Matter Takes the Floor

Quantum computing today occupies an ambiguous place in the scientific and philosophical imagination: simultaneously promising and opaque, concrete in its experimental devices and diffuse in the symbolic projections it raises. It has become a plane of inscription where expectations of future intelligence and remnants of a metaphysics not yet dissolved are projected, without sufficient distinction. More than enthusiasm or refusal, what is required is a **gesture**: to reinscribe the quantum as operative material reality — not as a mystical promise nor as a technological fetish. Under certain conditions, it can make thinkable what previously presented itself as incalculable. And it is in this interval that its power — and its risk — is revealed

In contemporary culture, speed is often confused with intelligence, complexity with consciousness, processing with thought. This confusion intensifies in quantum computing, often presented as the threshold of a new form of mind or as a harbinger of a technical consciousness to come. The problem does not lie in the experimental explorations, but in the lexicon that surrounds them: too much is yielded to fascination, ontological rigor is abandoned in favor of the rhetorical effect of exception. Although revolutionary, quantum computing does not operate according to the regimes of biological cognition. The human brain — a classically modelable electrochemical system — functions through ionic fluxes, chemical synapses, and local plasticity. There is, so far, no empirical evidence that quantum coherence, superposition, or entanglement play a relevant role in its functions. Invoking such categories is projecting an unfounded analogy.

Rejecting the analogy between the quantum and the cerebral does not devalue it — it reinscribes it in its specific domain. Quantum computing is not a mind, but an operative technique. Processing is not thinking: it is manipulating states, exploring probabilities, structuring combinations with higher density than classical computing. Its differential lies in the logic of probabilistic parallelism, not in any emergent interiority. Like any tool, it only acquires meaning if coupled to a broader functional structure.

The **Ontology of Emergent Complexity** proposes a decisive criterion here: there is no intelligence in the substrate, only operative potential. Only when this potential is reinscribed in a symbolic architecture — memory, decision, modulation, plasticity — is it possible to speak of cognitive emergence. Confusing substrate and structure compromises the possibility of rigorous ontological construction. The qubit is not a carrier of meaning: meaning emerges from its integration into a functional circuit that articulates calculation, plasticity, and symbolic reinscription.

This distinction is essential to avoid two symmetrical deviations: magical enthusiasm and inert skepticism. The first sees in the quantum a total ontological key; the second ignores the real effects that quantum computing already produces in domains such as molecular simulation or cryptography. Both fail to recognize the quantum as a plan of material reorganization that only becomes intelligible when symbolically reinscribed. Shor's algorithm, for example, does not think: but it reconfigures the regime of intelligibility of calculation. Quantum molecular simulations do not interpret, but generate states that challenge classical computational limits. Hybrid models of AI and quantum computing do not approach the mind — they merely expand operative variability.

Thinking with hope is not yielding to illusion, but sustaining possibility. And this implies recognizing that the quantum can play a crucial role in the architecture of future symbolic systems — not as the origin of meaning, but as a catalyst for new forms of structuring. Its function is not to speak, but to operate. And, in doing so, it expands the horizons in which language, decision, and interpretation become possible.

If radically new forms of intelligence emerge, it will not be due to processing speed, but because we managed to couple distinct regimes — physical, logical, symbolic — into a coherent functional system. The quantum may, in this scenario, play an essential role: not by thinking better, but by expanding the field of the thinkable.

The philosophical ethics of our time requires neither faith in the quantum, nor fear. It requires rigor: refusing hasty metaphors, listening to matter, assuming conceptual responsibility. Quantum computing does not dissolve reason — but redistributes the field where it can emerge reorganized. And all symbolic reorganization demands listening, discernment, and care. Hope is not in the machine, but in the **gesture**. What is transformed is not matter — it is the relationship we establish with its regimes of variation.

The strength of the quantum does not reside in consciousness, but in its operative excess, which challenges established symbolic forms and calls for new inscriptions. When matter operates beyond available forms, there is no collapse — there is a threshold.

Throughout the history of thought, every **traversal** beyond available symbolic schemes has been interpreted as a threat. So too here: the hypothesis that the quantum would disorganize the symbolic was formulated as a risk. But if the symbolic were to collapse due to excess, it would, by definition, be a defensive structure — which contradicts its emergent and unstable nature.

It was important, therefore, to shift the language of risk and recognize in excess the very condition of symbolic emergence. When a technique — such as quantum computing — produces variations not yet reinscribed, we do not witness a collapse, but the latency of a new field. The symbolic has not yet arrived — but it will be summoned. For the symbolic does not precede: it responds. It emerges locally as form before a reality that is already operating.

This turning point is decisive: the symbolic is not an a priori structure, but a contingent consequence of material excess. What seemed like a threat was a condition. Excess does not break — it summons. It does not dissolve — it reorganizes. And among the multiple possible forms, only a few will be reinscribed as stable fields. The others will remain as operative trials, not yet symbolizable.

This analysis is not illustrative — it is operative. Thought did not start from a principle, but from an excess. And it was forced to reorganize itself. This is the rationality of excess: it forces thought to happen.

Thus, we can affirm: there is no symbolic risk in the quantum. There is an interval where the symbolic has not yet arrived — and a demand for listening. The symbolic does not collapse — it transforms. And it is summoned whenever matter operates beyond available forms.

It is not about concluding, but verifying: Thought emerges from excess — not from rupture. The symbolic is not a structure to defend, but a field in reorganization. And the quantum, like all power that exceeds, does not threaten — it summons. It summons thought, inscription, and the true risk: that of thinking beyond what we already know how to think.

This essay does not propose a critique of quantum computing, but an ethics of material listening. A philosophy capable of accompanying excess as germination, not as error. An ontology that knows that the real does not collapse — it merely insists. And that the symbolic does not protect itself — it merely responds.

“Matter does not speak — but imposes listening; and where there is listening, there is already the beginning of the world.”