The mind as a physical field?
Physicists say that the stuff of the world consists of particles of matter and fields. If one wants to hold on to a naturalistic world view, one must assign consciousness either to matter or to a field. Only the latter seems plausible.
That means, from the features of a physical field conclusions can be drawn to features of the human consciousness.
And also the other way around. From the directly experienced consciousness one can make inferences to physical fields.
Physical fields can causally influence matter. So our mind can move our body.
Fields seem to emerge from solid matter, just as the magnetic field emerges from the magnet.
In the same way, our consciousness arises from our body, or more precisely, from our highly complex organized brain.
Consciousness involves a complete sequential dynamism. It is essentially dynamic, not something static.
Consciousness comes only in the absolute sense that it comes into being, and it also goes only in the absolute sense that it passes away. It always does both at once, so that it in no sense actually persists,
Consciousness is thus precisely an absolute change, in which there is nothing that does not change, and in which panta rhei.
What has been said for consciousness must then also apply to physical fields.
That means, from the features of a physical field conclusions can be drawn to features of the human consciousness.
And also the other way around. From the directly experienced consciousness one can make inferences to physical fields.
Physical fields can causally influence matter. So our mind can move our body.
Fields seem to emerge from solid matter, just as the magnetic field emerges from the magnet.
In the same way, our consciousness arises from our body, or more precisely, from our highly complex organized brain.
Consciousness involves a complete sequential dynamism. It is essentially dynamic, not something static.
Consciousness comes only in the absolute sense that it comes into being, and it also goes only in the absolute sense that it passes away. It always does both at once, so that it in no sense actually persists,
Consciousness is thus precisely an absolute change, in which there is nothing that does not change, and in which panta rhei.
What has been said for consciousness must then also apply to physical fields.
Comments (46)
I think is quite contradictory, at least in physical fields, say that there is change and no change. I say this because physics (general aspect/study) wants to develop the changes in our environment or reality. Probably consciousness can peak this criteria because their complexity. Nevertheless physics could sound empty if we say is a fiel with absolute change but at the end doesn’t change. Keep in mind that this science wants study the practical world, so there will be always change.
Evident in sight, a sense, mind-body phenomenon, which shows us mental abstractions of universe information. That coloured, textourous matter and energy isn't the same for an animal with a lesser eye than a human.
Mind makes an abstraction for the body using eyes, so naturally, the mind alone is a field with a brain core.
P.S. I thought I'd mention the core brain before you float away or pop!
So your point here is that those fields are dynamic because it could change and not change at the same time?
Exactly.
Good point though, I learned from it.
You might find this interesting: https://aeon.co/essays/does-consciousness-come-from-the-brains-electromagnetic-field
Well, no, they don't. So there's that for you to contend with.
It is not that they change and at the same time do not change, they are absolute change without there being anything that changes. They are substrate-less in this sense. That is, they are not like the waves in the water, which is the substrate for the waves. The fields are only waves.
Perfect! Now, I understand your point. Very good argument :100: :up:
I would say there is no force carrier in a direct sense. The consciousness field originates from the body. So the body in some sense provides the energy. To your second question one could perhaps say that yes brain waves are already measured.
I thought of the field as a genus, of which there are many species, like the electromagnetic field and perhaps also our mental. Therefore, I thought a distinction of the two would be insignificant.
One of my presuppositions beside naturalism was also that our mind moves our body. There would be a direct proof for the causal-physical effectiveness of the mental of our mind, because we experience it so.
However, if the law of conservation of energy is violated in the process, is it so bad that this law is violated? Is the law really inviolable?
There you go.
Some physicists (eg. Rovelli) say that the stuff of the world consists of interrelated events, whether we perceive them as consolidating (matter) or interacting (fields). If we consider consciousness to consist of interacting events as a field, what might those events be?
Lisa Feldman Barrett describes an ongoing event constructed by our interoceptive network (brain and central nervous system) from internal and external sensory data - which she refers to as interoception of affect. This is a four-dimensional construct of current valence and arousal in the organism. She also describes an ongoing prediction of affect, constructed as this interoceptive event feeds back into our conceptual system. The interaction of these two events generates a field of difference (information) in affect, as a four-dimensional distribution map or wavefunction of energy/information consisting of attention/valence and effort/arousal across the organism, effecting movement in the body and adjustment to the conceptual system as required for allostasis.
Body and mind are not two, they are one. Mind IS body and body IS mind. In the abstract nature of thought, which divides that which is indivisible, the ability to associate sounds, with things which are not sounds, is the powerful asset of language, which give humans a huge advantage over other animals on earth. Ownership, is an illusion, we do not have a body, we ARE a body. We do not have consciousness, we ARE consciousness.
