The Rise and Fall of Cognition and the Realization of the Larger Mind of Unconscious Knowing (Savoir)

Abstract

This chapter is a psychoanalytic response to cognitivism loosely inspired by Lacan’s Seminar XIX ‘ou pire…’. I distinguish between two types of cognition: Statements and narratives represent S₁ − S₂ relations between signifiers, while the unconscious saying represents an S₁ − S₀ relation. In S₁ − S₂ relations meaning comes from the relationship between words, while in the S₁ − S₀ relation, meaning or significance, in this case, comes from the infusion or evocation of a form of jouissance. Instead of the subject (S₁) being represented by another signifier (S₂), the subject is a single signifier in the place of jouissance as an unmarked state or original form of experience that could be traumatic or therapeutic. Both type of relations represents the root of cognition, the capacity to differentiate this from that, and the system of language from the Real that lies outside language.