"In my view the conscious brain does not act according to classical physics. It doesn’t even act according to conventional quantum mechanics. It acts according to a theory we don’t yet have."
Do most modern AI researchers disagree with this?
Do most modern AI researchers disagree with this?
Penrose's arguments are discussed for example here: http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec10.5.html
Although I too believe it.
This reminds me of that old anti-strong-AI bugaboo, "intelligence in the gaps": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps
Max Tegmark looked into the timing required for quantum effects to be significant in synapses - http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/brain.html - & showed it was just not required to build an effective model. The rebuttals, such as they are, strike me as tenuous & argued from faith & dogma rather than evidence.
You can see a bit of this back-and-forth at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mind#Ongoing_Debate
Edit: Links, & fixing word wrap.
Given the weight of evidence showing that anything we can measure about the brain can be explained by physical processes, the onus is on the person claiming that's not how it works to point to some phenomenon that isn't well explained by classical physics.
I mean: I give you as much workup on the brain of an unknown individual as you care to have (fMRI, scans, dissection, whatever you want).
Can you detect which languages, if any, the person speaks (or spoke), with any robustness?
Can you detect if the person ever saw an ocelot in person?
Can you detect which sports team, if any, they like or liked to root for, or which instruments, if any, they played?
For most sections of the brain the level-of-detail at which functionality is decoded is still very primitive and coarse-grained. The reason god-of-the-gaps arguments have so much traction is b/c the gaps are still so very large.