(This review will appear in a forthcoming issue of Philosophy Now magazine.)
Federico Faggin’s 2024 book is Irreducible: Consciousness, Life, Computers and Human Nature. He was a microprocessing pioneer, laying some of the groundwork for modern information technology. He propounds a startling theory of consciousness.
Before we get into that, the book extensively discusses classical physics versus quantum mechanics. We know that something seemingly solid, like a hammer, is made of atoms that are mostly empty space. We picture atoms as miniature solar systems, with electrons orbiting a nucleus. But not even those particles are solid; not tiny balls; it’s a kind of nothingness all the way down. Faggin also stresses uncertainty and indeterminacy. Whatever an electron might physically be, even its location is problematic. The best we can do is delineate a probability of its being in a certain place.
We might say particles, whatever they are, exist in spacetime.Yet even that is problematical. Again, drilling down, not even space seems to have the characteristics we commonly conceptualize for it.
All this leads Faggin to posit that the reality we think we inhabit isn’t, after all, actually there, at least not in the way we envision it. Which he considers wrongly materialistic and “reductionistic.”
Another view, however, is that quantum physics describes a submicroscopic reality operating very differently from that of classical physics governing everyday stuff — which is not some sort of misleading mirage. The two levels really work separately. A hammer still pounds nails. Isn’t that an aspect of reality?
Anyhow, Faggin’s take on reality is integral to his theory of consciousness, which does require breaking from our common understanding of reality.
To get there, start with the book’s introduction, relating how his life of achievement left him feeling existential suffering. This mid-life crisis centered upon his inability to understand qualia.
Now that’s a very important word, which Faggin associates with “sensations, feelings, and emotions.” It’s really even broader, applicable to everything one experiences. But whence comes the “you” doing the experiencing? That’s the heart of the matter.
One night, Faggin relates, he had an “awakening.” He “suddenly felt a powerful rush of energy” which he “could not even imagine possible . . . a love so intense and so incredibly fulfilling.” More surprising was its source: himself. Experienced “as a broad beam of shimmering white light, alive and beatific, gushing from [his] heart with incredible strength. Then suddenly that light exploded. It expanded to embrace the entire universe.” Convincing him, “that this was the substance out of which everything that exists is made . . . what created the universe out of itself. Then . . . [his emphasis] I recognized that I was that light.”
Well. Faggin presumably did have an experience. A quale. Which must have occurred among his neurons with no outside source. I’m guessing no one else in that room would have seen a bright light — being reminded of a family member insisting she’d experienced time going backward. Similarly illustrating the weirdness a massively complex brain can occasionally get up to.
Faggin himself tellingly says, “I was both the experiencer and the experience [his emphasis].” Anyhow, whatever happened there, it led to his great philosophical epiphany: “everything is ‘made of’ love . . . I had experienced the existence of another dimension of reality.” Analogizing this with quantum physics — “impossible to comprehend with ordinary logic.”
And finally the big reveal: “the only possible way to explain how the universe can create life and consciousness is that the universe is itself alive and conscious from the outset.” It “had free will forever.”
This is no science-based construct. And assuredly not “the only possible way to explain” life. While science has not nailed down every nuance, people like Darwin and Dawkins have done a much better job of explaining it. And what about “another dimension of reality?” That abuses the words’ meaning. Faggin is not talking about a “dimension” in any proper sense. Nor reality.
Then the word “love” — much over-used, a staple of “spiritual” bloviating. As in “God is love.” Devoid of meaning. Anyone saying such things has no idea what they’re talking about.
Faggin also introduces computers as an important point of reference. And likening the conscious mind to a computer does provide some helpful insight, but only gets us so far. This may be how Faggin goes astray. He writes, “I could not find any way to convert the electrical signals of the computer into qualia, because qualia belong to a different kind of reality with no apparent connection to symbols.” (My emphasis)
“Symbols” is another crucial word. We only understand anything through symbolification; that’s what language does. And thus your mind works by deciphering symbols into concepts. Qualia too are experienced by rendering them into symbols you then likewise decipher. But the “you” there is again the problem. How you turn symbols and qualia into something (non-physical of course) that you somehow understand. It’s not that qualia have “no apparent connection to symbols;” it’s that they have no apparent connection to something in there constituting “you.”
To solve this puzzle, the best modern science can do is to posit that the “you” experiencing consciousness and qualia must emerge from neuronal functioning. While we don’t (yet) know exactly how, that provides at least a rational explanatory concept. But this Faggin contemptuously rejects, indeed deeming it impossible that consciousness could emerge from elements themselves lacking that property. He posits instead that consciousness must be an irreducible property of nature already present in the primordial “stuff” out of which space, time, energy, and matter emerged. Thus every cell in our bodies must be conscious. As indeed must everything that exists — “a grain of sand, a stone, a plant.”
Faggin uses the word “seity” (really another word for selfhood) to signify a manifestation of a cosmic phenomenon that somehow operates inside a person as the source of what is experienced as consciousness. As the alternative to consciousness arising by itself out of one’s physical functioning.
Another term for what he’s putting forth is panpsychism, an idea that, as he says, has a long history — indeed, originating back when humans understood very little of nature. But even if we don’t know exactly how consciousness instead emerges from brain processing, it makes sense that it must. Whereas how panpsychism could be true has no explanation whatsoever, and is a far bigger leap.
Analogously, people who can’t see how the cosmos could exist without a creator don’t see how the notion of a creator raises far more questions than it answers, lacking any theory for where the creator came from.
The same logical black hole swallows Faggin’s notion of a universe “alive and conscious from the outset.” He offers no theory for how his panpsychic “seities” could have existed in the first place. Moreover, there is no evidence at all for the Universe having some sort of consciousness. If it’s conscious, it’s hidden that quite cleverly. Why?
In sum, Ockham’s Razor favors what conventional science says, over Faggin’s theory. It’s complete nonsense.
The Rational Pessimist 
