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# The Exteriority of Mind: Some Critical remarks about Neuro-Reductionism from a Psychoanalytic Perspective

Dario Alparone, Giuseppe Viviano

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Dario Alparone, Giuseppe Viviano. The Exteriority of Mind: Some Critical remarks about Neuro-Reductionism from a Psychoanalytic Perspective. International Journal of Psychoanalysis and Education, 2024, IV (1), pp.22-36. 10.32111/SAS.2024.4.1.2. http://hal-05030830

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# The Exteriority of Mind: Some Critical remarks about Neuro-Reductionism from a Psychoanalytic Perspective

Dario Alparone<fnref n="1" /> & Giuseppe Viviano<fnref n="2" />

**Abstract**

Any thesis about human nature that wants to call itself scientific today pretend to verify itself by neurosciences. These perspectives propose a pure organism that is far from unitary but with a common denominator: the reduction of the subject to its neural substrate, sometimes ignoring socio-symbolical dimension. This article develops the topics from the neuro-reductionist perspective showing its limits, both theoretical and clinical. The articulation of Lacanian conception of subject with Wittgenstein's critical approach to philosophy demonstrates the vacuity of neuro-reductionism discourse face to the "real", which resides at the bottom of human nature.

**Keywords:** Neurosciences; Psychoanalysis; Reductionism; Real; Wittgenstein

DOI: 10.32111/SAS.2024.4.1.2

<footnote n="1">¹ University of Occidental Brittany, France</footnote>

<footnote n="2">² University of Salerno, Italy</footnote>

<footnote>Corresponding author: Diego Alparone, darioalparone@gmail.com</footnote>
«C'est, si je puis dire, le grand secret de la psychanalyse. Le grand secret, c'est – il n'y a pas d'Autre de l'Autre.» (Lacan, 2013, p. 353)

## Introduction

Several authors have seen points of convergence between Lacan's psychoanalytic thinking and Wittgenstein's critique of meta-physical thought. Lacan himself, on several occasions, engages with the ideas of the Austrian philosopher, emphasizing the acuity of his analyses and underlining his subjective position in relation to language (Lacan, 1991, p. 69). In this article, we will explore the extent to which Wittgenstein's thinking, particularly his "later" work ("second Wittgenstein"), offers psychoanalysis a framework to contemplate certain aspects of subjectivity by providing insights into understanding some reductionist attitudes of human nature. For this purpose, we will briefly compare the psychoanalytic conception of the subject with Wittgenstein's philosophical critique of the language used by classical philosophers.

Our main aim is to clarify the difference between the subjectivity of psychoanalysis and that advocated by what we will call here as "neuro-reductionism", which is a cultural tendency very popular in common sense but also in human sciences, especially in many academic trends of studies in philosophy of mind, moral philosophy and cognitive psychology.

The utilization of certain aspects of Wittgenstein's philosophy will serve to demonstrate how neuro-reductionism relies on a model of the mind that adheres to a bipolar and obsolete logic of interiority-exteriority. This type of logic is based on a conception

of language as a label and is reduced to a correspondence between "language" and what we commonly call "reality". A difference which we will explore using Lacanian psychoanalytic theorization about the gap between symbolic order and the real. Indeed, De Sausure (1987)'s linguistics, or the theoretical base of Lacanian psychoanalysis, makes a difference between signifier, signified, and referent, producing a fundamental cut into human reality due to language. In this perspective, Wittgenstein's "immanentist" view of language moves toward recognizing this gap, meaning that there is no point in "external reality", which could serve as an external reference to close the "set of language", or the symbolic order (in Lacanian terms). In Lacan's final teachings we also find the same perspective about the relationship between body and language, indeed he highlights the grammatical role in the production of meaning emphasizing how the body is traversed by the signifier, which marks organs too (Lacan, 2001a, pp. 452-453). The subject is the effect of this language traversal by the organism, and so, in analysis, he is nothing but the result of the signifying cut: «the subject is the effect of the said» (ibid., p. 472).

