Key Computer Pioneer talk consciousness and the nature of reality

 The Irreducible Self: Federico Faggin’s Journey from Microprocessor Pioneer to Consciousness Theorist

“Life. After the first cell, all living organisms were formed “alive” within another organism.”
― Federico Faggin, Irreducible: Consciousness, Life, Computers, and Human Nature

I would not even understand the question except that I was fortunate enough to have had a brief experience of enlightenment, i.e. consciousness so awakened that it had become one with the universe. What I saw was that consciousness is everything. The entire universe is made from consciousness. Federico Faggin

Federico Faggin is renowned globally as a luminary in high technology, celebrated as the inventor of the microprocessor (the Intel 4004) and the MOS silicon gate technology, foundational elements of modern information technology. He was born in Vicenza, Italy, in 1941, and received his doctorate in physics from the University of Padua in 1965. His early work included developing SGS Fairchild’s first MOS process technology and integrated circuits (ICs), and later, at Fairchild Semiconductor, he created the MOS silicon gate technology, which became the basis of all modern CMOS integrated circuits. At Intel, he led the implementation of a new random logic chip design method and designed and developed all four ICs in Intel's groundbreaking MCS-4 microprocessor family, the world’s first commercial microprocessor. He later co-founded Zilog, designing and architecting the Z80 microprocessor, and co-founded Synaptics, pioneering in touchpads and touchscreens. Having successfully engineered the building blocks of the digital age, Faggin has dramatically turned his focus in recent decades to a realm irreducible to computation: the nature of consciousness and reality. Through his work, particularly articulated in his book Irreducible, Faggin proposes a comprehensive new theory that seeks to bridge the chasm between science and spirituality, redefining human nature and restoring meaning and purpose to the universe.

The Crisis of Materialism and the Transformative Experience

Faggin's intellectual pivot began from a position of deep-seated materialism. Trained as a physicist, he accepted the prevailing scientific worldview that reality was what physics described—classical and quantum—and that human beings were complex, sophisticated machines. By the late 1980s, despite achieving immense professional success as an entrepreneur and inventor, having co-founded Zilog and then Synaptics, and possessing financial security and a healthy family, Faggin was profoundly unhappy. He realized that he was pretending to be happy despite having checked all the boxes of worldly success. This personal crisis prompted an intense desire to understand consciousness as a subjective problem, leading him to study neuroscience.

He quickly confronted what philosophers call the "difficult problem of consciousness" (qualia): how electrical signals in the brain could possibly produce the sensations and feelings we experience, such as the taste of chocolate or the feeling of love. Recognizing the impossibility of reducing qualia, which are not numbers, to electrical signals, which can be reduced to numbers, he was convinced that consciousness could not be merely an emergent phenomenon of the brain.

This intellectual climate—of intense dissatisfaction and scientific inquiry—was shattered by a spontaneous spiritual awakening during the Christmas holidays of 1990. While skiing with his children, Faggin woke up one night, and a beam of energy, described as white scintillating light, physical yet overwhelming, emanated from his chest. This energy was instantly identified as unconditional love, joy, and peace, feelings far stronger than anything he had ever known. His consciousness was immersed in this light, leading to the realization that he was "both the observer and the observed." Crucially, a thought formed that this substance was "the stuff for which everything is made."

This experience created a "foundational change" in his conception of reality, moving him from believing he was separate from the world to realizing he was "the world observing itself," but with his unique point of view, as his sense of self remained throughout the experience. This direct, lived experience, which he considers essential for true understanding, served as the fundamental input for the theory he would develop over the next two decades, dedicated to uniting physics and spirituality into a single, seamless whole. He stresses that true knowledge requires direct experience, a "lived experience," which is the essence of what is called conoscere in Italian, as opposed to sapere, which is mere factual information or symbolic knowledge that can be repeated like a machine.

The Theory of Irreducible Consciousness

Faggin’s theory is predicated on a self-evident postulate of being: One, defined as the totality of what exists, is dynamic, holistic, and wants to know itself.

