Consciousness, Life, Computers and Human Nature

Book review by Aaron Frank

In his book Irreducible: Consciousness, Life, Computers, and Human Nature, physicist and inventor Federico Faggin exposes the limits of the reductionist materialism which has guided western thinking for centuries 

When future historians look back to analyze our current moment, it’s likely the invention of modern computers will stand out as among the most significant turning points in the story of our species. Thanks to these machines, our ability to process information, an undertaking which dates to at least the Sumerian Abacus, is now possible at the speed of electricity and measured in ‘trillions of calculations per second’. 

And in the history of computers, the invention of the microprocessor may stand out as among the most groundbreaking as it shrunk what was previously a roomful of machinery onto a single microchip like those which power everything from our laptops, cars, cameras, and much more. In the context of today’s digital revolution, perhaps the microprocessor’s debut is the reasonable moment to mark the beginning of our information age. 

Processing information has had a starring role in the western world’s conception of reality since at least ancient Greece. Since that time, the west has been locked into an ideological worldview which proposes that reality itself is a vast algorithmic processor of information whose secrets began to reveal themselves with the discovery of the mathematical and physical laws of nature. It was the Greeks who established the view that a singular universal truth exists as a set of rational laws and to know the mind of God, in the view of Plato, was to uncover the eternal mathematical rules governing the universe. 

These cognitive frames shaped western thought well into the 17th century’s scientific revolution when, with the discovery of Newton’s laws of motion, these views reorganized into a triumphalist confidence that the rule-based activities of the cosmos were finally revealing the fabric of a computable existence. Some leading physicists began to argue we could soon expect the end of physical discovery having uncovered all there is to know about the functioning of the universe. 

In his 19th century writing, Pierre-Simon Laplace famously imagined that a vast intelligence equipped with knowledge of the starting positions of all physical elements and the laws which govern their behavior could calculate, in a single instant, all the events unfolding across space and time. This understanding of reality, conceived as a grand information processor, is still expressed in the modern pursuit of a “theory of everything,” an idea popularized by Stephen Hawking’s views that a single unified equation might explain all observable phenomena in the universe. 

Today’s computational paradigm has further influenced our views of everything including neuroscience, biology, and even the social sciences. Reality, and everything in it including our DNA, our brains, and our bodies, are machine readable systems of computation. If everything in the universe is ‘information processing’, then building faster and more powerful computers would seem to promise godlike powers, not only to perfectly predict and control the behavior of the cosmos, but perhaps even upload our consciousness into machines; a notion that is fashionable in some high-tech circles today.

Perhaps, then, the inventor of the microprocessor is an unlikely candidate to so thoroughly demolish this view of a computational universe. 

While it may ironically be his invention most responsible for reinforcing these entrenched western ideologies today, Federico Faggin is a compelling scientific thinker who not only deconstructs the reductionist materialism core to the western knowledge system, but also offers a convincing alternative rooted in a panpsychist monism; or what could more simply be described as the spiritual worldview.

According to Faggin, the classical view of physics that underpins today’s scientific worldview is inadequate to account for the true nature of reality. As a result, many of our dominant assumptions are unraveling under the weight of developments in formal logic, quantum physics, and other scientific breakthroughs over the past century.

Irreducible, structured in two parts, begins by articulating how a majority of scientists today operate from a working set of assumptions, often unquestioned, which propose a separation between us as subjective observers and an external objective reality (realism), that physical reality is a product of interactions between indivisible and separate particles of matter (atomism), and that the behavior of a complex system comprised of that matter can be understood by breaking apart and analyzing its individual parts (reductionism).

In summarizing a range of paradigm shattering discoveries over the last century, Faggin raises serious doubts regarding each one of these assumptions. A good example is the discovery of chaos theory in the 1960s, which revealed that even in deterministic systems, tiny differences in initial conditions can lead to vastly different outcomes making perfect prediction impossible. Aside from the fact that no instrument is capable of infinitely precise measurement, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, the 1927 finding which shows that we can’t know both the position and speed of a particle at the same time, put a definitive end to Laplace’s vision of a predictable universe. 

