Thinking On Paper If Consciousness Is The Fabric Of Reality, Not A Byproduct Of Matter, What Does That Make You?
If consciousness isn’t produced by the brain but instead produces the brain, what does that make reality?
In Chapter 8 of Irreducible, Federico Faggin stops describing consciousness and starts rebuilding the universe around it. He argues that awareness isn’t an accident of matter but the foundation of everything, that every particle carries meaning, not just information.
Here he introduces a new model: Quantum Information-based Panpsychism. It joins physics and perception, suggesting that reality itself is built from conscious experience, private, uncopyable, and alive.
From this comes a radical idea: free will isn’t philosophy, it’s physics. Each decision, each act of attention, is the quantum moment when possibility becomes fact.
This chapter isn’t about theory; it’s about what happens when you accept that the universe might be conscious, and that your choices help create it.
This is a book club of Irreducible, Chapter 8.
Please enjoy the show.
And subscribe if you're conscious.
Cheers,
Mark and Jeremy
--
Chapters
(00:00) Consciousness and The Big Questions
(01:24) The Shift in Understanding Consciousness
(02:38) Consciousness: Quantum vs Classical
(06:14) What Is Panpsychism and Quantum Information?
(09:03) Qualia and Conscious Experience
(11:23) What Is Seity?
(19:26) Free Will and Quantum Entanglement
(21:21) Unsolved Problems of Existence
--
Other ways to connect with us:
Follow us on Instagram
Follow us on X
Follow Mark on LinkedIn
Follow Jeremy on LinkedIn
Read our Substack
Email: hello@thinkingonpaper.xyz