A McLuhan phrase — discussed in The Interior Landscape around p.32 — and one of Bob Dobbs's favorite formulations . It names the whole body in action, making and matching through tactility: a mutual anticipation between interlocutors that, for Cameron, issues from media into reality.
Across the dialogues
Defines the drama of cognition — contentless, mutual, grounded in the Incarnation
The drama of cognition has no content of its own — like tactility, it's an all-purpose ground beneath whatever particular content a culture supplies.
"The drama of cognition, in a way, has no content. You can make particulars depending on what culture you do, but it's an all-purpose word like tactility."
From Bob's essay "The Cloning of ESP" — the drama is mutual anticipation: my next move interests you, and I must expect your response to my response.
"It's what my next move is going to be, whether verbal, gestural, or indifferent, that is of interest to the other who just spoke to me. And therein is the drama of cognition."
Bob's ontological grounding — the Incarnation mimed the drama of cognition (and the stages of apprehension), giving the phrase a theological depth.
"The incarnation mimed the drama of cognition."
Ties it to pattern recognition and media's urge to realize themselves
Cameron's chemistry gloss — "the medium is the message" means the pattern recognition of the drama of cognition must itself become subject to pattern recognition; that is the survival strategy.
"What I'm talking about is the possibility of pattern recognition in a multimedia environment."
The move relocates agency — the drama of cognition is not a human interior event but something the media themselves enact, each medium pressing to become real: cognition as a property of the medium, not the mind.
"Then it's the drama of cognition that issues from media into reality. Media have this urge to realize themselves."
Made the answer to the regress — the superposition of possibilities the scientist consciously inhabits, and McLuhan's suggestion for how we might achieve peace
The drama of cognition is why the technique of how not to have a point of view is possible — every human, every second, faces a superposition of possible experiences and jumps to one; the scientist does consciously what everyone does unconsciously.
"is doing nothing but be conscious of the drama of cognition that's going on at every second."
Reading from his book, Bob quotes McLuhan on Joyce — Joyce first linked the stages of apprehension to the creative process and saw the drama of cognition as "the key archetype of all human ritual, myth, and legend."
"he was the first to understand how the drama of cognition itself was the key archetype of all human ritual, myth, and legend."
Cameron's payoff — that Joyce passage is McLuhan's suggestion for how we might achieve peace, "peace at every level."
"is exactly McLuhan suggestion for how we might achieve peace."
Connections
McLuhan's formulation (discussed in The Interior Landscape, ~p.32) — one of Bob Dobbs's central touchstones.
Bob locates the drama of cognition in McLuhan's Interior Landscape (pp.31–33), among the stages of apprehension.
Technology "coming alive" just is a drama of cognition crossing between humans and machines.
Nevitt glosses the "interplay of cliché-archetype as the generator of consciousness," which Bob equates to the drama of cognition.