Our Conscious Mind Could Be An Electromagnetic Field

Discussion in 'Human Science' started by whatsherface, Jul 1, 2002.

  1. whatsherface imaginary entity Registered Senior Member

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    Our Conscious Mind Could Be An Electromagnetic Field


    “The conscious electromagnetic information field is, at present, still a theory. But if true, there are many fascinating implications for the concept of free will, the nature of creativity or spirituality, consciousness in animals and even the significance of life and death.

    "The theory explains why conscious actions feel so different from unconscious ones ­- it is because they plug into the vast pool of information held in the brain's electromagnetic field,” Professor McFadden concluded.


    Interesting? What might those implications be?
     
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  3. Merlijn curious cat Registered Senior Member

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    mind-body problem solved?

    "The theory explains why conscious actions feel so different from unconscious ones "
    Eeeh. I thought that was just becuase you tend not to experience unconscious actions at all... they are after all not coming into consciousness.

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    I know what he is referring to, but it is sooo hard to explain. I tried that several times here on the forums, with only little succes. (since I wasn't succesful either, I won't critisize his explaination

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    ).

    In fact, the theory is not very new (heard several variants on it).
    What are the implications? Maybe the mind upload will be even harder to achieve.
    I don't see much spiritual implications.
    Simplyfied: if the body dies, the mind shuts off, just like an electro magnet with no power input.

    But the key question is does this solve the age-old mind body problem?
    Not necessarily. But it has very good potential. It really depends on how the transition from third-person description to first-person experience is proposed.

    third-person description: a description of events that describes in a communicable way.
    first-person experience: the actual experiencing of the events, and therefore not-communicable. one cabn only communicate a (3rd pers.) description of that first-person experience.

    I hope it not alltogether vague.
     
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  5. Firefly Registered Senior Member

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    Well, we know that the body has a small EM field... That the 'mind' also has one isn't completely... unbelieveable...
     
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  7. Xenu BBS Whore Registered Senior Member

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    The link that you gave described the implications of what they said, but did little in explaining why they think so. I don't know how one can make the leap and say that consciousness is this magnetic field. Does this mean that powerlines are conscious? Is the Earth conscious (ouu, I hear a Hegel reference coming on)? Maybe someone could explain more.
     
  8. Zero Banned Banned

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    No, this has a serious flaw. Does that mean that your thoughts would go crazy every time you went near a magnet, or when the sun started up a magnetic storm? No. The 'mind', is probably (in my oh so humble, NONprofessional opinion, I'd like some professionals in this field to correct me if I'm wrong) like software. The alignment and the change in the structure of the brain is the mind. The brain is hardware (with definite shape) and the mind is the software (a sort of noncorporeal abstract thing).

    I would say that asking where the mind is inside your brain is like asking where the program is inside a CD. It doesn't work.

    Of course, I could be waaaaay off the real thing, here. Anyone have some comments?
     
  9. glaucon tending tangentially Registered Senior Member

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    Gotta agree with Zero here. If our mind was completely EM, we would be unable to have any continuous sense of self; there's enough Em activity to destabilize what would have to be a coherent wave. We know that electrochemical neuronal activity does create some EM, but this doesn't mean that's 'where' the mind is. The problem here is a category mistake. Deriving mind from EM would be like saying the Mona Lisa was an emergent property of the paint Michelangelo used.
     
  10. whatsherface imaginary entity Registered Senior Member

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    Thanks for the comments.

    I think it's a good start to science perhaps finding something measurable relating to consciousness, and for that matter, something that does interact with others.

    The theory is here (pdf)

    Abstract
    The human brain consists of approximately 100 billion electrically active neurones that generate an endogenous electromagnetic (em) field, whose role in neuronal computing has not been fully examined. The source, magnitude and likely influence of the brain’s endogenous em field are here considered. An estimate of the strength and magnitude of the brain’s em field is gained from theoretical considerations, brain scanning and microelectrode data. An estimate of the likely influence of the brain’s em field is gained from theoretical principles and considerations of the experimental effects of external em fields on neurone firing both in vitro and in vivo. I point out that synchronous firing of distributed neurones phase-locks induced em field luctuations to increase their magnitude and influence. Synchronous firing has previously been demonstrated to correlate with awareness and perception, indicating that perturbations to the brain’s em field also correlate with awareness. I point out that the brain’s em field represents an integrated electromagnetic field representation of distributed neuronal information and has dynamics that closely map to those expected for a correlate of consciousness. I propose that the brain’s em information field is the physical substrate of conscious awareness - the cemi field - and make a number of predictions that follow from this proposal. Experimental evidence pertinent to these predictions is examined and shown to be entirely consistent with the cemi field theory. The cemi field theory provides solutions to many of the intractable problems of consciousness - such as the binding problem - and provides new insights into the role of consciousness, the meaning of free will and the nature of qualia. It thus places consciousness within a secure physical framework and provides a route towards constructing an artificial consciousness.
     
