Time, Memory, and the Physical Basis of Consciousness

Conscious experience may arise from electromagnetic waves propagating through time, not just space. Standard Maxwell's equations are likely incomplete; extending them with complex-valued field components implies that electromagnetic fields extend temporally. Applied to the brain's self-generated fields, this hypothesis accounts for the extended duration of conscious moments and the subjective flow of time—phenomena unexplained by current physics. It also reframes episodic memory: recalling past experiences becomes partly a perceptual re-experiencing process rather than pure retrieval from storage. Complex-valued fields substantially increase the explanatory power of electromagnetic field theories of consciousness.

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Abstract

Electromagnetic field theories of consciousness have generally assumed that Maxwell's equations are complete, while many physicists have long suspected that they are not. Recently it has been shown that Maxwell's equations can be extended successfully by assuming that electromagnetic fields have complex-valued components. This assumption, while speculative, implies that electromagnetic fields extend into time as well as into space. Here I show that a consequence of this hypothesis, when applied to the brain's selfgenerated fields, associates conscious experience with the propagation of electromagnetic waves through time. Complex-valued fields account for the extended temporal duration of conscious experience and for the subjective flow-of-time experience that is not otherwise explained by existing physics. They also suggest a novel interpretation of the memory mechanisms underlying the recall of past conscious experiences (episodic memory), casting the re-experience of past events as in part a perceptual process rather than solely as a recallfrom-storage process. The explanatory power of any electromagnetic field theory of consciousness is substantially increased by the existence of complex-valued fields.