Book Proposal - The Undecidable Unconscious: Complementarity and the Future of Intelligence

In our rapidly evolving world, both artificial intelligence (AI) research and our understanding of human consciousness seem bound by a shared assumption: that everything about thinking can ultimately be formalized and computed. Yet this classical view of intelligence may conceal deeper, non-classical truths—insights that quantum mechanics, psychoanalysis, and deconstruction each illuminate in their own ways. I propose a framework that recognizes the “undecidable unconscious” at the very heart of reality and mind, drawing on complementarity, a principle first articulated in quantum physics but with implications well beyond the lab.

For years, much of academia—be it analytic philosophy, mainstream psychology, or the newly emergent Digital Humanities—has sidelined or minimized ideas that challenge conventional rationalism. Psychoanalysis is deemed marginal; deconstruction is often dismissed as too opaque; quantum mechanics is relegated to physics alone, rarely considered for what it might teach us about consciousness or meaning. What if, instead, we placed these critical insights at the center of our inquiry into AI and the future of intelligence?

This new perspective asks us to look closer at how genuine complementarity might reshape our understanding of cognition. In quantum terms, complementarity refers to the necessity of using multiple, seemingly incompatible viewpoints—like wave and particle descriptions—to capture the full reality of subatomic phenomena. Applied to mind and AI, it suggests that rationalist, computational frames alone may never suffice, because human consciousness also encompasses that which is “unthinkable” in strictly classical terms.

Below, I outline the core themes of my current book project, The Undecidable Unconscious: Complementarity and the Future of Intelligence, which explores how psychoanalysis, quantum theory, deconstruction, and the ethics of care can converge on a fresh understanding of AI, moral injury, and the cultural unconscious.

1. Challenging Exclusionary Discourses

Many academic fields systematically exclude non-classical dimensions:

Analytic Philosophy: Often dismisses continental thought—especially deconstruction—as too “literary” or “obscure,” limiting how we engage the slipperiness of language and meaning.
Academic Psychology: Has traditionally overlooked psychoanalysis in favor of behaviorism and cognitive science, thereby sidestepping deep insights into the unconscious and moral injury.
Philosophy of Science: Tends to treat quantum mechanics as a specialized domain, rarely confronting its broader challenge to classical epistemologies.
Digital Humanities: Sometimes assumes data-driven methods can capture all dimensions of meaning, inadvertently ignoring the intangible, affective, or unconscious layers that complicate interpretation.

By revisiting these excluded insights, we open space for reimagining AI, consciousness, and cognition in ways that respect the indeterminate or “unthinkable” aspects of reality.

2. Quantum Complementarity as a Metaphor for Mind

Quantum mechanics reminds us that physical phenomena can appear contradictory—particles sometimes behave like waves, and vice versa. Rather than flatten these paradoxes, physicists accept both descriptions as valid but context-dependent. We might think of Arkady Plotnitsky’s reading of complementarity as urging us to entertain similarly irreconcilable perspectives on mind:

Psychoanalysis: Stresses the unconscious as a realm that is not merely hidden but structurally beyond full rational capture—akin to the superposition states in quantum theory.
Deconstruction: Reveals that meaning is always deferred, never completely present. Language, like a quantum system, never collapses into a single stable state.
AI and the “Rational-Calculable” Mind: Typically rely on classical logic—algorithms, data structures, deterministic or probabilistic rules. But if the human mind incorporates a fundamentally non-classical component, purely rational AI models risk missing something crucial.

By embracing complementarity, we acknowledge that contradictory modes of description (computational vs. unconscious, digital vs. deconstructive) can both be valid—and that the most profound insights emerge at their intersection.

3. The Undecidable Unconscious and Moral Injury

Alongside quantum thinking, psychoanalysis offers a framework for understanding what the rational mind struggles to articulate: the unconscious. This has special relevance in discussions of moral injury, where individuals experience a rift in their core values after witnessing or participating in ethically fraught events. That rift can be neither fully expressed nor healed through purely rational means.

My research bridges psychoanalytic concepts with health humanities and digital humanities to explore moral injury as a collective, not just individual, phenomenon. History, ideology, and social structures all play a role in shaping the “diseases” of the cultural unconscious. Only by engaging the unthinkable—those traumas and contradictions rational discourse often avoids—can we begin to address moral injury in a comprehensive way.

4. Why AI Needs Deconstruction and Psychoanalysis

If we treat AI merely as a higher form of computational logic, we perpetuate a classical ideal: that all thinking can be reduced to rules or patterns. But deconstruction and psychoanalysis point us toward something more ambiguous yet generative:

Deconstruction: Encourages us to see how seemingly clear categories—such as “input” and “output,” “algorithm” and “data”—carry hidden assumptions and incomplete logics. Language, and by extension symbolic processing, is never fully stable.
Psychoanalysis: Reminds us that cognition cannot be understood without addressing unconscious desire, fantasy, repression, and ethical conflicts. AI that ignores these dimensions risks a naïve anthropomorphism—projecting a purely rational model onto what is, in humans, far more contradictory.

By grappling with these complexities, we might envision new AI approaches that do not simply replicate rational processes but also incorporate awareness of the unspoken, the affective, and the structurally “undecidable.”

5. A New Ethics of Care

Alongside these theoretical frameworks, my work advocates for a renewed ethics of care—one that recognizes the irreducible roles of uncertainty, interdependence, and moral responsibility:

Healing Moral Injury: By acknowledging the unthinkable (traumas, paradoxes, unconscious processes), we foster spaces that allow for genuine transformation, both individually and institutionally.
Rethinking Institutions: Borrowing from Lacan’s discourse of the university, we can see how knowledge structures themselves can perpetuate blind spots and moral failings if they exclude uncomfortable truths.
Imagining AI as a Partner in Care: Rather than treat AI as an all-knowing system, we can develop it as a complementary participant—helping us store, analyze, and interpret data but always leaving room for the uncertain, the personal, and the emergent.

6. Future Directions: From Book Proposal to Broader Conversation

Although this project began as a book proposal, its scope extends into broader cultural questions. How do we best integrate quantum insights into real-world ethics? Can psychoanalytic approaches reframe the way we design AI or conduct digital scholarship? Does deconstruction have a role in shaping moral dialogues around technology and warfare?

If we aim to answer these questions, we must leave behind rigid disciplinary boundaries. My hope is that The Undecidable Unconscious: Complementarity and the Future of Intelligence will invite scholars, technologists, clinicians, and ethicists to collaborate on a richer, more humble vision of what “intelligence” entails—one that acknowledges the presence of fundamental unthinkability in both humans and machines.

Conclusion

We stand on the cusp of AI breakthroughs and an evolving understanding of consciousness, yet old assumptions die hard. Even as algorithms grow more powerful, we risk overlooking the realm of the undecidable—those aspects of mind and matter that evade tidy explanation. From moral injury to quantum paradoxes, from the complexities of language to the ethics of care, the unthinkable beckons us to question whether purely rational, classical frames can ever suffice.

By integrating psychoanalysis, quantum mechanics, and deconstruction, we begin to see a path forward that honors the complementarity of multiple perspectives. This is where The Undecidable Unconscious emerges: not as a flaw in knowledge, but as a constitutive dimension of how reality and thought genuinely operate. Embracing that dimension might well open the door to a more humane, imaginative, and ethically anchored understanding of intelligence—whether human, mechanical, or something yet to be conceived.