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Any scientific attempt to explain consciousness is tasked with reconcilingthe third person objective perspective of science with our first personsubjective experience of the world. A good point of departure is to considersituations in which these two perspectives are correlated. We note thatbehaviors conducive to our well-being, i.e. conducive to maintaininghomeostasis, tend to be associated with feelings of pleasure while actions thatthreaten our homeostasis tend to coincide with unpleasant feelings. We choose amaterialist/physicalist approach and find the simplest explanation for thiscorrelation arises from the assumption that we possess agency. If a system hasthe agency to choose an outcome then presumably it would choose a pleasant overan unpleasant one. Agency implementing preferences manifests itself as a forcein a third person theory. If a preference is strong it gives rise to a forcecausing a deterministic evolution, while weak preferences give rise tonon-deterministic evolutions. Quantum physics assigns a high degree ofnon-determinism to large systems of qubits, a Knightian uncertainty, in whichone can not even assign probabilities to observed outcomes. This can giveengineered systems the freedom to act on their preferences in ways not alwayspredictable by an outside observer. Our considerations lead us to propose athree part design for an engineered animat for which one may provocativelyargue that it is conscious and possesses agency and feelings.

Do Robots powered by a Quantum Processor have the Freedom to swerve?