This set of language, therefore, remains open and escapes the possibility of being reduced to a "fundamental equation" (a quilting point) from a sign to a specific object. In fact, we will demonstrate that Wittgenstein prevents us from falling into an essentialization of mental states and, therefore, subjectivity. Wittgenstein's critique of interiority as a metaphysical worldview unfolds from language (Cometti, 2004, p. 237), which will lead us to a critically approach of reductionism in neuroscience.
## A subject that escapes

The subject in psychoanalysis is neither the philosophical subject of knowledge, nor the psycho-behaviorist subject of conduct, nor the organism of medicine. The subject what Lacan talks about is the subject of the unconscious that lies beyond any possible classification and normalization that could relegate it to objective standards or biopower logics. This is what J.-A. Miller underscores when defining the subject in terms of “absence”: «from the outset, the subject is a disparity. Its concept is linked to absence, to bypassing, to the bypassing of an area I described as forbidden, that is to say, a hole, but that can just as well be treated as a residue – [Lacan] indeed calls it the *caput mortuum* of the signifier» (Miller, 2019a, p.157).

In other words, the subject is what remains outside of any possibility of being expressed; it only finds its proper status through one signifier to another signifier, meaning within a constant referral: «the self-differentiation of the signifier in that it cannot signify itself, the self-differentiation of the subject in that it is represented by one signifier in relation to another» (Miller, 1981, p. 11). We can say that this dimension of the subject is invoked in the analytic relationship. It is in strict relation to the analyst's silence, similar to what Wittgenstein (1922, p. 89) indicates, and it takes an ethical turn in both cases: «Wittgenstein has nothing more to say. In this regard, for Lacan, he is close to the position of the analyst who completely removes himself from his discourse». (Fontaneau, 1999, p. 210). Subject in psychoanalysis is a void, so our encounter with it coincides with the onset of the real, which implies the loss of power of words, language, symbolic order.

This reveals to us that the subject of the unconscious cannot be fixed by a signifier (even though it desires to be), but it eludes signification in a discontinuous fading movement, with the slip of the tongue being its most striking manifestation. The subject is, therefore, an avoid place, a symbolic space created by the effect of the signifier, a void from which discourse can unfold. The subject we are talking about is the one Lacan introduces and conceives through a reinterpretation of French philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre:

> [it is] the subject marked by the signifier, who is also the subject with no pre-existing identity, a lack-of-being. This subject fills its lack-of-being by identifying with certain features of the Other. [This subject] Lacan elaborated from the Sartrean subject, in the sense that the subject divided by the signifier is a new version of Sartre's nothingness of being revisited through the question of the relationship to speech and language (Leguil, 2019).

The subject referred to by Sartre (1965) is derived from Husserl's phenomenology, and it is a consciousness, so to speak, twilight-like, meaning a consciousness that, with its intentionality, designates the object in a transcendental field in an “unreflexive” manner: «This transcendental sphere is a sphere of absolute existence, that is to say, of pure spontaneities that are never objects and that determine themselves to exist» (ibid., p. 77, our translation). The subjectivity discussed in psychoanalysis is that of a consciousness that excludes the dimension of auto-reflexivity and thus the solipsism of a self-enclosed consciousness that would be a rational subject purely observing the “external world”, following Cartesian model of *Cogito*. The subject in psychoanalysis represents a fundamental openness of life to the world, and being devoid of substantiality, it goes beyond any ideal of psychological interiority. This is indeed what
Miller (2019a) emphasizes as a fundamental
difference between psychoanalysis and psy-
chology: «the terms subject and subjectivity
are used by Lacan right from the start entirely
at a distance from the cognitive meaning in-
tention that aims at activity, reflexivity, and
consciousness» (ibid., p. 155). It is evident
that this gap also arises in a comparison be-
tween neuroscience and psychoanalysis but
on an even deeper level.

The belief at the core of neuroscience is
in direct continuity with that of cognitive psy-
chology, which presupposes that the mind is a
perfectly circumscribed object, assumed to
exist within what is called “reality”, and on
which investigations could be conducted. In
this regard, we could say that:

Psychology is the science of the soul or
of the mind. But if we think of the soul
or mind as a kind of res, and as an object
of scientific inquiry, then psychoanalysis
is not a science of the soul or of the mind.
In fact, Lacan attacks American interpre-
tations of psychoanalysis because he re-
fuses to consider analytic practice as
linked to a scientific theory of a particu-
lar object, the mind or Self. Not by
chance a Lacanian (or generally a Conti-
nental philosopher) never speaks of mind
or self, rather of subjectivity: the mind is
now seen as a special object of scientific
inquiry, but the subject is not an object at
all (Benvenuto, 2018).

