Consciousness, in my case, is a property of a quantum field, a quantum field that is everywhere, does not even exist in space-time, and therefore our experience does not exist in the brain, it does not proceed from the head, but exists in this deeper reality. We interpret it as if it were something inside our head, but this is a mistake, simply because a small part of who we are, let's say, this quantum field that is conscious, has free will and wants to know itself through an experience in which this field controls a body that is like an instrument; and like an avatar in a virtual reality, it controls this instrument, this body that interacts in space-time with other bodies to have an experience of self-knowledge. Because experience, not just experience, but more importantly, the meaning of experience is the essence of oneness and the essence of who we are. Oneness is the totality of what exists. Therefore, in my model, consciousness is not the entity.
Consciousness is a property of an entity. The entity is a quantum field with the properties of quantum fields, but additionally with consciousness and free will. I call this field "seity," a selfhood, meaning it is a self. It has three fundamental properties and an identity. The identity is simply the fact that this field is self-conscious; it knows it exists, it knows it is conscious, it knows it is knowing, and it knows it can direct its experience through what I call free will. And the acting of this field is fundamentally communication, meaning the field can transform an inner experience into symbols with which it communicates with other fields. Why must it transform experience into symbols? Because experience is private. Experience cannot be copied. Experience is not transferable. The love I feel for a son, for a daughter, for my wife, only I can feel it. Even with my wife, I must use symbols. What are symbols? Words, a caress, a smile, what we can do in space-time through the body, or even deeper experiences in which, for example, through words, but through the love we feel for one another, we can bring our inner selves into resonance; and in that resonance, there is a community of meaning that is only possible by using love.
The concept of a field began with Faraday, who was a physicist trying to understand how, for example, the magnetic field works, right? Magnetic field: one has a magnet that attracts or repels another magnet. But then, where does this force of attraction or repulsion come from? How is it possible to imagine this force that no one sees? And yet there is a repulsion, an attraction. We all know it, we all played with magnets when we were kids, right? Well, he imagined that this force exists, in this case, in spacetime. Spacetime is also, let's say, the medium for this field, which can be described as a force at every point in space, a vector determined by certain equations. Now, without getting into the physics, it is a space; the field is a space with certain properties. However, when I talk about a quantum field, the quantum field is not in physical space; it is not in three-dimensional space. The field is an even deeper reality, because the state of the field can only be described with n-dimensional vectors—many dimensions, thousands, hundreds of thousands, even an infinite number of dimensions. Not only that, but every point—every point—is a complex number, not a real number.
A complex number, if anyone remembers—maybe from middle school, maybe you studied them, I don't remember anymore—but anyway, a complex number is a real number plus an imaginary number, and the imaginary number is the square root of -1. I don't know if you remember, but maybe someone is starting to say, "What is this guy talking about?" Anyway, the number -1 is a number that cannot be obtained by multiplying two real numbers, because if you multiply 4*5 you get 20; -4 times -5 also gives 20. It's impossible to multiply two real numbers, positive or negative, and get a negative number. Do you understand? So the square root of -1 is called i. As in input, as in i for imaginary, because it's not a number, yet it behaves mathematically as if it were a number, and in reality, these complex numbers are used to describe probability amplitudes. They are called probability amplitudes, meaning they are numbers that, when multiplied by themselves—well, the number multiplied by its complex conjugate, but guys, you're making me talk, you're making me say a lot of things that I would need a blackboard for—anyway, it's important that this complex number multiplied by its conjugate, which is a number with the imaginary part negative instead of positive, or with the sign changed, gives a real number, and that real number is a probability.
So, the state of a field is represented by a vector whose components are probabilities. But probabilities aren't exactly real things. Probabilities in quantum physics allow us to calculate what one could measure in spacetime, starting from a field, from the state of a field, but not the state that will be measured. And here is the fundamental difference between quantum physics and classical physics, because quantum physics doesn't tell us where the glass will end up if I push it with a force. Somewhere. Classical physics tells us the motion and conditions of the glass, but quantum physics can only tell us the probabilities that the glass will end up, for example, here, here, here, or there, or there, or there, depending on the force I apply; but it doesn't tell me where the glass will end up. To know where the glass ends up, I have to make a measurement. During the measurement, this event occurs which no one knows how it can happen, called wave function collapse, which states that in this measurement, the glass will manifest in this position. This position, however, is not predictable at all. It is a completely random phenomenon, random, impossible. There is no algorithm that can say where the glass will end up.
