Functionalism can be reformulated to include relational and comparative functional roles, as Sydney Shoemaker argued, making inverted spectra functionally distinguishable after all.

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Functionally distinguishable(as applied to whether inverted spectra can be differentiated): Able to be told apart based on what role something plays or what it does, rather than what it looks like or feels like from the inside.
Relational and comparative functional roles(as a refinement of functionalism): The idea that mental states can be defined not just by what they do in isolation, but by how they relate to and differ from other mental states.
Sydney Shoemaker(identifying the originator of the theory being discussed): A 20th-century American philosopher who developed influential theories about the mind and how mental properties relate to physical properties in the brain.
functionalism(Philosophy of mind; distinguished here from representationalism): The view that mental states are defined by the causal roles they play in a cognitive system — their actual, potential, or typical causal relationships.
inverted spectra(Contrasted with absent qualia to illustrate that the two possibilities are logically independent): The possibility that a functional duplicate of a conscious being has qualia that are systematically different in qualitative character — e.g., experiencing red where the original experiences green — while remaining functionally identical

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