The mind as a real object is conscious-
ness with its reflective function, and one can
find its substrate within the organism. This
perspective allows for a model of the mind
where interiority is reversed onto the exterior,
onto brain imaging. It is a position that is par-
ticularly evident in the field of affective neu-
rosciences, as seen, for example, in the work
of Damasio (1994), who argues that different
states of consciousness, or *qualia*, have a sin-
gle substrate that can always be traced back to
brain matter in a sort of materialistic monism.

The Blind Spot of Cognitive Neurosci-
ence

Neurosciences are a combination of sci-
entific disciplines aimed at studying the nerv-
ous system. However, this combination is in-
fluenced by various paradigms, which, in as-
serting their scientificity, tend to falsify or at
least contradict each other. In summary,
within the field of cognitive neurosciences –
that is, the area dedicated to understanding
how neural circuits can generate various psy-
chological functions – there are two main po-
sitions: the adaptationist and the extended. To
exemplify what we are thinking here when we
talk about neuro-reductionism, we will de-
scribe the first one of these two approaches.

The first position is ultra-Darwinian, as
it focuses solely on the activity of genes. Con-
sequently, life, whether human or not, is noth-
ing but the product of evolution, understood
as a «biological machine whose engine con-
sists of genes and their incessant “competition
for reproductive success”, that is, replication
and transmission of as much genetic infor-
mation as possible to the offspring» (Attana-
sio, 2010, pp. VIII-IX). In this perspective, or-
ganisms have the sole task of serving as ge-
netic vehicles; everything is reduced to genes
and their ability to replicate and propagate
various genetic components. Species with
their diversities, various ethnicities with their
histories and cultures, and individuals with
their desires play no fundamental role because
everything is reduced to genetics.

An example helps clarify the reasoning:
a subject hears the doorbell ring at their home
and decides to open the door. A philosopher
of the mind can analyze the action by breaking
it down into an external event (EE), which
produces a perception (P). This perception,
combined with mental dispositions (M), leads
the subject to make a decision (D) about an
action (A), which in this case is to open the door. This can be schematized as follows:

$$EE \to P (+ M) \to D \to A$$

Unlike EE and A, which are publicly observable, P, M, and D are deducted or inferred by the scientist, especially by the so-called “adaptationist”, as mental states closely related to the central nervous system. Therefore, what is described in ordinary language can be translated into a biophysical language that interprets the example described above in terms of a distal stimulus (SD), meaning sound waves that create a proximal stimulus (SP) by vibrating the eardrum and, connecting to cerebral processes (C) and motor neuron activities (N), triggering a response (R):

$$SD \to SP \to ..C... \to N \to R$$

A question arises at this point: is there a relationship between the two languages, the ordinary one and the biophysical one? Taking the adaptationist seriously, the mind is only understandable through a neuro-reductionist approach called eliminative materialism. For this line of thought, mental acts described by ordinary language cannot be reduced to cerebral processes. In other words, between SD and R, they only exist in C, the cerebral processes of a specific subject, with no one-to-one correspondence between the elements of C and M (mental disposition).

In this perspective, the failure to reduce all mental acts to cerebral processes, far from being a concession to dualism, is simply due to the fact that psychological language, as it is imbued with common sense concepts, is too imprecise, coarse, and laden with old religious or philosophical beliefs to be translated with-

out residue into the language of natural sciences. What many traditional concepts in folk psychology, such as “belief” or “desire”, refer to does not correspond to anything real (Nannini, 2021, pp. XV-XVI).

This perspective, however, would be, at least apparently, contested by the second major neuroscientific position, the extended one. The latter does not disconnect natural selection from historical and cultural factors. Human organisms are not just vehicles for genes, but first and foremost, bodies struggling for survival, while ecosystems are seen as a set of historical and cultural interactions. In other words, the extended position interprets various social systems as «sedimentations, choices, judgments of individuals living in society, that is, sedimentations of knowledge and behaviors learned and transmitted to future generations, not through genes, but through languages, culture, history» (Attanasio, 2010, p. X).

