Stuart Hameroff

I disagree ... the concept of darwinian adaptation operating also at the molecular level could not have promoted "good feeling" as the driver of evolution because we would all end up in some kind of a "hippies" civilisation, yet pain and destruction is what defines the human civilisation and in fact all Life on Earth eating each other very frequently alive and not at the Protozoa level only. So, I think the major driver behind the evolution of consciousness is not "feeling good" but rather "feeling nothing". This does not mean feeling no pain since pain has a very solid survival function but it means feeling the minima of all excitations - the topological landscape of space that is the most stable throughout changing time. This way there is no drive towards "good" nor towards "evil" but towards "indifference" like e.g. the mother of African Cheetah looking indifferently at her cub being torn apart by the lion. If Life and so consciousness evolved towards "feeling good" then such scenario should imply that Cheetahs are unconsciouss or that they feel immense pain and sadness, otherwise Life would be simply unbearable.

Hameroff's view rests on the mistaken claim that dopamine is a pleasure molecule. It's not. Learning that required a computational neuroscience framework in which dopamine encodes a critical term in reinforcement learning. The explanatory framework isn't hedonic qualia - it's computation, which requires supervenience and implies causal closure. The explanatory gap is a pseudo-problem because qualia are epiphenomal.

Stuart, in Orch OR, orchestrated objective reduction (OR) in microtubule quantum superpositions selects definite states from possibilities via spacetime geometry thresholds—producing discrete conscious moments. If subconscious moral alignments (deeper ethical ‘intent’ or coherence biases below explicit awareness) influence the orchestration of those tubulin superpositions—perhaps by modulating dipole moments, π-electron resonances, or the effective ‘ghost tax’ leakage that maintains the Edge around coherent cores—could this subconsciously bias which branch or outcome of the wavefunction collapses? In other words, does proto-conscious moral coherence in the pre-reduction phase (via bioelectric/ELF syncing or oscillator phase-locking across scales) non-computably steer objective reduction toward realities that better preserve or increase overall coherence, effectively making subconscious morality a selector of experiential spacetime geometry? How might anesthetics or microtubule vibrations reveal this?

With all due respect, Dr.Hameroff, to answer your question: cellular signaling requires biophysical coordination. Attributing 'pleasure' or 'reward' to primordial dopamine ignores the fact that molecular function strictly depends on specific receptors and complex downstream signal transduction machinery. From a bioenergetics perspective, for an isolated molecule or a primitive organism to maintain the molecular apparatus and protein synthesis required to process such a signal would demand a massive, unjustifiable energy expenditure. In early molecular selection, such a costly dispersion of energy is thermodynamically unfavorable. Evolutionary biology is not bluffing; it operates under the strict laws of energy economy. Without an integrated biophysical system to translate the stimulus, dopamine is merely a chemical structure, not a feeling.

With all due respect to the Orch-OR model, attributing purpose or 'feelings like reward' to primordial organic molecules seems to introduce an unnecessary anthropomorphic detour. Pre-genetic evolution can be elegantly explained through non-equilibrium thermodynamics and molecular natural selection. Molecules did not cluster due to psychological drives; they stabilized because certain configurations achieved local persistence, self-sustenance, and structural coherence within the primordial field.  It is not a matter of feeling or reward. It is physics.