Fields are the antithesis of
discontinuity. As such they are crucial for telling us what
consciousness is, or at least what it may be.
See the picture above? It was
chosen in order to show effects of fields, such as electric fields.
There is a very complex set of interactions involved, allowed to a considerable extent by the sensibly infinite gradations of the electric fields driving the charged particles emitting light.
What we get from electric fields is an essentially infinite set of possibilities of forces, interactions, and configurations, just the sort of effects necessary for the essentially infinite possibilities in sensory (visual, in this case) consciousness (actually, quantum mechanics rules that the
gradations are not continuous, but we are allowed to think in infinite gradational effects
so long as we're discussing human sensibilities, which normally are too
coarse to recognize quantum steps).
Nervous impulses are not in the least akin to
fields, nor, for that matter, are they what we apparently experience in
consciousness with its infinite gradations and variability. There
is one caveat, however: even
discontinuous nerve spikes moving down the same nerve may have
meaningful connections via electrical fields, which no doubt would have
some impact on the electrical force opening voltage-gated ion
channels. Far more interesting, however, are the connections
possible between nerves via the electrical fields, and their subtle
impacts on coordination and timing of nerve impulses.
Fields that are being disturbed are constantly
adjusting their energy and information states. And they do so
with infinite (on the human scale) variation and precision. One
portion of the field may be affected by an arbitrarily large number of
forces operating within the same field, thus providing the scope for
simultaneity and interactivity of a kind not found in other brain
phenonomena. That consciousness mirrors the predictable effects
occurring within a complex and changing electric field ought to be
considered unlikely to be mere coincidence.
As mentioned elsewhere on this site, the stability
of nerve impulses is extremely important, however the quanta that a
nerve impulse exists as does not itself provide for much subtle
interactivity with the rest of the information existing in the other
nerves. let alone any simultaneous coordination over a collection of
nerves all existing in close proximity to each other. The fields
allow for a large variety of interactions between nerves, and probably
a limited scope for useful interaction between nerve spikes in the same
nerve. It is probably fairly early to speculate on just what the
useful inter-nerve electric field activity would consist in, but from
patterned signaling across nerves to eventual lockstep coordination
between nerves (the latter is probably not
highly conscious) could very well be
happening.
The range of possibilities must be large within
electrical fields
as complicated and varied as those in the brain. Ion
concentrations both within and without nerves would serve to inhibit or
facilitate the travel of action-potentials along nerves having mainly
voltage-gated channels (their concentrations might also have a chemical
effect, but the reaction would be less quick, or informationally
relevant, as field changes would be). Thus the actual spike on
the nerves would no doubt have the greatest effect, while it must be
remembered that even the
spike is complex and the entire range of nerve activity is far more
complex. This means that transient spikes are not the only
effector of field changes, that a range of temporal effects are
probably possible within the fields, and that both inhibitory and
facilitory effects should be possible in the fields via the polarity of
electrical phenomena. If this complicates the search for relevant
conscious correlates in the brain, it also suggests that the conscious
medium could be subtly effective in many more ways than one would
suppose at first. It is worth noting, though, that the neuron
spikes are the primary carriers of specific information and thus are
most likely the main source of the information/energy dynamics
affecting consciousness.
It should be noted that coherent field effects
presumably are
minimized by the brain where codes and (classically) quantum processes
are necessary, such as in reductive schemata, mathematics, and color
codes. It is exactly where information is necessarily
associational and reliant upon highly complex contexts where
consciousness and their source in the electrical fields are to be
found. Nervous data are held as quanta precisely because
of the robustness and frequent value to be found in digital-like
data. However novel information in novel contexts is likely to
benefit from contextual field interactions between data that are
related in space, time, or in some other manner. Fields are
capable of allowing the sorts of subtle interactions that rational and
mathematical data are quantized to prevent. This is what we seem
to be most conscious of (we seem not overly conscious of competent
mathematical calculations once we have learned these well), and also it
is what electric fields should be able to provide.*
*Just as an addendum, it is not impossible that the electrical fields
making up conscious processing and consciousness itself are not simply
due to the electric fields unavoidably produced between nerves.
While these are almost certainly a part of any proposed electric
consciousness,
there could be special structures that more precisely coordinate
electric field information within themselves, like the glial cells,
along with other supporting cells. I do not think that this is
likely, in fact, mainly because it cuts down on the scope of
interactivity (unless these cells are specially structured to deal with
electric fields) as compared to the more conventional electric fields
that we know, but it seems worth mentioning the possibility.