To better understand the argument, we could refer to one of the leading proponents of this perspective, Antonio Damasio. According to the neuroscientist, it is impossible to understand the self, its constitution, and its development without considering emotions. Before the subject can have a conscious self, they are immersed in a process where the self, as it emerges, disappears; a stage of development called “proto-self”. Damasio’s theory (1994) aims to refute the view that the self and consciousness emerge after language. By reducing the latter to the verb, he states how «phrases, reasoning express, sometimes occur, what already exists in non-verbal form sunken in the nuclear or proto-self, a magnetic component of personality where knowledge ranging from non-verbal and not conscious of the neural self to the non-verbal but conscious of the nuclear self» (Attanasio,
2010, p. 68). Damasio's starting point is an organism where biological dispositions allow a living being to continue living, and that is the originary source of the self. From this perspective, the brain amplifies and enhances the ability to know. In other words, the drive for life uses an implicit (and innate) knowledge of the organism, organized with the help of certain brain structures, and only subsequently from a conscious mind. In this regard, the neuroscientist suggests:

> the sense of self has a preconscious biological precedent, the protoself [which] is a coherent collection of neural patterns which map, moment by moment, the state of the physical structure of the organism in its many dimensions. This ceaselessly maintained firstorder collection of neural patterns occurs not in one brain place but in many, at a multiplicity of levels, from the brain stem to the cerebral cortex, in structures that are interconnected by neural pathways. These structures are intimately involved in the process of regulating the state of the organism (Damasio, 2000, p. 180).

If the proto-self allows an organism to exist, but not to know, for the latter, there is a need for a core-self, which takes shape from the continuous interaction between the environment and the organism, which sees its primary configurations modified. For Damasio, «the self is to the extent that it is integrated in the act of knowing, without being able to extricate it from that act and distinguish it from that, temporally or spatially» (Attanasio, 2010, p. 77). Thus, the organism finds itself, in representing its own state, also representing something else. Second-order maps are added to the first-order maps of the physical structure, which implicitly record and regulate the organism, producing explicit images.

A core self has an instantaneous consciousness. It is the product of changes, which occur when the organism encounters an object

such as the perception of a face, a sound, well-being, or suffering. This core-consciousness represents the object in images, without language and in a form that is still pre-reflective, without a future and with a past confined to that just-passed moment. Yet, this ephemeral self, in its continuous appearance, leaves traces that contribute to the construction of autobiographical memory: this is the appearance of the autobiographical self, an extended consciousness.

The whole is not reduced to the series of stimuli received by the organism through its encounters with objects. Or rather, memory records, along with the stimuli, the resulting emotions because they allow living beings to react in the best way to life situations, positive or negative. However, far from being an entirely human prerogative, devoid of a « brain without mind, without thoughts, even the simplest organisms are provided with emotional reactions that can preserve life. But not to feel feelings or reflect on them » (ibid., p. 91). It is the feelings, on the other hand, along with the autobiographical self that belong to those animals, like humans, who have a strong capacity for memory and reasoning. In fact, feelings extend the emotion, activate attention, and combine images and memories, increasing the likelihood of new and innovative responses, enhancing the adaptive and survival capabilities of organisms.

The difference between speaking animals and other living beings is based on the amount of memory and greater reasoning ability, coupled with the non-essential, albeit useful, language. Damasio is convinced:

> I believe the self to which they refer is the autobiographical self. I also believe apes such as bonobo chimpanzees have an autobiographical self, and I am willing to venture that some dogs of my acquaintance also do. They possess an autobiographical self but not quite a person.
You and I possess both, of course, thanks
to an even more ample endowment of
memory, reasoning ability, and that crit-
ical gift called language (Damasio, 2000,
p. 101-102).

In conclusion, the human animal has de-
veloped its mental abilities to better protect it-
self and adapt to its environment. Damasio’s
work is remarkable in his attempt not to con-
fine the subject solely to the brain and its bio-
chemistry. However, his theory falls into neu-
rological reductionism, as seen in his view of
emotions, which are not considered much dif-
ferently than as a set of chemical exchanges
between neurons (Attanasio, 2010, p. 93), and
consequently, even feelings are regarded as
extensions. This raises a question: how can
such an approach explain phenomena like an-
orexia, addiction, or masochism? Here, the
evolutionary paradigm seems overly simplis-
tic and inappropriate for grasping the essence
of the speaking animal, which involves a dis-
ruption of homeostasis, the dimension of ex-
cess, and the articulation of enjoyment linked
to desire.

Neurosciences and the Subject-Sub-
stance

How we have seen, the neurocognitive
conception of the mind makes the individual
psyche the paradigm of subjectivity, meaning
an individual interiority presumed in every ac-
tion and conduct. Such an idea of psychic in-
teriority is at the foundation of a concept of
the subject-substance, which implicitly or ex-
plicitly refers to a theory of language as mir-
roring reality, as we will discuss below. It is
in this direction that the slope toward reduc-
tionism lies, which has indeed been criticized
as contradictory by certain philosophical per-
spectives, such as those affiliated with ideal-
ism, claiming that the identity proposed by

neuroscience is an identity outside of relation.
It defines the subject as autonomous and sol-
ipsistic, thereby contradicting the very con-
cept of identity (Stella & Ianulardo, 2019, pp.
13-14).

