  Any scientific attempt to explain consciousness is tasked with reconciling
the third person objective perspective of science with our first person
subjective experience of the world. A good point of departure is to consider
situations in which these two perspectives are correlated. We note that
behaviors conducive to our well-being, i.e. conducive to maintaining
homeostasis, tend to be associated with feelings of pleasure while actions that
threaten our homeostasis tend to coincide with unpleasant feelings. We choose a
materialist/physicalist approach and find the simplest explanation for this
correlation arises from the assumption that we possess agency. If a system has
the agency to choose an outcome then presumably it would choose a pleasant over
an unpleasant one. Agency implementing preferences manifests itself as a force
in a third person theory. If a preference is strong it gives rise to a force
causing a deterministic evolution, while weak preferences give rise to
non-deterministic evolutions. Quantum physics assigns a high degree of
non-determinism to large systems of qubits, a Knightian uncertainty, in which
one can not even assign probabilities to observed outcomes. This can give
engineered systems the freedom to act on their preferences in ways not always
predictable by an outside observer. Our considerations lead us to propose a
three part design for an engineered animat for which one may provocatively
argue that it is conscious and possesses agency and feelings.
