I argue that emojis are essentially little pictures, rather than words, gestures, expressives, or diagrams. ???? means that the world looks like that, from some viewpoint. I flesh out a pictorial semantics in terms of geometric projection with abstraction and stylization. Since such a semantics delivers only very minimal contents I add an account of pragmatic enrichment, driven by coherence and nonliteral interpretation. The apparent semantic distinction between emojis depicting entities (like ????) and those depicting facial expressions (like ????) I (...) analyze as a difference between truth-conditional and use-conditional pictorial content: ???? depicts what the world of evaluation looks like, while ???? depicts what the utterance context looks like. (shrink)

In this paper, we look at installation art through the lens provided by the notion of “affective artifact” (Piredda 2019). We argue that affective character is central to some works of installation art and that some of those works can expand our knowledge of our affective lives, while others can contribute to the construction of our identities. Sections (2), (3), and (4) set the stage for our discussion of affective installation artworks by, respectively, situating it within the debate on affective (...) artifacts, looking at some general issues concerning the affective character of artworks, and sketching out a view of the ontology of installation art. In section (5), we discuss the affective character of six works of installation art. In section (6), we show how those artworks can reveal aspects of who we are. Section (7) concludes. (shrink)

The authors' commentary on Bruno Latour's "Technology is society made durable" provides the reader with an opportunity to become acquainted with actor-network theory.

What is the role of the environment, and of the information it provides, in cognition? More specifically, may there be a role for certain artefacts to play in this context? These are questions that motivate "4E" theories of cognition (as being embodied, embedded, extended, enactive). In his take on that family of views, Hajo Greif first defends and refines a concept of information as primarily natural, environmentally embedded in character, which had been eclipsed by information-processing views of cognition. He continues (...) with an inquiry into the cognitive bearing of some artefacts that are sometimes referred to as 'intelligent environments'. Without necessarily having much to do with Artificial Intelligence, such artefacts may ultimately modify our informational environments. -/- With respect to human cognition, the most notable effect of digital computers is not that they might be able, or become able, to think but that they alter the way we perceive, think and act. (shrink)

This introduction aims to familiarize readers with basic dimensions of variation among pictorial and diagrammatic representations, as we understand them, in order to serve as a backdrop to the articles in this volume. Instead of trying to canvas the vast range of representational kinds, we focus on a few important axes of difference, and a small handful of illustrative examples. We begin in Section 1 with background: the distinction between pictures and diagrams, the concept of systems of representation, and that (...) of the properties of usage associated with signs. In Section 2 we illustrate these ideas with a case study of diagrammatic representation: the evolution from Euler diagrams to Venn diagrams. Section 3 is correspondingly devoted to pictorial representation, illustrated by the comparison between parallel and linear perspective drawing. We conclude with open questions, and then briefly summarize the articles to follow. (shrink)

The traditional definition per genus et differentiam is argued to be cognitively grounded in perception and in order to avoid needless argument, definitions are stipulated to assert boundaries. An analysis of the notion of perspective shows that a boundary is a composite of two distinctions: similarity that includes and difference that excludes. The concept is applied to the type-token distinction and percepts are shown to be the result of a comparison between a token as representing some phenomenon and a type (...) as representing the kind of object the phenomenon might be. The Principle of Connection is proposed as the mental architecture that gives rise to percepts. The value of a percept is shown to be one of Identical, Similar, Different or Contrary and its perceptual aspects represent the cognitive schema of Essence, Quality, Quantity and Relation. The two notions of similarity and difference are claimed to constitute the necessary and sufficient conditions for definitions. Accordingly, the qualitative elements of a definition signify the genus as representing the similarity of the defined entity in terms of others of its kind and the quantitative elements signify the differentia as representing the difference it has from everything else. Paying proper attention to both qualitative and quantitative aspects will enable formulation of definitions that are ‘good’. (shrink)

Historically the words representation and symbol have had overlapping meanings, meanings that usually disregard the role played by the interpreter. Peirce’s theory of signs accounts for these meanings and also for the role of the interpreter. His theory draws attention to the static and dynamic nature of signs. Sign interpretation can be viewed as a continuous dynamic and evolving process. The static and dynamic nature of signs helps us understand the teaching–learning activity as a process of interpretation on the part (...) of teacher and students. The paper attempts to explain the classroom interpretation process on the part of the actors involved using the Peircean theory of signs. (shrink)

