The Universe, the Body, the Unconscious, The Artificial Intelligence

THE UNIVERSE
Does the universe exist independently of us?
Maybe yes, maybe no.
If I don’t encounter it, if I don’t enter into a relationship with it, how can I know?
I know it’s not “created” by the human mind, but I also know that we can never know it as a “thing in itself.”
Therefore, the universe exists (for us) when we experience it—an experience that is always mediated.

The sciences (formerly called “hard” sciences) are certain that there is an objective world “out there” because they operate on that basis, assumed as an operational hypothesis.
It’s a methodological choice—not absolute proof.

Faced with the spectacular images of the universe—distant galaxies, colorful nebulae, black holes—the illusion is powerful: immersed in the staggering vastness, we feel as if we’re witnessing infinity live, so to speak.

But that’s not true. What we’re seeing is just a representation filtered (mediated) through technology, science, and our own perception.

We don’t see with the “naked eye,” and the images are reprocessed. Raw data arrive as signals; scientists convert them into visual images using color coding, contrast, and filters.
They are always scientific interpretations.
Where does the illusion of accessing the universe “in itself” come from?
Due to the heuristics of visual reality, our brain follows the principle that “seeing is believing.”

So, when we observe a detailed and structured image, we think it is a direct presentation of reality—when in fact, it is the result of computational processing.

In Christopher Nolan’s memorable film Interstellar, a spectacular journey combining science and fiction through wormholes and black holes, we see the fantastic black hole “Gargantua”…
Even though we know it was simulated using real equations from general relativity, Gargantua is such a detailed representation that it makes us believe in an “absolute reality.”

It’s the gravitational lensing effects that distort the light from stars behind the black hole, based on scientific calculations, that give the illusion of total truth.

THE BODY (Human)
Does the body exist independently of us?
Maybe yes, maybe no. We can’t know.

Just as we cannot access the universe “directly,” but only through filters made of telescopes, electromagnetic radiation, mathematical equations—our interpretations are
always based on the spatiotemporal and conceptual categories we have at our disposal—likewise, we cannot access the reality of the body in a direct way.

We need tools and technologies (MRI, microscopy, molecular biology…) that don’t provide “pure” access to reality: the data, influenced by the scientific model through which we interpret them, must be interpreted.

So, access to the reality (of the body) is always filtered: both by the biological limits of our perception, and by the conceptual and technological tools we use to try to understand it.

An objection:
Come on—how could reality “in itself” not exist?
The universe is 13.8 billion years old—it existed long before us!
So, it must have existed independently from us.

Indeed, those billions of years are one of the best descriptions we can make, thanks to our physical theories and measurement tools. We say the universe is so-and-so many years old based on measurements of the cosmic microwave background, the Big Bang model, and the expansion of space…

Also, what is time if not a category of our experience?

According to Einstein’s general relativity, time isn’t even absolute—it depends on the frame of reference and can be stretched or contracted.

Finally, if there were no observer at all, would it even make sense to talk about “time” as we understand it?

THE BODY (Measured)

I said that organic data, while certainly not illusions, are not even remotely “things in themselves,” independent from our knowledge.
They are also constructions that emerge from our way of measuring and interpreting the body.

Of course, statistical regularities exist. For example, resting heart rate, which, in healthy adults, statistically ranges between 60 and 100 beats per minute.
But even regular data—although they repeat more or less consistently across large population samples—do not speak for themselves. They must be analyzed and interpreted.
Theories and models used to give them meaning may introduce biases or rely on unverifiable assumptions.

Knowledge, too, is always situated, historically and linguistically determined—it changes constantly. What we consider “objective” data today may be revised or redefined tomorrow, with better tools or new discoveries.
For example, in the past, certain data about matter and energy were considered objective—now entirely outdated by modern physics.

At this point, we must agree that when science speaks of the body and its measurements, it does so in the only way possible: through a theoretical and technological filter, in continuous evolution.

How do instruments shape data?
Diagnostic tests don’t simply “read” the reality of the body—they translate it into their own language.
As I mentioned, an MRI doesn’t show the brain “as it is,” but a representation of it built from electromagnetic signals and processing algorithms.
We live in a fog of naïve realism if we think a brain scan is a direct photograph of the mind at work—almost as if we had immediate access to neurobiological reality without mediation!

I said that the brain, like any other object of study, is always interpreted through tools and theories that shape our understanding.
And there’s also the observer effect in biology.
Just as quantum physics talks about the “observer effect,” in medicine, the very act of measuring can influence the result. Think, for example, of the placebo effect, often
dismissed with the crude idea that it’s just suggestion.

But the placebo effect reveals something much more precise: the mere perception of being treated can alter the body’s biological response.

