Having been trained as an electrical engineer, I can tell you that McFadden is right that electrical currents produce magnetic fields. That's Ampere's Law. Fluctuating magnetic fields induce electrical current. That's Faraday's Law. Given that the flow of electrical impulses through the neurons is always changing, the magnetic field produces is guaranteed to change, and likely to induce electrical flows.
The brain clearly produces an electromagnetic field, and the field clearly could affect neuronal circuits. The only question is, does that make a difference? Most likely so. Dr. Michael Persinger claims to have successfully used magnetic stimulation in the laboratory to induce thoughts and feelings.
There are several other elements that make me well disposed toward the cemi theory. McFadden argues that it provides a neat solution to the binding problem, which is the question of how the actions in the various neurons come together to produce a unified experience in the conscious observer. A mind field provides a neat way of integrating the diverse affects of neurons, because fields are additive within the same space, unlike matter, which having defined dimensions, prevents other matter from existing within the same space.
Surprisingly, McFadden does not mention holography. Neuroscientists like Karl Pribram have hypothesized that the mind operates along holographic principles. The interference patterns produced by the electromagnetic fields of the brain's circuits could provide a physical basis for bioholography.
McFadden's argument regarding consciousness, up to this point, does not require any involvement of quantum mechanics. But it is certainly compatible with quantum mechanical theories of consciousness. Indeed, I find it more plausible that consciousness could interact with an electromagnetic field as a whole, rather than being directly entangled with elements of matter in the brain, such as microtubules or calcium ions. This sort of holistic operation would also help elucidate the many-to-one relationship between neurons and the mind, in which massive amounts of data flow from brain to mind in an apparently parallel stream, while a trickle of data, consisting of the choices made by the mind, flow back to the brain in an apparently serial stream.
McFadden does not reduce consciousness to electromagnetism. There would still be a domain where the qualities of conscious existence are expressed, but electromagnetic energy would provide the bridge between mind and matter.
Article comments
1 - Evans
"If there is an observer, perhaps that observer is outside the system, like Bishop Berkeley's God."
I haven't read this book, but I'd like to point out that, if the author is truly invoking the many-world's theory of quantum mechanics, no observer is outside the system, and thus this is not a valid point.
An interesting point is that a DNA molecule can act as it's own observer, as an observer doesn't need to be conscious....