“What Am I — Qualia, Brahman, Neurons, or just Nothing?”
Federico Faggin's quantum-based consciousness model. As the co-inventor of the microprocessor, Faggin concludes that consciousness cannot be produced by computation, and proposes that awareness is primary.
Faggin argues that computers process syntax (formal rules for symbol manipulation) but do not experience semantics (meaning, feeling). Consciousness is a semantic phenomenon that cannot emerge from syntactic computation alone.
Consciousness exists in a quantum field prior to physical matter. The brain acts as a classical transceiver, translating this quantum conscious field into classical sensory experience, rather than generating it.
Details Faggin's core argument that physical reality is the syntax (outer expression) of a deeper semantic (inner experiential) reality. Consciousness is the fundamental fabric of existence, and physical systems are its symbols.
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