<story><title>Are the brain’s electromagnetic fields the seat of consciousness?</title><url>http://nautil.us/blog/are-the-brains-electromagnetic-fields-the-seat-of-consciousness</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>TheHideout</author><text>Tangent by PhD student in Cognitive Science here - My current belief is that consciousness arises at the cross section of 3 core skills: Theory of Mind [0], Autobiographic Episodic Memory [1], and Embodied Cognition [2].&lt;p&gt;Principally, recognizing that other people have intentions and beliefs different from your own, being able to understand that you have experienced a timeline of personal experiences and these contribute to who you are, and that you are a physical being that can think in-situ as well as plan your physical actions in the future.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m favoriting this link and will try to return to it after my dissertation is done for reflection.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Theory_of_mind&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Theory_of_mind&lt;/a&gt;
[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Episodic_memory&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Episodic_memory&lt;/a&gt;
[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Embodied_cognition&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Embodied_cognition&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>DennisP</author><text>There are actually two problems, that people often mix up. One is how we get a sense of self, which I think is what you&amp;#x27;re talking about. Another is how qualia, like the perception of color, arise at all. Nobody seems to have any idea how that happens; we have no way to map some arrangement of atoms to a perception and prove from first principles that one leads to another.</text></comment>
<story><title>Are the brain’s electromagnetic fields the seat of consciousness?</title><url>http://nautil.us/blog/are-the-brains-electromagnetic-fields-the-seat-of-consciousness</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>TheHideout</author><text>Tangent by PhD student in Cognitive Science here - My current belief is that consciousness arises at the cross section of 3 core skills: Theory of Mind [0], Autobiographic Episodic Memory [1], and Embodied Cognition [2].&lt;p&gt;Principally, recognizing that other people have intentions and beliefs different from your own, being able to understand that you have experienced a timeline of personal experiences and these contribute to who you are, and that you are a physical being that can think in-situ as well as plan your physical actions in the future.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m favoriting this link and will try to return to it after my dissertation is done for reflection.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Theory_of_mind&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Theory_of_mind&lt;/a&gt;
[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Episodic_memory&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Episodic_memory&lt;/a&gt;
[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Embodied_cognition&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Embodied_cognition&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>glial</author><text>Thanks for sharing. My own pet theory is very similar to yours: humans evolved consciousness in order to ‘observe’ our cognitive and emotional state, so that we can build models and apply them to reason about other people’s cognitive and emotional states. It’s hard to have ‘theory of mind’ about someone else when you don’t have access to your own mind to start with.</text></comment>