This paper reviews evidence from neuroscience and quantum comput­ing theory in support of the notion of autonomy in the workings of cogni­tive processes. Deficits in speech, vision, and motor abilities are described to show how cognitive behaviour is not based just on incoming sensory data. Active agents, to which the conscious mind may not have access, are described. Recent developments in quantum computing, of relevance to machine intelligence, are also examined.

1        Introduction 

In the naive view, the mind processes the signals coming into the brain and obtains its understandings in the domains of seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and so on using its store of memories. But in reality, a cognitive act is an active process where the selectivity of the sensors and the accompanying processing in the brain is organized based on the expectation of the cognitive task and on effort, will and intention. It is now generally agreed that intelligence must be seen as a result of the workings of numerous active cognitive agents. If we could properly assess the capacities of these agents, it would help us better appreciate the power of natural intelligence and provide directions for future research in machine intelligence.

The reductionist approach to artificial intelligence (AI) emerged out of an attempt to mechanize logic in the 1930s. In turn, AI and computer science influenced research in psychology and neuroscience and the view developed that a cognitive act should be viewed as a logical computation. This seemed rea-sonable as long as classical computing was the only model of effective com-putation. But with the advent of quantum computing theory, we know that the mechanistic model of computing does not capture all the power of natural computation.

Classical computers work on classical logic and they may be viewed as an embodiment of classical physics. Quantum computers, on the other hand, are based on the superpositional logic of quantum mechanics, which is a different paradigm. Conventional explanation sees consciousness arising as an emergent property of the classical computations taking place in the circuits of the brain, but this does not address the question of how thoughts and feelings arise.

The other view is to consider consciousness as one of the grounds of reality, together with space, time and matter. Consciousness and space-time-matter are complementary because consciousness needs the support of matter and without observers it is meaningless to speak of a universe. Also remember that our idea of the physical world is constructed out of mental experiences. If I give primacy to this mental experience then I am an idealist, but if I give primacy to the contents of this mental experience then I am a materialist. If I believe that both these have an independent existence then I am a dualist.

In going beyond reductionism it is assumed that quantum processing in the brain, given appropriate neural hardware, leads to awareness. This model is similar to the classical model in that computational structures of a certain complexity are required before awareness can emerge. But there is a basic difference in the nature of processing in the two models.

It is useful to note that there exist several states of consciousness: wakeful-ness, sleep, dream-sleep, coma, hunger and thirst, love and anger, interest and boredom which have distinct neurochemical signatures. These different states may be taken to be modifications caused by the neural hardware of a universal state. The contents of consciousness are our perceptions. Due to the subjective nature of perceptions, often one eschews this term and speaks only of attention.

The case that quantum computing is at the basis of biological information processing and, consequently, the explanation for the power of animal intelli-gence, is based on the following elements:

• Philosophical.

At the deepest level of description nature is quantum-mechanical. The world of mathematics, as a product of the human mind, sits on top of the sequence physical — chemical — mental — ideational (mathematical). Since our ideas (dressed in a mathematical form) are able to describe the quantum-mechanical physical reality, the power of information processing in the brain should equal the power of quantum mechanics. Another argument is that quantum mechanics as a uni-versal theory should apply to information and organization and so the information processing of the brain cannot be understood but in quantum mechanical terms

[• Neurophysiological.

The interior of living cells is organized around the cytoskeleton which is a web of protein polymers. The major components of the cytoskeleton are the microtubules, that are hollow tubes 25nm in diameter, consisting of 13 columns of tubulin dimers arranged in a skewed

hexagonal lattice. Researchers have argued that the microtubules support coherent, macroscopic quantum states. They see brain processing as a hybrid quantum/classical computation.