Quantum microtubule substrate of consciousness is experimentally supported

"Remarkably, a detailed quantum chemical modeling study found that the potencies of several volatile anesthetics were predicted by their binding affinity to delocalized electron sites within the tubulin subunits that make up MTs (Craddock et al. 2015, 2017). These theoretical results essentially reproduce the Meyer–Overton correlation by assuming that anesthesia is primarily mediated by MTs. This cannot be said for any other candidate molecular target. Thus, MTs could be the primary molecular target that mediates the unconsciousness caused by inhalational anesthetics."

I'm sorry to disappoint, but consciousness explanations follow a predictable pattern - one that you can't unsee once you learn it.

Consciousness explanations historically align with what's considered "mysterious" in science. We have a correspondence heuristic that perpetually fails at explaining consciousness. Previous explanations included nous, pneuma, fluids, monads, vibrations, libraries/memory banks, magnetic fields, computers, and now quantum mechanics and simulations. The association with the current trends of what constitutes "mystery" in science is a negative signal and reduces the likelihood to that it's correct. I wish it wasn't, but history rhymes.

> Anesthetic quantum binding results in randomization of quantum processes in target proteins, disrupting highly orchestrated and entangled quantum activities

It is a fair hypothesis, but it pushes the (hard) problem down.

Before: consciousness emerges from electrochemical interactions. After: consciousness emerges from quantum interactions.

"It runs on some form of electricity".

> This allows us to understand our consciousness as an elaboration of more primitive processes that already existed in biology [...] “What is alive must sense and can be anesthetized. The rest is dead.”

Disturbing when you think of cell cultures (see also: Henrietta Lacks).

> Remarkably, the same anesthetic vapors that make us unconscious also reversibly slow or halt motility in single-celled organisms and plants

This is supposed to indicate that some form of consciousness emerges from the simplest interactions. I am not convinced. The same argument was used for electrochemical interactions in the past, and it seems like a placeholder.

> “combination problem of panpsychism”

> But panprotopsychism comes with its own very difficult problem, the CP.

From the philosophical perspective, it's the same difficult problem, not a new one.

We could explain why senses are connected to consciousness, but not how. We could explain why electrochemical signals are connected to consciousness, but not how. We now can potentially explain why quantum phenomena are connected to consciousness, but not how.

All of these explanations relied on some form of "break it, then we know we reached an important piece", but fail to describe the "mechanism" as a whole. No idea how it emerges from those more fundamental pieces.

I do, however, understand why discovering how small pieces work is promising.

> Here I will use in term physical and physicalism in the “narrow” sense, which again simply means that they exclude fundamental phenomenal properties or fundamental mental properties of any kind.

I don't know about Chalmers, but I don't need consciousness to be fundamental to recognize the hard problem. If it's not, then I need someone to explain the machine, not the small piece of it. In some sense, not having it fundamental makes it harder, and thus more hopeless (big machine of many small moving parts, how can we ever possibly map it?)

> if the fundamental mental property is not itself conscious, but has the potential to become conscious in the appropriate context, we call the theory panprotopsychism

> Such a postulate sounds like a radical step, perhaps even like “cheating,”

It doesn't sound like cheating at all to me. In simple terms, a machine does more than the sum of its parts. The problem is, if you rely on small quantum interactions to identify the substrate, then you need to bottom-up explain the emergence. It's cheating only if you don't.

> The quantum consciousness hypothesis is often derided as “two mysteries explaining each other.” [...] In this connection, the failure of classical physics to allow for unified states like our conscious experiences does not prove that quantum physics has the answer—except that quantum physics has exactly the relevant property that is missing from classical physics: irreducible causally efficacious holism, ontological unity, objectively integrated information.

That is both promising and a disappointment.