Below is a short extract from Frederico’s autobiography , paraphrasing; it is about the relationship between science of the world of objectified experience and the world of direct experience in awareness.

…. Science cannot explain this phenomenon, and nobody seems to have the faintest idea about how this miracle happens. It is surprising that most researchers believe there is no miracle. We are so used to being aware that we generally do not recognize that consciousness cannot possibly emerge from unconscious matter. Only those who have begun to think seriously about this problem realize that consciousness is a fundamentally unsolved problem.

For years I tried to understand how consciousness could arise from electrical or biochemical signals. Invariably, electrical signals can only produce other electrical signals or other physical consequences such as force or movement, but never sensations and feelings that are qualitatively different. Feelings are internal subjective properties or states correlated to external properties of matter that we consider objective. They represent a class of phenomena completely different from material phenomena.

It seems to me that just like electricity is a fundamental physical property that cannot spontaneously arise from elementary particles devoid of some essential electrical quality, the same could be true for consciousness. Electricity and magnetism exist in macroscopic bodies because some elementary particles contain electrical charge and magnetic spin. Likewise, consciousness may already be contained in some essential form in the very elementary particles of which everything is made. No one has been able to explain how consciousness could arise from matter that does not already contain some form of consciousness.

Consciousness is where the conversion from outer material symbolic reality into inner semantic reality takes place, and qualia are the bearers of meaning. But could consciousness also be the space in which the inverse conversion from meaning to symbols takes place?

If yes, this would imply that inner reality could have a direct impact on outer reality as well, though classical physics denies this possibility by postulating that only outer reality exists and inner reality has no causal power. This is equivalent to saying that either the inner world is illusory or that inner reality can only be influenced by outer reality, though not vice versa.

I summerise my own take on his autobiography here. Thoughts on Frederico Faggin’s AutoBiography

But then how can interiority emerge solely from outer reality when the physical laws control only the transformation of outer phenomena into other outer ….

Faggin, F. (2019). Silicio. Dall’invenzione del microprocessore alla nuova scienza della consapevolezza. Milano: Mondadori. ISBN 978-88-04712589.

Faggin, F. (2021). Silicon: From the Invention of the Microprocessor to the New Science of Consciousness. Waterside Productions. ISBN 978-1-949003-41-3.

A scholarly review: Pilkington, R. (2021). “Silicon: From the Invention of the Microprocessor to the New Science of Consciousness by Federico Faggin” (book review). Journal of Scientific Exploration, 35(3).