Yes, seriously! Look into the work of the philospher David Chambers. His position is called non-reductive functionalism. Instead of saying "the brain causes consciousness", he would say "it is not ONLY the brain that causes consciousness".[1]
In other words "consciousness is a fundamental property ontologically autonomous of any known (or even possible) physical properties" of the physical universe. [2]
I am amused by discussions like these where simplistic functionalist arguments [3] are taken as being proven. The whole area of consciousness is still side open, none of our current theories are adequate and it is simply wrong to assume that consciousness can be explained away.
I find the simple-minded dogmatism that the mind = brain hugely amusing. The fact is that right now science has absolutely no idea how consciousness works. There is no proof that reductionist materialism can explain how a mind arises from bunchs of neurons. And yet some believe without proof.
In other words "consciousness is a fundamental property ontologically autonomous of any known (or even possible) physical properties" of the physical universe. [2]
I am amused by discussions like these where simplistic functionalist arguments [3] are taken as being proven. The whole area of consciousness is still side open, none of our current theories are adequate and it is simply wrong to assume that consciousness can be explained away.
[1] - http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1997/may/15/conscio...
[2] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Chalmers
[3] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functionalism_%28philosophy_of_...