alt Hacker News> does a hydrocarbon have feelings? what about a mitochondria? a cell? a neuron? what about a collection of neurons? how many neurons before it has "feelings"?
The best theory I have heard is that subjective experience is a field of some sort (the EM field, maybe?). The brain and its neurons etc. are essentially an antenna. They both modify and stabilize the field, and read off changes in the field and translate these into actions (firing motor units, etc.).
The subconscious is computation done either only in neurons (no coherent field) or in various topological pockets not directly connected to the main topological structure in the field (which is "your experience").
Since transistors etc. do not work in this same way, they are essentially entirely subconscious, with no coherent, central phenomenal experience.
This neatly solves many problems associated with experience. The topological structure determines the boundary between one person's experience and another person's experience. The texture, valence, content, etc. of the experience is the structure of the field. The evolution of the field can efficiently solve difficult optimization problems, which is why humans evolved a complex organ that recruits the field of experience (it is computationally more efficient than doing everything in subconscious).
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Until you have a unit and a method to measure this field, and a way to experiment on it, it is not scientific theory. And, if it WAS the EM field, then surely transistors (or some other fundamental component of electronics or combination thereof) would be capable of having feelings, since they operate on electromagnetic principles.
> The best theory I have heard is that subjective experience is a field of some sort (the EM field, maybe?).
what would be producing the field for us to pick up? That explanation sounds no more scientific than astrology.
This doesn't really answer anything to me, only that there is a complex electrical simulation going on in our minds.
When a computer simulates a game, where does the simulation occur. I mean there is absolutely a representation of a game world in the computer somewhere. New elements can be added and removed from it. Signals saying there is or isn't "pain" can occur.
By trying to say brains use EM fields I'd say you're making your position far worse when you're talking about a potential lifeforms that only exists as EM fields