Wow, this is such an odd response. There’s plenty of research that link microtubules to consciousness. I don’t understand this pushback other than one being sped in a certain scientific dogma that doesn’t allow new thoughts or questioning to creep in.
Just say that Penrose is a crank is way off chart in my opinion
The word "consciousness" means at least 40 distinct things; some of those (e.g. brain being alive and functioning) are obviously connected to microtubles; others (e.g. qualia, which is what most understand Penrose invoked microtubles to explain) are so ill-defined as to be untestable and unfalsifiable.
That Penrose also seems to have a fundamental error in his understanding of the implications of Gödel's incompleteness theorems, doesn't help.
He’s a neuroscientist that studies consciousness. I think that gives him more valid reasons to have this definition than someone who programs computers.
I believe you’re being disingenuous and hopes that no one reads the full article. Because what he said is more nuance than what you’re proposing that we should not appeal to authority. I’ll post what he said here just to be clear.
“ I fully admit that this is an appeal to authority! But saying you should rely on the framings of a scientific field, like literally just respecting how it defines terms, is extremely reasonable as an appeal. It’s also very different than saying you should blindly believe the conclusions of that field. While “trust the experts” is often too strong a claim, the much weaker ask of “use the agreed-upon vocabulary the experts use when discussing the field” is actually quite reasonable, and most people who want to have an opinion about a scientific (or philosophical) subject should respect the used terms. The same goes for consciousness.”
But that accepted definition is that it means everything... "What it means to be a bat" isn't a useful definition. I will accept that is what the word means and defend the viewpoint the word is thus useless.
This is the last paragraph of his article for people who aren’t going to read the whole article.
“ So yes, there is scientific confusion about what consciousness is! And there’s metaphysical confusion about what consciousness is! But there’s no definitional confusion about the word “consciousness” itself. People know what needs to be explained, it’s just that explaining the phenomenon is very hard, and no one fully has yet.“
To save everyone a click: this objective definition of consciousness is "the fact that an organism has conscious experience at all means, basically, that there is something it is like to be that organism". This is quite obviously circular, even though it sounds fun initially.
He came up with his idea in collaboration with scientist to study consciousness. It’s not his idea really it’s a group of people’s ideas. His brilliance in his field contributed to the brilliance of other people’s fields. This is how collaborative science works.
If you seen any of Penrose’s talks or read any of his books, you know that this was not fundamentally his idea.
Paraphrasing here: The paper above was looking for energy given off during collapse, (which they did not find) on the Diosi side, where Penrose' idea is more in the retro-causal, you wouldn't find an energy signature. I am sure someone can call out a better representation, but similar to your response that Roger has these ideas and looks for collaborators, but still has his own ideas on things that may differ.
Interesting seeing this conversation going on, Roger / Stuarts work has been trashed over the years, Max Tegmark did the maths and said brain is too wet/warm for any quantum stuff, but we've been finding this in tubulin* and other places, never retracted the paper.
Either way, consciousness is amazing, and a mystery, anyone interested should come to Tucson in April for Towards a science of Consciousness, good conversations, interesting people, usually more questions than answers.
Finding isolated quantum effects is emphatically unsurprising: after all, everything is quantum. It's just limited in locality, which is basically what Tegmark is talking about (locality and decoherence time being somewhat dual).
There is no evidence for the kind of quantum effects that would involve multiple neurons. This is quite a block, since afaik, even the quantum-woo types (Penrose, emphatically) are not claiming that consciousness comes from the quantum behavior of a single neuron. (And that would be profoundly ignorant of basic neuroscience.)
Just say that Penrose is a crank is way off chart in my opinion