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. (shrink)

The electromagnetic field theory of consciousness proposes that conscious experiences are identical with certain electromagnetic patterns generated by the brain. While the theory has always acknowledged that not all of the electromagnetic patterns generated by brain activity are conscious, until now it has not been able to specify what might distinguish conscious patterns from non-conscious patterns. Here a hypothesis is proposed about the 3D shape of electromagnetic fields that are conscious, as opposed to those that are not conscious. Seven predictions (...) arising from this hypothesis are described. Existing empirical evidence shows that four of these predictions have already been successfully tested. Requirements for experimental testing of the other three are discussed. (shrink)