There still seems to be an explanatory gap. Seager does not have a good reason for ruling out the emergence hypothesis. Synchronized firing is not an emergent property - it is not qualitatively different. For discussion of synchrony, binding, and consciousness, see the special issue of Consciousness and Cognition. The emergence of consciousness from neural activities is no more mysterious than the emergence of magnetic properties from atomic properties.
All matter exhibits magnetic properties to some degree.
When placed in an inhomogeneous field, matter is either attracted or repelled in the direction of the gradient of the field. This property is described by the magnetic susceptibility of the matter and depends on the degree of magnetization of the matter in the field. Magnetization depends on the size of the dipole moments of the atoms in a substance and the degree to which the dipole moments are aligned with respect to each other. Certain materials, such as iron, exhibit very strong magnetic properties because of the alignment of the magnetic moments of their atoms within certain small regions called domains. Under normal conditions, the various domains have fields that cancel, but they can be aligned with each other to produce extremely large magnetic fields.