Federico Faggin's theory of consciousness, developed with the physicist Giacomo Mauro D'Ariano, proposes that consciousness is fundamental rather than produced by brains: information, on their hypothesis, carries an intrinsic property of being experienced by the system that supports it, which makes consciousness the ground of physics rather than one of its late products.
That hypothesis is offered as a non-reductive answer to what David Chalmers named the hard problem, and they argue the information involved has to be quantum — partly for its intrinsic privacy, partly because entangling qualia states is how they picture thoughts being assembled. What they reach is a panpsychism built on quantum information, with classical physics supervening on quantum physics, quantum physics on quantum information, and quantum information on consciousness (D'Ariano and Faggin, arXiv preprint, revised January 28, 2021). It is a theoretical proposal published as a preprint, not an experimental result. That distinction governs everything below, including the parts where Holopsychism agrees with them.
Who is Federico Faggin, and what is he claiming?
Faggin is known first as an engineer: a coinventor of the first commercial microprocessor. That is why most readers arrive at his name, and it is worth saying what it does and does not do here. Designing silicon that works is a demanding achievement and evidence of nothing about the metaphysics of experience. If the argument is good, it is good on its own terms; if it is weak, a famous byline will not rescue it. His co-author, D'Ariano, works in quantum information theory, and the paper reads as a physicist's document, explicit that it is exploring assertions rather than reporting findings.
What they claim, stripped of ornament, is that the hard problem cannot be solved by reduction. You cannot, they hold, derive the felt quality of an experience from a description of physical processes that does not already contain experience somewhere. Rather than declare the problem illusory, they take the other exit: put experience at the base and see what the physics then has to look like. Whether that exit leads anywhere is the question Holopsychism keeps returning to in an invitation, not a conclusion.
What is Faggin's theory of consciousness?
Their own summary is the cleanest statement available: "We explore definite theoretical assertions about consciousness, starting from a non-reductive psycho-informational solution of David Chalmers's 'hard problem', based on the hypothesis that a fundamental property of 'information' is its experience by the supporting 'system'."
The whole structure sits in that sentence. Psycho-informational means the bridge between mind and matter is information itself rather than some further substance. Non-reductive means experience is not explained away as a byproduct. And the load-bearing word is hypothesis: they posit that being-experienced belongs to information the way charge belongs to an electron, as a basic property rather than a derived one.
From there the paper draws a distinction that does real work. A system's state as experienced from the inside, they argue, corresponds to a definite experience rather than a random choice, so it must be pure — fully specified, with no statistical mixing. They call this the ontic state. The state predictable from outside is generally mixed, a spread of possibilities; that one they call epistemic. Free will enters as a constraint: keeping the ontic state pure requires an evolution that preserves purity, what quantum theory calls an atomic operation. The inside of a system, on this picture, is not merely hidden. It is a different kind of state.
How does quantum information enter the argument?
Two reasons drive the move, both stated plainly in the paper. The first is privacy. A quantum state cannot be read off by an external party without disturbance, and that intrinsic privacy matches something true of experience: yours is not merely undisclosed, it is structurally unavailable from outside. The second is compositional. They propose that thoughts are built by entangling qualia states — that the way simple experiences combine into complex ones has the shape of entanglement rather than of addition.
This is where their inversion becomes visible. The familiar order of explanation runs upward: particles, then chemistry, then neurons, then mind. D'Ariano and Faggin run a chain of supervenience the other way, with classical physics supervening on quantum physics, quantum physics on quantum information, and quantum information on consciousness. Consciousness is not the last floor of the building. It is the ground.
The proposal is also an attempt at the combination problem, the standing objection to panpsychism: if every micro-constituent has its own speck of experience, how do those specks become one unified point of view rather than a crowd? Entanglement is their candidate answer — a formal mechanism rather than a promise that one will be found.
What does the physics actually license?
Here the three layers need separating, because conflating them is how this subject goes wrong.
What is established is the vocabulary. Pure states, mixed states, entanglement, and purity-preserving operations are standard quantum-information mathematics, used here as they are used elsewhere. The paper is not inventing physics.