We argue that a formal semantics for music can be developed, although it will be based on very different principles from linguistic semantics and will yield less precise inferences. Our framework has the following tenets: Music cognition is continuous with normal auditory cognition. In both cases, the semantic content derived from an auditory percept can be identified with the set of inferences it licenses on its causal sources, analyzed in appropriately abstract ways. What is special about music semantics is that (...) it aggregates inferences based on normal auditory cognition with further inferences drawn on the basis of the behavior of voices in tonal pitch space. This makes it possible to define an inferential semantics but also a truth-conditional semantics for music. In particular, a voice undergoing a musical movement m is true of an object undergoing a series of events e just in case there is a certain structure-preserving map between m and e. Aspects of musical syntax might be derivable on semantic grounds from an event mereology, which also explains some cases in which tree structures are inadequate for music. Intentions and emotions may be attributed at several levels, and we speculate on possible explanations of the special relation between music and emotions. (shrink)

More than one researcher is currently proposing that the notion of information become an important element for defining living systems as well as for explaining conditions that make their origins possible. During the pre-biotic era, the type of compounds encountered would mainly have been very simple in nature and might have been immersed in the natural dynamic of the physical world and in processes of self-organization. It is furthermore quite possible that they formed a relationship between and among certain types (...) of processes that here we are specifically proposing as central for the emergence of cell organization. Consequently, an important initial step towards constructing a theory of biological information is to ask ourselves the question: how do biological systems process information? In this way, we will be contributing to the proposals of this paper where we seek to identify general principles that govern biological computing and that deal with biosemiotic approaches as they are defended in naturalistic normative terms. (shrink)

The tradition of Kant’s critical philosophy developed the concept of imagination rigorously and productively. In this article, I shall defend the suitability of placing this concept in a paleoanthropological frame and linking it to the cognitive practices – predominantly sensorimotor, interactive and those directed at the emergence of technologies – which preceded and prepared for the advent of articulated speech. Special attention will be paid to the internalization processes of these practices and their effects on human conduct. On the basis (...) of this discussion, I shall defend the theory by which the advent of denotative articulated speech entailed a profound reorganization of the technical performances attributable to the imagination and the relative internalization processes. Moreover, the origin of articulated speech inaugurated a singular story, that of the relationship between word and image. In my conclusions, I shall describe a major outcome of this within the framework of the new electronic technologies. (shrink)

Summary In the methodology of science, intersubjectivity is usually associated with replicability of experimental results. A related, judicial conception of objectivity as impartiality has it that a theory or judgment is objective if it covers all the relevant angles of the object or phenomenon in question, ensuring that the latter is not ephemeral and the concepts referring to them are valid. Based on the assumption that in the social sciences, the researcher is also a participant, an alternative view was conceived, (...) according to the notion that intersubjectivity rests on either sharing of a lifeworld and its associated practices or on empathy, or on some form of direct social cognition. My aim in this paper is to bring some elements of the Gestalt theory – and more specifically, Rudolf Arnheim’s (1988) adapted model of field dynamics – to bear on the problematic of intersubjectivity. The proposed model suggests that intersubjectivity is a dynamic phenomenon, best described as a product of two vectors: a vector describing a movement across the circumference combined with a vector describing the movement from the center to the circumference. While the first vector corresponds to impartiality, the second represents the tension between cognitive distancing and direct experience. Overall, it is argued that intersubjectivity cannot be divorced from either subjectivity or objectivity and it amounts to skillful navigation within different frames of reference. (shrink)

