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Are the brain’s electromagnetic fields the seat of consciousness?

nautil.us

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Re: Are the brain’s electromagnetic fields the seat of consciousness?

#41

Post by ncmncm »

It is a travesty that this guy is a department head somewhere, with serious responsibilities for, at least, students, and pushing this BS.

Might EM fields and waves have a role in brain operations? Sure. Does that have anything at all to do with us perceiving our own cognition? Absolutely no way!

Cars have (1) spark plugs that emit radio pulses, and (2) a radio in the dash panel. Therefore, spark plug E-M pulses control traffic flow? No.

The biggest mystery about consciousness is that anybody thinks there is anything at all mysterious about it.

Re: Are the brain’s electromagnetic fields the seat of consciousness?

#42

Post by MaxBarraclough »

djmips wrote: post #40
Santosh83 wrote: post #14

Do we have an unambiguous, universally accepted definition for consciousness?

No, and it's clear from many of the comments that there is an all to common bias that only human's are conscious which is absurd.

> it's clear from many of the comments that there is an all to common bias that only human's are conscious

Few people today think that animals are incapable of suffering.

Re: Are the brain’s electromagnetic fields the seat of consciousness?

#43

Post by ncmncm »

bondarchuk wrote: post #4

Another nice article trying to drum up support for the idea of a soul (yes, in the religious sense), in this Templeton Foundation-supported magazine.

Agreed, it just doubletalk, like calling Creationism "guided evolution".

Re: Are the brain’s electromagnetic fields the seat of consciousness?

#44

Post by MaxBarraclough »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #29
bserge wrote: post #2

Well it's an easier read than this: https://academic.oup.com/nc/article/2020/1/niaa016/5909853 but it lacks details. Regardless, my question is why did consciousness arise? What was the need? Would humans not have been able to achieve unprecedented control over the environment without it? Everything I read about self-control (which is a major problem of mine) points to an eternal battle between the conscious self and…

>Regardless, my question is why did consciousness arise? What was the need? Think of it in terms of salience. Why do we need multiple levels of salience, such that some signals are intrinsically more important than others to the bearer of those signals ? The answer is that once organisms were able to move under their own power, there needed to be a mechanism for the organism to have an intrinsic interest in its own w…

> Consciousness is the solution to the problem of competent behavior without comprehension.

I sense the signature of Dan Dennett.

An interesting read for the curious: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/06/-a-pe...

Re: Are the brain’s electromagnetic fields the seat of consciousness?

#45

Post by ncmncm »

yk42bb wrote: post #35

Since the brain can communicate between both hemispheres without a corpus callosum[0] I think it is obvious that our brain does interact with itself via electromagnetic fields. [0]: https://www.kurzweilai.net/unexplained-communication-between...

The corpus callosum is not the only nerve connection between hemispheres. It is just the easiest to cut, and the least consequential.

Re: Are the brain’s electromagnetic fields the seat of consciousness?

#46

Post by hackinthebochs »

kazinator wrote: post #37
hackinthebochs wrote: post #36

A simple argument for electromagnetic fields being the seat of consciousness: The brain is composed of discrete units undergoing local interactions following the laws of physics. Conscious experience is a seamless unified whole. But there is no way to arrange parts into a whole; it is necessarily a collection of parts. Therefore the brain, a collection of neurons, does not constitute the seat of consciousness. The br…

That seems like useless hair splitting. It's similar to pondering whether, in the cell of a DRAM chip, it is the electric field of the stored charge that is representing the 1 or 0 meaning, or whether it is the presence or absence of electron particles which is doing the representing.

In the case of the DRAM chip, the only relevant feature is its functional behavior. The stored charge and its electric field are isomorphic, i.e. have the same functional properties. So the difference is meaningless. But the question of what constitutes consciousness isn't merely about functional equivalence. If we took away the brain but left the dynamics of the electromagnetic field in tact, would there still be consciousness? Or vice-versa? The distinction I point out points to different answers to this question. This is a relevant philosophical difference, although no practical difference.

Re: Are the brain’s electromagnetic fields the seat of consciousness?

#47

Post by hackinthebochs »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #44
hackinthebochs wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Regardless, my question is why did consciousness arise? What was the need? Think of it in terms of salience. Why do we need multiple levels of salience, such that some signals are intrinsically more important than others to the bearer of those signals ? The answer is that once organisms were able to move under their own power, there needed to be a mechanism for the organism to have an intrinsic interest in its own w…

> Consciousness is the solution to the problem of competent behavior without comprehension. I sense the signature of Dan Dennett. An interesting read for the curious: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/06/-a-pe...

Indeed. He is always good for pithy quotes.

Re: Are the brain’s electromagnetic fields the seat of consciousness?

#48

Post by lokimedes »

bserge wrote: post #2

Well it's an easier read than this: https://academic.oup.com/nc/article/2020/1/niaa016/5909853 but it lacks details. Regardless, my question is why did consciousness arise? What was the need? Would humans not have been able to achieve unprecedented control over the environment without it? Everything I read about self-control (which is a major problem of mine) points to an eternal battle between the conscious self and…

Even as a physicist (sorry) I can see a clear evolutionary utility of consciousness. If all organisms as a rule are guided towards an optimal state (survival, reproduction, etc.) based on sensory input and a learned world model, then the second order evolutionary trait that would help an organism the most is executive access to the optimizer itself or the ability to synthesize a phase space of possibilities through imagination/dreaming. Both of these aspects may be what we call consciousness.

Re: Are the brain’s electromagnetic fields the seat of consciousness?

#49

Post by hackinthebochs »

ncmncm wrote: post #39
hackinthebochs wrote: post #36

A simple argument for electromagnetic fields being the seat of consciousness: The brain is composed of discrete units undergoing local interactions following the laws of physics. Conscious experience is a seamless unified whole. But there is no way to arrange parts into a whole; it is necessarily a collection of parts. Therefore the brain, a collection of neurons, does not constitute the seat of consciousness. The br…

Nonsense. Your DNA is made of atoms. Those are parts. Your cells are made of proteins and fats. Those are parts. Your computer is made of transistors and wires. Those are parts. Cities are made of people, buildings, and streets. Those are parts.

What premise of my argument are you objecting to? Nothing you have said appears to contradict anything I have said. I obviously agree that the body is made out of many individual parts at all levels of analysis.
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