Mostyn W. Jones – Electromagnetic-Field Theories of Mind
Journal of Consciousness Studies, 20, No. 11–12, 2013
Paper received October 2011; revised July 2013.
"Abstract: Neuroscience investigates how neuronal processing circuits work, but it has problems explaining experiences this way. For example, it hasn’t explained how colour and shape circuits bind together in visual processing, nor why colours and other qualia are experienced so differently yet processed by circuits so similarly, nor how to get from processing circuits to pictorial images spread across inner space. Some theorists turn from these circuits to their electromagnetic fields to deal with such difficulties concerning the mind’s qualia, unity, privacy, and causality. They include Kohler, Libet, Popper, Lindahl, Arhem, Charman, Pockett, John, McFadden, Fingelkurts, Maxwell, and Jones. They’re classifiable as computationalist, reductionist, dualist, realist, interactionist, epiphenomenalist, globalist, and localist. However, they’ve never been analysed together as a whole, which hinders evaluations of them. This article tries to rectify this. It concludes that while field theories face challenges, they aren’t easily dismissed, for they draw on considerable evidence and may avoid serious problems in neuroscience concerning the mind’s qualia, unity, causality, and ontology."
"9. Conclusions
Standard neuroscience investigates how neuronal processing works. But it has problems explaining the mind’s qualia, unity, privacy, and causality this way. For example, it isn’t clear about why colours and other qualia are processed so similarly yet experienced so differently, how colour and shape information unite in visual processing, and how abstract information, concrete brain activities, and private experiences are causally and ontologically related given their radical differences.
Field theories of mind try to avoid such problems by turning from neurons to their fields. Here minds typically get their unity from the continuous nature of the fields generated by discrete neurons, while different qualia arise from different structures in the fields. These qualia are private (not publicly accessible) either because they’re non-physical or because they’re the underlying nature of fields (hidden behind what instruments and reflected light show). Mind–brain causality is (in the simplest field theories) just field–brain causality. Field theories offer new ontological approaches to dualism’s problematic causality and reductionism’s explanatory gap. Field theories face their own problems, but they’re progressively improving upon each other (see Table 1). These theories can’t be easily dismissed, for they’re based on considerable evidence and they offer powerful ways of dealing with standard neuroscience’s deepest problems."
But "fields" doesn't solve those problems.
I've thought for some time that phenomena involving waves may be a crucial aspect of the mechanism of consciousness. There certainly are synchonised waves of neuronal activity, and one can easily imagine how that could lead to unification, integration. But I don't think this explains conscious experience, it's just speculation at this stage. The "fields" idea also seems like speculation. I'm surprised to see an academic article like this about it.
"However, they’ve never been analysed together as a whole, which hinders evaluations of them. This article tries to rectify this. It concludes that while field theories face challenges, they aren’t easily dismissed, for they draw on considerable evidence and may avoid serious problems in neuroscience concerning the mind’s qualia, unity, causality, and ontology."
Shouldn't we be hearing about some of that evidence in this abstract?
My own personal philosophical worldview, Enformationism, is intended to be naturalistic, except that it requires a conscious First Cause, which existed prior to the Big Bang beginning of our world -- hence super-natural, or meta-natural, or preter-natural. It's merely a layman's thesis, proposing an evolutionary process to explain how Life & Mind could emerge from the physical interactions of fundamental particles or substances. In that theory, the fundamental substance of reality is Information (EnFormAction), which occurs in both tangible physical (matter) & intangible meta-physical (energy) forms.
Recently I came across a novel theory postulated by Johnjoe McFadden, professor of Quantum Biology & Molecular Genetics. He calls it Conscious Electromagnetic Information (cemi), and it seems to fit neatly into my hypothesis of the origin of Consciousness via natural processes. I'm pretty sure this CEMI theory is also currently in the hypothetical stage, but it should allow for some empirical verification. And it also appears to be be compatible with Tononi's Integrated Information Theory (I.I.T.). So, it looks like these professional conjectures are on the same track with your notion of the "mind as a physical field". However, I suspect that the "Mind Field" would have some different properties & effects from the various "energy fields" of Physics, including the well-known Magnetic & Electromagnetic Fields. :smile:
Electromagnetic theories of consciousness :
McFadden has proposed that the brain's electromagnetic field creates a representation of the information in the neurons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_theories_of_consciousness
The EnFormAction Hypothesis :
http://bothandblog3.enformationism.info/page23.html
Thanks for the tips. Most here seem somewhat "hostile" to the idea that consciousness or the mental might be related to a physical field in perhaps only a remote sense. To me, the connection of the two is forward-looking and promising.
