Does consciousness emerge from quantum processes?
Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose think it does, while Patricia Churchland is less convinced How can we comprehend the nature of our conscious experience? This question provokes four types of explanation. “Reductive materialists” believe that conscious experience simply emerges from computer-like excitations among the brain’s neurons. “Dualists” view consciousness as separate from the brain, but able to influence brain activities. “Idealists” argue that consciousness is primary and itself creates reality: consciousness is all there is. “Panpsychists” say that conscious experience is intrinsic to physical reality, that a “protoconsciousness” (a “funda-mentality”) is present even in inanimate structures. Consider this fourth view. Could the raw components of conscious experience actually be “built-in” to the universe? Philosopher Alfred North Whitehead proposed that at a deeper level than atoms or electrons are fundamental units, which Whitehead termed “occasions of experience”. Some mod
