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Federico Faggin

Cofounder, Peaxy

Search every verified Federico Faggin interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Federico Faggin, cofounder at Peaxy and inventor of the microprocessor, has recently appeared in public discussions focused on consciousness, quantum physics, and the nature of reality. At a 2026-10-09 event in the "dialogues at the border" series at Sapienza University of Rome, he presented his views on the universe as dynamic and holistic, citing quantum entanglement as a connecting principle, and argued that consciousness is a fundamental property of nature rather than an emergent product of the brain. He also stated that, in his theory, consciousness continues after death and existed before birth, describing it as a field with identity, self-awareness, and free will that controls the body. Faggin also participated in a 2026-10-07 book discussion with psychiatrist Erica Francesca Poli for "Consciousness, Knowledge, and Quantum Information," where he discussed free will, the limits of machine understanding, and the idea that machines only manipulate symbols without true comprehension. In a 2026-09-28 podcast interview, he elaborated on his idealist model of reality, critiquing scientific materialism and recounting spontaneous experiences that led him to reject the notion that consciousness arises from brain activity. Across these appearances, he consistently questioned mainstream scientific assumptions about consciousness and emphasized the importance of a spiritual dimension in understanding human nature.

Recent appearances

  • Federico Faggin at Sapienza Unipi for the "dialogues at the border" series

    ... having granted us also this wonderful hall, which has already hosted Federico Fagin in the past for the conferral of the doctorate ...

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  • Consciousness, Knowledge, and Quantum Information | Federico Faggin and Erica Francesca Poli

    Who am I? Federico Faggin, inventor of the microprocessor, and psychiatrist Erica Francesca Poli discuss quantum physics and consciousness. ✨ Discover why we are much more than our bodies and why the future is not yet written. 👉 Find the book "Consciousness, Knowledge, and Quantum Information" here: https://www.ilgiardinodeilibri.it/lib... 00:00 Introduction and presentation by Federico Faggin and Erica Poli 03:21 Who am I? The experience that changed Federico Faggin's life 07:05 Who am I? For Erica Poli, a question that has always been there 11:17 The color wheel: body, mind, and spirit merg…

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  • #164 Federico Faggin -Part 1- Consciousness, Life, Computers, and Human Nature

    Federico Faggin is one of the greatest luminaries of high technology alive today. A physicist by education, he is the inventor of the microprocessor and the MOS silicon gate technology, both of which underlie the modern world's entire information technology. With the knowledge and experience of a lifetime in cutting-edge fields, Federico now turns his attention to consciousness and the nature of reality, sharing with us his profound insights on the classical and quantum worlds, artificial intelligence, life and the human mind. In this book, he elaborates on an idealist model of reality, produc…

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  • Federico Faggin: What Distinguishes Us from Artificial Intelligence? | Stesi’s 30th Anniversary

    Putting technology at the service of human beings, their lives and their consciousness: this is the wish with which Stesi celebrates 30 years of activity. A commitment to humanity that we wanted to honor by welcoming, during our anniversary event on Friday, April 10, 2026, the man who changed the course of modern computing forever: engineer Federico Faggin, the physicist who invented the microprocessor. His contribution was fundamental to the digitalization of information: from the first RAM memories and microprocessors to the technology behind the touchscreen. Faggin designed some of the ess…

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  • Can AI Ever Be Conscious? | Federico Faggin

    Will artificial intelligence ever become conscious? Federico Faggin argues that neither classical nor quantum computers can possess genuine consciousness because consciousness requires a quantum field with identity, free will, and agency, not simply information processing. 0:00 Can AI Become Conscious? 1:11 Why Classical Computers Cannot Be Conscious 2:15 Why Quantum Computers Don't Solve It 3:44 Can Consciousness Interact with Computers? 5:38 Why Consciousness Must Be a Quantum Field 8:22 Could Consciousness Use a Non-Biological Body? Federico Faggin is an Italian-American engineer and inv…

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  • Our body is an AVATAR we use to know WHO WE ARE - Federico Faggin

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  • A Physics Built From Consciousness | Federico Faggin

    What if the fundamental building blocks of reality are not particles, but conscious units? Federico Faggin proposes a radically different framework — the Consciousness Information Paradigm — in which conscious fields are primary, matter is secondary, and physics itself may need to be reformulated around consciousness, free will, and meaning. 0:00 Introducing the Consciousness Information Paradigm 2:09 Consciousness Units, Fields, and Leibniz's Monads 5:12 The Number and Hierarchy of Consciousness Units 9:24 Time, Memory, and the Expanding Universe 14:32 The Body, Mind, and Spirit Framework 19…

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  • The Universe Knowing Itself | Federico Faggin

