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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?

#101

Post by ncmncm »

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.

A sweet Nobel for demonstrating that people have experiences, despite being made out of base matter?

People do have experiences, and are made out of matter. QED. I will expect your nomination.

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

#102

Post by xvedejas »

DennisP wrote: post #96
bawolff wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've sometimes wondered if people precieve things qualitatively different way then I do to give rise to this problem, since to me it seems like s non-problem. To me, i have trouble even conceptualizing what is meant by the qualia problem. What is the fundamental difference between something's "redness" and say a tall person's "tallness". Maybe "redness" is a bit more mysterious because its non-spatial, but still is i…

Tallness is a physical property of the thing itself. Light also has its own physical properties, e.g. a wavelength of 700nm. But the qualia of red is the experience you have when that 700nm light hits your retina. It's conceivable that when 700nm light hits my retina, I have an experience which you would call "blue." That's why the qualia and the physical property of the light are two different things.

We have a lot of evidence of how people perceive color, and the differences of perception. There are tests that measure the ability to distinguish color. Some people are only colorblind in one eye, and report perceptual differences that are predictable by phenotype. I would expect any meaningful difference in qualia would have some conceivable (if not performable) test. Otherwise we're calling two equivalent things different for no reason at all.

I personally tend to believe that non-falsifiable statements are necessarily non-physical.

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

#103

Post by ShellfishMeme »

Hokusai wrote: post #6
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…

> why did consciousness arise? What was the need? It may be just a property of matter. If you set up matter in certain way, it gains consciousness. And that certain way is needed for intelligence. Maybe another good question is can intelligence exist without consciousness ?

I would rather assume that basic consciousness is a property of a certain kind of computation over time that keeps state in a way that allows you to experience the events of the world as a continuous process and track your state in it over time.

Of course one could say that the way that is implemented for us is using matter. Then again one could argue that all matter is just a manifestation of a huge amount of computation.

So we are just computers built on a substrate of manifested computation, and we built even more computers ourselves that way.

Thus I'd argue that anything that can compute and keep state can have consciousness. How intelligence fits into this all, I am not sure.

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

#104

Post by ncmncm »

sixothree wrote: post #69
abellerose wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Really? "Will be" and "has been" presume time. If you admit time, then no. If you don't admit time, then the statement is meaningless.

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

#105

Post by dvt »

bawolff wrote: post #82
captainmuon wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Franky, I have never understood the problem of qualia - or why it is something in need of explanation at all. Maybe the correct answer is an "anthropic principle"-style non-answer: External stimuli have to affect the human brain and body somehow . There has got to be some internal representation of what you percieve. Now we have the capability of reflection. To some extent, we can think about how we think, and we can…

I've sometimes wondered if people precieve things qualitatively different way then I do to give rise to this problem, since to me it seems like s non-problem. To me, i have trouble even conceptualizing what is meant by the qualia problem. What is the fundamental difference between something's "redness" and say a tall person's "tallness". Maybe "redness" is a bit more mysterious because its non-spatial, but still is i…

Qualia are easier to understand when you think about things you can't experience. For example, think about echolocation. We understand how it works, we understand what parts of a bat's brain light up when echolocation is used. However, I have no idea what the experience of echolocation might be like.

I guess it's kind of like hearing.. but different? Maybe a weird combination of hearing + seeing black and white? Or similar to one of those LIDAR depth-field renderings? In other words, I don't have access to the qualia of some echolocated object. Exactly how I wouldn't have access to the qualia of some red object if I were blind.

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

#106

Post by kordlessagain »

amarte wrote: post #78
captainmuon wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Franky, I have never understood the problem of qualia - or why it is something in need of explanation at all. Maybe the correct answer is an "anthropic principle"-style non-answer: External stimuli have to affect the human brain and body somehow . There has got to be some internal representation of what you percieve. Now we have the capability of reflection. To some extent, we can think about how we think, and we can…

"There has got to be some internal representation of what you percieve." I don't think this is necessarily true. It seems to me like the universe would get on exactly the same without internal representation. By "internal representation" I mean a universe without "embodiment" -- no experience of being me or being you, no feelings felt, no colors seen, no sounds heard, etc.. And yet those experiences "exist" in some s…

> I don't think this is necessarily true.