Sequential transformative design of research :224–235, 2015; Groleau et al. in J Mental Health 16:731–741, 2007; Robson and McCartan in Real world research: a resource for users of social research methods in applied settings, Wiley, Chichester, 2016) allows testing a group of theoretical assumptions about the connections of artificial intelligence with culture and education. In the course of research, semiotics ensures the description of self-organizing systems of cultural signs and symbols in terms of artificial intelligence as a special set of (...) algorithms. This approach helps to consider the arguments proposed by Searle :417–457, 1980) against ‘strong’ artificial intelligence. Searle :417–457, 1980) believes that artificial or machine intelligence cannot fully emulate the processes of the human mind. Machine intelligence shows own inevitable weakness. This is non-autonomous tool for computations and data operating. In fact, this tool cannot provide insight into real cognitive conditions. After Lotman and Uspensky, authors expand the meaning of artificial intelligence. The authors identify a cultural type of ‘strong’ artificial intelligence or ‘self-increase of Logos’ in terms by Lotman and Uspensky. The interpretation of human intelligence as imitation of machine intelligence makes possible such immersion of artificial intelligence in culture. The authors reveal a case of self-organizing autonomous generation, encoding, decoding, reception, storage, and transmission of social information in the field of physical training. From the empirical studies it is clear that the organization of collective activities without external control ensures the development of positive emotions and social orientations. Interest in autonomous behavior provides the formation of educational and cognitive motives. As a special set of algorithms, these motives are the most promising and favorable for personal development. (shrink)

Two decades of attempts to model the emergence of language as a collective cognitive activity have demonstrated a number of principles that might have been part of the historical process that led to language. Several models have demonstrated the emergence of structure in a symbolic medium, but none has demonstrated the emergence of the capacity for symbolic representation. The current shift in cognitive science toward theoretical frameworks based on embodiment is already furnishing computational models with additional mechanisms relevant to the (...) emergence of symbolic language. An analysis of embodied interaction among captive, but not human‐enculturated, bonobo chimpanzees reveals a number of additional features of embodiment that are relevant to the emergence of symbolic language, but that have not yet been explored in computational simulation models; for example, complementarity of action in addition to imitation, iconic in addition to indexical gesture, coordination among multiple sensory and perceptual modalities, and the orchestration of intra‐ and inter‐individual motor coordination. The bonobos provide an evolutionarily plausible intermediate stage in the development of symbolic expression that can inform efforts to model the emergence of symbolic language. (shrink)

Paleontological evidence suggests that human artefacts with intentional markings might have originated already in the Lower Paleolithic, up to 500.000 years ago and well before the advent of ‘behavioural modernity’. These markings apparently did not serve instrumental, tool-like functions, nor do they appear to be forms of figurative art. Instead, they display abstract geometric patterns that potentially testify to an emerging ability of symbol use. In a variation on Ian Hacking’s speculative account of the possible role of “likeness-making” in the (...) evolution of human cognition and language, this essay explores the central role that the embodied processes of making and the collective practices of using such artefacts might have played in early human cognitive evolution. Two paradigmatic findings of Lower Paleolithic artefacts are discussed as tentative evidence of likenesses acting as material scaffolds in the emergence of symbolic reference-making. They might provide the link between basic abilities of mimesis and imitation and the development of modern language and thought. (shrink)

Floridi’s Theory of Strongly Semantic Information posits the Veridicality Thesis. One motivation is that it can serve as a foundation for information-based epistemology being an alternative to the tripartite theory of knowledge. However, the Veridicality thesis is false, if ‘information’ is to play an explanatory role in human cognition. Another motivation is avoiding the so-called Bar-Hillel/Carnap paradox. But this paradox only seems paradoxical, if ‘information’ and ‘informativeness’ are synonymous, logic is a theory of inference, or validity suffices for rational inference; (...) a, b, and c are false. (shrink)

Currently, there is a focus in science education on preparing students for lives as innovative and resilient citizens of the twenty-first century. Key to this is providing students with opportunities, mainly through inquiry processes, for discovery making and developing their creative reasoning by bringing school science closer to authentic science. I propose, building on the work of Woods, Magnani and the authors of a 2005 special issue of Educational Philosophy and Theory on Peirce, that these efforts can be advanced through (...) the adoption of a Peircean logic of discovery in the science classroom. I further suggest that this can only take place if a classical logic that frames school science, which deems abduction—the creative element of reasoning that drives discovery—as fallacious and not valuable as an inference making process, is replaced with a naturalised logic. Such a logic positions students as practical, not ideal agents of reasoning who in their hypothesis making are inferential-experts... (shrink)

