Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Cognitive Semiotics. Radical Enactivism, Pragmatism and Material Engagement

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Cognitive Semiotics

Part of the book series: Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology ((PEPRPHPS,volume 24))

Abstract

As suggested by Goran Sonesson (2012: 208) in a seminal article, “cognitive semiotics has been invented many times during the last decades”. Cognitive semiotics can indeed be many things, and there are many ways to “invent” it. Some of these things and ways are de facto. Other things and other ways are de iure. I will not proceed to create a new invention. Rather, in this book I will try to clarify the articulation between what cognitive semiotics is de facto and what, in my perspective, should be able to be de iure.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 119.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    “4e cognition” refers to a turn inside cognitive sciences and theory of mind that thinks of cognition being as embodied, extended, embedded and enacted. For an overview, see Rowlands 2010.

  2. 2.

    A very important exception is Material Engagement Theory (Malafouris 2013), which explicitly refers to a semiotic perspective on cognition. More on that in this very same chapter.

  3. 3.

    See Paolucci 2008, Fabbri 2017.

  4. 4.

    Sonesson (2019) does not agree with El-Hani et al. (2009)’s interpretation, since, according to Sonnesson’s point of view, “animal mimicry, as well as phenomena of the human Lifeworld comparable to it, are in a sense the opposite of signs. It has often been observed, not only within speech act philosophy, but also by the semiotician Luis Prieto, that a sign can only function as such once it is recognized to be a sign. Animal mimicry, camouflage, and the like, in contrast, only work as such, to the extent that they are not perceived as signs”. I will come back to this important debate in a future work.

  5. 5.

    Indeed, in his response to some of my solicitations at a conference on A Theory of Semiotics. Eco talked about the “theory of misguided inference” and he said that, although he no longer corrected the definition of “theory of lies” because of its enormous success, he believed that the idea of semiotic features should be extended to that of “error”, namely to cases where someone is wrong and does not deliberately lie. The classic example is Ptolemy. When he said that earth stays still at the center of the universe he was not lying, but he was wrong. Or, and this is the example given by Eco (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSEEYdM7k9A), when a well-known Italian philosopher translates an English passage saying that “bees take bananas with sticks” he is not lying, but he is simply mistakenly translating “apes” with “bees”, since the Italian word for “bee” is “ape”. On this topic, see Gramigna 2020.

  6. 6.

    I owe this idea to Paolo Leonardi (personal communication), even if Paolo used it in order to argue that truth has to be considered more important than falsity, since telling a lie is parasitic upon telling the truth.

  7. 7.

    As it can be seen, “actant” is a neutral term in Greimas’ theory, which does not distinguish between subjects and anything else which causes something to happen (this distinction would be rather be in the “thematic roles”). In this way, Greimas does not even need to talk of “material agency”, since agency can be material from the very beginning.

  8. 8.

    “Sense Making: The active adaptive engagement of an autonomous system with its environment in terms of the differential virtual implications for its ongoing form of life. The basic, most general form of all cognitive and affective activity manifested experientially as a structure of caring.” (Di Paolo et al. 2018, Glossary).

  9. 9.

    “Participatory Sense Making: “Sense-making in the context of a social interaction as it is affected by coordination patterns, breakdowns, and recoveries undergone during social encounters. Participatory sense-making is how people understand each other and how they understand and act on the world together.” (Di Paolo et al. 2018; Glossary).

  10. 10.

    See Lawrence 1991: 99–106.

  11. 11.

    See Bacon 1993.

  12. 12.

    But the true concrete activation of the Encyclopaedia idea in Eco is to be found in his novels according to the principle “whereof one cannot theorize, one must narrate” (see Paolucci 2017a).

  13. 13.

    See Deleuze 1981: 157.

  14. 14.

    See Festi 2003: 192. On this theme, within a semiotics of perception, see also Moutat 2016, 2019 and Marrone 2016.

  15. 15.

    On the theme of the body which must render itself social, see two important volumes by Gianfranco Marrone (2001, 2005).

  16. 16.

    See Fontanille 2004: 214.

  17. 17.

    In Eco the semiotic ratio (1975) is a relationship between type and token. I cannot follow Eco on this point, as the type/token distinction seems to work virtually exclusively for the expression plane of verbal language and similar semiotic systems, while it would not appear to be adequate for taking account of what happens, for example, for visual or syncretic languages, where the existence of a type of expression is much more doubtful. Moreover, a type/token ratio would not seem to adequately describe what happens on the content plane. I would argue that ratio takes shape primarily between singularities, in the establishment of a commensurability relation.

