Cognitive Semiotics Research Articles

Perception, hallucination, virtual reality. From controlled hallucination to Resident Evil 7: Biohazard

In this paper, I will work on the relationship between perception and imagination in Virtual Reality, claiming that “hallucination” is the ordinary motor also for online perception and not only a deviant form of it. First, I will deal with the problem of perception from the point of view of cognitive semiotics and I will try to underline the crucial role of imagination, claiming that perception is a form of “controlled hallucination”. Later, I will focus on the relationship between perception, hallucination, and memory in Virtual Reality. On the one hand, I will claim that Virtual Reality expresses the transition from actual perception to imagination, memory or dream through another actual perception. On the other hand, I will claim that it can express it without any problems through the old techniques coming from cinema and other audiovisual languages, since they partially share the very same formal apparatus of enunciation. I will demonstrate all of this by analyzing Resident Evil 7: Biohazard.

A Cognitive-Semiotic Approach to Agency: Assessing Ideas from Cognitive Science and Neuroscience

Following the levels of intentionality and semiosis distinguished by the Semiotic Hierarchy (a layered model of semiosis/intentionality), and the distinction between original agency (without the use of artefacts) and enhanced agency (the prosthetic incorporation of artefacts), we propose a model of an agency hierarchy, consisting of six layers. Consistent with the phenomenological orientation of cognitive semiotics, a central claim is that agency and subjectivity are complementary aspects of intentionality. Hence, there is no agency without at least the minimal sense/feeling of agency. This perspective rules out all artefacts as genuine agents, as well as simple organisms, since it is highly unlikely that e.g. bacteria have any first-person perspective. Using this model, we review and assess recent proposals on the nature of agency from cognitive science, and neuroscience, and draw conclusions on how to incorporate aspects of them within a synthetic cognitive-semiotic framework.

Why sentiments can be logical

[The dialogue took place online on the channel @TIDDigital youtube.com/watch?v=sPijMys2qYg, on September 25, 2020].
 Today we are having our fourth and last encounter with the philosopher and Peirce scholar Vincent Colapietro in a series of dialogues on cognitive semiotics. The first was our “Dialogue on cognitive semiotics: Minds and machines” (TECCOGS 21).The second was on the question “What is the semiotic self?” (TECCOGS 22) and the third on “How can we change habits?” (TECCOGS 23). This time, we want to discuss whether or why sentiments may be logical. “Logical Emotions” sounds like a contradiction in terms, a contradictio in adjecto. When we address this topic, we continue our first dialogue of this series, which was on cognition in general. For many scholars, emotion and rationality are separate. We are so used to thinking that logic admits no feeling, but Charles Sanders Peirce had some not so well-known ideas on how both are intimately connected. Peirce had a cognitive theory of emotion, which means that feeling and cognition are not be separated a priori. Of course, we know that the elaboration of a logical argument can bring about a feeling of satisfaction when we finally succeed in coming to a conclusion or a feeling of frustration in case we fail, but the details are still enigmatic. This is why we are awaiting, with feelings of curiosity, what professor Colapietro has to say about the logic of sentiments.

Ontology of functional synergetics in virtual cognitive-semiotic design of information processes and systems

Objectives . In view of the currently expanding practice of applying methods for configuring ontologies of designing information processes and systems, information technology (IT) specialists need to disclose the definition of such a new concept as functional synergetics. This concept is actualized by the course of development of virtual information technologies, forming the system foundation for methods of design ontologies and indicating attributes for the correct formation of design ontologies of relevant dynamic information processes and systems. In the present work, this is done by means of analytical review. Methods . The analytical review is based on the authors’ vision of deepening the concept of synergetics as applied to a variety of modern information processes and systems. This context concessionally conjugates the combined use and consideration of such approaches as the method of ontologies (the major component of the resulting concession of methods), methods of cognitive semiotics, autopoiesis, and other manifestations of synergetics with related methods and techniques of emergent evaluation of the role and effectiveness of any occurring systemic changes. It is this combined dynamics of information processes and systems that allows the authors to put forward a developing treatment of the methods of synergetics as functional. Results . The concept of functional synergetics was clarified and deepened based on the method of ontologies. In the theory of information processes and systems, it is manifested in updating ontologies accompanying scientific and engineering projects that use synergetics as an initial methodological basis. It turns out that the functional features of synergetics in the context of assessments and functional ordering of modern IT devices give it new opportunities in highlighting the significant indicators of system changes: properties, attributes, and manifestations of functionalsynergistic nature. It is these three concepts, revealed by synergetics as a functional eyepiece, that distinguish functional synergetics from the generally accepted definition of synergetics as such. Matching form to content, autopoiesis, development, and transformations occurring with informational processes and systems with their emergent consequences are the essence and feature of functional synergetics. Tracing what is happening in dynamics, in the inseparability of assessments and regulations of the set of properties, attributes, and manifestations of the analyzed processes to an even greater extent clarifies the essence and role of the concept introduced by the authors in the general classical theory of information processes and systems. In the related analysis, virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, expanded reality, composite reality, coupled reality, geoinformation systems, multidimensional computer graphics, fractal graphics, holographic graphics, computer teletype games, X-reality, etc., which have essential dynamic characteristics and properties, are included here as objects of research and design. Conclusions . Improvement of the theory and practice of creating and using information processes and systems from the position of recognizingthe accelerating speed and dynamics of how their properties and indicators are modified leads the synergistic methodology of assessments and control mechanisms to the emergence of a clarifying concept of functional synergy. This is a complex and dynamic concept, which includes its interpretation of the positions of classical synergetics and related paradigms of cognitive semiotics, etc. The method of ontologies, which is gaining more and more popularity, is the main means and tool of such unification. When combined with cognitive semiotics, functional synergetics becomes a powerful science-intensive tool for further development of the theory and practice of modern multimedia intensified information systems and their information fields described by both imperative and convivial paradigms.

