I agree, and I was about to post the same thing. The idea of quantum processes fueling consciousness is my latest obsession. Specifically because I have genetic polymorphisms in the DNM3 gene that help maintain the functionality of these microtubules.
And let’s just say my experience of reality, or my consciousness, is quite unusual. My gene polymorphisms in DNM3 are linked to obsessive compulsive disorder, which I have.
Like Penrose said, I believe our consciousness is an electromagnetic field, and not anything solid, but rather a femoral and affected by electromagnetic forces inside and outside of our brain
Interesting. I don't know that it's a literal electromagnetic field, but it does seem to be a dynamic pattern. I don't personally think I have enough information yet to guess at what medium that pattern is encoded in (I mean, except, broadly, "Brain stuff").
Not long ago, I suffered the first bout of unexpected unconsciousness I'd ever experienced; a series of unfortunate events caused me to pass out from pain (which I didn't quite understand was really a thing before then... Haha no that's real, you can get your brain shorted out from too much pain signal). The experience was a little... Cosmologically-reframing. It wasn't like sleep; it was a missing-time experience. Like, post-event me is acutely aware of a lack of me in that period of time; the body was there (I assume; I couldn't see it but there's nowhere for it to have gone), the thing I'd call myself seems to have completely 404'd for about a half hour.
Put lots of thoughts of my own mortality in my head. Not sure I'd recommend it.
> I believe our consciousness is an electromagnetic field
Well, this is almost certainly true in some very vague sense - I mean, it seems much more unlikely to meaningfully categorize it as a gravitational phenomenon, or a strong interaction phenomenon or a weak interaction phenomenon. Though it would be cool if somehow it turned out our minds had color charge.
Of course, this is only the same sense in which Linux and McDonalds and potatoes are also electromagnetic fields, or phenomena related to it.
I think sometimes people forget that when we think of "chemistry", we're talking about an approximation based on behavior that ultimately emerges from quantum effects. It's just that you don't often need to model the full wavefunction to talk about an iron atom's ionization state in that cuvette where you're testing your pool water.
We don't see a lot of macro-scale quantum weirdness because big and warm directly implies vast amounts of interaction - decoherence.
Note that decoherence is only part of the answer. It explains why we don't see constructive interference, but it doesn't explain other effects that are missing from the classical world, such as why all classical objects have definite properties in the same measurment basis.
I've had a weird thought that it might be that consciousness is the result of a quantum field that collapses to instantiate a consciousness when enough feedback mechanisms are present to allow for its function. Of course, this is likely not true, but it would explain a few things.
It does, we actually use Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation to treat Major Depressive Disorder and a few other things. Precisely because electromagnetic waves can alter our perceptions and behavior.
Your use of "is" here is problematic (and that's what triggered the other responses).
I guess you mean "like". That would be accurate: TMS is disrupting normal brain activity a little like ECT does. It alters consciousness because it causes a partial reboot - an altered state. Drugs (and sleep and love and anger and meditation) also cause altered states. (Not to imply that any of these altered states are the same!)
The “is” I meant is that it induces an electric current in the brain. I’m sure there’s some subtlety (in the temporal and spatial patterns) but whether current is flowing between electrodes or is induced from a changing magnetic field, it’s still current, the effects of which are what we’re seeing.
Crucially, there is no special magnetic interaction with the brain beyond Faraday’s law, as people seem to be implying.
A changing magnetic field induces an electric field; this is how asynchronous motors work.
Having been in the room with a patient undergoing TMS a couple dozen times, I can assure you that the electromagnet will induce a muscle twitch from the electric field it creates. What it doesn't do is cause a seizure, which is the typical desired result of ECT.
This is just 100% false. To say that TMS is electric shock therapy because it changed electrical signals in the brain is totally misleading, if not, totally misunderstanding the science of the relationship between electricity and magnetism.
The fact that both electricity and magnetism can affect neurotransmission does not mean that TMS and ECT are the same thing. When they give people ECT they’re giving them controlled seizures. In TMS this is not the case at all.
Oh, please don’t be silly. I think this is one of these comments that serve no purpose here. Most Magnets are too weak to possibly affect consciousness.
> But I might want to continue and ask you a question, and this is just out of curiosity, do you think consciousness is made of matter?
You might want to stop calling people silly if you want them to answer your random questions. You'd have to define consciousness to ask that question because every person that overthinks these topics has their own personal definition and they are 100% sure they are right.
I didn’t say you were silly, I said you were being silly. And I was actually being nice because what you said was actually demeaning.
“Careful around magnets my friend, your consciousness will change a lot if you're right.”
That was just flat out ridicule with no scientific or philosophical rationale and was not useful to the conversation whatsoever.
As I pointed out before consciousness as well defined. I’m not defining consciousness. I’m explaining how consciousness arises. Or what consciousness is. Consciousness does not arrive from matter, but instead matter arises from consciousness. Consciousness, or fields, are the driving force of the formation of matter.
I want to say in light of all the down votes you’re getting on this, that I agree with you.
I believe everything is a field and a probability. That objects have no defined borders, but our brains create these borders to reconcile with the probability of a thing being in a certain area. I think the proof this comes when we understand that we never really touch anything, it’s only the electromagnetic field that we are experiencing from another object.
Cheers mate. Also, I’m sorry to read you are homeless according to your description. We have family that suffer from schizophrenia and would be otherwise homeless without our support. I hope you have such a network.
Thank you, unfortunately, I don’t have such a network. And I actually have schizoaffective disorder, not schizophrenia. I often say schizophrenia to make it simple for people. But my family the ones who were not ill were not really helpful to those who were ill. And hence my current position.
And can I just say that YouTube video and the demonstration with the magnets? Wow. I don’t see how any physicist can look at that and not have a total change of mind. That it’s the fields that are the formative function of what we call the universe well when you see it, so much more seems to make sense. I knew when I was in ninth grade that materialism had its end because the infinite aspect of cutting something into just did not sit right in my mind and therefore, I just intuitively thought that everything was really made up of nothing.
Thank you for that and now I have a whole new series of videos to watch!
https://www.uniprot.org/uniprotkb/Q9UQ16/entry
And let’s just say my experience of reality, or my consciousness, is quite unusual. My gene polymorphisms in DNM3 are linked to obsessive compulsive disorder, which I have.
Like Penrose said, I believe our consciousness is an electromagnetic field, and not anything solid, but rather a femoral and affected by electromagnetic forces inside and outside of our brain