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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?

#131

Post by bulletsvshumans »

micksabox wrote: post #124

I would be thrilled to hear somebody's theory of consciousness that takes into account the following axioms: 1. Consciousness demonstrates quantum non-locality. The U.S government via 3 letter agencies studied psychic phenomena like remote viewing for over 30 years under various names including Project Stargate(a). and was studied at Stanford Research Institute by scientists like Russell Targ and Hal Puthoff. 2. Cons…

"Commentators have criticized Emoto for insufficient experimental controls and for not sharing enough details of his approach with the scientific community.[9][17] In addition, Emoto has been criticized for designing his experiments in ways that leave them prone to manipulation or human error influencing the findings.[9][18] Biochemist and Director of Microscopy at University College Cork William Reville wrote, "It is very unlikely that there is any reality behind Emoto's claims."[9] Reville noted the lack of scientific publication and pointed out that anyone who could demonstrate such a phenomenon would become immediately famous and probably wealthy.[9]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masaru_Emoto#Scientific_critic...

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

#132

Post by RhodoYolo »

superkuh wrote: post #129

No. There's no evidence for that. There's an incredible mountain of evidence supporting the idea that neuronal action potentials are. The currents in neurons aren't even in the direction of the action potential propagation. They're perpendicular to it and only over a handful of tens of nanometers. Yes, the substrate of our macroscopic reality is dominated by electromagnetics but the brain isn't a very conductive plac…

but it begs the question; why? Obviously there is a biological necessity for these forms of propagation. I remember reading an old neuroscience textbook that said glial cells were purely support cells but they are finding a-lot of emergent phenomenon there as well.

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

#133

Post by ncmncm »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #108
ncmncm wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 u…

None of that has the slightest bit to do with how brains work to weave the activity you have chosen to noun as "consciousness". Minding is activity brains perform, exactly as motion is activity cars perform. To imagine that mind can't come out of brain cells being brain cells is woolly mysticism that is pointless even to write: rejecting reason, you reject language and communication, and there is nobody to talk to and nothing meaningful to say.

You could equally well say that, being in the car, you can't experience the motion. But that is also nonsense: you do.

There is nothing profound about noticing yourself noticing. Brain activity is not distinct from other activity, just because it can react to itself. Individual, nanoscopic transistors do it all day long.

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

#134

Post by RhodoYolo »

captainmuon wrote: post #58
DennisP wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are actually two problems, that people often mix up. One is how we get a sense of self, which I think is what you're talking about. Another is how qualia, like the perception of color, arise at all. Nobody seems to have any idea how that happens; we have no way to map some arrangement of atoms to a perception and prove from first principles that one leads to another.

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…

Maybe qualia is generational knowledge; Certain distinct objects developed differentiation and over time wee learned to associate it visually with color. Initially in our evolution we only had two wavelengths of color differentiation, but somewhere along the line a mutation caused a third, offset wavelength to appear. This is what color blindness is - my third mutated wavelength is just slightly closer to the second wavelength.

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

#135

Post by RhodoYolo »

micksabox wrote: post #124

I would be thrilled to hear somebody's theory of consciousness that takes into account the following axioms: 1. Consciousness demonstrates quantum non-locality. The U.S government via 3 letter agencies studied psychic phenomena like remote viewing for over 30 years under various names including Project Stargate(a). and was studied at Stanford Research Institute by scientists like Russell Targ and Hal Puthoff. 2. Cons…

Those two axioms would make a fantastic sci-fi novel.

The second one isn't that interesting to me philosophically, but your first questions gives rise to so many questions about human nature, free will, etc. Also, it would give credence to the theory that we are just one giant super consciousness. it'd also have the added affect of making the concept of war super brutal.

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

#136

Post by RhodoYolo »

musingsole wrote: post #71
FrameworkFred wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

^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.

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_magnetic_stimulat... ) is a very real thing that has been used for inducing behavioral modification effects.

HAHA this is why i love HN. Seems as though, given this wiki page that this has been an ongoing field of study for a while. Everyone seems to be dismissing this as out of pocket. I don't see why both action potentials, electromagnetic waves and whatever phenomenon we discover next can't be all contributing factors to consciousness?