The ability of predicting upcoming events or conditions in advance offers substantial selective advantage to living beings. The most successful systematic tool for fairly reliable prognoses is the use of dynamical causal models in combination with memorised experience. Surprisingly, causality is a fundamental but rather controversially disputed concept. For both models and memory, symbol processing is requisite. Symbols are a necessary and sufficient attribute of life from its very beginning; the process of their evolutionary emergence was discovered by Julian Huxley (...) a century ago. In behavioural biology, this universal symmetry-breaking kinetic phase transition became known as ritualisation. Symbol use for predicting future dynamical processes has culminated in the unprecedented complexity of mental models used in science and technology, coining the historical ascent of modern humans. Observation and measurement transform structural information of physical exchange processes into symbolic information from which state quantities are derived by means of mental models. However, phylogenetically inherited models such as naïve realism do not necessarily explain the sophisticated insights revealed by modern experiments with, say, entangled quantum states. It is suggested to carefully distinguish observed exchange quantities from predicted unobservable state quantities, and physical reality from mental models thereof. (shrink)

El presente artículo reflexiona sobre los orígenes del pragmatismo atendiendo puntos importantes para implicaciones epistemológicas que buscan servir luego de clave para una perspectiva para el pensamiento del sur del continente. Hay una exposición de aspectos centrales que sobre el pragmatismo expuso Charles Pierce, específicamente sobre las creencias, el signo como mediación cognitiva, así como una consideración de las ciencias para comprender el papel tanto del razonamiento como de la percepción y el instinto. Igualmente, se exponen elementos claves de la (...) teoría del conocimiento de John Dewey, quien ante el rechazo declarado al racionalismo cartesiano y sin limitarse a la experiencia como punto de referencia para la clarificación conceptual, se encamina más a unas vivencias y contactos con un mundo observado comprometiendo así la realidad sentida la propia mente. El pragmatismo implica atención a lo que nos rodea sin generar separaciones entre sensibilidad y razón o entre pensamiento y emoción, lo cual hace que los asuntos de la ciencia y del conocimiento no se den ajenos a las acciones democráticas entre los individuos activos y sus colectivos. (shrink)

This work emphasizes the influence in Apel of the named Critique of Meaning developed by Wittgenstein and Peirce. We reconstruct the foundations of the recognitionof a linguistic a priori, and of the semiotic-anthropological radicalization, that leads to the conception that man can be understood as thought-sign. It also shows the way Apel believes that such thought-sign is inscribed in the context of a supraindividualenviroment, where it develops its own individuality. From that approach, a transformation of the subject function in the (...) interpreter function of the signs has to be done in order to create a new answer to the problem of intersubjectivity. (shrink)

There has been much philosophical debate about whether the meaning of pictures can be analysed using theoretical frameworks normally employed within philosophy of language. A specific question within this debate is the question of whether pictures can express propositions. Instead of addressing this question in of pictures in a broad sense, this essay focuses on a specific category of pictures referred to as pictorial signs. These signs constitute a pictorial form of communication that we use in our everyday lives. The (...) question of whether pictorial signs can express propositions should, because of this communicative use, be more approachable than the same question applied to pictures in general. While a standard approach to the question has been to investigate the extent to which pictures may share some syntactic or semantic features with natural language, the approach in this essay is instead to look at how pictorial signs are used. The suggested strategy is to approach the question of propositionality by attempting to translate a particular sign into some sentence in natural language on the basis of how the sign is used, rather than analysing its structure. (shrink)