Now, this thing here, for example, scientism doesn't even imagine it could be possible, doesn't even consider it. So scientism, which should be science, doesn't consider these things as if they never existed, when physicists have been trying for 100 years to understand how this thing can work, and no one has ever understood how it can happen. In this new theory that I created with Professor Dariano, we explain that wave function collapse doesn't even exist. What happens is that the quantum field, for example, the electron quantum field, is what decides—since it is conscious in the new theory, it is conscious—it decides itself where the electron will manifest. It is a decision of free will, because a decision of free will has exactly the properties of a wave function collapse seen from the outside: a random decision because we cannot predict what the field will decide. Because the field has free will, it decides what it wants, it decides where to manifest the electron, and to truly be a decision of free will, there cannot be any hidden law. No possible law, no algorithm that could determine where that electron will end up. So you understand that the field, therefore, is a—that the quantum field, which is a field that does not exist in spacetime, there is a deeper reality where we exist, controlling the body that exists in spacetime, is something much more powerful than any idea we have ever had in physics.
For me, consciousness is the ability we all have to know through an experience made of sensations and feelings, what philosophers call qualia, that is, we observe the world and the shapes, the colors, the sensations. We put food in our mouth, the taste of the food, etc. Those are qualia and these qualia are, and here is my original contribution, let's say, which are the carriers of meaning. We observe symbols and consciousness transforms symbols into the meaning of its experience. Therefore, consciousness is what allows us to experience and to go further, further than the experience, the meaning of what we experience, of our experience, and we bring into existence the meaning of what we have that we produce. So, in a sense, this being is bringing into existence what we experience, but the fundamental aspect of experience is meaning, something that is never talked about. Science only speaks of symbols. Even when it says meaning, in reality, meaning for the scientist is another symbol. For example, the meaning of a symbol becomes a mathematical symbol. But mathematics is made of symbols, guys, those in mathematics are not meanings. It is we who give our consciousness that gives meaning to the mathematical symbol. You understand that it's all a game here of not understanding when you start from the idea that information is just a symbol and this is the fundamental problem of scientism.
I said it before because I needed a little bit of a background to be able to understand it, but scientism starts from the idea that there exists only—that there exist in reality only symbols without meaning. But I will make you understand the difference. A robot, not a robot, a ChatGPT that tells you "I love you with all my soul." You believe that it loves you with all its soul, even if it says it exactly as someone would who is actually responding to the love they feel inside, says "I love you with all my soul" because it responds, that is, the meaning comes before the symbol, but if we have deleted the meaning, the symbol is empty, it is empty, there is nothing, it is just a symbolic structure. Experience is arriving at meaning and the deepest meaning of who we are is love, joy, peace, the ability to understand, the ability to work together. That is what counts. And instead, that is all erased by scientism, which wants to see only mechanism, functioning, materialism, but the most bleak kind, because it does not even accept what quantum physics says, which is the deeper physics from which classical physics emerges. Classical physics derives entirely from quantum physics. They have forgotten this, they have forgotten this fact and speak of reality as if reality were only the classical one.
So, consciousness is therefore much more, it's much more even than what those who say yes, consciousness doesn't need a brain, think; because for scientism, consciousness is obviously an epiphenomenon of the brain, therefore not even plants can be conscious because plants don't have a brain. Do you understand? When the living cells that make up our body clearly must be conscious to create a body that is conscious, if one believes that the body is conscious. So today the confusion that exists is crazy, and unfortunately, since this crazy confusion has led us to artificial intelligence, if we don't understand, if we don't get to the bottom of who we are, we will be completely displaced by a description of reality that is truly poisonous because it takes away our reason for living. So this is the problem we are facing. I'm getting straight to the point because intellectual discussions are fine, but what does consciousness mean? It means that we have an extra gear, but not just a gear, because it's not an extra gear, it's something that isn't even comparable to what a machine does. We have capabilities that go beyond the invisible. The visible, what I call visible, is only what we can already know, which is our experience, but meaning goes even beyond conscious experience, the qualia that are not even accepted as reality by scientism. So the invisible, beyond the invisible, there is the meaning of information.
