correlations between brain function and subjective experience do not directly imply the two phenomena are identical (e.g. Bealer, 2010). This argument encounters the problem of the explanatory gap. One issue is the dissimilarity between phenomenal conscious experiences (thoughts, seeing colours, being in pain, etc.) and the accompanying brain states, which involve apparently dissimilar physical processes (nerve firings, neurotransmitter activations, membrane potential changes, etc). Also related to the hard problem.
Further reading
Do you find this argument strong or weak?