Consciousness as a Field: Metaphor, Model, and Testable Hypothesis

Epigraph

“It is nothing jointed; it flows.”

William James, Psychology: Briefer Course, 1892, Chapter XI “The Stream of Consciousness”; English rendering via the reviewed Russian text, based on the original.

James simply and aptly described the coherence of personal experience. He never claimed that a literal electromagnetic river or a quantum force field was humming inside the cranium.

What This Article Is About

The word “field” has long turned into a universal mental skeleton key. An awkward silence on a date? “Heavy field.” Trying to read a book while your neighbor blasts a TV show? “Field of attention.” A neuroscientist measuring microvolts between neurons? “Electromagnetic field.” The trouble begins the moment these meanings are thrown into a blender, passing off a poetic image as a rigorous physical law and, on that basis, demanding license to pry open someone else's personal boundaries.

Here, without undue reverence, we will dissect the difference between poetry, a working model, and a rigorous physical hypothesis using Johnjoe McFadden’s cemi concept as an example. We will figure out why the presence of electricity in the skull does not imply telepathy, why the COGITATE project felt the need to torture two authoritative theories of consciousness at once, and why an ancient Indian parable about a clay pot was never intending to predict Maxwell’s electrodynamics in the first place.

I. A Roomy Word Allows an Unnoticed Substitution

A hypothetical scene: an open-plan office on a Monday morning. The boss sits in grim silence, the coffee machine grinds away, employees exchange nervous glances and glue their eyes to their monitors. A colleague walks out and breathes out dramatically: “Do you feel what a viscous, destructive field is lingering here?” Suppose that in this hypothetical scene, the tension stems from poor ventilation, a missed deadline, and the anticipation of a scolding. Yet the word “field” has already puffed itself up with false physical gravitas.

The entire trick rests on a seemingly innocent bait-and-switch:

Poetic image: “we were on the same wavelength,” “a heavy atmosphere,” “soulful resonance.”
Research model: an illustrative model of a “field of attention,” describing what is in focus and what lies at the periphery of perception.
Physical reality: physical electromagnetic quantities that require measurements and equations.

If someone claims: “You and I are in the same field, so I know what you’re thinking and you have to agree with me,” we are not looking at quantum magic, but at a banal psychological intrusion. The shared experience over a cup of tea does not lay a hidden telepathic cable between brains. Before taking someone’s word for it, it is worth asking a polite question: exactly what kind of field is this, in what units is it measured, and where do we ground the device?

II. An Image Allows Us to Notice Experience

When William James called consciousness a “stream” in 1892, he was protesting against attempts to slice living perception into dry, frozen cubes. We do not experience a collection of isolated freeze-frames: here is an isolated pixel of a cup, here is an isolated sound of a siren, here is an isolated thought about apartment utility bills. All of this flows into one another, creating the continuous fabric of the moment.

A metaphor is brilliant as long as it honestly does its job—helping us notice and describe internal experience. If you say, “right now, only anxiety about the project is in my field of attention,” you are describing your current experience. But if you claim on that basis that your anxiety generates a force field warping the kitchen space, common sense will delicately exit the room.

Experience is by no means obligated to know its physiological roots to remain genuine. A person drinks cold water in the sweltering heat and feels sheer bliss, having no clue what physiological processes are involved. A metaphor doesn’t need a patent for a physical invention; the main thing is not to crown a handy comparison as the definitive theory of everything.

III. A Concrete Hypothesis Speaks of a Concrete Physical Field

Let us turn to rigorous language before overeager telepathy enthusiasts start tuning their imaginary crystal radios. In a 2020 paper, Johnjoe McFadden advanced the cemi (conscious electromagnetic information) hypothesis, proposing causally active information integrated within the brain’s electromagnetic field as the physical substrate of consciousness. Yet, while breathless pop-science headlines love to herald this as if physicists had already soldered the human soul into a silicon circuit, what lies before us is strictly an authorial proposal with an armful of untested predictions, rather than an established consensus carved into the bedrock of global science.

