A Radical Behaviorist Adventuring on the Cusp of Consciousness, Language, and the Quantum Web

Dora R. Powell

A Functional Context

17 February 2025

"Reality is not what it seems; it is what we have learned to see." — Carlo Rovelli

The Whisper Below the Noise

Lately, I've found myself captivated by an idea we discarded long ago: the ether. I keep daydreaming—actual dreaming—about the unseen threads that bind us to the universe and to each other. Those elusive connections we can't quite measure, yet undeniably feel. You know what I mean: the gentle tug of a memory making its rounds back to the front, the peculiar weight of a single word or scent, the flicker of light when you think of a particular moment, or the uncanny certainty that someone, miles away, is holding you in their thoughts at that exact instant.

Science, with its relentless precision, might one day label these phenomena with terms like quantum entanglement or intuition. Ironically, the mystical is, perhaps, merely the yet-to-be-measured. Language, elegant as it is, falters here. I suspect this is where we find ourselves today—staring at the edges of the known, wondering what else our instruments, our words, our assumptions have left unseen. The universe hums beyond time and space, resonating with invisible relationships we have yet to grasp. We, whether consciously or not, are its instruments. This doesn't mean unseen causative forces lurk in every shadow; it simply means there is truth beyond what our senses and systems can currently comprehend.

Federico Faggin, the mind behind the first commercial microprocessor, has since turned his intellectual gaze toward the architecture of consciousness itself. His theory proposes a radical departure from traditional neuroscience: consciousness, he argues, isn't a mere byproduct of brain activity but the fundamental substrate of reality—a dynamic, relational field of quantum information.

Imagine a universe woven from threads of conscious, interactive potential rather than inert particles. Reality, in this view, isn't a solid structure—it’s a shimmering lattice of intentionality. Oddly enough, this concept stirred in me decades ago when I dipped my toes into New Age literature, only to retreat, wary of pseudoscience yet captivated by patterns that seemed intuitively significant. The missing piece, I've long suspected, lies in our inability to escape the prison of our anthropocentric lens. We see through human senses, name with human words, and so naturally, we reconstruct the universe in our own image.

"Consciousness is that by which the universe knows itself." — Federico Faggin

Language as the Architect of Worlds

Language doesn't merely describe reality; it sculpts it.?

In ancient Hawaiian cosmology, the concept of mana (spiritual power) is not possessed individually but relationally. Language reflects this: strength is not attributed to the person but to the web of ancestral, environmental, and communal ties. One’s words are expected to honor that relational tapestry rather than assert isolated autonomy. (Meyer, 2001).

During the reconstruction period after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, some local communities avoided the language of "rebuilding"—a term that suggested restoring what was lost. Instead, they adopted "tsukuru mirai" (creating a future), reframing their work as forward-looking and innovative rather than restorative (Takahashi & Sugiura, 2013).

In Ubuntu philosophy, often verbalized through Bantu languages like Xhosa or Zulu, the very structure of selfhood is relational. "Umntu ngumntu ngabantu"—a person is a person through other people (Tutu, 1999). Pronouns don’t merely distinguish individuals; they entangle identities in a network of communal interdependence.

Relational Frame Theory (RFT) helps us understand this. Human cognition, RFT tells us, operates not through isolated facts but through webs of relationships. Words become nodes linking past experiences, present sensations, and future anticipations. Words are spells. Think of the word enemy. It's a single word, yet it conjures a thousand associations—histories of conflict, personal wounds, cultural narratives. With one utterance, complexity shrinks into certainty.

Wittgenstein warned us: "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world." Quantum mechanics underscores that point. Take quantum entanglement: two particles separated by vast distances can influence each other instantaneously. Our language, rooted in spatial and temporal assumptions, can barely touch the implications of this reality.

"We do not see things as they are; we see them as we are." — Ana?s Nin

The Illusion of the Separate Self

Modernity sells us the myth of individualism—the notion that each self is an isolated entity, neatly contained and independent. Yet both behavioral science and ancient traditions whisper a different story. We are relational beings, entangled with our environment like waves shaped by the unseen contours of the sea floor.

Functional contextualism offers a similar insight: behavior is never solitary. It emerges from the interplay between the organism and its context. Your laughter at a friend's joke is not a singular expression but a harmonic resonance of past interactions, shared understanding, and the implicit social rules that shape humor itself.

Faggin's vision of consciousness as a vast, relational field resonates here. We are not lone minds adrift in a mechanical universe; we are nodes in an immense, conscious web.

"Behavior is not a thing done by a person. It is a dance between organism and environment." — J.R. Kantor

AI, Consciousness, and the Hollow Mask

As artificial intelligence advances, so too does the temptation to mistake mimicry for awareness. Faggin cautions against this confusion. AI can recognize patterns, process language, and simulate emotional responses. But it remains, at its core, an elaborate mirror of our own behaviors. It does not know that it knows.

Empathy, for instance, is more than an output. It is a lived, relational experience. An algorithm might echo the phrases of comfort, but it cannot feel the magnetic pull of another's sorrow or the unbidden rise of tenderness that follows. It is a mask without the dancer.

"A single word can set off a cascade of meaning, like a pebble into water—rippling across generations." — David Whyte

The Responsibility of the Conscious Observer

Language, like water, shapes the landscape it flows through. When we speak, we do more than convey facts; we plant seeds of perception. Language can imprison or liberate, soothe or enrage, fragment or unify.

Consider the metaphors we use for societal challenges. We speak of wars on poverty, cancer, or drugs. What does war bring to mind? Combat, destruction, casualties. What if, instead, we spoke of healing poverty, partnering with communities, cultivating health? Such linguistic shifts, subtle yet profound, can transform how we mobilize collective action.

"The world is not given to us as it is; it is given to us through the scaffolding of the stories we’ve been told." — Yuval Noah Harari

The Ocean, the Wave, and the Whisper

Perhaps consciousness isn't confined to neural circuits at all. Perhaps it flows like an ocean—vast, mysterious, and endlessly relational. Language gives us the illusion of capturing it, but each word is merely a wave cresting the surface.

Faggin's hypothesis proposes that consciousness isn't generated by the brain but serves as the fundamental ground of reality. It is the quiet hum beneath the noise, the whisper below the words. And maybe, if we learn to listen more closely—to the silence between our thoughts—we might hear it more clearly.

"All that you touch you change. All that you change changes you. The only lasting truth is change." — Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

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