This way of thinking about the mind re-
lates to a specific conception of language as a
tool to indicate the object (the so-called “os-
tensive”), a kind of label through which refer-
ence is made to some specific and concrete ex-
ternal entity, namely a model of language as a
duplication of reality. At this regard, E. Lau-
rent emphasizes the difference in scope be-
tween cognitive neuroscience and psychoa-
nalysis: «Like our cognition theorists, Lacan
trusts what is senseless and is wary of mean-
ing. But it's the reverse of representation con-
ceived as storage. The place of the subject is
the place of loss and its encounter, or *tuché*.
The unconscious is not a trace of learning; it's
a play with the signifier that's lacking» (Lau-
rent, 2008, p. 43). In other words, there is no
signifier of the subject in psychoanalysis,
which “shows itself” as that which eludes rep-
resentation, whereas in neuroscientific theory,
consciousness is seen as a reflection of the
subject of his own functioning, which is based
on specific brain circuits. Therefore, the sub-
ject as conceived in psychoanalysis appears as
an empty set, where the realm of identification
serves to attach it to the signifying chain on
which it depends. It does not correspond to an
ideal of self-sufficiency; it stands out for be-
ing caused by the signifier, as pulsatile, a dis-
continuity in the real:

The language effect is the cause intro-
duced into the subject. By this effect, it is
not the cause of itself; it carries within it
the worm of the cause that splits it. [...]
An effect of language in that it arises
from this original splitting, the subject
translates a signifying synchrony into
that primordial temporal pulsation,
which is the fading that constitutes its
identification (Lacan, 1966 a, p. 200).

The subject is like an effect of language,
and thus it is merely a logical effect, not a re-
ality with ontological consistency. In this
sense, Lacan suggests that a distinction needs
to be made «not between the physical and the
psychic, [...] but between the psychic and the
logical» (Lacan, 2005, p. 45). The paradigm
of reductionist neurosciences stands in stark
contrast to what psychoanalysis reveals in its
clinical practice, where it concerns a dimen-
sion of subjectivity that is foreign to itself.
This dimension is recognized by the ego
(which coincides with the aforementioned re-
flective consciousness) as a part of oneself and
simultaneously as external. In the reductionist
application of neuroscience to the subjective
dimension, there is a new attempt to substan-
tialize subjectivity, aiming to provide it with a
psychological delineation, assign a personal-
ity profile, and so on. This is the most intri-
guing aspect of neuroscience; it offers to the
contemporary subject the illusion of finally
being able to define oneself, to settle into a
clearly defined identity, a sort of roadmap of
the brain's inner workings useful for visualiz-
ing "without filters" and "without veils" their
"inner life". (Ehrenberg, 2018, p. 11). Con-
temporary subject finds in neuro-reductionism
the realization of the illusory hope that afflicts
every subject: to have well-fixed and totally
completed identity.

From this perspective, the interest of
cognitive psychology and neurosciences in
the emotional dimension of human experi-
ences stems from this fundamental illusion.
For example, developmental psychologists
emphasize how at the origin of an individual's
development, there are pre-linguistic and fun-
damentally biological experiences of the self
(Parvizi & Damasio, 2001, p. 137), where the

essence of consciousness coincides with phys-
iological states, changes in the activity of cer-
tain brain regions associated with emotions
(ibid., p. 139). This perspective implies a con-
ception of human subjectivity that is based on
a mind that feels, that has self-experiences,
that undergoes emotions. It is a mind with spe-
cific, locatable places within the brain regions,
as F. Fontaneau demonstrates well with the
following example in the neuroscience inves-
tigation:

We have three realities: an individual A
observing a red flower, an individual B
observing the brain of A, and the visual
experiences of B. However, we confuse
the physical concept 'process in the brain
of A' with the reality itself designated by
the concept. We have, for example, the
lived experience of A regarding the red-
ness of the flower and the physical pro-
cess in the brain of A, and we believe that
the two must be parallel or act upon each
other. We treat the intuitive images of B's
consciousness as if they were already the
physical object 'A's brain' and as if the
properties of the transcendent thing 'A's
brain' were immediately grasped within
them (Fontaneau, 2010, p. 223).