  11. Merlijn curious cat Registered Senior Member

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    haven't read the paper yet, but printed it and had a glance (yeah you know in my present condition I am not totally focussed on such matters, most of my recourses are spend on a certain young woman

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    ).
    The paper doesn't look promising at all, to my opininon.
    And there doesnot seem to be any clear cut link at all to consciousness, only to the orchestration of the complex organ called the brain. I whish the neuroscientists would learn that there is more to discuss than just the brain.
     
  12. whatsherface imaginary entity Registered Senior Member

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    Me too, but this seems the most promising start yet, where they may have to accept q model that must interact?
     
  13. kmguru Staff Member

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    I am a little confused. Anytime there is a collection of electrons that are moving - you get an EM field. That is basic fundamental physics (or EE). So what? What are we trying to arrive here?
     
  14. Rick Valued Senior Member

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    Well the theory is coorect,may be partially.

    some here said that if we bring a magnet near a man 's head would his thoughts change?

    could you please refer to some of my threads in AI forums.perhaps that would enlighten you.

    thanks.


    bye!
     
  15. GeraldoRivera Registered Member

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    Yes , the collective conscious....or as Carl Jung said, "The Collective Unconscious."

    http://www.psychoheresy-aware.org/jungleg.html

    http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/cjung.htm
     
  16. Merlijn curious cat Registered Senior Member

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    I am afraid you are overestimating the matter:
    1. the Em fields are extremely weak and work on short distances
    2. such a field (even when stronger) could never convey any usefull information
    3. and even if the field was strong enough and informations could be conveuyed though the field, we have no sensors to pick it up.

    I believe the point of the article was that the ions in the neuronal system are influenced by the activity of other neurons.
     
  17. GeraldoRivera Registered Member

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    Not at all

    1) Yes, the Electromagnetic fields are quite weak, but so is the Em field surrounding a mamalian brain. Just because a silcon based amplification circuit cannot detect these signals at a distance is like saying that Galileo could not see Gamma Hydra, so it must not exist!

    2) Little is really known about the complex electromagnetic fields that may or may NOT carry this possible type of information. We may think of electromagnetic transmission in terms of modulated carrier waves (radio), but is this all to be known about radiated energy? No.

    3) In fact, all of our five (accepted) senses are specifically set up to receive these types of energies. Even though this theoeretical energy may pass through air/space, the best receptor is going to be based on the sender.

    Just because a high quality radio receiver cannot pick up these signals doesn't mean that humans can't! I have done a bit of piddling into the electronics engineering sciences, over the decades (a hobby). Actually, I am more amazed at how insensitive modern electronic amplifiers really are, to say nothing of basic RF filtering.

    I believe that the human (mamalian) mind is far & above in it's abilities to distinguish magnetic signals/information. I suspect, strongly, that even the most up to date equipment pales in comparison to the Collective Unconscious biological brain/mind. Evolution.
     
  18. GeraldoRivera Registered Member

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    Interesting~notable~

    A D V E N T U R E S in C Y B E R S O U N D
    Nathan Stubblefield : 1858 - 1928


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    Somewhere in the shadows of the early history of radio looms the mysterious figure of Nathan B. Stubblefield. Nathan B. Stubblefield? Nora Blatch? Reginald A. Fessenden? Professor Amos Dolbear? Where do they get those names?

    Stubblefield was born in, grew up in, lived in, and died in Murray , Kentucky. The citizens of that miniscule town were affectionate towards their mad radio genius, and erected a monument to Stubblefield in 1930. They called him The Father of Radio.

    Stubblefield was poor, and a mystic. He was a mendicant and a martyr to his invention...convinced that everyone wanted to steal it from him. Jim Lucas said that his home was so wired "that if a stranger approached within a half a mile, it set off a battery of bells." And Stubblefield, stubby mystic that he was, said:


    "I have solved the problem of telephoning without wires through the earth as Signor Marconi has of sending signals through space. But, I can also telephone without wires through space as well as through the earth, because my medium is everywhere."

