Well, surgeons and researchers have shown that electrical stimulation of certain brain regions, can induce "perception" during procedures. They can make a patient have the conscious experience of certain smells, for instance.
It's not conclusive proof of anything, but I wouldn't bet against us getting closer to the mark, than we were when we only considered hydro-dynamics as the model.
I can carefully drop liquid reactants on a storage medium and induce nontrivial and reproducible changes in any computer reading it. That doesn't tell me how digital storage works, it just says I'm proximate to the process.
We can induce religious experience, see "The God Helmet"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_helmet
or deep depression & suicidal thoughts
> Other groups have subsequently found that individual differences such as strong belief in the paranormal and magical ideation predict some alterations in consciousness and reported "exceptional experiences" when Persinger et al's experimental set-up and procedure are reproduced, but with a sham "God helmet" that is completely inert or a helmet that is turned off.