This perspective relies on the paradigm
of thinking about the mind in terms of interi-
ority-exteriority, where interiority is consid-
ered beyond the realm of language and there-
fore inexpressible except through measuring
devices that make it objectifiable or “exter-
nal”. It is the same logical error that behavior-
ism made by claiming that psychic experience
is unknowable and, therefore, the study of di-
rectly observable external behavior is needed
to define it in an “objective” manner (Gauvry,
2019). However, as we aim to explain, “psy-
chic experience” is only expressible through
linguistic means: «This doesn't mean, how-
ever, that our psychic experience is purely lin-
guistic. We continuously have psychic experi-
ences, just like all our other experiences, but
we truly experience them only when they
manifest in our statements in the form of expressions (or, more rarely, descriptions)» (ibid., p. 113). Indeed, Lacan also recognizes that the human being “is not a body” but “has a body”, precisely because of being a “being of language” (*parlêtre*): man «has something else (a body), without being able to make it his own» (Lacan, 2001b, p. 567). The experience that the speaking being has of their own body is one of fundamental alienation, and the same holds true for their interiority.

One of the ramifications of this logic is the programmatic approach of brief psychotherapies, based on affective neuroscience, aimed at managing emotions that disrupt an individual's life, such as in the case of trauma. Emotions are fundamental, but at the same time, they can be controlled. It is no accident that we never talk about the feeling of anxiety, which is fundamental in Freud and Lacan, but rather about anguish, meaning an emotion that doesn't fundamentally question the subject but can always be managed in some way:

> The path proposed by cognitive-behavioral therapies is that of “emotional re-modeling”. The principle is based on the malleability of reactivated memories and their ability to integrate new information. Through pharmacological treatment, subjects are put in a state of trust that allows reducing the emotional component before reactivating the memory to gradually diminish its pathological nature (Blancard, 2019, p. 227).

This is a tendency in cognitive psychology towards a sort of ego psychology, based on the centrality of the “self”, understood as a function of synthesis in the psychic economy, similar to the adaptive interpretation of the Freudian adage «*wo Es war, soll Ich werden*» (Freud, 1933, p. 111) by Ego psychology. From this, it follows that if emotions are the foundation of subjectivity, then language has

only secondary importance, especially as a tool for communicating one's inner emotional experiences to others. This is one of the central points of “incommensurability” between psychoanalysis and neuroscience: «Language implies a logical causality different from neuronal causality. And above all, language is external, it precedes us. It is already there at our birth, and it will follow us beyond. Language is another form of life than neuronal life (Ansermet, 2019, p. 63). It is about giving substance to subjectivity by presenting it as an entity, whereas in psychoanalysis, there is a notion of “fading”. In the value attributed to emotions and the reduction of mental functions to brain regions, there is always a form of substantialization that involves using language as a set of labels to refer to so-called “real objects”.

This perspective is famously criticized by Wittgenstein in relation to the language of philosophers, in which he critiques, for instance, the “ostensive” explanation of language: «One might say that ostensive definition explains the use - the meaning - of a word if the role that this word is generally to play in language is already clear. [...] You already have to know something (or be able to do something) in order to be able to ask a question about the name». (Wittgenstein, 1958b, p. 14, § 30)

In other words, Wittgenstein argues that the meaning of a word has nothing to do with the object; it is not a question of representation but of the use to which words are put in everyday life. Therefore, one shouldn't look for an external origin to grasp the meaning of words, which is what characterizes metaphysical approaches, namely «subordinating reality to truth and thought» (Utaker, 2019, p. 348). On the other hand, the psychoanalytic
conception of language and reality is that re-
ality always surpasses us, and language is not
a mirror of either reality or the real. Language
itself, not being self-contained, always sur-
passes its user, as De Saussure (1987) stated,
«we cannot control the linguistic sign» (ibid.,
p. 71).

