ABSTRACT
Key concepts: semiotic and symbolic codes, meaning without reflection.
Is there meaning outside the symbolic order and outside thinking? Are there similarities between semiotic or genetic and Symbolic codes in the same way that there is correspondence between the codes regulating the brain (the code that regulates brain switches turning gates open or closed) and those regulating language (words that are turned off and on by censorship). Semiotic and Symbolic codes come into interaction through the way language wires the neural chains and brain function.
This is the link between the codes in birds or mammals – the use of signs and codes – and the code of language and the signifier. Some may think the semiotic and the Symbolic are totally unrelated. Lacan is talking about the code in language and not about animal signs. Lacan raises the question himself about the function of signs in animals in relationship to the letter and the signifier.
This is our scientific field. Our scientific field is analytical, consisting of analytic observations, and therefore we limit theory to generalizable analytical experience. On the other hand, there is also the question of the body-mind interaction in the field of experience. When Lacan is talking about jouissance, he’s talking about the body.
The way we read about the bird and the bees is that there are certain things that can have meaning, but that it may be sort of ludicrous to expect the meaning to be available to reflection. Where the bee has its path, going from flower to flower, but it is not in any sense conscious that its purpose is to pollinate flowers, you couldn’t really say to the bee, “what do you think about your purpose in going around pollinating flowers?” In a way it seems a little bit like a satirical comment on what we often try to do with analysis – that we say, “you’re doing this” or “what do you think about this pattern”, and what if people are just going around pollinating flowers without having a particular reflective sense of it!