McFadden advances a concrete idea: the physical substrate of consciousness may be causally active information integrated within the brain’s own electromagnetic field. Note carefully: the subject of this hypothesis is the electromagnetic field of the brain. This proposal entails neither a cosmic consciousness nor mind-reading through walls; meanwhile, a physical field is not obliged to break off at the boundary of the skull.

To avoid drowning in speculation, it is useful to strictly distinguish between three stages:

Electrical processes run continuously in neural tissue (a banal, proven fact).
Specific field effects can influence neural activity under investigated conditions.
This field itself is the direct substrate of subjective experience (a bold authorial proposal, whose 2020 account includes untested predictions).

A hypothetical scene: an old tube television. Currents race through it, microchips warm up, and electromagnetic radiation from the cathode-ray tube makes a nearby cheap radio receiver crackle. Is the field real? Absolutely. Does it affect operation? Of course. But do these facts prove that the television is personally living through the drama of the evening soap opera? No.

IV. A Real Effect Does Not Prove Identity with Experience

Fans of instant cosmic epiphanies love brandishing the 2011 experiment by Anastassiou and colleagues, as though it definitively proves their household microwave harbors secret existential dread. The researchers observed rat cortical slices to document perfectly grounded biophysics: a weak extracellular field can nudge the membrane potential of pyramidal neurons and entrain their spike timing, particularly during slow oscillations. This is an immaculate physical effect under meticulous bench conditions, but mistaking it for the direct capture of conscious experience is like confusing the hum of an electric refrigerator with deep philosophical contemplation.

What did the experiment show? Under the investigated slice conditions, an influence of the extracellular field on neurons (so-called ephaptic coupling) was detected. Does this prove that the rat slice’s field attained consciousness and contemplated eternity? No, it does not prove it in the slightest.

A factor’s influence on a system never automatically implies identity between them. Suppose coffee helped an office worker feel more alert; the office worker does not thereby become a mug of cappuccino. The brain’s field may participate in tuning neural ensembles, but between “the field synchronizes membrane discharges” and “the field equals consciousness” lies a massive logical chasm that cannot be bridged with loud exclamations.

V. The Unity of Experience Is a Question, Not a Ready-Made Answer

When we watch a film, the visual stream, the soundtrack, the crunch of popcorn, and the meaning of dialogues merge into one seamless perception. This is the so-called binding problem: how do signals from completely different areas of the brain assemble into a coherent picture?

A seductive cognitive shortcut might sound like: “Well look, the brain is fragmented, but the field is continuous! Therefore, the field connects everything!” It sounds neat, but so far it is merely swapping out a mechanism for a similar-sounding adjective.

A hypothetical scene: a thick paper novel lies before us. A reader perceives the protagonist’s tragedy as a unified experience. If we label the book a “field of literary suffering,” does it become any clearer how printing ink on dry cellulose causes a human being to weep over the fictional demise of a character? Formulating a problem is not the same as solving it. The unity of experience remains an open question in science, not a settled triumph of field physics.

VI. Testability Demands Differences Between Explanations

A scientific theory is valuable not for how many pretty words it can swallow, but for its vulnerability to reality. A hypothesis must specify what results would support its distinctive predictions, and what results would require revision; a single outcome is not obligated to definitively seal the fate of an entire theory.

If a concept can explain absolutely any outcome (“our moods matched—the shared field worked; we quarreled—the field was warped by negativity”), we are dealing not with science, but with convenient everyday folklore.

A researcher’s declaration that “our model is in principle testable” simply serves notice for grueling future laboratory legwork, not an open invitation to uncork champagne over the resolved mystery of existence. In his 2020 paper, McFadden clearly outlines several bold predictions, but putting them down in print validates the theory no more than drafting a grocery list cures an empty stomach. An ambitious architectural blueprint does not equal a finished, furnished skyscraper, and declaring an idea testable is a world away from proving it true under peer-reviewed fire.

