How to talk about the unconscious?

I've started thinking about how to talk about the unconscious mind within the framework that I've been developing here on this blog (understanding psychology as the intersection of phenomenology and biology). The struggle that I've been having has to do with the fact that, on one hand, the unconscious mind plays a role in our conscious life insofar as our conscious life is not like some notebook that we periodically take up, write things in, and then put down, leaving it unchanged until the next time we encounter it. Rather, our impressions of things change both within our conscious experience, and beyond that experience. Therefore, unconscious processes are something that have to be dealt with.

But how can we talk about these unconscious events? They don't occur in conscious experience, so its automatically suspect to speak of them in phenomenological terms. When we do this, we're inferring phenomenological content onto unconscious events based on the effects that they've had on our thought processes. While doing this may not seem completely objectionable, I am not strongly in favor of it because it seems to me that if we could really talk about these events as phenomenological processes, then they would be phenomenological processes. The fact that they're not clearly implies that something is different, or perhaps just intervening, to prevent them from becoming phenomenological.

Now, it's entirely possible that whatever is preventing unconscious thoughts from being conscious is inconsequential and these thoughts are just being "blocked" from appearing consciously because of the lack of some other, outside process.

But, I think that this is not a very important concern because the question remains of how to talk about unconscious activity once it gets down to a low enough level. The question is not just at what level do psychological explanations break down, but how they break down.

Dreams of neural implants...

I'm not excited by all technological developments, but I am excited by the development of neural implants that could solve the problem of inputting alphanumeric chartacters into increasingly tiny devices. This particular development has yet to occur (as far as I know), but I see it as inevitable, since I can't think of any other way to solve the incredible inconvenience of using a tiny qwerty keyboard on a phone.

The inconveniences caused by such keyboards exemplify the communication bottleneck in human social activity. The development of culture has left human beings with a rich heritage in which to grow and develop means of expressing ourselves. Yet, in doing so, we are not limited so much by our brainpower, but by our physical appendages.

To continue with the first example, the alphanumeric system is poorly suited to the kinds of devices that we (increasingly) use to communicate, and as a result, our ability to express ourselves through written words on these devices is constricted. With neural implants, we would not have to externalize a clumsy 40+ key keyboard (on the machine input side) or the complex hand movements required to use such a keyboard (on the human output side).

Technologies like a neurally implanted alphanumeric command system would only be the tip of the iceberg. In addition to learning to mentally conjure up letters and numbers, we could learn to externalize the imagery of our minds, painting rich pictures of our imagination for others, and eventually even creating 3d virtual environments in which to interact with others. Presumably, children brought up using such devices could acquire incredible dexterity with them...

The richness of human culture has created within each of us a profoundly rich experience, which while unique is certainly not devoid of any potential for sharing with others. As much as it's interesting to speculate how technological developments might offer the possibility removing "communication bottlenecks" and allowing for an increased sharing of experience, used inappropriately, such devices could jeopardize privacy, and allow for terrible violations of private experience.