    "My medium is everywhere"; said the self-taught inventor who would later tell people that he would turn whole hillsides light with "mysterious beams", Stubblefield, the mystic of the mystic transmission of waves through air and land and water, to the nether reaches of the stars.
    Everybody in Murray knew about Stubblefield's Black Box, which made the light and voices appear out of thin air. In 1892, (14 years before Fessenden's experiment from Brant Rock) he handed his friend Rainey T. Wells a box, and told him to walk away from the shack, Stubblefield always lived in a shack, Wells said later:


    "I had hardly reached my post.. when I heard I heard HELLO RAINEY come booming out of the receiver. I jumped a foot and said to myself THIS FELLOW IS FOOLING ME. HE HAS WIRES SOMEPLACE. (Wells moved a few feet further on.) All the while he kept talking to me...but there were no wires, I tell you."

    Early radio magic, the magic of sending the voice through nothing. But they stole his invention. Of course: they always do. The Wireless Telephone Company of America, set up by "promoters" and "speculators"... smooth talkers (unlike the verbally rustic Stubblefield) who jacked up the price of the stock, then disappeared. Stubblefield wrote for the prospectus:

    "I can telephone without wires a mile or more now, and when the more powerful apparatus on which I am working is finished, combined with further developments, the distance will be unlimited..."

    Stubblefield called the New York promoters a bunch of "damned rascals". He said they were "defrauding the public". What he meant was that they were defrauding his dream of unlimited voices, for unlimited distances, and with unlimited lights. They wanted to take his loops and coils and make money.

    Stubblefield was so devastated by these "animals from the city" that in 1913 he went back to his shack and for fifteen years was barely seen. Sometimes the neighbors saw him "from a distance" and some observers reported seeing mysterious lights and hearing weird sounds in the vicinity of Stubblefield's home.

    Two weeks before his death, Stubblefield visited with a neighbor, Mrs. L.E. Owens. He asked her to write his story. He said:


    "I've lived fifty years before my time. The past is nothing. I have perfected now the greatest invention the world has ever known. I've taken light from the air and the earth as I did with sound.. I want you to know about making a whole hillside blossom with light..."

    In 1928, Nathan B. Stubblefield of Murray, Kentucky died at seventy of starvation...and too many visions.

    Source: http://wfmu.org/LCD/GreatDJ/Stubble.html



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    Nathan B. Stubblefield is reputed to have made the first wireless voice transmissions in 1892 in Murray, Kentucky. His goal was to develop a method of "general transmission of news of every description." For some reason, the business arrangements were unsatisfactory, and Stubblefield went into seclusion, continuing to research until his death in 1928.

    One major problem: no way to transmit other than very short distances. Another, it not certain he even used "radio waves", instead relying on an induction field. The issue is hotly debated in Kentucky, and the Kentucky Association of Broadcasters does not recognize Stubblefield's claims.


    Source: http://www.fedele.com/website/tech/bcst-faq.htm



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    This article tells the story of Nathan Stubblefield and his almost-invention, the cell phone. In 1902, the Kentucky melon farmer, who had spent all of his time and money on his inventions, developed the first (albeit primitive) cellular phone. Years earlier, Stubblefield had developed and implemented the mechanical phone in a few Kentucky towns. This invention, which was like the well-known tin-cans-and-string models that kids make, was outmoded when the Bell telephone company moved into Kentucky.

    Then, Stubblefield decided to try a wireless phone because he figured that it would be too difficult and expensive to string wires and poles all over rural Kentucky. To do this, Stubblefield used electromagnetic induction. The invention worked, but reception failed after about a half mile, so Stubblefield turned to natural conduction instead (meaning that instead of using wires, the systems used water or land). Sadly, Stubblefield was cheated by a company who stole his invention, and he became a hermit who died of starvation a few years later.

    I think that this story is interesting, not because of Stubblefield's near-contributions to technology, but rather because of the visions he had of the future. It's almost impossible for us to imagine what our world would be like without various types of telecommunications, yet less than a century ago, people like Nathan Stubblefield worked tirelessly to contribute new ideas and media to society.


    Source: http://instruct.comm.cornell.edu/pub/comm626/reviews/reports/hammond9.html



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    On the lawn of the court house in Murray, Kentucky, there is a stone memorial which commemorates the day in 1892 that Nathan Stubblefield performed an unusual demonstration.

    Stubblefield, a farmer and telephone repairman living in Calloway County, Kentucky, claimed he could send messages through the air without wires, a claim which attracted a huge crowd of spectators. At points about two hundred feet apart on the lawn, Stubblefield and his son had set up two boxes that were not connected in any visible way.

