How can we confirm the validity of the electromagnetic field theory of consciousness?
I haven’t read that entire article, but there is a general answer to your question for scientific theories: (i) You don’t confirm them, so much as not refute them (yet). (ii) To refute a theory, you examine the predictions it gives for various experiments. Then you do the experiments. If they don’t match up, the theory is refuted. To apply these to the article/theory you’re interested in: (i) Examine the theory to see what predictions it makes for what experiments. (If some parts of the theory don’t seem to make any predictions, they aren’t actually part of the theory in the scientifically-useful sense and you ignore them.) (ii) Enquire with the literature or relevant experts about whether those experiments have been done before (or could be done soon). A final remark, and please do remember: I haven’t read the entirety of this particular article: Many scientific articles are “crackpottery”, that is, based on conceptual errors that are obvious (to an expert (or sometimes just a student
IANRANSY (I am not really a neuroscientist yet), but this seems like a bit of a crackpot paper to me. The guy has clearly read a lot, and the things he talks about (synchronous firing, possibly the EM field in general) are likely to be part of some final theory. But he’s just hand-waving. He doesn’t give any detailed proposal, and he doesn’t do any tests of that proposal. I’m thinking things like detailed computer modelling (pick a part of the brain, model the individual neurons doing a particular task, add in this field effect you’re talking about, see how that changes their ability to do the task) or specific experimental predictions (new predictions, not just “this agrees with previous predictions.”) I can’t say for sure he’s wrong — just that there are an awful lot more wrong ideas out there than right ones, and until you do the work, you can’t tell which is which. This guy hasn’t done the work.