    What kind of experience could change a physicist's entire understanding of reality? Federico Faggin describes an extraordinary experience of consciousness that led him from neuroscience and AI research to the conviction that consciousness and free will are fundamental features of the universe. 0:00 Introduction: "I Was Love" 1:15 From Neuroscience to the Problem of Consciousness 4:41 The Experience That Changed Everything 6:16 Why Consciousness Must Be Fundamental 8:59 Quantum Physics, Information, and Meaning 11:04 The Universe Knowing Itself Through Conscious Fields 16:05 Death, Identity,…

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  • Why Consciousness Cannot Emerge from Matter | Federico Faggin

    Can consciousness emerge from something that is not conscious? Federico Faggin argues that no mechanism can explain how consciousness arises from non-conscious matter, and that consciousness and free will must instead be treated as fundamental features of reality. 0:00 Consciousness Cannot Emerge From the Non-Conscious 1:05 Quantum Information-Based Pansychism 1:41 Why Consciousness and Free Will Are Fundamental 5:30 The Limits of Emergence 6:32 From Consciousness to Quantum Physics and Meaning 11:13 Wave Function Collapse as Free-Will Decision Federico Faggin is an Italian-American enginee…

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  • Federico Faggin - Seminare Idee Festival Città di Prato 2026

    Federico Faggin domenica 7 Giugno - Ore 17:15 - Chiostro San Domenico - Nessuna macchina potrà mai desiderare Il desiderio non è un impulso biologico, ma, insieme al volere, fa parte dell’intenzione profonda della coscienza. Mentre il volere implica la capacità di dirigere con libero arbitrio le proprie azioni, il desiderio si riferisce allo scopo a cui sono dirette tali azioni. La coscienza non è spiegabile in un contesto materialista e riduzionista per la semplice ragione che essa è la sorgente della coerenza che lega le parti in un tutto unitario. Questa coerenza è una proprietà quanti…

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  • Consciousness and Free Will Come First | Federico Faggin

    What if consciousness and free will are more fundamental than physics itself? Federico Faggin argues that consciousness and free will must be taken as primitive features of reality, and that quantum phenomena may be consequences of those deeper properties rather than their cause. 0:00 Translating Love into Symbols 1:29 Consciousness and Free Will as Fundamentals 3:09 One as Dynamic, Holistic, and Self-Knowing 6:13 The Birth of Satis and Identity 9:12 Why Materialism Cannot Explain Consciousness 11:34 Quantum Experience and Conscious Fields 14:10 Wave Function Collapse as Free-Will Decision…

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  • Interview | Federico Faggin

    Federico Faggin designed the first microprocessor. The Intel 4004 was the chip that first made it possible to put an entire programmable computer on a single piece of silicon. The process technology he developed at Fairchild Semiconductor became the foundation for every microprocessor, memory chip, and logic device built in the half-century since. The touchscreen on your phone exists because of work he went on to do at Synaptics in the 1990s, when his team replaced the trackball with capacitive touch. In between, he spent years in the 1980s building hardware for neural networks at a moment whe…

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Verified interview transcripts

Notable quotes

“We have been indoctrinated into a way of thinking that has reduced us to being machines, and in fact scientism says that when the body dies we no longer exist, yet we have evidence from hundreds of thousands of people who find themselves above their body, find themselves with other dead people and all the rest, but those don't count because they cannot be reproduced in the laboratory. But even the quantum state of a ”

“Yes, after death our consciousness continues to exist, and it existed even before birth. In other words, in this theory, our consciousness is the property of a field that is similar to a quantum field, but it is much more than a quantum field because it also has identity, self-awareness, and free will, agency with free will. So, this field that we are controls the body, which is essentially an instrument of the field”

“We lose the spiritual dimension and also a large part of the mental dimension. The machine is simply a game of symbols, and we taught it how to assemble symbols based, for example, on a question we ask, which then requires the subsequent symbols to be the most probable regarding a history of, a sort of synthesis of human knowledge that we have made the machine learn, in such a way that the machine seems to understand”

“One is dynamic meaning is never the same instant after instant is holistic means it is not made of separable parts everything is interconnected and so far I have described the universe that quantum physics and general relativity describe. But I add one thing. I say one dynamic analistic wants to know itself. And it is the wanting to know itself that brings in into the reality of the universe the consciousness which i”

“I asked myself a question. They said how come that these books that talk about electrical signal you know by you know bio biochemical signals in the brain describe for example the taste of food as if the taste of food was the electrical signals that we have in the brain. And they said this is this is not that cannot be that is there is something missing here. You know where where where do you go from electrical signa”

“Scientism starts from the idea that there is a universe that exists independently of the observer. The most advanced physicists say: 'No, the universe is a creation of the interaction between quantum fields. Quantum fields, interacting, create the universe through their interaction.' So the universe emerges from these interactions, but this is not complete because quantum fields in physics are not defined as consciou”

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