Well, sure, but that's a semantic point rather than a scientific one. The colorectal basis of peristalsis is likewise not peristalsis, but if you want to understand it, you are best off studying the bowels.
OK, that was vulgar, but this is the Smok'y Backroom. A more genteel analogy might be to say that the paint is not the image, and in fact I like that better, because the same image can be expressed equally well on a computer screen or a t-shirt as on a canvas. I see no reason not to expect that the same will be true of minds, with what is now instantiated in fragile wetware being expressed in greater detail on a grain of sand, a mote of dust, or a beam of light.
But if we're gonna rest on our laurels at this juncture, and not pursue other hypotheses, if only to "cross-check" the one we've already got, then we're not going to learn anything new about the mind.
Unless, of course, the hypothesis is the correct one, after all.
The problem here is that we're using nouns ("The" Mind, consciousness, "soul", if you will) to express what is probably better off as a verb. "Mind" is the action performed, for instance, by the brain.