[ExI] New consciousness paper

[Brent Allsop]

Hi Colin,

So is the paper available for free, someplace?

I'm very interested in the "hard problem of consciousness" but am having
troubles understanding how any of this has anything to do with that "Hard
Problem".

It's probably because I don't understand a bunch of it.  For example, what
is a "provision of consciousness"?

Isn't the 'hard problem' all about knowing what other minds are
qualitatively like?  (as in is my redness the same as yours?)

Brent






On Tue, Jun 24, 2014 at 11:28 PM, Colin Geoffrey Hales <
cghales at unimelb.edu.au> wrote:

>   Dear Folk,
>
> I thought you might be interested in the following paper, which is
> essentially my PhD outcome packaged into a journal paper (49 pages!),
> contextualised with respect to consciousness, and now finally published in
> a special journal issue on the ‘Hard problem of Consciousness’.
> Online-ready only at this point. Came out yesterday. There are 14
> supplementary videos.
>
> Hales, Colin G. 2014: 'The origins of the brain’s endogenous
> electromagnetic field and its relationship to provision of consciousness'. *Journal
> of Integrative Neuroscience*, Vol 13 Issue 2, pp. 1-49.
>
>
> http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0219635214400056?queryID=%24{resultBean.queryID}
> <http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0219635214400056?queryID=%24%7bresultBean.queryID%7d>
>
> *ABSTRACT*
>
> As a potential source of consciousness, the brain's endogenous
> electromagnetic (EM) field has much to commend it. Difficulties connecting
> EM phenomena and consciousness have been exacerbated by the lack of a
> specific conclusive biophysically realistic mechanism originating the EM
> field, its form and dynamics. This work explores a potential mechanism: the
> spatial and temporal coherent action of transmembrane ion channel currents
> which simultaneously produce electric and magnetic fields that dominate all
> other field sources. Ion channels, as tiny current filaments, express, at a
> distance, the electric and magnetic fields akin to those of a short
> (transmembrane) copper wire. Following assembly of appropriate formalisms
> from EM field theory, the paper computationally explores the scalar
> electric potential produced by the current filaments responsible for an
> action potential (AP) in a realistic hippocampus CA1 pyramidal neuron. It
> reveals that AP signaling can impress a highly structured, focused and
> directed "sweeping-lighthouse beam" that "illuminates" neighbors at mm
> scales. Ion channel currents thereby provide a possible explanation for
> both EEG/MEG origins and recently confirmed functional EM coupling effects.
> Finally, a physically plausible EM field decomposition is posited. It
> reveals objective and subjective perspectives intrinsic to the
> membrane-centric field dynamics. Perceptual "fields" can be seen to operate
> as the collective action of virtual EM-boson composites (called qualeons)
> visible only by "being" the fields, yet objectively appear as the familiar
> EM field activity. This explains the problematic evidence presentation and
> offers a physically plausible route to a solution to the "hard problem".
>
> For those impoverished and for those without institutional access I do
> have the preprint. Just email me.
>
> Traction. Finally. J
>
> Cheers
>
> Colin Hales
>
>
>
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