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Comment by trashtensor | Hacker News Reader

> Most researchers agree that consciousness is somehow related to the electrical activity of brains. Some go further and propose that brains’ electromagnetic fields actually are conscious.

I am not knowledgeable at all here so I'm just going to talk out of my butt for a second but this seems testable. Does disrupting the electromagnetic fields in the brain disrupt consciousness?

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Well, if you disrupt it enough, to produce a current in the brain, you surely get an effect.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_magnetic_stimul...

I like the angle and skepticism, but the experiment would still need to overcome the challenge that the philosophically rigorous way to confirm a consciousness is to be that consciousness.

> Does disrupting the electromagnetic fields in the brain disrupt consciousness?

Or, is consciousness A interacting with consciousness B in a certain way observed by both as “disrupting electromagnetic fields in the brain”?

That is to say: the experiment does not demonstrate causal directionality.

Yes - isn't that what anesthesia does?

Most researchers cannot agree on what consciousness is. If we cannot even get a straight, agreed upon answer on what consciousness is how can we actually make these sorts of claims?

Electrical shocks have been used for a long time and are still used to treat mental illness.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroconvulsive_therapy

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