Faggin is particularly compelling in describing the implications of Kurt Gödel’s 1931 incompleteness theorems; what he calls the coup de grâce of logical positivism. Before Gödel, it was assumed that all of mathematics could be formalized into a complete and consistent set of axioms. What Gödel showed is that rather than an objective ground truth from which to build an understanding of reality, all of mathematics is dependent on the starting assumptions, which themselves cannot be proved from within that model.

As Faggin points out, “The starting axioms are in fact considered self-evident truths, accepted as such by convention because their truth cannot be proven. The presumed objectivity of mathematics is therefore based on the subjective acceptance of what is considered self-evident.” 

Many scientists today misunderstand that the core assumptions underpinning today’s views of a material, reducible, and external physical reality are themselves predicated on ‘self-evident’ yet unproveable starting point ideas. And for a culture well practiced in appealing to an external objective-seeming set of scientific truths, it will likely require a radical paradigm shift in thinking to internalize that a first-person subjectivity, and not an external separate ground truth, is the bedrock from which all knowledge of the universe can be conceived. 

This leads to the core of Faggin’s writing which argues for a reimagined view of science that integrates new starting assumptions positing consciousness and free will as fundamental and irreducible aspects of a unified reality. Reality, as a singular entity, intrinsically possesses the qualities of being conscious and alive and has free will from the outset, and so these attributes cannot be derived from classical physics, mathematics, or matter. 

In his conception, the totality of all existence in its potential and actual form makes up what he refers to as One. According to Faggin, this singular entity is irreducibly holistic, dynamic, and creative, and seeks to know itself by emanating finite expressions of its own consciousness as unique perspectives which explore its infinite potential within its own inner and outer realities.

Starting from this idea, Faggin introduces what he calls the QIP theory (Quantum Information-based Panpsychism), alongside a framework that distinguishes between two inseparable dimensions of reality. One is our outer symbolic world of measurable forms, and the other is an inner non-material realm of semantic meaning. While this may appear dualistic, Faggin emphasizes that both aspects are expressions of a single and undivided whole. While the material outer world we experience may consume our attention, it is merely an approximation of a deeper inner realm beyond spacetime from which our consciousness is derived.

It is within this context that he debunks a growing belief that modern technologies like AI and computers could ever possess a capacity for self-directed conscious activity. While perfectly capable as useful tools to manipulate the discrete symbols of our outer symbolic realm, today’s machines are rule-based classical systems which process information without an intrinsic capacity for comprehension, which he argues is a core property of consciousness. Therefore, according to Faggin, today’s computers and AI systems belong to an entirely different category than biological lifeforms. 

While Faggin’s work is likely to provoke a significant antibody-like response from the world of conventional materialism pervasive in academic science today, his ideas, and their implications, will appear entirely aligned with the knowledge systems of spiritual philosophy. While much of the second part of his book introduces a new taxonomy with terms like “seities” and “consciousness units” (what spiritual teachers like PR Sarkar would refer to more simply as ‘unit minds’) the ideas presented reconfigure the spiritual philosophy of tantric yoga in a scientific packaging which could be a more palatable introduction for western audiences.

Faggin is an excellent candidate to contribute to the work of dismantling the scientific materialism which has permeated western thought for centuries. Until he experienced a direct spiritual event himself, which he describes briefly in the opening pages of his book, he was immersed in the mainstream materialist perspectives suggesting that physical matter is the starting point to understand consciousness and existence. 

As his own journey suggests, a core implication Faggin explores in exposing the limits of mathematics in describing reality is that true knowing cannot be fully reduced using the symbolic systems we’ve constructed from math or language. Truth, he argues, unlike information processed in the classical world of physics, must be touched directly as ‘knowing’ and ‘being’ collapse into an act of direct conscious experience.

Published in Neohumanist Review, Issue 5, September 2025, pp 48-50.