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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?

#61

Post by hackinthebochs »

bigbubba wrote: post #59
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…

> Conscious experience is a seamless unified whole I disagree, it seems to be totally disrupted by general anesthesia. Having experienced it, from my perspective it was time travel in a way that normal sleep never is. When you wake up from sleep there is some perception of time passed, and therefore a sort of continuity. Not so under general anesthesia. The time spent under is simply gone without even leaving a sensa…

It's seamless to the experiencer (you don't experience the moments or the objects unexperienced), but not necessarily at a 1 to 1 correspondence with properties of the world. Discontinuities in time is a good example.

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

#62

Post by ci5er »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #31
TheHideout wrote: post #8

Tangent by PhD student in Cognitive Science here - My current belief is that consciousness arises at the cross section of 3 core skills: Theory of Mind [0], Autobiographic Episodic Memory [1], and Embodied Cognition [2]. Principally, recognizing that other people have intentions and beliefs different from your own, being able to understand that you have experienced a timeline of personal experiences and these contrib…

That doesn't sound right to me at all. To your first point: consider a hypothetical person who is unable to recognise other people as being similar to themselves, i.e. as having minds of their own. We would treat this person as having a serious social disability. We certainly wouldn't conclude that the person lacks consciousness entirely. They could still be capable of experiencing pain and pleasure, and could still…

Ha! Under the influence of certain psychotropics, your ability to do functional planning would be diminished, but the number of creatures that you thought worthy of your empathy might well grow. :-)

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

#65

Post by hobby-coder-guy »

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…

No

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

#66

Post by virmundi »

ncmncm wrote: post #41

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 cont…

Can you prove that conscious is an emergent property of the bio-chemical brain? If you can, there is a sweet noble waiting for you. Otherwise it’s speculation on your part.

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

#67

Post by hackinthebochs »

FrameworkFred wrote: post #56
argomo wrote: post #13

Yes, let's move the soul from being an emergent property of the staggeringly complex arrangement of billions of neurons to their electromagnetic byproducts. It's cool because instead of grappling with the consequences of material reality we can satisfy our dualists instincts by ascribing consciousness to mystic energy despite it being equally mechanistic in the eyes of modern science. I want to see the college debate…

^This...exactly. This seems all kinds of testable. Construct apparatus to significantly interfere with the fields, turn it one, then look for changes...if it's really something fundamental to consciousness, that should be discernible one way or another.

The issue is you can't manipulate the EM fields in exclusion to neural activity as they are intrinsically linked to one another.

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

#68

Post by abellerose »

virmundi wrote: post #66
ncmncm wrote: post #41

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 cont…

Can you prove that conscious is an emergent property of the bio-chemical brain? If you can, there is a sweet noble waiting for you. Otherwise it’s speculation on your part.

Nobody has proven consciousness is even real. It’s like people assuming they have free will.

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

#69

Post by sixothree »

abellerose wrote: post #68
virmundi wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you prove that conscious is an emergent property of the bio-chemical brain? If you can, there is a sweet noble waiting for you. Otherwise it’s speculation on your part.

Nobody has proven consciousness is even real. It’s like people assuming they have free will.

Unless atoms have free will then everything that will be has always been, right?

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

#70

Post by kozd »

abellerose wrote: post #68
virmundi wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you prove that conscious is an emergent property of the bio-chemical brain? If you can, there is a sweet noble waiting for you. Otherwise it’s speculation on your part.

Nobody has proven consciousness is even real. It’s like people assuming they have free will.

You have direct access to your own subjective experience. Do you deny that it is like something to be you?
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