Abstract
The conscious electromagnetic information (cemi) field theory proposes that the seat of consciousness is the brain’s electromagnetic (EM) field that integrates information from trillions of firing neurons. What we call free will is its output. The cemi theory also proposes that the brain has two streams. Most actions are initiated by the first non-conscious stream that is composed of neurons that are insulated from EM field influences. These non-conscious involuntary actions are thereby invisible to our EM field-located thoughts. The theory also proposes that voluntary actions are driven by neurons that receive EM field inputs and are thereby visible to our EM field-located thoughts. I review the extensive evidence for EM field/ephaptic coupling between neurons and the increasing evidence that EM fields in the brain are a cause of behaviour. I conclude by arguing that though this EM field-driven will is not free, in the sense of being acausal, it nevertheless corresponds to the very real experience of our conscious mind being in control of our voluntary actions. Will is not an illusion. It is our experience of control by our EM field-located mind. It is an immaterial, yet physical, will.
Highlights
Introduction to the Cemi Field TheoryWhen a neuron fires, the motion of matter particles, ions, through ion channels in and out of neuronal membranes generates the action potential that travels down the length of the neuron until it reaches the synapse where it triggers the release of chemical neurotransmitters that transmit signals to downstream neurons
The theory that will be discussed here accepts all of this, but it proposes that, alongside the matter-based algorithmic information processing performed along the brain’s neuronal wires, a quite different form of computation is implemented through the interactions of EM field with neurons leading to motor actions
The idea that mental states reflect the dynamics of some kind of field goes back at least as far as the Gestalt psychologists who, in the early decades of the twentieth century, insisted that the holistic properties of perception must be instantiated in some kind of field
Summary
The motion of matter particles, ions, through ion channels in and out of neuronal membranes generates the action potential that travels down the length of the neuron until it reaches the synapse where it triggers the release of chemical neurotransmitters that transmit signals to downstream neurons. The idea of some kind of field existing in the brain persisted in the latter half of the twentieth century as a means of accounting for the binding problem of consciousness—how our conscious mind integrates information distributed among billions of spatially separated neurones to generate the unity of conscious experience. This is essentially the same problem with which the gestalt psychologists had been wrestling but generalized beyond perception to any conscious state. Updates on the cemi field theory were published in 2006 [26], 2013 [27,28] and 2020 [29]
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