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

#137

Post by jeremyjh »

DennisP wrote: post #98
thechao wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You get a pattern of electrical impulses. Is there something else in the brain that's not just protein cascades and electrical impulses? I'd be interested in a published paper describing this structure. Barring that, yes, experience really is just protein cascades and electrical impulses. A light bulb is orders of magnitude simpler — easily 10 or 12, maybe more; and, that's just spatial; the spatiotemporal complexi…

That's often people's assumption, that at some level of complexity, qualia just show up. But we don't actually have a clue why that might be the case, or how it happens, or why a pile of atoms banging against their neighbors should be considered a larger whole which thus has complexity and therefore consciousness. People think qualia must just show up this way because if you're committed to materialism, it seems ther…

> People think qualia must just show up this way because if you're committed to materialism, it seems there's no other option. But that's not an argument, it's just faith in materialism.

What other explanation is there? A magic fairy unicorn in the sky is making the qualia possible? How does that solve the problem you are pointing to, wouldn't we still want to get there via "first principals" ?

And if we did find a magic unicorn in the sky, we'd study it and probably eventually understand how it works, what forces are acting upon it or vice versa. And once we'd done all that, someone on a forum would say of course this can't explain qualia because its "just materialism".

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

#138

Post by phs318u »

RhodoYolo wrote: post #132
superkuh wrote: post #129

No. There's no evidence for that. There's an incredible mountain of evidence supporting the idea that neuronal action potentials are. The currents in neurons aren't even in the direction of the action potential propagation. They're perpendicular to it and only over a handful of tens of nanometers. Yes, the substrate of our macroscopic reality is dominated by electromagnetics but the brain isn't a very conductive plac…

but it begs the question; why? Obviously there is a biological necessity for these forms of propagation. I remember reading an old neuroscience textbook that said glial cells were purely support cells but they are finding a-lot of emergent phenomenon there as well.

Not finding an obvious "use" for something doesn't mean it doesn't have one. Especially when that thing has survived millions of years of evolutionary pressure to preserve useful stuff and cull useless stuff. Remember "junk DNA"? Turns out it wasn't junk. Anybody calling "useless" any of the outputs of nature's exquisite forge is likely to be proven wrong.

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

#139

Post by joubert »

bawolff wrote: post #117
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.

But you dont experience tallness as an objective property of the object. You view it relative to the scene, people who intimidate you appear taller, etc. The tallness might cause us different emotional experience too - maybe im intimidated, maybe it makes me feel safe, maybe it makes me feel trusting, etc Its entirely possible that when the exact same light hits our eyes to form a scene, you and i would experience th…

“ Another way of defining qualia is as "raw feels". A raw feel is a perception in and of itself, considered entirely in isolation from any effect it might have on behavior and behavioral disposition. In contrast, a cooked feel is that perception seen as existing in terms of its effects. For example, the perception of the taste of wine is an ineffable, raw feel, while the experience of warmth or bitterness caused by that taste of wine would be a cooked feel. Cooked feels are not qualia.” — Wikipedia

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

#140

Post by hackinthebochs »

ncmncm wrote: post #133
hackinthebochs wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 u…

None of that has the slightest bit to do with how brains work to weave the activity you have chosen to noun as "consciousness". Minding is activity brains perform, exactly as motion is activity cars perform. To imagine that mind can't come out of brain cells being brain cells is woolly mysticism that is pointless even to write: rejecting reason, you reject language and communication, and there is nobody to talk to an…

>Minding is activity brains perform, exactly as motion is activity cars perform.

This is a contentious claim, for which you have provided no arguments. Unsupported assertions are entirely useless in this discussion. My argument is very clear and straightforward. If you disagree, you should point out which premise you disagree with and why. Unspecific incredulity does not make an argument.

Note that my claim that consciousness supervenes on the dynamics of the EM field generated by the brain does not make it "mysticism". The EM field is a perfectly kosher physical property of the universe. The core claim of my argument is rather mundane in fact. If you feel compelled to resist the argument at all costs because it strikes you as mysticism, you simply didn't understand it.

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