The linguistic game of interiority

Wittgenstein emphasizes that one can-
not treat the object of psychology as if it were
an object of physics: «What shows it is that
the physicist sees these phenomena, hears
them, reflects on them, and informs us about
them, whereas the psychologist observes the
expressions (the behavior) of the subject»
(Wittgenstein, 1958b, §571). In other words,
we can say that there is interiority only with
reference to an external linguistic framework:
«an internal process needs external criteria»
(ibid., §580) for understanding, even for the
subject. Such interiority would, therefore, be
posited by social discourse, what Wittgenstein
calls a “language game”, which establishes
the concept of interiority accepted in the forms
of life in which we act (ibid., §583). For these
reasons, we relate our critique of interiority to
Wittgenstein's remarks about the fact that the
meaning of words cannot be understood from
an ostensive gesture. Indeed, he demonstrates
that in the case of “internal” mental states, lan-
guage does not require an object to be shown
to be understandable by others. One cannot
say that there is another person’s mind, so we
can only base our certainty on their own lin-
guistic expressions about their experience,
that is, we talk about feelings or thoughts (ex-
press them), but we do not show them (or de-
scribe them). We understand internal states as
the result of a language game accepted on the
basis of a context with specific “forms of life”.

One could therefore say that, in a certain
way, scientific reductionism addresses Witt-
genstein's questions about the legitimacy of
asserting the existence of interiority. At the
point where we can see everyone's mental
state in brain imaging, they respond by creat-
ing a sort of ontology of the mind or subjec-
tivity, that is, by providing objective evidence
about what is subjective. It can be noted that
in this position, there is a kind of zeal to define
reality by giving it linguistic labels in the man-
ner of a map (Cassou-Noguès, 2019). In the
specific case of the relationship with neurosci-
ence, each psychological concept is matched
with a location in the brain, which is a sort of
direct connection between concept and thing,
between the word (the union of signifier and
signified) and referent.

From this perspective, it seems im-
portant to refer to J.-A. Miller (2019b) when
he points out that “second Wittgenstein”

questioned the fundamental absence of a
point of quilting and his investigations
precisely focus on what could well tie to-
gether the signifier, signified, and refer-
ent. He presents this readily in an apo-
retic manner: how do we know that red is
red? How do we know that what we call
red, the other also calls it that way, espe-
cially when the other could be color-
blind, it raises a question. In essence, his
fundamental recourse, in what he clearly
experienced as the fundamental absence
of a point of quilting, his recourse is the
community of language users. It means
something within the framework of a
community of those who do the same.
Practice is the criterion. This is what hap-
pens when the Other has shattered, all
that remains is the common practice of
language within a given community
(Miller, 2019, p. 169).

Common and consensual usage is what
binds the signifier and the signified, allowing
us to understand the meaning of words in our
everyday life, and therefore, in other words,
enabling us to access a common sense of so-
cially shared, objective reality. Wittgenstein's
proposed logic means that language is not a
closed set, and there is no external point to it
that would establish a univocal relationship
between the signifier and the signified, which
would imply essentializing meaning. From
this perspective, raising the question of interi-
ority based on brain investigation, as if the
brain were the ideal organ where this interior-
ity would occur, can nonetheless be read as an
attempt to fix the point of origin of language
outside of language itself, thus pointing to re-
ality as the place where language takes on sub-
stance outside of itself.

Upon reflection, this is the same criti-
cism that Laurent makes of the representation-
storage model used by neurocognitive scien-
tists, which is quite the opposite of what dis-
tinguishes psychoanalytic discourse. Moreo-
ver, this is what Cosenza identifies as the core
element that makes psychoanalysis irreducible to neurology:

*Das Ding* is the mythic object of the first
satisfaction lost forever; the object irre-
ducible to the realms of *Vorstellung*, rep-
resentations of both the thing and speech.
*Das Ding* is the first name of Freud's un-
conscious as the indefinable core of the
psychic apparatus, an absent cause. It is
the point at which the young Freud's pro-
ject of a scientific psychology for neurol-
ogists is thwarted. *Das Ding* is what
paves the way for the foundation of psy-
choanalysis (Cosenza, 2019, p. 55).

There is no coincidence between lan-
guage and the real. In psychoanalysis, there is
instead a fundamental gap between represen-
tation and what is the object to be represented,
between language and sensory experience.
They are irreducible to each other.

Another way to approach the solution to
the enigma of interiority, as indicated by Witt-
genstein and Lacan, is through language:
«Both De Saussure and Wittgenstein reverse

