Table of Contents
André Duqum interviews Federico Faggin. Faggin says knowing and being are two sides of one coin. A classical machine, he says, has a following state fixed by the state it just had, so the machine does not choose. Quantum physics, in his account, cannot say where a particle will be found, while a classical machine has no such spread of chances. Only consciousness, he says, is what wants to guess what comes next. He treats consciousness as basic, with free will as part of that picture, and he says mathematics cannot reach one layer of reality. Fields, in this account, are not sitting inside space and time. The body is a bridge from that deeper layer to the world of objects that move. Coming from the man who led the design of the first microprocessor, that view carries weight for me. I recommend it to anyone who wonders whether a computer could ever be aware.
Key points
- André Duqum interviews Federico Faggin. The caption hears his surname as Fine.
- Knowing and being, he says, are two sides of one coin.
- A classical machine has a following state fixed by the state it just had.
- Only consciousness, he says, wants to guess what comes next.
- The body, in this account, bridges a deeper layer and the world of objects.
Short quotes
Knowing and existing are two faces of the same coin.
Federico Faggin, Federico Faggin on consciousness
He says knowing and being are two sides of one coin. Watch at 18:54
This next state of the computer is determined by the previous state.
Federico Faggin, Federico Faggin on consciousness
A classical machine, he says, has a following state fixed by the state it just had. Watch at 22:56
In other words, only consciousness wants to predict the future.
Federico Faggin, Federico Faggin on consciousness
Only consciousness, he says, is what wants to guess what comes next. Watch at 26:23
Video by André Duqum. Watch on YouTube.