Bluesky

Sorry for delay. Work got in the way.

What does that even mean?

At essence the argument for Penrose and Hameroff comes down to the requirement for a non-computational requirement for consciousness. At the time of publication the response was "has Penrose never heard of a heuristic?" Because organisms generally do not solve problems computationally, they ballpark things and fumble around in the problem space for something that looks like an adequate solution.

Without the requirement for the brain to function as a universal Turing machine there is no need to point alternative mechanisms like quantum processes.

I made the point about temperature because there are all kinds of things, at specific doses, affect "consciousness" without disrupting other physiological processes. Anaesthetics are useful, but they aren't a unique tool to probe conscious experience.

We could go on in this vein with Koch and Crick's interest in the split sensory processing of the superior and inferior geniculate. One pathway is consciously perceived and the other is not. So a quantum explanation needs to account for dorsal vs ventral pathways. And so on.

Backing the discussion out, it may be correct. But it is far from settled, or even a leading theory in the area.