Consciousness Rising

Let’s take an outrageously speculative dive into how consciousness may arise. We start by reminding ourselves what we mean by “aware”. A is “aware” of B if A encodes information about B in a way that includes electromagnetic fields. In the case of our central nervous system, that will often include responding to B by encoding some sort of internal representation of B in neuronal activity. Biological inputs to cortical neurons cause them to become more active and thereby create or enhance an electromagnetic field, (EMF). That means, in response to a stimulus there are both material and immaterial changes in the brain. That EMF is an immaterial event that includes mindness properties and thus may be part of our unconscious mind. We can measure an EMF, objectively. The experience of our unconscious mind, however, is subjective, a private matter. The changing EMF, triggered by the stimulus, feeds back on the originating cortical cells, modifying the behavior of those cells, which of course, modifies the EMF those cells produce. In other words, the EMF feeds back on its source, changing the source’s behavior, which then changes the EMF. In other words, the EMF is responding to, and encoding information about, itself, which, in our model, means it is aware of itself, what it is doing. Awareness of awareness is our working definition of consciousness. Our cortical EMF bootstraps itself into consciousness. Neurons are not the only material actors contributing to this drama. There are many others. There are, for one example, more neuroglia cells in the brain, than neurons.

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