    Each box was about two feet square and contained a telephone, through which stubblefield and his son talked as if they were standing next to each other, their voices being perfectly audible to the crowds gathered around each box. It's said that his demonstration was greeted by hoots and snickers, causing the inventor to angrily gather up his equipment and leave.

    However, word of the demonstration reached the St. Louis Post Dispatch, who wrote to Stubblefield to request another demonstration. Weeks later, the newspaper received a simple postcard: "Have accepted your invitation. Come to my place any time. Nathan Stubblefield." The Post Dispatch reporter arrived at the farm on January 10, 1902, and was handed a telephone attached to two steel rods about four feet long each, and was instructed to go anywhere in the neighborhood, stick the rods in the ground, and put the receiver to his ear.

    In an article written later, the reporter described how he traveled about a mile from the inventor's farm, stabbed the rods into the ground, and... "I could hear every syllable the Stubblefield boy spoke into the transmitter as clearly as if he were just across the room!" According to the same article, Stubblefield claimed his apparatus worked by using the electrical field which permeates all matter.

    The newspaper article won Stubblefield an invitation to demonstrate his invention in Philadelphia; this demonstration, in May 1902, is said to have done well. From there the inventor went to washington, D.C., where it's said he amazed scientists with his discovery. At this demonstration one of his boxes was placed on a steamship, the Bartholdi, on the Potomac River, while a number of other boxes were positioned along the shore at sites of the users' choosing.

    Again, communication between the boxes -- including the one on the ship -- was fantastically clear. The Washington Evening Star's headline for May 21, 1902, read: "First Practical Test of Wireless Telegraphy Heard for Half Mile. Invention of Kentucky Farmer. Wireless telephony demonstrated beyond question."

    Strangely, Stubblefield never marketed his invention. After his stunning success in Washington, he packed up and went home, afraid, some said, of havinfg his ideas stolen. He's also said to have taken out patents of his equipment, but that these patents don't make sense to those who've studied them. Stubblefield dropped out of the public eye. In the Spring of 1929 he was found dead in his home, his equipment was gone, and his records scattered.
     
  19. kmguru Staff Member

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    Many years ago, I was doing some research into the bio-electric area and looked into several papers on research of salmander limb regeneration. The researcher was able to deduce that the regeneration takes place from electrical signals in the order of nanoamps. When the researcher recorded the signal and tried to inject the signal on a healthy leg area, the Salmander started growing a deformed additional leg. The researcher noted that, at the time, several factored prevented him from creating a perfect leg namely:

    Signal isolation was a major problem at the nanoamp level.
    Signal to noise ratio was terrible even with the best recorder.
    The signal seemed to be coded, but deciphering could not be done.

    Just some food for thought.
     
  20. Merlijn curious cat Registered Senior Member

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    Geraldo,
    I was talking about the brain's EM.
    Retinal neurons and heat sensors in the skin (I forget their proper name) are the only neurons (I am aware of) sensitive to EM radiation; those sensory neurons are much less sensitive then the most senitive "silicon based" sensors.
    Apart from that, your conclusion is not correct. You make a universal-existential error.

    True, but what other information, apart from "activity is present" can be conveyed?

    What are you refrring to? All psychologists know that the idea of "five accepted senses" is a medieval conception.
    And what is theoretical energy? and what does the rest mean, I can't make heads or taiols from that.

    Forget the Collective Unconscious (or Subconsciousness, as Jung called it!), it's an impossible idea. Just as Freud's idea of subconsciousness, it runs into logical inconsistencies!
    BTW The term subconsciousness is specific for psychoanalisys, wheras unconsciousness is a much more general term.
     
  21. Merlijn curious cat Registered Senior Member

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    I think we should agree on what we mean by information and signal. I get the feeling we are talking different subjects here.

    Here is a quote from my piece on Representations in Perception-Action Coupling
     
  22. whatsherface imaginary entity Registered Senior Member

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    Thank you for those, Geraldo.

    I hadn't heard of him before, *sigh* poor man!



    The weakest electromagnetic field could be detected from any distance, if only the receptor were capable of distinguishing it from the noise. Distance is not a limit. We have yet to invent anything even remotely as sensitive as our own brains.

    This theory, should it prove a goer, and i haven't yet seen any disproof, may well allow science to consider seriously the idea of a "collective unconscious", and a lot of other things which have been kneejerk rubbished as impossible simply because no plausible physical explanation could be established. It even lends credence to such way out theories as Sheldrake's "Morphic Resonance"?
     
  23. Merlijn curious cat Registered Senior Member

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    aaah I feared that the Drake of Shells would show up in this discussion somewhere.
     

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