I'm not a physicist, but I do believe most other consciousness conspirators call the quantum level explanation as either an equalizers trick based on: quantum mechanics is not comprehensible and consciousness is not comprehensible, so therefore they must have the same source (Damasio), or simply a that consciousness is "fairy dust" (Dennett, I think). Information systems level theorist, neurotheorists, cognitive and meta cognitive theorists, which are the most plentiful, all have in common the rejection of the explanation of consciousness lying at the level of quantum mechanics. This comes from the assumption that representation of information is processed in ensembles of neural patterns. The reason they assume this, is because it's a premise to believe this in order to study how neural activity grossly progresses, and if you're a cognitivist then the premise is the same, as well as that explanatory power comes from connecting different functional capacities, disregarding exactly the physical implementation of it. But the cognitivist does acknowledge the neuron as then smallest information processing unit, just that it's an irrelevant level when it comes to how the brain manages to represent different images, as it can do so in many different ways.

I'd say the main thing that makes me indifferent about Stuart and Hameroff is the lack of predictive studies of different sorts. It's mostly a proposition, and doesn't really contribute that much to empirical study of consciousness. Guilo Tononi's framework is mathematically formulated based on phenomenological considerations, but allows for an ocean of empirical studies to test it. And concurrent with neuropsychological and medical research, physiological markers as e.g. captures by EEG, really brings home predictions of when and how conscious a person is (from coma to depe sleep to wakefulness). The question now is more like, how can the (systems models) predict exactly which qualities of consciousness an organism is having.

As I wrote upon opening the thread, could you cook down the dissertation you reccomend into the format I requested?

Otherwise your contribution to the question is currently: Argument from authority: God exists because some guy at Hong Kong Baptist university said so :)

I was considering whether or not to post the reason behind the request, and thought perhaps I'd try to keep it short, but I guess my initial instinct was more in tune (at least with you).

It's simply a hobby side project to create a booklet on the general topic of agnosticism. Common arguments would be a section in it, if it ever becomes anything.

I've had half a lifetime just learning different things I find interesting, but I haven't had equal motivation to "give back". Booklets are first attempts to see if I can overcome the boredom of producing something (anything), by putting my unique syncreticism of knowledge to use.

Thanks 180 Proof, your link really does the trick!