References

  • Abe, N. (2009). The neurobiology of deception: evidence from neuroimaging and loss-of-function studies. Current Opinion in Neurology, 22(6), 594–600.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Abe, N., Okuda, J., Suzuki, M., Hiroshi, S., Tetsuya, M., Etsuro, M., Minoru, T., & Toshikatsu, F. (2008). Neural correlates of true memory, false memory, and deception. Cerebral Cortex, 18(12), 281–289. https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhn037.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bacon, F. (1993). Conversazioni con Michel Archimbaud. Genova: Le Mani Microart’s. English Edition: Bacon, Francis. 1994. Conversation withMichel Archimbaud. New York: Phaidon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Beer, R. D. (2000). Dynamical approaches to cognitive science. Trends in Cognitive Science, 4(3), 91–99.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Benveniste, É. (1966). Problèmes de linguistique générale. Paris: Gallimard. English Edition: Benveniste, Émile. 1971. Problems in General Linguistic, Transl. Maria Elizabeth Meek, Coral Gables Fl.: Miami University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bottineau, D. (2016). Linguistique incarnée et “énactivisme”: quelles collaborations possibles avec les neurosciences? In A. Rabatel, M. Temmar, & J.-M. Leblanc (Eds.), Sciences du langage et neurosciences (pp. 211–232). Limoges: Actes du colloque 2015 de l’Association des Sciences du Langage, Lambert-Lucas.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chemero, A. (2009). Radical Embodied Cognitive Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Clark, A. (2008). Supersizing the mind. Embodiment, action, and cognitive extension. Cambridge, MA: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • De Jaegher, H., & Di Paolo, E. (2007). Participatory sense-making: An enactive approach to social cognition. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 6(4), 485–507.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Deleuze, G. (1981). Francis Bacon. Logique de la sensation. Paris: Éditions de la Différence. English edition: Deleuze, Gilles. 2003. Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation. London: Continuum Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Di Paolo, E. (2005). Autopoiesis, adaptivity, teleology, agency. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 4(4), 429–452.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Di Paolo, E., De Jaegher, H., & Cuffari, E. (2018). Linguistic bodies. The continuity between life and language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Diana, B. (2014). A cognitive approach to deception detection: multimodal recognition of prepared lies. Department of Human Sciences for Education “Riccardo Massa”. Milan: University of Milan, Bicocca. Retrieved from https://boa.unimib.it/retrieve/handle/10281/53250/80210/phd_unimib_043265.pdf.

  • Eco, U. (1975). Trattato di semiotica generale. Milan: Bompiani. English edition: 1976. A theory of semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Eco, U. (1984). Semiotica e filosofia del linguaggio. Turin: Einaudi. English edition: 1984. Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. London: Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Eco, U. (1997). Kant e l’ornitorinco. Milan: Bompiani. English edition: 1999. Kant and the Platypus. Essays on Language and Cognition. London: Secker & Warburg.

    Google Scholar 

  • El-Hani, C. N., Queiroz, J., & Stjernfelt, F. (2009). Firefly Femmes Fatales: A case study in the semiotics of deception. Biosemiotics, 3, 33–55. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12304-009-9048-2.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fabbri, P. (2017). L’efficacia semiotica. Domande e risposte. Rome: Mimesis.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fabbrichesi, R., & Leoni, F. (2012). Continuità e variazione. Rome: Mimesis.

    Google Scholar 

  • Festi, G. (2003). Le logiche del sensibile. Un confronto tra la semiotica tensiva e il processo di naturalizzazione del senso. Semiotiche, 1(03), 175–196.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fontanille, J. (2004). Soma et séma. Figures du corps. Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fontanille, J. (2008). Pratiques sémiotiques. Paris: PUF.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, M. (1969). L’archéologie du savoir. Paris: Gallimard.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fusaroli, R., & Tylén, K. (2014). Linguistic coordination: Models, dynamics and effects. New Ideas in Psychology, 32, 115–117. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.newideapsych.2013.03.002.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gallagher, S. (2017). Enactivist interventions. Rethinking the mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Gallagher, S. (2020). Action and interaction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Gallagher, S., & Zahavi, D. (2008). The phenomenological mind. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ganis, G. (2015). Deception detection using neuroimaging. In P. A. Granhag, A. Vrij, & B. Verschuere (Eds.), Detecting deception: Current challenges and cognitive approaches (pp. 105–121). Chicago, IL: Wiley.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gensini, S. (2018). Appunti su semiotica ed etologia: un dialogo (parzialmente) interrotto. Reti, Saperi, Linguaggi, 7, 97–110.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gramigna, R. (2020). Imagining others. Deception, prediction, and disguised intentions in strategic interactions. Versus—Quaderni di Studi Semiotici, 130(2020), 121–138.

