Plenty of Room at the Bottom

Feynman (1949) developed a wonderful geometric notation for validating particle interactions, which is today called a Feynman diagram.

An example of a Feynman diagram can be seen below illustrating an interaction between two electrons. In this diagram time proceeds from the bottom to the top of the page and the interaction between the two electrons takes the form of a wiggly line, from right to left, which represents a virtual particle transferring energy.

In 1959 Feynman gave a (teaser) lecture entitled “Plenty of Room at the Bottom” where he expressed the opinion that down at the level of the atoms “we have new kinds of forces, and new kinds of possibilities, new kinds of effects”. Today despite a lot of physicists disagreeing with Feynman that the bottom consists of interactions between particles, but rather interaction between fields, they share Feynman’s sentiment that there is still room at the bottom to find new kinds of effects.

Whether we think in terms of particles or fields we are left with the question, where is the bottom of a Feynman diagram?  It could be argued that the junctions are really the only likely places to find new kinds of effects, such as consciousness.

Looking at Feynman’s Lectures (1965)  again  the neglected parts are the transitions at the junctions n

In fact it has been evolution and not physicists who were first to explore the bottom. Single-cellular life evolved 3500 million years ago, and multi-cellular life evolved 600 million years ago. Cells can be several hundreds or thousands of nanometres across and the proteins inside cells are often tens of nanometers in size. Amino acids that make up proteins and are derived from DNA are a few nanometers across. Atoms are a tenth of nanometer in size. Imagine a cell to be a house and each nanometer a centimetre. Every component in the house (e.g. bricks, doors, windows) to be a protein. Each millimeter to be an atom. The brain to be a planet of houses.

All those components interact using evolved electric fields; and do not interact as objects simply randomly rattling around.

Above it all somehow the brain has evolved to be calibrated, so that all those brain cells can create a real time working model of the external world using as little energy as possible. There is plenty of room at the bottom but the brain got there before us to exploit the effects that can be found there.

 

Action Potentials are not Conscious

Many of us have studied action potentials and are familiar with the academic narrative. On one hand neurologists hold up action potentials as the core signals in the brain on the other they fail to make any statement whatsoever on how action potentials relate to consciousness.

Perhaps, it is is time to re-think action potentials.

What is not often stated is that action potentials only occur very rarely in  neurons and neurologists often have to hunt to find them. In fact even when they find a firing neuron the action potential only takes up less than 2% of the total time

The problem is there really isn’t any theory that relates these action potentials to consciousness.

To illustrate this problem imagine waiting for a train that comes every 30 minutes. In which case the 2% of the time the action potential occurs would be roughly the one minute the train was boarding. The remaining 29 minutes would be waiting for the train to arrive.

So ask yourself does consciousness feel like the time waiting for a train or the time boarding a train. Do you feel conscious 2% of the time or 98% of the time. Which seems more likely?

There is an good analogy here between heartbeats and action potentials. In ancient cultures heartbeats were a signal that you were alive and spirits lived in the body. Focusing on the heartbeat rather than the flow of blood is misleading. The discovery of capillaries closed the circuit and defined the circularly system.

Perhaps another way of thinking about this issue is to think about action potentials as the thing that happens between conscious events. We can get a feel for this by turning the action potential graph on its head and seeing the gaps between action potentials as rises and the action potentials as sudden dips

In the book these dips will be explained  as “reset actions” in the electrical state of neurons.

In fact I analogise these sudden dips as the reset actions you find at the bottom of the Etch-a-Sketch magnetic drawing game.

Signals in Neurons

This blog lays out a brief position statement on the signals level in neurons.