the empiricist and cognitivist conception of
the construction of language: we need first a
language in order to have a sensed experience
of the world, we never are in a solitary, vir-
ginal, primal touch with the things» (Benve-
nuto, 2018). In particular, from the perspec-
tive of the Austrian philosopher, the “I” we
talk about as being connected to a body has
only a grammatical derivation (Wittgenstein,
1958a, p. 124). It is only an effect of the lan-
guage game of positioning oneself as a subject
who feels, hears, desires, namely being able to
talk about “myself” in the third person (ibid.,
126; Descombes, 2014, p. 207). The same
logic can be found, for example, in Wittgen-
stein's resolution of Moore's paradox, “It's
raining, but I don't believe it”. The philoso-
pher points out the contradiction between the
first and the second proposition in the fact that
the latter is superfluous: the assertion “It's
raining” is already sufficient to express the
subject's opinion on the weather, and there is
no need for the psychological verb in the sec-
ond proposition (“I believe”). In other words,
the assertion about the weather already con-
veys something about the subject's stance on
reality, and there is no need for the “reflec-
tive” moment in the second proposition. The
contradiction in this paradox is in expressing
two contrary opinions simultaneously, where
the second part indeed represents the moment
of subjective division as the subject turns in-
ward. It is a psychological moment where the
subject posits itself as an entity with opinions,
thoughts, etc., but what Wittgenstein makes us
realize is that the speaking subject is already
posited when he talks about weather, not when
speaking about himself as a unitary and reflex-
ive psychological entity (Descombes, 2013).
From this perspective, it's not difficult to de-
duce a critique of cognitive, substantialist and
reductionist models of the mind where con-
sciousness is viewed solely as a phenomenon
of duplicating perception that establishes a
sense of self-continuity over time (Jeannerod,
2009, pp. 91-92).

Therefore, in Wittgenstein's philosophy we can see a critique of cognitive model of the psyche. Our perspective aligns with the logical view of Jacques-Alain Miller when he describes the subject as a shifter between signifiers (Miller, 2019 c, p. 162). However, the two conceptions of the subject (from psychoanalysis and Wittgenstein) differ when considering that Wittgenstein's "I" is a logical-grammatical function that underlies action, while the subject in psychoanalysis is the subject of the unconscious, meaning it is thought of in terms of discontinuity in reflexivity. However, in both case the result is that subject is a result of a linguistic and grammatical operation which operates a discontinuity on the illusion of unitarity of cognitive subject: «This cut in the signifying chain alone verifies the structure of the subject as a discontinuity in the real» (Lacan, 1966b, p. 160). In both perspectives, real onset by the hiatus created by the symbolic order in the subjective experience by the effect of significant, precisely because language set is not a closed set. There is not a meta-language, which could guarantee a perfect and closed relation between signifiers, signify and referent, and the consequent of this is the inner division of subject. Subject is overcome by grammar, which is his logical precondition; and in this way it is an avoid set that cannot correspond with brain.

Conclusions

What has interested us in the relation-
ship between psychoanalytic theory and Witt-

genstein's philosophy is this convergence to-
wards an anti-cognitivist perspective of psy-
che. The assertion that we have material or
"natural" evidence of interiority, that we can
say that such interiority exists and has onto-
logical value, involves a metaphysical belief,
a philosophical prejudice where language is
conceived as a set of labels for pre-existing
mental experiences. Conversely, physiology
tells us only that there are possible correla-
tions between mental states (intention,
memory, perception, etc.) and changes in the
activity of certain brain regions when the in-
dividual does something. However, the mean-
ing of, for example, an individual's action is
given by the social processes of signification.

The intention is not given in an agent's
intimate experience, for example, in their
conscious awareness of wanting to vote
when their arm goes up: it is given in the
interplay of these descriptions, all of
which belong to the external world. It is
not physiology that can tell us that rais-
ing the arm is also the act of voting; it is
the context in which the action con-
sciously takes place. (Aubin, 2014, p.
45).

In other words, the discourse of neuro-
reductionism about interiority is a kind of re-
sponse to the same logic of philosophical met-
aphysical subjectivity, where it is possible to
say something about the subject in an objec-
tive way, reducible to some material entity.
However, what they actually do is fall into the
same logic of metaphysics, which reduces the
complexity of the world to an ideal entity,
which would allow the language to be reduced
to a relationship of fundamental equivalence
or substitution with objects of the world;
hereby closing the language system.

In conclusion, as Wittgenstein humor-
ously states, a statement that Lacan would
likely appreciate, the mind is like a beetle in a
closed box that each of us possesses but no
one can verify its real existence (Wittgenstein, 1958b, §293). It is a collective game that everyone engages in, and it is by not opening the box to see what is inside that the mind, as an entity, can “exist”, in the sense of a linguistic game. In other words, the mind is nothing more than the performative effect of social practices of signification and symbolic production of reality and it is not less “real” for this, at the contrary it is “real” because to this.
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