    Google Scholar 

  • Greimas, A. J. (1970). Du sens. Paris: Seuil.

    Google Scholar 

  • Greimas, A. J. (1983). Du Sens II—Essais sémiotiques. Paris: Edition du Seuil.

    Google Scholar 

  • Higuera, C. J. R., & Kull, K. (2017). The Biosemiotic glossary project: The semiotic threshold. Biosemiotics, 10(1), 109–126.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hjelmslev, L. T. (1942). Langue et parole. Cahiers F. de Saussure, 2, 29–44.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hjelmslev, L. T. (1943). Prolegomena to a theory of language. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hjelmslev, L. T. (1959). Essais linguistiques, Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Copenhague vol. XII, 1959 (tr. it. Saggi di linguistica generale, Pratiche, Parma, 1981).

    Google Scholar 

  • Hutto, D. D., & Myin, E. (2013). Radicalizing Enactivism. Basic Minds Without Content. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hutto, D. D., & Myin, E. (2017). Evolving enactivism. Basic minds meet content. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Hutto, D. D., & Robertson, I. (2019). Clarifying the character of habits: Understanding what and how they explain. In F. Caruna & I. Testa (Eds.), Habit: Pragmatist approaches from cognitive neurosciences to social sciences. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ito, A., Abe, N., Fujii, T., Hayashi, A., Ueno, A., Shunji, M., Takahashi, S., & Mori, E. (2012). The contribution of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex to the preparation for deception and truth-telling. Brain Research, 1464, 43–52.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lawrence, D. H. (1991). Scritti sull’arte. Syracuse: Tema Celeste.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lo Piparo, F. (2003). Aristotele e il linguaggio. Roma-Bari: Laterza.

    Google Scholar 

  • Malafouris, L. (2013). How things shape the mind. A theory of material engagement. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Malafouris, L. (2019). Understanding the effects of materiality on mental health. BJPsych Bulletin, 43(5), 195–200.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Marrone, G. (2001). Corpi sociali. Processi comunicativi e semiotica del testo. Turin: Einaudi.

    Google Scholar 

  • Marrone, G. (2005). La cura Ludovico. Turin: Einaudi.

    Google Scholar 

  • Marrone, G. (2016). Semiotica del gusto. Linguaggi della cucina, del cibo, della tavola. Rome: Mimesis.

    Google Scholar 

  • Maturana, H., & Varela, F. (1980). Autopoiesis and cognition. The realization of the living. London: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Moutat, A. (2016). Le dispositif énonciatif à l’épreuve de la remédiation. In T. Migliore (Ed.), Rimediazioni. Immagini interattive (Vol. 2, pp. 233–250).

    Google Scholar 

  • Moutat, A. (2019). Le commentaire œnologique ou comment déguster le vin par les mots. Lexicons, Sensations, Perceptions and Emotions, 13. Retrieved from http://journals.openedition.org/lexis/3026.

  • Ofen, N., Whitfield-Gabrieli, S., Chai, X. J., Schwarzlose, R. F., & Gabrieli, J. D. E. (2017). Neural correlates of deception: lying about past events and personal beliefs. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 12(1), 116–127. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsw151.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Paolucci, C. (2008). Modelli di analisi non testuale di una semiotica interpretativa delle culture. Il caso del Partito Democratico. Versus-Quaderni di Studi Semiotici, 107–108, 73–100.

    Google Scholar 

  • Paolucci, C. (2010). Strutturalismo e interpretazione. Ambizioni per una semiotica minore. Milan: Bompiani.

    Google Scholar 

  • Paolucci, C. (2011). The external mind: Semiotics, pragmatism, extended mind and distributed cognition. Versus—Quaderni di Studi Semiotici, 112–113, 69–96.

