The reward. Information is being corrupted in science. For us, for me, for you, information is the meaning of a symbol. The symbol is a carrier of meaning, and the meaning is not a property of the brain or the physical brain. The meaning is a property of the field, something that we have within we. In fact, we had to have is what is carried by qualia, by an experience, by an inner experience.
So meaning is the foundational aspect, is the ultimate ontology of reality, because meaning is what one is seeking to know itself. Meaning is the essence of its own self. Knowing the essence of who am I is the meaning of who I am. That's what meaning is. And we seek the same. In effect, one knows itself through our own knowing ourselves.
So it's a, you know, if there is a locked door to this theory, as you can see, but it all makes sense. And it all connects with the spiritual traditions as well as connect with what physics is being say. And so this is truly a joining of spirituality and science.
So is it fair to say then, that meaning is a foundational aspect of reality? It's built into the fabric of existence, and we use information and classical symbols as a way to sort of for agents within this reality, to sort of share that meaning with each other.
Absolutely. And if you share then that information, if you share that information with love, you achieve the same meaning. The same. You resonate.
Okay. I'm joined here with Doctor Federico Faggin. Federico, your invention of the microprocessor laid the foundation for the digital age. This made computers, the internet and smartphones possible. You know, it's essentially reshaped human life. And now you seem to be on a bit of a mission to change our understanding of consciousness. So I was curious to ask you, why is this so important? Why have you dedicated this part of your life to doing this?
Well, because the advent of AI is really changing the entire society right now. And I kind of saw it coming. I was working in artificial intelligence back in the late 80s, starting from 86 on, until I switched to a different products and ideas simply because it was too early, but at that time, I also had an extraordinary experience of consciousness that let me understand that consciousness was fundamental and it could not be a product of any physical matter in space and time had to be something else.
But at that time, I was a, I believe in scientism. In other words, the way most scientists today think. The reality is only what exists in space and time. So I thought that the computer could be conscious eventually because, you know, anything? Our bodies in space and time. So computers in space and time. So if we are conscious, they can be conscious. But after that experience, it was very clear that that was not so easy and possibly not possible.
And so it took a while to understand the conscious. It must be fundamental and must have a completely different origin than classical matter like computers. And then AI was really coming up. And so I decided to go public, in a sense, to really express the research that I had done for, you know, since 1990, actually, before 1988, when I asked myself the first time the question, what is consciousness? Is consciousness a part of the brain or not? Can I make a conscious computer? Those questions I asked myself at that time.
And so I decided to write my autobiography and also a chapter in the book that was published in Italy in 2019, talking about the beginning of a theory. And now I have a full blown theory of consciousness and free will that explains that consciousness and free will cannot be produced either by a quantum classical system like our body and even less by a classical computer like the ones that host artificial intelligence.
And so it is fundamental that we understand that we are much more than computers in a day when we are told that we are machines, just like computers. In fact, not so good because computers will, you know, will overcome our intelligence pretty soon if they haven't done it already. So, you know, now I'm really on a tour in this sense to explain my theory, because I believe that only if we change the idea of who we are can we really handle properly, ethically, this technology, which is extremely destructive. And only if we use it ethically can it be a benefit for mankind.
Thank you for sharing that. And for anybody that's new to your work, could you just give us a sort of big picture overview of your theory of consciousness?
Yes. My theory recognizes that consciousness must be a fundamental property of quantum fields. Quantum fields like the quantum field of electrons, the quantum field of protons, and so on. So those quantum fields, of course, within physics, they don't have consciousness, nor do they have free will. In this theory, they have consciousness and free will, and they want to know themselves. So I start with the postulate. And the postulate is that the totality of what exists is dynamic, is holistic, and wants to know itself.
So dynamic and holistic. Everything holistic describes what quantum physics is saying, that the universe continuously changes, is never the same, instant after instant. Holistic means that the universe is not made of parts. Everything is interconnected. The discovery of quantum entanglement has shown without any doubt that everything is interconnected. That is, there are no parts. What we consider as particles, for example, electrons, are actually states of a field, just like the waves of the sea are states of the sea. They are part of the sea that cannot be separated from the sea. The same way electrons are not objects that can be separated from their field. They are states of the field. They come and they go.
And so this idea then makes a lot of sense because if we now say that one wants to know itself, then we can explain why quantum fields in quantum physics have the crazy properties that physics has found. The property of the quantum state of a field, for example, are not properties of a computer because the quantum state of a field cannot be reproduced. That is the no cloning theorem. It says no quantum state can be known. The maximum that you can know of a quantum state is one bit per quantum bit that describes the state.
Quantum bits are very sophisticated structures. You can imagine them as every point on the surface of a sphere, which could be a state of a quantum bit. And quantum bits are entangled. They have states in common, which are not properties of classical bits. Plus each classical bit is independent from all the others, nothing in common with any other. But in the quantum fields, quantum bits have properties that are in common. In some cases they are so tied that if one points in this direction, the other one must be in the opposite direction. And that property maintains even if the two states are far apart, way beyond the reach of light, because these states are instantaneously manifested. When you measure one, the other one instantly takes the other state.
So these properties are incomprehensible. Why are they there? Well, those properties are exactly the same properties that we have when we consider our own inner experience. My inner experience is private, can only be known by me. By me is not the body in this case, it means the field. Because if I were the body, my state, like the state of a computer, can be copied, right? But we are not the body. We are a field controlling the body in this new theory. And it is the field that we are that has these crazy properties.
Also, what I can say about what I feel is only a small part of what I feel. The same thing that happens in a quantum field. The other thing that happens in a quantum field is when you make a measurement, a measurement of an electron, for example, quantum theory only can tell you the probability of where you could measure an electron if you make an experiment. But when we make a measurement, we find the electron in a certain place. How do we go from this probability distribution to actually the actual measurement?
Quantum physics says that is the collapse of the wavefunction. In other words, there is a random event that doesn't exist in any theory, but we have to assume that there is because we find this. So we say, okay, there is a random event. We find the electron here. And if we repeat the experiments many times the same way, we find that the probability of finding electrons in different places is actually correctly predicted by quantum physics, but not the state that manifests. So the probabilities are deterministic, but not what we measure. So the term determinism is in the probabilities.
But the deterministic probability doesn't mean that I know what is going to happen. You know, it's just like if I throw a coin, the probability tells me that there is a 50% chance that it comes up heads or tails, right? But I cannot tell which way it comes up.
In quantum physics, though, this is much more subtle because in classical physics, if you knew everything that there is to know about the table, the coin, and all the way the force with which you throw the coin up, you can actually predict precisely if you have heads or tails. In other words, the state that will manifest is deterministic. And knowing all the information, you could tell whether it would show up heads or tails. Not so in quantum physics.
In quantum physics, the state the world manifests cannot be known, it is determined when you make the measurement. But the measurement is actually an interaction between two fields. The field of the particle, the one measuring it, the field of the instrument that interacts with this other field, and only in the interaction the state is determined. And the state is determined by what? By the collapse of the wavefunction.
In this theory, we say no, it is the free will of the field that you are measuring that determines its own state. So now we can basically eliminate the need of a collapse of the wavefunction. And you can explain the free will decision of the field, and the fields are no longer observer-observed, because that's possible only in classical physics. In quantum physics, every field is an observer and an agent.
Because the field, for example, when I measure a quantum bit, the field will have a certain direction of the magnetic field that is needed to measure the qubit. And it imposes that direction to the qubit that I'm trying to measure. So it changes its state. So it is an agent. And so by changing the agent, the agent then responds by changing its own, resulting in changing the observer.
And so both behave this way. The measurement becomes a symmetric operation where each observer and observed are actually interacting and exchanging information. Which of course in this theory, this information is really only the outer aspect of the meaning. They want to communicate with each other. In other words, the inner state, the state that cannot be known, that state is the meaning. And that meaning is what is actually exchanged through symbols which are states of fields in space and time, which are really the symbolic aspect of reality. But this semantic aspect of reality is the interiority of the field, where there is consciousness and free will.
Long story. But this actually can explain very clearly that if you start with quantum fields that have consciousness and free will and interact with each other symmetrically like a pair, which is what quantum physics is saying, they can visit that stuff, saying that the fields have consciousness and free will. But other than that, if you accept that, then you explain why quantum fields must have those properties.
If you start with the existence of consciousness and free will at the outset, it is a postulate. Since consciousness cannot be explained in any way if you have matter that has no consciousness, the same way happens with free will. How can you explain free will if you have matter without free will? You cannot explain it. You have to say it is random. And so now we say randomness when we should say free will.
And now the moment that you say free will, all of a sudden the universe has meaning and purpose. Because free will is connected with meaning and purpose with us. So you can see that just by starting with this postulate, where one wants to know itself, and to want to know itself means the wanting is what becomes the free will of the fields which are emanations of one, the totality of what is, the unified field.
And to know itself, it must be conscious, because consciousness will allow the field one to know itself and also the fields to know themselves. And they do, and they can. And since they cannot know their own state, they cannot copy their own state. They have to use symbols to communicate and to know themselves, because when one knows itself, it creates a part whole of itself. It doesn't create, it is holistic, so it cannot know itself just a tiny bit of itself. It must know the totality of itself in the direction in which it knows itself, and the direction in which it knows itself is like a frame of reference in which one is knowing itself, which becomes the identity of the field.
Wow, there's so much there. Since discovering your work, something I've been thinking a lot about is the idea that free will is a property of the field and not of the body. Can you just expand on the significance of this for our individual human lives, do you think?
Yeah, it means that we are directing our own self-knowing with free will and of course consciousness. The direction in some way is determined by the particular identity that we have, which is the direction in which one is knowing itself. Originally, the creator does so. But one knows itself in that direction, it creates a field that is a part of itself. Because it must bring into existence what it didn't know before. So knowing and existing are two aspects of the same thing. So to know is to bring into existence from the potential existence, which in physics would be the quantum vacuum.
The quantum vacuum is a plane of energy, it's something that connects everything. It's like a bath that connects everything. Quantum physics describes it. When you take all matter out, there is vacuum. But this quantum vacuum has a density of energy which is unbelievable, it's incalculable, it's near infinite. And so you stop at a certain point, you say, well, you go up to this frequency and then we stop, which the frequency is determined by the Planck time. But let's not get into the details, but basically the density of energy of the quantum vacuum is enormous.
So the quantum vacuum is basically the entity out of which everything emerges. And so I call the quantum vacuum the potentiality of one. If there has ever been a beginning, because we don't know if there was a beginning or not, but if there was ever a beginning, the first time one knew itself, it brought into existence the first field. Perhaps that was the electromagnetic field, because light was a fundamental expression, but not necessarily in the form in which it became free later in the evolution of the universe. But the photons were the first state of one.
But let's not get there, because otherwise we need... but the point is that if we consider this, we have immediately a sense that one is absolutely the origin of everything. And what it creates is what it knows, and what it knows must be conscious, must be a part whole of itself, meaning it must contain all this potentiality and must want to know itself.
But to know itself, now since it is a particle, it must know the others like itself. There we go. Now we have in reality, a universe where cooperation is the word, not competition. Life starts with one creating part whole of itself. Look also at our body, it is made of parts whole. Every cell of my body has the genome of the egg that created the entire organism. Every part has the potential knowledge of the entire organism. We are built in the image of one.
Even the body, even the body that I claim is not conscious. The consciousness of the body is really the consciousness of the field. That little portion of the consciousness of the field has identified with the body, believes to be the body, thinks to be in the body, but is in fact in this space. But this space and time, the way we perceive it, is our construction, is the construction of what the body senses, the body's brain has elaborated, creating information, then the quantum field we experience as this reality.
Since we have this same sensory system, typically the same brain, the same way of processing, the same culture, we see reality the same way. And we think that this physical reality is the real reality, when in fact it is, in a great measure, a construction done by the body, but experienced in the field that we are, in the conscious field that we are.
An analogy that you use, that I find really helpful, was this idea of someone playing a video game. And in the analogy, we sort of mistakenly think that we are the character within the game, within the screen, when in reality we are that, but we are also the person outside of the screen holding the controller. Could you maybe just expand on this analogy and how this connects with free will?
Yeah, basically I have an analogy which I have not used much, but is very rich. Imagine that you're playing a game with the computer. So the screen of the computer is where all the reality that you are observing occurs. So there is an avatar there, and if you have a mask, one of those headsets, whatever you want to call it, where you have the information coming from the computer. That information shows you the reality. Then you can also hear. So you have at least two sensory modalities that you can interact with this virtual reality.
When you move around, you see the whole construction. You see space-time. You see objects. Where are those objects coming from? Are they coming from the real you? No, they are generated by the computer, and you see space, objects, they move, and you interact with the body in that thing, right? If this is well done, you may indeed believe for some moments, if you engross yourself with the game, that you are the avatar that is actually acting in that virtual reality.
Well, the actual reality is now far different, except that we actually see with our sensory systems, we see what's here. But what's here is we only look through a very narrow window. For example, we only see a sliver, one octave of many, many, many octaves of light altogether. Meaning the frequency band of light, which goes from roughly 0.4 to 0.8 micron of wavelength.
So you go from 0.4 to 0.8, and from 0.8 to 1.6, you go in the infrared, and on it goes, and you keep on going. And so if I had cell phone eyes, I would actually be listening to the 10,000 conversations that are going on right now in this space, where I don't see anything. But all these conversations are here, right? So you can see how we isolate in a very narrow band of what's going on. And we call that reality, or we use instruments and we call reality what the instrument sees. But even the instrument is in space and time.
But we, the field, is not this reality. This reality is outside of the computer, the computer with the screen. That's the reality. Now, we don't even see the computer when we put this stuff on. We think the reality is what is the screen where the output of the computer goes. But there is a computer. In this new idea, the reality that we see on the screen is what I call the body. The computer is actually the mind, but the mind is a quantum computer, it's not a classical computer like in the games that we play right now. And we are outside of the quantum computer.
And that spirit, you, the consciousness and so on, is outside of that. So there are three aspects which are integrated, inseparable, that are part of the fundamental reality that we are, which for the moment scientism recognizes only one, which is the body, because we also consider quantum physics. But scientism considers it simply a mathematical theory that allows us to make predictions about what we can measure in space and time, because reality is only what exists in space and time. That is what scientism is saying today. There is no reality associated with quantum theory.
But what I'm saying, the deeper reality is in fact completely... it goes beyond quantum. The quantum theory is really only the aspect of mind, and that is the aspect of body. But the aspect of spirit is completely unknown. That's new physics on top of it, but also is what we really are. We are in that deeper reality.
So for example, in the overlap between quantum theory, the mind and the spirit, which is consciousness, free will, the meaning of information there in that overlap, we have qualia, sensations and feelings. Sensations and feelings are produced at the interface between mind and spirit, between the quantum computer and the spiritual aspect that we are, the fields within the field. That is the meaning, that is the experience, but also the meaning of the experience.
And the meaning of the experience is the meaning of the information that is perceived by the body, that looks at the physical reality, that looks at the screen, is inside the screen, looks at the screen and believes that that is reality, when in fact it is largely a construction.
I've heard you say that the body can be thought of almost as a bridge, which allows us to connect with a deeper reality. And you also speak about this idea of a citta. Can you tell us what a citta is and how this links in here as well?
Yeah. Well, a citta is simply the name to call a quantum field that is conscious and has free will. In this theory, a citta is a quantum field with free will and consciousness. That's it. However, in this theory, quantum fields can interact with each other. When they interact with each other, they attract and exchange information with each other, and they can bring into resonance their interiority.
And by the way, important here is that love is what allows this, brings this resonance of the two fields into communication, into resonance, which means that they have the same meaning. So through outer communication and love, which is an inner property of the fields, they can arrive to a joint state where the maximum joint understanding is being reached. And when they reach that state, then a new entity appears, which is a field of fields, just like the field of the atom of hydrogen.
When the field of electrons, the field of protons interact with each other, to know each other, to see what they have in common, eventually find all that they have in common. What do they do? They create a new field, which is the field of the atom of hydrogen, which has completely different properties, and not some of the properties of the electron and the proton. It's a quantum... That's why the atom of hydrogen behaves... If you send the atom of hydrogen...
Through a double slit, it behaves just like a particle. It behaves just like a wave is not an object. Even that one. And so on.
So what implications does this have for our understanding of death and what comes after?