Here you can find the whole article
https://philpapers.org/archive/JONETO.pdf
I suspect that scientist's "hostility" to the notion of a Mind Field, that might extend beyond the brain or body, is due to its similarity to New Age notions of Consciousness as something like a radio signal that the brain tunes-in to. But, McFadden himself noted that the neuron fields he studies have a very short range from the emitter. So his theory may not provide much support for those who believe in Mind-Reading and remote Mind Control. Elon Musk's Neuralink technology is still quite primitive and clunky, compared to Mr. Spock's Mind Meld. :smile:
Mind Field :
In a circa-2002 publication of The Journal of Consciousness Studies, the electromagnetic theory of consciousness faced an uphill battle for acceptance among cognitive scientists. Scientific study of consciousness has only recently begun to gain acceptance as a legitimate scientific discipline, and some think field theories like McFadden's are unscientific beliefs that threaten their hard-won legitimacy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_theories_of_consciousness
Neuralink :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1nDo8KYozU
So much more exists in the brain than neuron synapsing. The analogy to a computer's electrical wiring is hugely inadequate. Investigating chemistry in the soma and glia will lead to a revolution in our model of brain structure. It will be key to comprehend the molecules involved in hallucinatory states, and define exactly how the additiveness of electromagnetic fields and further kinds of coherence fields with nanoscale, quantum entangled molecular complexes works.
I doubt that the conscious Mind is literally an electro-magnetic field. If it was, we could easily learn how to read minds, just as we tune our radios to E-M frequencies. Energy fields can only be detected by their effects on matter; the field itself is invisible and intangible.
A "field" just a familiar physical concept that we can use as a metaphor for an immaterial function. For me the mind-field consists only of Information, imagined as a kind of energy. Energy is also not a material object, but an invisible matrix or pattern of mathematical relationships and ratios. So it's not necessarily the physical neurons or glia or cells or molecules that generate the mind-field, but more likely contributions from the whole body to the complex pattern of relationships, that can only be seen by the mind's eye. So far, scientists have found no way to detect mind-fields, if they indeed exist. The physical E-M analogy is a handy way to think about meta-physical minds. But it can be misleading if taken literally.
As far as we know, unlike Energy, individual minds have only local effects on the thinking subject, and no effect on material objects (psychokinesis). So, in order to communicate with other minds, we have to translate incorporeal thoughts into physical material objects that serve as symbols or proxies for immaterial ideas. But that real-world limitation doesn't stop people from trying to bend spoons with their minds, and imagining all kinds of mental powers, such as Chi -- which martial artists in video games use like laser beams to vanquish their simulated enemies. :cool:
I think the electromagnetic field might suffice to make a trillion trillion atoms in neurons of the brain (or whatever the amount is) simultaneously reside in states of quantum entanglement. Scientists entangled 15 trillion atoms at 350 degrees Farenheit, and an action potential easily reaches that amount of energy, but as electricity rather than heat. The axon is insulated by the myelin sheath so that a neuron loses minimal energy while the ion cascade occurs, and all of this electrical energy is spouted into the soma where it probably produces a very strong coherence (entanglement) field at the nano or micro scale, channeled into functional form by nuanced biochemical arrays and pathways while generating the nonlocal magnetic effects always characteristic of electric currents.
The action potentials in billions of neurons are synched up by dendrite linkages so that their coherence fields are extremely coordinated, which is probably responsible for standing waves in the brain, a sort of macroscopic cycling built from said microscopic fields.
Systems of coherence fields within coherence fields superposition (blend) because they are composed of particles with wavelike properties, exactly like the additive nature of the visible light spectrum. Action potentials are a timing and energy amplification mechanism, but coherence fields in the soma and probably glial cells as well must be the additive substance of qualitative perception (in consort with organs of sensation): subjective color, sound, smell, taste, touch, feel, vastly variable quantum resonances amongst wavicles.
This of course does not mean the brain's electromagnetic field is the only coherence field that contributes to consciousness, for the range of nonlocal phenomena in natural environments seems huge and a lot of what matter does and consists in is still unknown, but is probably enough to provide the foundation of that which occurs within our heads.
Because a field is a single partless place extended in space. So it's a candidate for the 'one' part of the many-in-one nature of experience.
And in any case, "a consciousness field" or whatever would only make "binding" more of a problem since that would suggest a higher level "hive mind" or binding of multiple minds as well. No evidence of the "hive mind" (or "telepathy") as a "mind, or consciousness, field" implies though, so a (e.g. panpsychist) "field theory of consciousness" is merely an implausible, unwarranted, idle speculation (woo-of-the-gaps).
Oh well that settles it then