Is consciousness just a complex electromagnetic field?

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sciborg2

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« on: December 22, 2019, 09:15:38 pm »
Is consciousness just a complex electromagnetic field?

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There are many field theories of consciousness and McFadden is not the first to develop an electromagnetic field theory of consciousness. Field theories were first proposed in the 1940s by Kohler, Wallach and Held. John, Libet, Pockett, Jones and others have proposed electromagnetic theories in the last twenty years. Mostyn Jones’ 2013 paper, “Electromagnetic-field theories of mind,” is a great overview of this history.

My own General Resonance Theory of consciousness includes electromagnetic fields as a possible seat of consciousness, and the same holds with any physical field. EM fields differ, in my approach, in that while other physical fields like gravity or nuclear forces could be the seat of consciousness in some systems, EM fields are capable of far more complex and fast-acting consciousness. We see below that McFadden holds a similar view in this regard.

McFadden’s approach seems to be panpsychist, as Jones has suggested in his work, but McFadden denies this and, as with Giulio Tononi in my 2011 interview of him in my book, Eco, Ego, Eros, seems to shy away from the panpsychist implications of his theory.

I’ve been inspired by McFadden’s work over the years, even though we differ on some key issues (such as panpsychism), and it was an honor to be able to dialogue with him here. We conducted this interview by email in the latter half of 2019.

TaoHorror

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« Reply #1 on: January 10, 2020, 03:02:43 pm »
Interesting stuff, Sci - I take it's Tam Hunt you're quoting here? I don't know enough to contribute, but it would be interesting to learn how an EM generates self awareness.
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