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collin_of_thisyesterday at 11:27 PM0 repliesview on HN

> Until you have a unit and a method to measure this field, and a way to experiment on it, it is not scientific theory.

Field-based theories of phenomenal experience have obvious ways to experiment on them, and are actively being researched. The main limitation is engineering (it is difficult to make detailed measurements inside a living human brain). Note that I would agree that the theory, as outlined above, is more of a proto-theory than a complete theory. But I think it is much more sophisticated than anything you've presented so far.

> 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.

No -- if the _structure_ of the EM field was was was important, than you could have very similar computations with wildly different field structures. Transistors create very different fields than axons.