What is live open debate is the hypothesis itself: that information has experience as an intrinsic property. Nothing in the formalism contains that claim. The mathematics describes how states evolve and what measurements yield; it is silent on whether anything is felt. Adding felt-ness to information is a philosophical move made on top of the physics, and the authors say as much by calling their work an exploration of theoretical assertions. Treating it as a discovery would misrepresent their own framing.
One thing must be said without hedging, because it is routinely claimed in Faggin's name by people who have not read him: quantum mechanics does not prove that consciousness creates reality. The "observer" in quantum theory is a measuring interaction, not a mind. That confusion is treated at length in whether the observer effect proves consciousness creates reality. Faggin and D'Ariano are doing something far more disciplined than the popular version that keeps borrowing their credibility.
If the question of what physics can and cannot settle is the one holding your attention, the guide works through it from the beginning.
Where does Holopsychism agree and diverge?
The agreement should be stated before the disagreement. Both hold that reduction has not worked. Both refuse to dissolve the hard problem by redescribing it. Both accept that if experience cannot be derived from the non-experiential, something experiential or proto-experiential belongs at the base. In its strongest form, Faggin's position is that a formal, quantum-informational base is more tractable than a vague appeal to "mind everywhere" — and on that point he is right against most of what circulates under the panpsychist label.
The divergence is about what sits at the base. Faggin and D'Ariano reach a panpsychism: experience distributed through the informational constituents of the world. Holopsychism proposes something different, and proposes is the operative word — a tentative framework, this site's own coinage rather than a recognized school. What it places at the base is not mind and not micro-experience but pure potential: pre-mental, not yet anything in particular. Awareness is selection from that potential, and brains are receivers, filters, and translators that tune what is already there rather than generating it. Resolution varies as a spectrum, not a hierarchy.
The comparison below sets the two proposals side by side on the points where they actually part.
| Question | Faggin and D'Ariano | Holopsychism (proposal) |
|---|---|---|
| What is at the base? | Quantum information, with experience as its intrinsic property | Pure potential, pre-mental and not yet experiential |
| How does complexity arise? | Qualia states composed by entanglement | Awareness selecting what becomes selectively stable |
| What does a brain do? | Supports information that is experienced | Receives, filters, translates — it tunes, it does not generate |
| Status of the claim | Theoretical proposal in a preprint | Tentative framework, offered as argument |
Pre-mental potential is not a softer word for mind. Panpsychism inherits the combination problem; a pre-mental substrate faces a different burden, explaining how anything mental arises from it at all. That burden is unpaid: Holopsychism has no mechanism for selection, predicts no measurement, and does not explain why this world resolved rather than another. A related divergence, running toward idealism rather than panpsychism, is traced in Bernardo Kastrup's analytic idealism.
What Faggin's work changes is not the evidence but the standard. He has shown that a fundamental-consciousness position can be written in formal language, with defined terms and stated commitments, exposed to the ordinary risk of being wrong. That is the bar now. Frameworks that decline to meet it — including this one, wherever it falls short — should be read as unfinished rather than deep.
FAQ
Did Federico Faggin prove that consciousness is fundamental?
No. The work with D'Ariano is a theoretical proposal in an arXiv preprint (revised January 28, 2021), framed by its authors as an exploration of theoretical assertions — an argument about what the world would have to be like, not a measurement showing that it is.
Is Faggin's theory the same as panpsychism?
It is a form of panpsychism, which is how the authors describe their own result: a quantum-information-based panpsychism. What distinguishes it from older versions is the attempt to give composition a formal mechanism, with qualia states entangling rather than piling up.
What is the difference between an ontic and an epistemic state?
The ontic state is the state as experienced internally; because it corresponds to a definite experience rather than a random choice, they argue it must be pure. The epistemic state is what an outside party can predict, and it is generally mixed — a spread of possibilities rather than one settled description.
Is Holopsychism a version of Faggin's theory?
No. They share a starting objection to reduction and diverge on the substrate: Faggin and D'Ariano place experience at the base, while Holopsychism proposes pre-mental potential, which is not mind. It is this site's coinage and a tentative framework, not an academic school or an extension of anyone else's work.