Explorations in Systems Phenomenology in Relation to Ontology, Hermeneutics and the Meta-dialectics of Design -/- SYNOPSIS A Phenomenological Analysis of Emergent Design is performed based on the foundations of General Schemas Theory. The concept of Sign Engineering is explored in terms of Hermeneutics, Dialectics, and Ontology in order to define Emergent Systems and Metasystems Engineering based on the concept of Meta-dialectics. -/- ABSTRACT Phenomenology, Ontology, Hermeneutics, and Dialectics will dominate our inquiry into the nature of the Emergent Design of the (...) System and its inverse dual, the Meta-system. This is an speculative dissertation that attempts to produce a philosophical, mathematical, and theoretical view of the nature of Systems Engineering Design. Emergent System Design, i.e., the design of yet unheard of and/or hitherto non-existent Systems and Metasystems is the focus. This study is a frontal assault on the hard problem of explaining how Engineering produces new things, rather than a repetition or reordering of concepts that already exist. In this work the philosophies of E. Husserl, A. Gurwitsch, M. Heidegger, J. Derrida, G. Deleuze, A. Badiou, G. Hegel, I. Kant and other Continental Philosophers are brought to bear on different aspects of how new technological systems come into existence through the midwifery of Systems Engineering. Sign Engineering is singled out as the most important aspect of Systems Engineering. We will build on the work of Pieter Wisse and extend his theory of Sign Engineering to define Meta-dialectics in the form of Quadralectics and then Pentalectics. Along the way the various ontological levels of Being are explored in conjunction with the discovery that the Quadralectic is related to the possibility of design primarily at the Third Meta-level of Being, called Hyper Being. Design Process is dependent upon the emergent possibilities that appear in Hyper Being. Hyper Being, termed by Heidegger as Being (Being crossed-out) and termed by Derrida as Differance, also appears as the widest space within the Design Field at the third meta-level of Being and therefore provides the most leverage that is needed to produce emergent effects. Hyper Being is where possibilities appear within our worldview. Possibility is necessary for emergent events to occur. Hyper Being possibilities are extended by Wild Being propensities to allow the embodiment of new things. We discuss how this philosophical background relates to meta-methods such as the Gurevich Abstract State Machine and the Wisse Metapattern methods, as well as real-time architectural design methods as described in the Integral Software Engineering Methodology. One aim of this research is to find the foundation for extending the ISEM methodology to become a general purpose Systems Design Methodology. Our purpose is also to bring these philosophical considerations into the practical realm by examining P. Bourdieu’s ideas on the relationship between theoretical and practical reason and M. de Certeau’s ideas on practice. The relationship between design and implementation is seen in terms of the Set/Mass conceptual opposition. General Schemas Theory is used as a way of critiquing the dependence of Set based mathematics as a basis for Design. The dissertation delineates a new foundation for Systems Engineering as Emergent Engineering based on General Schemas Theory, and provides an advanced theory of Design based on the understanding of the meta-levels of Being, particularly focusing upon the relationship between Hyper Being and Wild Being in the context of Pure and Process Being. (shrink)

In order to explain some of the paradoxes and mysteries of the artist's cross cultural experience in Kiribati, he constructed an Artist's Book depicting through visuality, anecdote and reflection, his research process, engaging with current visual perceptions through negotiation with the past. In Kiribati previous encounters with Europeans and Islanders was dominated by English and I Kiribati with significant contributions by French missionaries. Each viewed the other through cultural filters of identity, which were informed by concepts of myth-historical, often heroic (...) pasts, modified by contemporary purpose such as power, trade, evangelism or personal gain. The method of transmission of beliefs about the past differed fundamentally as the Europeans were predominately informed by writing and the I-Kiribati by orality and performance. The non-literary epistemology of the I Kiribati contributed to a cosmology of non-iconic symbols that defined belief systems and social structures. These symbols connected place and space with time, self and group identities. The research found that the all surrounding visual symbol system of sacred meeting house, dwelling and canoe ) could be partly understood as an ongoing struggle since Deep Time, between the forces of the Ocea n represented by Bakoa, The Shark, and that of the triumph of the coming onto the Land and its people represented by Tabakea, The Turtle. The performative outcome of this triumph and the spirit of identity it engenders is expressed primarily in the ubiquitous I Kiribati Dance. The Artists Book is inspired by the creative classic I Kiribati form of oratory known as Te Kuna, using a structure analogous to the symbolic forms of narrative of Oceanic Voyaging traditionally employed by the I Kiribati. Differences in visual perceptions across cultural interface are understood not only as having the potential for conflict but also as providing positive dynamic force by the interchange of understood differences. The project contributes specifically to the ethnography of English and I Kiribati, semiotic systems and visual epistemologies, indicating directions towards positive outcomes in cross-cultural encounters. (shrink)

This paper looks at the attack on scientific racism in the 20th century by a group of social and biological scientists. I will utilize the apparatus of my model of emerging truth to show how even in complex socially conditioned argumentation the ultimate virtue is seeking the truth through increasingly powerful logical connections and deeply embedded warrants.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the possible implications of Peirce's categories for a project of a community. In order to do so, I will start by analysing the first formulation of these categories in Peirce's early writings, and then I will compare them with their later formulations. Thus, we will see some their most important characteristics, namely, their universality and their dynamism, which will allow for a particular understanding of the role that logic can play in his (...) system, in a theory of scientific inquiry and, finally, in a community in general. (shrink)