Mind as an External Sign: A Semiotic Externalist Philosophy of Cognitive Science

This book applies notions from C.S. Peirce's philosophy, such as semiosis, mind, diagrammatic reasoning, abduction, and habits, to contemporary problems in distributed cognitive science. These problems include distributed cognitive systems, cognitive niche construction, external representations, cognitive artifacts, agency, and emergence. In this movement, Peirce's approach provides a philosophical framework that reconceptualizes fundamental notions in distributed cognitive science. Among the founders of pragmatism, Charles S. Peirce remains one of the least influential within the pragmatic turn in cognitive science. Nevertheless, Peirce's theory of mind is processist and externalist, placing it at the center of cognition and the action of external signs. This book is therefore of interest to philosophers of science as well as cognitive scientists and cognitive linguists.

The only book-length treatment of C.S. Peirce's distributed cognition Includes a variety of examples, including music and written and oral poetry Of interest to philosophers of science as well cognitive scientists and cognitive linguistics

Autorentext

Pedro Atã is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Linguistics and Language Practice, Free State University, South Africa. Atã earned a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Linnaeus University, Sweden. His work focuses on modelling surprise, creativity and semiotic complexity in distributed cognitive processes, in fields such as Philosophy of Cognitive Science, Semiotics, Intermediality Studies, and Process Philosophy. He has published on topics such as intersemiotic translation between music and poetry, oral poetry improvisation, cognitive artifacts in dance, artwork authorship, situated problem solving, and cognitive niche construction.

João Queiroz is a professor at the Institute of Arts and the Graduate Program in Linguistics at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (Brazil), where he coordinates the Iconicity Research Group (IRG). Queiroz earned a Ph.D. in Communication and Semiotics from the Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP), received a post-doctoral fellowship in Intelligent Systems and Artificial Life at the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (FEEC-DCA), State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), and in Philosophy of Biology at the Institute of Biology, Federal University of Bahia (UFBA). He has been teaching courses on Cognitive Semiotics, Peirce’s Philosophy, and Intermediality Studies, and has supervised Ph.D. and Master’s students in the fields of Semiotics, Art & Technology, and Cognitive Semiotics. He has several publications in international journals, books, and conferences. Queiroz is a member of the International Association for Cognitive Semiotics (IACS), a member (expert panel) of the Linnaeus University Centre for Intermedial and Multimodal Studies, Växjö (Sweden), a member of the Group for Research in Artificial Cognition (UEFS, Brazil), and an associate researcher of the Linguistics and Language Practice Department, University of the Free State (South Africa). Personal homepage: https://joaoqueirozsemiotics.wordpress.com/

Inhalt

1 Semiotic turn in distributed cognition.- 2 Active semiotic externalism.- 3 Semiosis as an emergent process.- 4 The emergence of sign action: the case of Classical ballet.- 5 Artifacts in problem solving: iconicity and abductive inference.- 6 The object of iconic artifacts: why an underground system is a semiotic problem.- 7 Poetry improvisation as problem-solving in distributed cognitive systems.- 8 Semiosis as problem-solving, problem-solving as semiosis.- 9 Meaning is niche construction: semiotic artifacts and cognitive externalism.- 10 Artwork authorship as a legisign-in-action.- 11 Towards a typology of artistic experimentation -- metasemiotic experiment as niche construction 'pump'.- 12 Conclusion.- References.