If there is free will, there must be consciousness, because otherwise free will could not even be called free will, it could be called randomness. Seen from the outside, it is randomness, exactly what science says. Today it talks about the collapse of the wave function, something that happens randomly, not just random, but it is proven that randomness is non-algorithmic; it goes beyond algorithms, it goes beyond numbers. So, if the—uh, I lost my train of thought, guys. Consciousness of free will. It happens, it happens. So, if one starts by saying free will exists, free will must be something that consciousness uses to do something with free will, you see? Meaning I have to know what I want to have free will. If I knew what I wanted and didn't have free will, it would be a not very interesting phenomenon, because I couldn't do anything with the fact that I know, for example, what I want. I want to go over there, but I don't have the free will to go over there. Well, I mean, that would be, it wouldn't make sense to have free will. Free will only makes sense if the entity possessing it is also conscious, knows what it wants, has a sense of its current situation, and can therefore direct its actions based on this free will.
And naturally, if we are in the physical world, for example, we have very limited free will, in the sense that if I wanted to fly by flapping my arms, I couldn't do it. Therefore, free will does not mean that one can do whatever one wants; one must live with limitations, for instance, those of a body. However, within the limitations of the body, my free will allows me, for example, to look where I want, and thus to take symbols from this reality, the symbols that interest me. So I do have this free will, and I also have the free will to decide which meaning I hold within myself to transform into symbols to speak to you. This is free will. Fundamental free will of the fields. The free will of fields is to communicate with other fields because, at a more fundamental level, these fields do not need a body; they communicate with each other without a body. They use symbols. For example, the electron field. In physics, an electron is not an object separate from the field. The electron is a state of the field, like a wave in the sea. If the field were the sea, the electron would be a wave in the sea. The wave cannot be separated from the sea, so it is the field that has free will, not the electron. The electron has no free will; it is the field that decides where to manifest the electron or where to remove it from spacetime. The electron can appear and disappear from spacetime. You understand that the notion of a field is much more fundamental than the notion of a particle, for example. The particle is a state of the field. This is what quantum physics says.
So free will and consciousness must work together and must be part of a field. Therefore, when, for example, it is possible to have consciousness without free will, that consciousness is not very useful. One can have, for example, this consciousness, according to the D'Ariano theory, in a quantum computer. The quantum computer, while it operates, while it performs quantum operations—not when it functions as the material it is made of, but when it performs quantum operations—in this state, since it is a pure state, this computer is in a pure state, and the pure state corresponds to a state where there is a consciousness that exists. Temporarily, then it disappears. As soon as the computer finishes the quantum calculation, consciousness fades away. However, the computer has no free will; it doesn't even know it is conscious. This is not self-consciousness; it is simply a phenomenon associated with the computer, which serves no purpose for the computer, yet it exists. So, this is an important thing to remember. Therefore, there can be consciousness without free will, but it serves no purpose. Ah, and so there is a distinction. The computer is an entirely deterministic structure, and even when one performs these experiments using randomness, one typically uses a random number generator that is an algorithm, so not always; sometimes there is a physical one, radioactive decay, and other things.
No, no, if there are two, I was getting to that, I was getting to that. So, the interesting thing, in fact, is that it is possible and so, in the case where everything is, how should I say, um, deterministic from the point of view, let's say, of the model I have, of the physics I have, it is exactly possible to have the information, since it is already known what the number that will come out will be, and therefore which image will be shown. This is already knowable. So it is possible to do this, and so there is this little peak that occurs before one sees the image because there is this possibility of knowing what will come, and so this is important, right? Because otherwise it would not be explainable in any way, it would be absolutely, it would mean that there is a retrocausality, which in my model does not exist; retrocausality does not exist. It is not possible to send signals from the future to the past in physics, and my model does not require this. This is important because physicists are very firm on this point.
By the way, if one were to have a random number generator, a quantum number generator, this quantum number generator is purely random, it is not influenceable in any way. Ah, meaning it would not be influenceable in principle in any way, and in fact, it is not so. It is precisely the fact that if this exists, one can influence it and get the images one wants more often, for example, erotic images, because one can influence the generator itself with one's own consciousness, with quantum field to quantum field. And this is fundamental, and I add that there is no time to discuss it in detail, but I myself have done experiments at this level and I am able to control a—Yes, it is possible. And do you know how? With love.