    Google Scholar 

  • Paolucci, C. (2017a). Whereof One cannot theorize, thereof one must narrate. In T. Thellefsen & B. Sørensen (Eds.), Umberto Eco in his own words (pp. 165–174). Berlin: De Gruyter.

    Google Scholar 

  • Paolucci, C. (2017b). Eco, Peirce, and the anxiety of influence: The most Kantian of Thinkers. In S. G. Beardsworth & R. E. Auxier (Eds.), The Philosophy of Umberto Eco (pp. 251–278). Chicago: Open Court.

    Google Scholar 

  • Paolucci, C. (2019). Social cognition, mindreading and narratives: A cognitive semiotics perspective on narrative practices from early mindreading to Autism Spectrum Disorders. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 18, 375–400.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Paolucci, C. (2020a). A radical enactivist approach to social cognition. In A. Pennisi & A. Falzone (Eds.), The extended theory of cognitive creativity. Vol. 23: Perspectives in pragmatics, philosophy & psychology (pp. 59–74). Cham: Springer.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Paolucci, C. (2020b). Persona. Soggettività nel linguaggio e semiotica dell’enunciazione. Milano: Bompiani. French translation 2020. Liège: Puliège.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pennisi, A. (2014). L’errore di Platone. Bologna: Il Mulino.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pennisi, A., & Falzone, A. (2010). Il prezzo del linguaggio. Evoluzione ed estinzione nelle scienze cognitive. Bologna: Il Mulino.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pennisi, A., & Falzone, A. (2017). Darwinian biolinguistics. Dordrecht: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ricoeur, P. (1984). Temps et récit II. La configuration dans le récit de fiction. Paris: Editions de Seuil.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rowlands, M. (2010). The New Science of the mind. Harvard: MIT Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Sarti, A., Citti, G., & Piotrowski, D. (2019). Differential heterogenesis and the emergence of the semiotic function. Semiotica, 1–34. In press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sonesson, G. (2012). The foundation of cognitive semiotics in the phenomenology of signs and meanings. Intellectica, 58(2), 207–239.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sonesson, G. (2018). No more faith in fakes: A natural history of counterfeiting. Versus—Quaderni di Studi Semiotici, 127(2), 259–274.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sonesson, G. (2019). On mimicry, signs and other meaning-making acts. Further studies in iconicity. Biosemiotics, 12, 99–114. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12304-018-9340-0.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stjernfelt, F. (2007). Diagrammatology. An investigation on the borderlines of phenomenology, ontology, and semiotics. Dordrecht: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thompson, E. (2007). Mind in Life. Biology, Phenomenology and the Sciences of Mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Van Bockstaele, B., Verschuere, B., Moens, T., Suchotzki, K., Debey, E., & Spruyt, A. (2012). Learning to lie: Effects of practice on the cognitive cost of lying. Frontiers in Psychology, 3, 526. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00526.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Varela, F. J., & Weber, A. (2002). Life after Kant: Natural purposes and the autopoietic foundations of biological individuality. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 1, 97–125.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Varela, F. J., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1991). The embodied mind. Cognitive science and human experience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Vrij, A., Fisher, R., Mann, S., & Leal, S. (2006). Detecting deception by manipulating cognitive load. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10(4), 141–142. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2006.02.003.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vrij, A., Granhag, P. A., Mann, S., & Leal, S. (2011). Outsmarting the liars: toward a cognitive lie detection approach. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20(1), 28–32. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721410391245.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Walczyk, J. J., Harris, L. L., Duck, T. K., & Mulay, D. (2014). A social-cognitive framework for understanding serious lies: Activation-decision-construction-action theory. New Ideas in Psychology, 34, 22–36. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.newideapsych.2014.03.001.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zalamea, F. (2012). Peirce’s logic of continuinity. Boston, MA: Docent Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zlatev, J. (2011). What is cognitive semiotics?. Semiotix: a global information bulletin, XN—6. Retrieved from https://semioticon.com/semiotix/2011/10/what-is-cognitive-semiotics/.

  • Zlatev, J. (2015). Cognitive semiotics. In P. Trifonas Peter (Ed.), International handbook of semiotics (pp. 1043–1067). Dordrecht: Springer.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy and Communication Studies, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

    Claudio Paolucci

Authors
  1. Claudio Paolucci
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Paolucci, C. (2021). Cognitive Semiotics. Radical Enactivism, Pragmatism and Material Engagement. In: Cognitive Semiotics. Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, vol 24. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42986-7_1

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation