A New Physics Arises: Irreducible by Federico Faggin Reviewed

Physicist and microchip inventor Federico Faggin is an open unabashed enthusiastic pantheist, or rather panpsychist. Any number of such people are found in the sandal-shod organic trail-mix crowd, the sort who willingly live in Ithaca, NY, people always ready to recommend the latest restrictive diet, like eating only chakra-adjusted matched-color wild vegetables.

Faggin displays no shades of this in his Irreducible: Consciousness, Life, Computers, And Human Nature. His take is rooted in physics, by route of a profound spiritual experience, a believable story he tells with conviction. It was in thinking how to reconcile this experience with physics that he came to his theory. It it this we’ll examine. (That video just linked is a good entry point.)

Atoms Apple

It has been clear for a century that the premises of what we can call mechanistic materialism are wrong. The Democritian idea that everything is atoms, or whatever, bumping into each other and giving rise to all things is not true. It is has been proved not true. Take what physicists call entanglement: experiments prove simple mechanistic accounts fail. Or take things like double-slit experiments: experiments prove that simple materialism cannot be true. Or that the so-called measurement problem: again experiments prove that simple clock-like mindless determinism (used in the sense of cause) are just plain wrong.

It’s not that we haven’t discovered the as-yet-hidden mindless mechanist materialist explanations for the working of things, it is that we have proved, with a hard capital P, that these explanations cannot be so. The proofs are of a form all Popperians love. The experiments say “If the world is mechanistic, this-and-such must result; Lo, something else besides this-and-such happened; thus, the world is not mechanistic.” A sound, valid syllogism. Every physicist knows these troubles, and though they worry about the meaning from time to time, they have been raised in academia to “Shut up and calculate“, so that is what they do.

Most of my audience knows what these things are, but for those who do not, Faggin spends the first part of Irreducible explaining quantum mechanics in simple, non-mathematical ways. He knows of what he speaks: he made much moola building practical applications of this physics. (If you’re concerned you won’t understand these things, recall you don’t have to know how something works to know that it works.)

All we need here is to grasp that a different philosophy of nature is needed to jolt physics from its doldrums. One that accounts for entanglement, duality, and measurement. Faggin does not seem aware that one such philosophy already exists, which is odd because he was raised Catholic and in a time where such things were better known. Others are now busy showing how well this new-old philosophy comports with observations. That philosophy is, in part, hylomorphism, which we covered before. Briefly and incompletely, everything contingent is made of a combination of actuality and potentiality, and that matter-plus-form is substance (see this). This accounts for both duality and entanglement. But not measurement.

And that’s where Faggin starts and concentrates his efforts. Some thing must account for why objects register the values they do upon measurement. Nothing happens for “no reason”: there is always a reason, even if it is unknowable. Quantum objects don’t take states until interacted with, and are unknowable before interaction by any outside (of the object) means. Yet measurements can’t, and don’t, happen for “no reason”. And we know the reason, whatever it is, cannot be something simple and mechanical. So what is it?

Mind. Or, as he puts it, consciousness.

Think Of That

Instead of working backwards, as physicists in a rut might do, from theory to the world, Faggin works from what is observed in the world, then moves to theory. It is obvious that we are conscious and that we have a mind. That is his starting assumption. Our minds cannot be “illusions”, because it requires a mind to have an illusion! The materialist idea is that the mind and consciousness somehow, never mind how, that they “emerge” from simpler mechanistic workings of small particles. This is not only always a bluff, it is known to be wrong. It cannot be simple particles bumping around, wiggling faster, because of all those problems mentioned above.

Take a qubit, which is said to be in a “superposition” of every possible value. Now I and others would say it is composed of actuality and potentiality, with the qubit when measured taking a definite single value. While the qubit (or any quantum object) is in potentia, as is said, to its infinite possibilities, it cannot be peered into nor copied. This is called the “no-clone theorem” in quantum mechanics. Faggin says “the state of a qubit cannot be copied, and cannot be measured without disturbing it and changing it unpredictably.” And irrevocably.

Because our cells, the stuff inside and channels of communication, are in this sense also in states of actuality and potentiality, they also cannot be copied. You cannot build a man out of parts. This will disappoint Star Trek fans, because it means you also cannot transport a man by constituent parts by some beam, either. And even if we could copy quantum states, there is no way to set a collection of them, even a set as small as one, to the precision required for duplication. Chaos theory teaches that even infinitesimal changes in initial conditions in many dynamical systems, which our bodies certainly are, produce wildly disparate outcomes.

Life Does Not Compute

Even more limiting: “[S]ince the cell is incredibly dynamic, it is different at every instant, making it impossible to simultaneously measure its state.” We are not computers. Computers are trivial, nothing but tinker toys. We are not in the same class. Not only does every cell contain, as it were, the entire organism in potentia, whereas each part of a computer is just a dumb part, “A living organism is never the same physical and psychological entity from one instant to the next.” Recall our discussion of the limits of AI here, with which Faggin agrees. The syntax is not the semantics: it takes a mind to grasp meaning.

It should also be stressed that the clear separation (reductionism) between software (information), power supply (energy), and hardware (physical support) that applies to a computer does not exist in a cell. Consider for example a glucose molecule: its presence within the hierarchical organization of a cell can be mainly information for a certain level of organization [i.e. the state of the molecule sometimes is interpreted as information in the cell], energy for another, and building material for yet another.

Life is not the same as non-life. Faggin starts with life. He takes life to be consciousness itself, and even rocks in their way are conscious, which is an odd definition. It is this premise which leads to his panpsychism. He says, for instance, “the entire Earth is a single living organism.” The opposite view, and mine, is that the earth contains an ever-changing collection of organisms in rough cooperation battling it out in an constantly shifting environment. If the earth itself were alive, then it’s difficult to explain how its lifeforms (us, monkeys, bacteria, etc.) can propel themselves into and survive in space. This is the weakest portion of the book, which even sees Faggin fretting about global warming, though it is a position consistent with his earth-alive idea.

He quotes with approval Max Planck: “I consider consciousness as fundamental, and matter as a derivative of consciousness. We cannot go beyond consciousness. Everything we talk about, everything we consider as existing, requires consciousness.”

Without going into detail, substances (linked above) are composed of forms, which are immaterial, and matter, which is (of course) material. Traditional philosophies like Platonism put those forms in a heavenly realm, or in Aristotelian-Thomistic threads, in the mind of God. The forms, which come first, survive or exist without matter, but matter cannot persist without form. Something needs to hold these forms. Which means consciousness, which is to say mind, is a requirement. And which is why mind must come before substance. He late in the book quotes this interesting, and true, Tibetan proverb: “The vase can break, but its pattern will continue to exist in the mind.”

Then there are the experiences, the so-called qualia; emotions, sensations, awareness of color, pain; all that. These, too, require a mind. Faggin correctly sees that we see, in the metaphorical way; we grasp, we understand, we know forms. Comprehension requires a mind. Which is why Faggin holds with AI limitations.

I am delighted to report Faggin isn’t buying any form of “emergence”: “I insist that if these things are epiphenomena, they should be clearly explained through some mechanism, rather than arm-waving them away by asserting that at some point these qualities emerge from the brain.” Yet something has to cause consciousness.

Where The Game Is Played

Enter (quantum) fields. The simplest description of field theory is that fields represent the parts of reality that can be quantified. But physicists aren’t quite sure what a field is. Particles are said to be excitations of fields, and so the field is prior to the particle. You are familiar with electromagnetic fields. Fields give, or quantify uncertainty in, values of things at all points in space, which is supposed absolutely continuous. Quantum mechanics in particular is modeled on infinite dimensional Hilbert spaces. Don’t worry if you don’t know what these are. If you’ve ever had linear algebra, they are like multidimensional vectors (the standard x-y chart is a space in two dimensions).

Faggin believe fields give form to matter. Recall Rupert Sheldrake calls for morphic fields to do this. And married to Oderberg’s idea that energy is prime matter, this seems an incredibly fruitful area of research, thus far almost completely ignored, because unknown. Think of Reality like bunches of force fields existing on absolutely continuous space, which brings in call kinds of infinites, trapping energy. E=mc2! Matter from energy, which the equation represents, requires an organizing force.

Yet the fields themselves are not matter, and again forms can exist without matter. So we ask how all this works, and the answer comes back: mind. Or, to Faggin, consciousness. “[H]ow could free will, consciousness, and life be nested subsets of inanimate matter? It seems obvious to me that freedom cannot emerge as special case of non-freedom, consciousness cannot emerge from non-consciousness, and, likewise, life cannot emerge from non-life. It is illogical to think that a more general property could emerge from a property that does not contain it.” Classically we’d say effects cannot contain what isn’t in the cause. This (as we’ll see) also helps explains the changes we see in organisms in time.

Full Of Oneself

Faggin pushes into service seity, “a rarely used English word which means selfhood, personal identity.” In his use, a “seity is endowed with a unique and permanent identity because she knows that the conscious experience she is having is her own, and thus she can direct her experience.” He doesn’t only apply this to females, but to all substances. And indeed, Faggin’s seity is nearly identical with a classical substance, except that he awards consciousness to each and every seity. Even salt!

Quantum objects, or rather their fields, to Faggin, are conscious but not all are self-conscious; not all are aware. He calls fields thoughtforms, which if you take mind to be prior to form, and form prior logically to substance, than this is a redundancy. But also a helpful reminder. Qualia are known only to seity, as experiences are only felt by us. Though they can be described, the description is not the experience. External observers can form probabilities of events, as is done in quantum mechanics, but they cannot see how the events are chosen, i.e. caused (I like to say you cannot quantify the unquantifiable). This is a description of the measurement problem.

Faggin accepts only one miracle, which is creation itself. He doesn’t explain it, and never mentions the G-word. Instead, he has the O-word. One, the universal field and source of all seities. “I call this Whole, One, to distinguish it from the unified field of physics, because from One emerge the conscious fields with free will, the elementary seities that I call consciousness units (CUs), rather than the inanimate fields of the elementary particles of physics that interact in accordance with preestablished laws.” (See How the Laws of Physics Lie.)

Yet the natural question, and one Faggin does not address, is how his One differs from God; God of the theologians or the philosophers. Since all seities flow from One, just as classically all forms eventually originate in the mind of God, it’s hard to see any difference (and see this). Perhaps it is his way to avoid religion.

Everything we perceive in the universe was initially envisioned in the consciousness of the seities because classical reality follows quantum reality, not vice versa. And quantum physics follows quantum information, which in turn represents the thoughts, desires, and conscious experience of the seities.

The order of quantum to classical physics, I think, no one disputes. That all forms are somehow conscious in a way never explained can be disputed. I dispute it. It seems an unnecessary layer of abstraction, the purpose of which, it seems, to remove any hint of theology. Faggin has “physical laws emerg[ing] from the agreements between the seities that communicate with each other.” That “agreement” has to be metaphorical for seities that are not self-aware, though. Which sounds mechanical.

Instead of physical laws, he imagines syntactical laws. “In my model, a seity is a reality that goes beyond all categories and all definitions. A seity cannot be defined in the same way that a machine can be, since its properties, namely consciousness, identify, free-will agency, and creativity, are inseparable and do not have sharp boundaries.” The advantage of this view is that those physicists who find religion beneath them can work on these problems without bruising their consciences.

Salt Water

It is clear there are real problems to be solved. I and others have used water as a prime example. The properties of H and O can be modeled to any degree you like, but once you, as Faggin would say, introduce these two seities together, you get something unprecedented. And, one can say, miraculous: H and O have their interests, but water is in the running for Most Amazing Chemical, with few competitors. Water is something entirely new and different than H or O, its full powers unpredictable, as far as we know, from knowledge of its constituents. Faggin uses salt as his prime example.

NaCl is the quantum combination of a sodium atom (Na) and a chlorine atom (Cl). The molecule of NaCl resulting from this combination is a new entity with completely different properties from those of the two constituent atoms. If fact, the interaction of very many NaCl molecules forms a hard crystal, whereas many sodium atoms combine into a soft solid, and many chlorine atoms form a gas. The transformation of the properties of a single sodium atom and the properties of a single chlorine atom into the completely new properties of one molecule of sodium chloride is a quantum phenomenon that classical physics cannot explain….in which the two atoms have lost their former identity.

In hylomorphism, it is said the Na and Cl are in salt only virtually, no longer individually. The total Na is greater than the sum of parts Na + Cl. This is both a deduced and observed truth. Faggin posits that it is the fields of each which are the conscious entities, and these combine in an agreement to create a greater being. How to non-self-aware entities agree? “The combination problem arises only when we do not recognize that consciousness is a quantum property of a field and not a property of the states of a field.” Na meets Cl and marry, their progeny being NaCl. Just like your own children, it is a separate being.

It’s not only salt and water. Don’t forget that all this started a long time ago, with greater and greater complexities in matter being formed—which we now see is an excellent word. Especially where life is concerned. The trend since Day One has been to greater complexity, not accumulations of “random” changes.

Now I agree on the same observations as Faggin, on the quantum foundations, and on the need to explain form-plus-matter. But there are already classical explanations, albeit with theological roots, that describe these which avoid having to posit salt is somehow conscious, albeit not self-aware. And though he awards life self-awareness, he has no explanation for the jump to awareness. Classically, the forms of world are divided into classes, again of increasing complexity, starting with inanimate matter, moving up through vegetative (plants, of course), sensitive (animals), and rational (us, angels) and of course God. The distinctions we all observe, but I’m not aware of any proposed mechanisms for the jumps, and Faggin offers none.

Both Faggin and I agree, and you ought to, too, that new forms are created. Or rather, are instantiated in matter for the first time somewhere. Creation is something entirely different. That might not sound much, but it answers central criticisms cast for and against the origin of new species. We see they arise, see progeny are unlike their ancestors in essence, understand that effects cannot be greater than causes, so how did they get here? Instantiation of “new” forms explains this. Which is consonant with what we also see outside life: sudden change and real difference in essence, like Na + Cl = NaCl.

What should have been realized is that we see this all the time, and accept it happens in the simplest of chemicals, and not only life. Which means those forms had to be there first. (See this on so-called intelligent design.) Just as classical philosophy insisted! So it should not be a surprise abrupt change can happen with higher forms such as life. (We’ll discuss what all this means to “evolution” when we review Denis Noble’s book.)

Probably Not Chance

Forms are information, if you like. And you can have knowledge or ignorance or anything in-between about information. Which brings up probability. I am pleased to report Faggin quotes with approval (as do I as often as I can) De Finetti’s true words: “probability does not exist“.

Probability is about knowledge, and only consciousness can know. Therefore probability has relevance only if consciousness exists! The fact that quantum physics is about probability is saying the physical universe is about knowing!…

…quantum physics does not describe the evolution of the actual state of a system kike classical physics does, but rather the evolution of the probabilities of all states we might measure, i.e. know. Therefore, quantum physics primarily represents what we may be able to know about the system rather how the system will actually behave.

Faggin repeatedly points to a development of quantum theory from the ground up using an information-centric point of view with his collaborator Giacomo Mauro D’Ariano. See their paper “Hard Problem and Free Will: an information-theoretical approach“. (If there is interest, I can go through this paper.) They are, of course, not alone in this.

So much for his theory of the world. How do we make this science? Except for the mathematics of quantum information theory, which is plenty, Faggin does not offer a research program. I don’t know anybody who does. It’s one thing to say, and prove, that the laws of science lie and that forms must be metaphysically prior to matter, and all that, but it’s quite another to say how forms give shape to matter. Hilbert space models only say what happens, not why. How do new forms appear, or rather instantiate? Can we take two complex substances and find some way of predicting, beyond mere correlation of similarities, the causal powers of the new substance? Nobody knows.

Yet that nobody knows how NaCl can be predicted from knowledge of Na and Cl does not mean that it can’t be known. Open is how morphic fields work with energy to instantiate forms. Field theory is only the first step in this because it is downstream from formal cause. Since locality is out, it is likely the measurement problem will forever remain a problem. Which is to say, there will be no way to look inside any of Faggin’s seities, or fields, and see what is going on and why they interacted with the classical world to take the definite values they did. Something like Wolfgang Smith’s insights on vertical causality are needed here.

If you’re young and can afford to eschew banality-enforcing academic route you are incredibly fortunate to be on the foundations of the coming physics. And it will come. Disquiet with the limitations of the old philosophy are growing, sometimes venting out into ridiculous directions, like multiverses. Start with the books and papers listed here, and let them guide you to more. And thank God you’re born when you were.

Let me end with a word of caution from an early work of Fulton Sheen who, many forget, began his career with a doctorate on the philosophy of science. This is from his excellent and recommended 1934 The Philosophy of Science.

The philosopher who knows the method and content and principles of his science will therefore not become excited when a new physical theory is offered to the world. Hence, we have little sympathy for those philosophers who, forgetting the principles which gave them certitude in their field, fell that the Quantum Theory proves free will, or that there is a God because the physics of Eddington and Jeans says there is a God. The Quantum Theory has nothing more to do with the proof of free will than a proton has to do with a wish to be moral. The existence of God did not wait for Eddington and Jeans, and those fundamentalists who enthused about science becoming theistic are very apt to find their theism overthrown when the theories of these two notable scientists are upset. The life of a physical theory today has only about the life of a peace treaty.

Note: except for the Class, and since Monday and Tuesday’s post are so long, there will be no more posts this week.

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