You seem to be engaging more with the headline writer than with Penrose. They're both, perhaps, wrong, but Penrose is wrong in a far more interesting way.
Penrose doesn't just think quantum mechanics is wrong in the sense that it can't quite be lined up with general relativity, he thinks that quantum mechanics and consciousness are the same problem and that we can't understand one without the other. Now, to me this smacks a bit of the old argument:
1. I don't understand baseball
2. I don't understand women
3. Therefore, women and baseball must be related somehow
but he has slightly better reasons than that for believing what he does.
Consciousness and quantum mechanics are both fascinating problems to understand; personally I don't think they're the same problem but I don't mind if some smart folks want to think carefully about the possibility that they are.
If consciousness is a property of quantum mechanics then this ought to be at least partially measurable. All you have to do is to construct an intelligent non-quantum computer and ask it "Hey, are you conscious?" Of course this doesn't really help you, because what if the computer just thinks it's conscious but doesn't have real consciousness the way we do? What would this even mean? What is it like to be an intelligent but non-conscious mind? In my own opinion the question is meaningless which is why I think consciousness is some kind of inevitable emergent property of intelligent systems; but of course there's thousands of philosophers out there tackling this very question so I won't pretend to have any original thoughts on it.
Penrose doesn't just think quantum mechanics is wrong in the sense that it can't quite be lined up with general relativity, he thinks that quantum mechanics and consciousness are the same problem and that we can't understand one without the other. Now, to me this smacks a bit of the old argument:
1. I don't understand baseball
2. I don't understand women
3. Therefore, women and baseball must be related somehow
but he has slightly better reasons than that for believing what he does.
Consciousness and quantum mechanics are both fascinating problems to understand; personally I don't think they're the same problem but I don't mind if some smart folks want to think carefully about the possibility that they are.
If consciousness is a property of quantum mechanics then this ought to be at least partially measurable. All you have to do is to construct an intelligent non-quantum computer and ask it "Hey, are you conscious?" Of course this doesn't really help you, because what if the computer just thinks it's conscious but doesn't have real consciousness the way we do? What would this even mean? What is it like to be an intelligent but non-conscious mind? In my own opinion the question is meaningless which is why I think consciousness is some kind of inevitable emergent property of intelligent systems; but of course there's thousands of philosophers out there tackling this very question so I won't pretend to have any original thoughts on it.