VII. A Dispute Between Theories Can Be a Collaborative Effort

How are overarching views on the nature of consciousness tested in practice? An exemplary case is the large-scale 2025 project by the COGITATE consortium. The researchers refrained from staging a verbal duel on social media. They recruited 256 participants, preregistered their experimental protocols in advance, and pitted two leading frameworks against each other: Integrated Information Theory (IIT) and Global Neuronal Workspace Theory (GNWT).

Real empirical science settles theoretical turf wars not through rhetorical brawls on social media, but by impartially recording neural activity across multiple converging methodologies. The resolution of the COGITATE project served as a sobering splash of ice water for anyone demanding a clean, theatrical knockout: the experimental results corroborated select predictions from each camp while simultaneously blowing holes through core foundational tenets of both rivals. Instead of crowning an undisputed champion, the showdown ended in a humbling draw, sending both contenders straight back to the drawing board to nurse their bruised equations.

Let us emphasize especially:

This is not the declaration of a winner, nor the definitive unraveling of the nature of the mind.
This is not a direct test of McFadden’s cemi hypothesis.

When two leading concepts run into experimental friction, this by no means implies an automatic victory for a third theory. Science is organized more rigorously: a competitor’s misstep does not hand you a medal of truth until your own grounds are presented.

VIII. A Common Ground in Tradition Is Not a Laboratory Field

Whenever conversations touch upon the unity of the world, Eastern philosophy is almost inevitably invoked. In the sixth chapter of the Chandogya Upanishad, a wise father instructs his son Shvetaketu, elucidating the nature of reality through tangible examples: if you thoroughly know the properties of a single lump of clay, you understand the essence of all clay jars, plates, and pots in existence, for their distinctions are merely a play of outward forms and names.

This is a profound philosophical and spiritual text of antiquity. But seeing in it a direct foreshadowing of the brain’s electromagnetic field is an act of intellectual violence against a cultural monument. Ancient Indian thinkers were addressing the metaphysical dilemmas of their own time and context; they were not soldering encephalograph sensors or trying to predict neuronal membrane potentials.

Respecting ancient thought means letting it be itself, rather than hastily forcing modern neurophysiologist scrubs onto it for the sake of cheap scientific veneer.

IX. The Experience of Connection Does Not Establish the Means of Its Transmission

A hypothetical scene: two old friends are sitting in the kitchen. One silently reaches for the kettle; the other, without a single word, hands over the jar containing his favorite tea blend. The first thinks rapturously: “Telepathy! Pure mental resonance without words!”

In such a hypothetical scene, years of shared tea-drinking, a noticed movement, and familiar habits may be at play. Ordinary communication can be nonverbal. The fact that we did not utter words out loud does not imply that a paranormal radio channel was activated.

It also happens that the true causes of mutual understanding genuinely evade transparent analysis. An honest acknowledgment sounds simple: “We experienced an important, deep moment of closeness, but the exact mechanism of this state remains unknown to us.” Ignorance of causes does not devalue the experience itself, yet it provides no license to invent magical fields.

The central ethical rule: your subjective sensation of a “shared field” never equals the automatic consent of another person. One partner’s sincere conviction that telepathic contact has formed between you does not grant them the right to breach someone else's boundaries, second-guess their thoughts, or speak on their behalf: “I feel our field, after all; you think exactly this way.”

X. Three Languages Can Be Held Side by Side

Mature thinking is capable of holding three registers together without blending them into an indistinct mush:

The language of metaphor: helps to emotionally live through the moment (“an astonishing warmth reigned in the hall today”).
The language of a model: aids practical organization (“let us shift our field of attention to the key issue”).
The language of a testable hypothesis: requires sensors, numbers, equations, and the risk of refutation (“causally active information is integrated within the brain’s electromagnetic field”).

None of these languages is required to destroy the others. The trouble begins only when a poetic metaphor is masqueraded as medical fact, or when a laboratory hypothesis is turned into an aggressive dogma for everyday manipulation. It is enough to preserve sobriety: admire the richness of personal experience, protect your interlocutor’s boundaries, and remember that a scientific hypothesis demands rigorous evidence, not fervent protestations.