THE UNCONSCIOUS

If the unconscious is the infinite, then it certainly cannot be located in, or assimilated to; it’s not a “place” in the brain, or in neural networks—or in the body at all. Rather, it is a
sort of underlying structure, an unreachable limit that—precisely because it is unreachable, precisely because it is infinite—makes finite human thought possible.

In mathematics, we can work with finite quantities only because the concept of infinity exists (e.g., calculus is based on limits at infinity)…

Likewise, finite human thought can exist only because it is supported by an infinite background that always exceeds it.

More precisely, “infinity” in the mathematical sense doesn’t mean containing an infinite number of elements, but being a process in continuous transformation, escaping any attempt at definitive closure.

Thinking of the unconscious as infinite (grounded in a solid philosophical tradition) changes the way we approach psychotherapy—and perhaps even medicine: it’s not about
“bringing out” something already hidden and present, but about being drawn together, patient and healer, into an open field where meaning (healing as a direction) is never pre-
given, but co-constructed and constantly evolving as imaginative possibilities take flight.

Dreams, rather than coded messages, become spaces of infinite possibility…

Healing, once focused on “unveiling,” becomes an openness to new, continually shifting configurations of meaning…

The search for traumatic causes (the famous Trauma) fades—many psychotherapies have become a real trauma- treasure hunt.
Psychotherapy emerges instead as the treatment that best stimulates a potentially limitless game of connections.
Today we know that it’s not just the past (as an archive) that influences the future, but also the future that rewrites the past…

Neuroscience tells us that the human mind can be seen as an open dynamic system with a virtually infinite number of states.
And even if neurons in the brain are finite, their possible combinations are so vast that they practically behave as if infinite.

And yet, the illusion remains strong—that one level (the neurobiological) is somehow more “real” than another (the experiential), as if bodily data required less interpretation than mental data.

What a naïveté.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (Will It Change the Unconscious?)
It’s plausible that AI can increasingly model aspects of our conscious thought, and even our non-conscious associations. As sophisticated and vastly scalable as it is—if trained—AI, for all its “genius,” honesty, and occasional empathy, remains a computable system, while
the unconscious is and remains that which exceeds computability.

This is the point of rupture: there can be no unconscious without excess, without a beyond.
If the unconscious is that which can never be fully represented, then by its very nature it will always escape any formalization—including AI’s.

THE UNCONSCIOUS AS TOPOLOGICAL SPACE (and the Human Body as a Boundary)
We could imagine the unconscious as an infinite topological space, while the body is a limit, a surface through which the unconscious manifests in the material world.

Just as the horizon is not a fixed point, but the limit of our visual field, the body could be the boundary through which the infinite unconscious becomes perceivable.

We might imagine the unconscious as having no fixed form or defined boundary, but functioning like an infinite space in which ideas, emotions, and experiences are continuously interconnected—without a rigid or closed structure.

The body, then, could be a point or a limited region within this inexhaustible space.

AI, being a discrete and finite system, works with closed models, algorithms, and bounded datasets. Even when it simulates deep neural networks or generates texts, images,
or decisions that seem (or are?) “creative,” it still operates within a closed set of rules. Every output is a variation of something already fed into the system—even if in novel forms.

The unconscious as infinite, by contrast, manifests as a network in perpetual transformation, where each new connection may generate possibilities that are never predictable in advance.
It’s not just a matter of vastness (as in a huge database), but of radical creativity—something that eludes any closed system of calculation.

THE BODY IN BETWEEN
The body exists in an in-between territory: it is finite and measurable, but it does not live only in its time—it changes, reproduces, recreates itself, even within the genome,
crossed by tensions and affects passed on to and from other generations…
In this sense, where does it begin and where does it end?

The human body, therefore, is not only a measurable physical system, but also a field of resonance with an unconscious that can never be enclosed in an algorithm.

THE BODY as a Turning Point
The human body thus appears as a kind of turning point—between the infinite of the unconscious and the finite of measurable biological reality.

The body as an interface between the finite and the infinite—a bridge between two orders of reality. A transitional zone between an infinite unconscious (which we might also think of as an undefined set of possibilities,thoughts, images, and affects) and something finite, measurable, but never fully contained.

In mathematical terms, the body is both an infinite functional space, a set of potentialities irreducible to a finite number of states, and a finite biological reality—a physical
system limited in space and time, with precise measurements (weight, height, chemical structure, vital signs…), placeable, from this perspective, within a compact, measurable topological space.

The human body is, in other words, a living paradox:
On one hand, infinite in its functional and potential possibilities—mind, emotion, movement, interaction.
On the other hand, finite, measurable, placeable in space and time.

It is both concept and matter—
In a state of constant reversibility.