Most people, say 99% or so, can form an internally perceived image of something in their mind's eye. The rest aren't seeing things in their mind's eye, other than that which is built from direct sensory input. Both are form.

  You see with your eyes
  I see destruction and demise (that's right)
  Corruption in disguise
  From this fuckin' enterprise
  Now I'm sucked into your lies
  Through Russel, not his muscles but percussion he provides
  For me as a guide
  Y'all can see me now 'cause you don't see with your eye
  You perceive with your mind
  That's the inner
  So I'ma stick around with Russ' and be a mentor
  Bust a few rhymes so motherfuckers remember where the thought is
  I brought all this
  So you can survive when law is lawless (right here)
  Feelings, sensations that you thought was dead
  No squealing, remember that it's all in your head

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

#107

Post by DennisP »

xvedejas wrote: post #102
DennisP wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tallness is a physical property of the thing itself. Light also has its own physical properties, e.g. a wavelength of 700nm. But the qualia of red is the experience you have when that 700nm light hits your retina. It's conceivable that when 700nm light hits my retina, I have an experience which you would call "blue." That's why the qualia and the physical property of the light are two different things.

We have a lot of evidence of how people perceive color, and the differences of perception. There are tests that measure the ability to distinguish color. Some people are only colorblind in one eye, and report perceptual differences that are predictable by phenotype. I would expect any meaningful difference in qualia would have some conceivable (if not performable) test. Otherwise we're calling two equivalent things d…

I challenge you to devise a test able to detect that I perceive the color spectrum in reverse.

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

#108

Post by hackinthebochs »

ncmncm wrote: post #99
hackinthebochs wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Cars, when driving, have speed that is a continuous, seamless "whole". Therefore, the driver, engine, and wheels have nothing to do with speed because they are parts? Or, the driver must be connected to the wheels via magickal electromagnetic fields? It is meaningless even to say.

Your points are not analogous to my argument which suggests you don't really understand it. Wheels can have continuous angular velocity which cashes out the continuous speed of a car. I don't preclude collections of parts from correlated behavior, which is what a rotating tire is. A road in contact with a tire is interacting with the complex of correlated parts and so the road's perspective of the tire is that of a unified whole. Similarly, our perspective of a table is that of a unified whole due to electromagnetic forces that keeps the dynamics of the constituent molecules highly correlated and our inability to perceive the seams between the parts (without the aid of tools). But when it comes to consciousness, there is no perceiver distinct from the perception, and so you cannot rely on such a distinction to cash out the apparent unified whole of consciousness.

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

#109

Post by kordlessagain »

ncmncm wrote: post #100
kozd wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Neither sentence means anything at all.

You probably have image recall. Some people have audio recall. The recall events can contain imagery, moving imagery, sounds, speech, thoughts during event. They may be historic recordings/memory, creative "visualizations" or a hybrid. Some people can insert objects into their version of reality. Dots on walls. Boxes on tables.

Your internally perceived reality is a "visualized+ object" that is similar to a visual and auditory recall of a historic event, or a future event "imagined". That object includes body impressions, smell, taste, etc. Hunger. Pain. Impatience in understanding the nature of consciousness. Etc. All of that is built from sense impressions. Buddhists call these "aggregates".

The internal model of reality is an aggregate object which is refreshed from senses. While it looks very close to what everyone else sees inside, it is very individualistic to the person experiencing it and distinctly different from the various wavelengths of light and sound bouncing around in various material configurations which are then sampled by imperfect sensors.

Would it be surprising to learn that not everyone's world model is complete, especially when attention is not being held on it? See "basketball gorilla attention" on Google. Yet, we all take it for granted so much that we forget we do it, sort of like the fact most people take for granted they can see their parents in their mind's eye but don't ever bother wondering how it is they can actually see an image representation of something without it being processed through a sense organ.

It shouldn't come to anyone's surprise that reality is hallucinated into being and we experience that hallucination inside alone and outside together. If you stop hallucinating it, you lose consciousness. Dreams.

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

#110

Post by Lammy »

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…

I like this a lot, plus it’s a trinity :p

Please forgive me for Going There, but I believe [2] is also Original Sin, even in a secular definition as a generic source of evil perpetrated by humans against humans.

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