1. Consciousness and Free Will as Fundamental: The fact that One wants to know itself implies two fundamental properties: consciousness (the capacity to know itself through self-reflection) and will/free will (the wanting or the capacity to direct one's experience). Faggin insists that consciousness and free will cannot be derived from the brain; they must be fundamental properties of nature deeper than space-time. Free will and consciousness are inextricably linked: consciousness without free will would be epiphenomenal, and free will without consciousness cannot achieve self-knowing.

2. The Emergence of Seities: In the process of knowing itself, One brings an entity—a "part-whole" of itself—into existence from its unconscious potentiality. Faggin calls these foundational entities seities (similar to Leibniz’s monads). Each seity has the same essential properties of One (consciousness and free will) but is distinguished by a unique point of view or identity through which One knows itself.

3. Seities and Quantum Physics: Seities are identified conceptually with the quantum fields of physics, but with the crucial addition of consciousness and free will. This provides an interpretation for the non-classical aspects of reality. Faggin posits that the properties of quantum states are precisely the properties of conscious experience:

    ◦ Privacy and Non-reproducibility: A quantum state is private and cannot be exactly copied or cloned (the no-cloning theorem). This mirrors conscious experience, which is private and cannot be fully transferred to another, such as the fullness of love, which is rich, dynamic, and not a number.

    ◦ The Collapse of the Wave Function: The collapse of the wave function, viewed by physicists as a random, non-algorithmic event, is reinterpreted as a free will decision made by the conscious seity (quantum field) being observed. The field decides what symbol to manifest from the infinity of possibilities, which appears as randomness to an outside observer. Faggin emphasizes that the observer is also an observed agent, and the decision is made by the observed field, not the observer's consciousness.

4. The Body as a Bridge: The theory establishes three levels of reality: the quantum field (seity/consciousness/free will), the classical reality (objects in space-time), and the body, which acts as a quantum-classical bridge. Humans are fundamentally the seities, not the body. The body is merely a "symbol" or an "instrument" used by the conscious field to communicate and have experiences in space-time. The body itself is not conscious and does not possess free will; the free will resides in the controlling field. The body is a quantum and classical structure, an extremely sophisticated machine, but it is not the source of consciousness. When the body perishes, the seity continues to exist, integrating the memories and knowledge of its self-knowing. Near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences are offered as experiential evidence supporting the idea that consciousness is not confined to the brain.

Ethical Implications and the Challenge of AI

Faggin argues that the current "scientism" worldview—based on materialism and reductionism—reduces human beings to machines, denying meaning, purpose, and our deepest interiority. This philosophy, which promotes the "survival of the fittest" rather than cooperation, is the root cause of many global issues, including war, climate disasters, and genocide. The belief that everything must be measurable and that the universe is pointless is what drives people to "get the most out of this life" without concern for consequences.

Relevance to Artificial Intelligence (AI): The theory strictly refutes the possibility of conscious AI. A digital computer relies on information (bits) that can be perfectly copied and reproduced. Since the core property of consciousness (represented by quantum states) is that it cannot be reproduced or cloned, AI systems inherently lack consciousness and free will. AI merely imitates consciousness; it is a simulation of reality based on data humans have produced, reflecting only our own knowledge without true comprehension, creativity, or meaning. The surprising effectiveness of large language models only shows how good AI is at imitating our verbal knowing and correlating symbols, but imitation is not reality.

The Moral Imperative: Faggin stresses that recognizing the universe as holistic and interconnected mandates cooperation. Since all seities are part-wholes of One, any harm done to others eventually returns to the self, and any good done benefits the self. The fundamental choice humanity faces is between working solely for oneself (service to self, competition) or working for all (cooperation, love). The latter aligns with the true nature of the universe. The most important step forward for humanity is to change its mind about who we are—recognizing that "we are beings of light, not machines like computers." He advocates for a future founded on "new SIM" (Science, Intellect, Meaning), a logical and powerful foundation where humanity embraces its true, conscious nature.