What This Means in Practice

If useful in your situation, one of the following steps may be selected:

Clarify the meaning at the outset. If someone in a dialogue authoritatively asserts the “influence of fields,” ask straightforwardly: are we talking about the mood of the conversation, the focus of attention, or electrodynamics with amperes and volts?
Look for original facts behind loud claims. If a popular article screams about the “scientific proof of a unified field of consciousness,” inspect the reference: you may find a modest experiment on rat cortical neurons examining the influence of an extracellular field on membrane potential and spike timing.
Translate mysticism into verifiable facts. Instead of the vague accusation “you are ruining the field of our meeting,” name concrete specifics: “you are interrupting, not letting me finish the sentence, and looking away at your phone for the second time.”
Do not decide for others. Your personal sensation of deep unity does not mean the other person thinks the same thing. Ask a simple human question with your mouth: “I felt this; what are you feeling right now?”
Distinguish the status of scientific knowledge. Respect bold scientific hypotheses such as McFadden’s cemi for their audacity, but remember: an author's proposal and an untested prediction are an occasion for future experiments, not a ready-made final truth.

Key Quotation

“The truth is only that it is clay.”

“Chandogya Upanishad”, VI.1.4; English rendering via the reviewed Russian text, based on the version by F. Max Müller, The Upanishads, Part I, 1879, text.

In the context of the Upanishad, the passage concerns the knowledge of a material and the conventionality of humanly contrived names for pots and jars. The quotation in itself does not establish a modern physical hypothesis of consciousness.

Connections Between Traditions

Comparison	Common Question	Substantial Distinction
James on the stream and the metaphor of the field of attention	How do we describe the coherence of experience without losing transitions and background?	The language used to describe experience does not establish a physical substrate.
The “Chandogya Upanishad” and cemi	What allows us to conceptualize diversity through a common ground?	A religious-philosophical illustration and a physical hypothesis have different premises and means of justification.
Ephaptic coupling and the field hypothesis of consciousness	What field interactions are capable of participating in neural activity?	An observed cellular effect does not prove identity between a field and experience.
COGITATE and reading cemi	What distinctive commitments does a theory undertake prior to testing?	The 2025 experiment directly compared IIT and GNWT, not cemi. A rival’s predicament does not constitute confirmation of a third theory.

Primary Sources and Research

McFadden, Johnjoe. “Integrating information in the brain’s EM field: the cemi field theory of consciousness”. Neuroscience of Consciousness 2020(1), niaa016. Publisher text, DOI 10.1093/nc/niaa016; the link PMC7507405 is currently unavailable. Based on the accessible indexed abstract and excerpts of the original: an authorial proposal and hypothesis with untested predictions, not constituting an accepted consensus; full reading of the article is not claimed.
Anastassiou, Costas A.; Perin, Rodrigo; Markram, Henry; Koch, Christof. “Ephaptic coupling of cortical neurons”. Nature Neuroscience 14, 2011, 217–223. DOI: 10.1038/nn.2727. Consulted abstract and PubMed metadata; the experimental protocol was not studied in its entirety.
COGITATE Consortium et al. “Adversarial testing of global neuronal workspace and integrated information theories of consciousness”. Nature 642, 2025, 133–142. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-08888-1. Consulted PubMed abstract. Information from the available abstract was used; the full publisher text was not investigated in this review.
James, William. Psychology: Briefer Course, 1892, chapter XI “The Stream of Consciousness”. Text. Epigraph and the question of experiential continuity in an independent historical context.
“Chandogya Upanishad”, VI.1.1–6. F. Max Müller, The Upanishads, Part I, Sacred Books of the East, vol. 1, 1879, pp. 92–93. Section text. Key quotation is VI.1.4, indicating the source of the version.

About the Authors

Andrey Zarinsh — author and founder of the United Wisdom project. He explores themes of inner transformation, unity of traditions, intercultural dialogue, and contemporary spiritual discipline. Instagram: @andrey.zarinsh.

Maria Evilkut — co-author at United Wisdom. Alongside research work, she strives to test these ideas in practice and observe how the principles of unity and mutual understanding operate in real life between people and cultures. Instagram: @ilkutki.