Part 2: Sir Roger Penrose & Stuart Hameroff: What is Consciousness? (#248)

A conversation with Nobel Prize Winner and renowned mathematical physicist Sir Roger Penrose and anesthesiologist Dr. Stuart Hameroff about consciousness and quantum mechanics.

Sir Roger Penrose and Dr. Stuart Hameroff have tackled one of the most vexing problems in science -- how does consciousness work? Their theories of consciousness were selected by the Templeton Foundation for study. We will discuss Is the brain a sophisticated computer or an intuitive thinking device? Following on from their conference in Tucson which pitted Integrated Information Theory (IIT) against Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch-OR), Sir Roger Penrose OM and Stuart Hameroff discuss the current state of theories that might explain human consciousness and objections to them from FQXI and others.

Sir Roger Penrose describe examples of ‘non-computability’ in human consciousness, thoughts and actions such as the way we evaluate particular chess positions which cast doubt on ‘Turing’ computation as a complete explanation of brain function. As a source of non-computability, Roger discuss his ‘objective reduction’ (‘OR’) self-collapse of the quantum wavefunction which is a potential resolution for the ‘measurement problem’ in quantum mechanics, and a mechanism for non-computable physics.

Dr. Stuart Hameroff reviews neuronal and biophysical aspects of Orch OR, in which ‘orchestrated’ quantum vibrations occur among entangled brain microtubules and evolve toward Orch OR threshold and consciousness. The nature, feasibility, decoherence times and evidence for quantum vibrations in microtubules, their role and correlation with consciousness, effects upon them of anesthetic gases and psychedelic drug molecules will be discussed, along with Orch OR criticisms and predictions of microtubule quantum vibrations as therapeutic targets for mental and cognitive disorders.

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