1. Consciousness is an electric and magnetic field, called “The Field”
2. The Field is not an extra cellular field because of lack of control.
3. The Field uses static, quasi-static and electromagnetic fields.
4. The Field is inside dendrites
5. Potassium and sodium ions create a body to The Field
6. Membranes have a lower internal reflection than water and deflect electric fields back into the neuron.
7. Axons carry action potentials as “information packets” that open post synaptic nanoholes to let astrocyte calcium into the synaptic cleft.
8. Neurofibres in axons resets the water dialectic when an action potential passes via their phosphated side arms.
9. Chemical synapses do not pass electric fields but do pass information.
10. Calcium and magnesium ions create “content” in The Field
11. Calcium ion fields are injected from astrocytes into dendrites.
12. Spines act as oscillating cavities.
13. Waveguide modes form in dendrites  based on oscillating potassium and sodium ion wavelengths.
14. Electromagnetic fields are not relativistic and do not form photons.
15. Waveguide modes are formed by  fields in Galilean limits.
16. Waveguide modes in dendrites form standing waves.
17. Waveguide modes are of the type where electric input is from the edges of the membrane.
18. The shapes of different classes of dendrites are determined by the waveguide mode as well as voltages.
19. Some neuron dendrites (e.g pyramidal neurons) diameters enable modes.
20. The diameters of some dendrites have evolved to prevent modes forming.
21. The diameters of distal pyramidal dendrites supports calcium waveguide modes.
22. Connexion plaques act as nano hole arrays.
23. Connexions in electric synapses are attracted by stronger localised fields on the membrane surface whigh form connexions plaques, i.e. electric Synapses.
24. Connexion plaques act as nano hole arrays.
25. Extraordinary electric magnetic through put through nano hole arrays uses surface plasmons which maintains quantum coherence.
26. Electric synapses form partially complete local circuits.
27. Filopodia use calcium diffraction to align chemical synapses.
28. Calcium fields are injected  into spines through nano holes in the post synaptic cleft.
29. Spines act as resonating cavities.
30. Fields injected into dendrites from spines joins waveguide modes in dendrites.
31. Spine necks are telescopic to change their output into dendrites.
32. Local circuits of electrical synapses are completed by injection of calcium into dendrites.
33. The physics of waveguide modes in dendrites is determined By the physics of Galilean fields.

 

 

Book Title ?

I have a few ideas for the book title.

Here are the titles and the reasons.

1. Neurogeometry – because the geometry of the neurons plus the wavelengths of the ionic fields can be used to understand what conscious news is.
2. A Field Architecture of Consciousness – says on the tin what is inside.
3. Roots of Consciousness – the original title of the book from 10 years ago based on the idea of a top down explanation of consciousness.
4. Fields of Consciousness – again title on the tin.
5. Physics of Consciousness – is about the consequence of including consciousness in a low level classical interpretation of electric and magnetic fields.
6. The Blind Calibrator – based on what consciousness is.

You are here.

The philosophical framework that has been introduced is made up of two dimensions. One dimension is called Perspectives the other is called Levels.

The Perspective dimension is composed of three perspectives:-

• Objective
• Language
• Subjective

The Objective perspective can be broadly thought of as measurable, kickable things, such as particles and objects. The Language perspective can be broadly thought of as things that refer to things including other references. The Subjective perspective can be broadly thought of as experienced, mental things. The original idea came from the rejection of the dialect reference frame of an argument in favour of a reference frame of the solution-space, at university.

The Levels dimension is composed of seven levels:-

• Stuff
• Substance
• Signals
• Signs
• Symbols
• Schema
• Self

The Level perspective can be broadly thought of as the space of possible information required to have a thought. The original idea came from the solution-space for the space of possible computers, when the author was at university, Importantly, every type of thinking machine would have these kinds of  information. These levels are generally seen as computer models, but they can also represent levels of self-calibration, where they represent what is needed to calibrate rather than the target of the calibration.

The two dimensions are orthogonal and can be combined to produce a Matrix, as seen below.

The Matrix has been annotated with two important comments. First “You are here”, indicating where conscious experience is. Second “Field theories are here” indicating where experiments and mathematical field theories are. The ‘Hard Problem” of consciousness (Chalmers 1995) is being able bridge the gap between the two.

The term consciousness is never used in the Philospohical Framework, so that there is no self-referential defintion of consciousness (Dennet 1991). However the explanation of consciousness is built up from an understanding of being within fields. A move to the Perspective and Levels dimensions was a deliberate act to move to frame the problem of consciousness to a solution-space without including the solution within it.

Edit: In addition to the “s” levels listed here there are two levels of “sentience” and “spirit”. These have been excluded from these posts because the “self” level is sufficient to explain consciousness. Sentience means a self-referential field that is not just in contact with itself but the content can be interpreted. Spirit means a field that can be transmitted. A field must be sentient before it can be transmitted. These fields are based on slow moving quasi static fields, are complex and allow for complex schemas to be transmitted. This is in contrast to photons which are simple, homogenous, locked-in types of transmitting fields. Spirit fields are physical fields based on laws of physics and do not necessarily imply “spirituality” or “soul” like activity.

Fields of Consciousness

This site presents excerpts of my book about Fields of Consciousness. A more detailed summary can be found on the main menu.  The book presents a theoretical framework that relates the evidence and theories of physics to the evidence and theories of consciousness. A consequence of this framework is to re-interpret the laws of physics to include consciousness experience, and heal a fracture between physics and consciousness that opened during the enlightenment.

References