Landscapes of the mind, consciousness and time

This paper describes ‘mentality’ in terms of the contents of dynamic state spaces, then goes on to explore how consciousness-associated features of these contents, termed ‘ruling attractors’, could ‘map’ onto neural states. A fractal mapping, its links with memory mediated by the protein CaMKll, is pictured; it’s a view that, with minor differences of emphasis, turns out to have a lot in common with Stuart Hameroff’s ‘conscious pilot’ as far as the neural (though not quantum computational) picture is concerned. Finally, it is proposed that consciousness itself may be a local field, supervenient on fractally mapped ‘ruling attractors’and due to time-related symmetry breaking. Lines of evidence that may prove relevant to these ideas are indicated. I thus argue that consciousness can be described as a succession of ‘ruling attractors’ in the brain; it is based on fractal patterns of calcium waves, interacting with EEG fields and recorded by changes in protein (CaMKll) activation, while it may turn out to be a modulated ‘temporal field’.