Temporal agency of social movements

AbstractThe article examines, through the lens of cognitive semiotics, temporal agency and experiences that define the protestors’ identity within the space of the Floyd protests as visualized in AP sequenced news photos. The analysis points to the role of resemiotized chronotopic motifs that bring together the past, present and future times of racial discrimination. In this regard, the paper synthesizes the Bakhtinian chronotope with Multimodal Conceptual Metaphor. Synthesizing Multimodal Metaphors with the chronotope is meant to conceptualize the temporality of the social movement, assigning it agentive identity. That is, chronotopic temporality is deployed in this article as a metaphorical placeholder for movements agency and individuality. Two chronotopes interact within the visualized space of the protests: one is centred in the memories of past apartheid and a desired future, the other conceptualizes a resistant and angry present.

Hyperembodiment

AbstractThe article introduces hyperembodiment as a general feature of artefacts for perception and representation and as a research agenda for cognitive semiotics and cognitive science at large. At the heart of the article, I offer analyses of two different selected examples: Hyperembodiment in a Facetime conversation and in a Snapchat message. These digital productions of appearances of social interactants are analysed with particular attention to their intercorporeal qualities and it is argued that social perception is facilitated which takes the users of visual, interpersonal communication devices beyond the corporeal limits of ordinary ways of being present for each other. Broadening the scope, I then discuss how a general focus on hyperembodiment opens new, productive avenues of inquiry. First, I relate hyperembodiment to the heterogenous field of social presence research and suggest how it may contribute to it. Thereafter I discuss hyperembodiment as a topic of cognitive semiotics.

Review of Claudio Paolucci, Cognitive Semiotics. Integrating Signs, Minds, Me

Review of Claudio Paolucci, Cognitive Semiotics. Integrating Signs, Minds, Me

Habit-change, heightened consciousness, and agential “crises”: impersonal mechanisms, personal agents, and their complex entanglement

Abstract The author begins by highlighting Peirce’s claim that every kind of consciousness is more or less like a cognition. He concludes by making a plea for a cognitive semiotics in which both mechanistic explanations and accounts framed in terms of personal agents are necessary for an adequate account of human cognition. The topics of habit-taking and the form of consciousness associated with this process are what link Peirce’s cognitivist approach to consciousness and an inclusive, non-reductionist vision of cognitive semiotics. Impersonal mechanisms play an integral role in even the most sophisticated forms of human cognition. But the self-critical endeavors of personal agents, especially ones susceptible to “crises” such as doubt, play no less an important role.

What is the semiotic self?

In its last issue, TECCOGS presented a dialogue on issues of Cognitive Semiotics, which Professor Vincent Colapietro, University of Rhode Island (Kingston, RI, USA), contributed to this journal in dialogue with Winfried Nöth. Under the title “Cognitive Semiotics – Minds, and Machines”, he outlined the foundations of Charles Sanders Peirce’s philosophy of mind and its relevance to the study of human and artificial intelligence. TECCOGSs now brings a new dialogue with Colapietro as the first of a series of three “Reflections”, first presented in dialogue with Winfried Nöth on tidd’s YouTube channel under Lucia Santaella’s curatorship. “What is the semiotic self?”, “How can we change habits”, and “Why sentiments can be logical” are the titles of the three Reflections. In this series, Colapietro adds new chapters to extend his introduction to cognitive semiotics. Among the topics of these Reflections are the self as a cognitive agent, the philosophy of intelligence, and the role of emotion in cognition and reasoning.

KONSTRUKSI FILSAFAT AKUNTANSI, DAN AUDITING STUDI ETNOGRAFI, DAN HERMENEUTIKA PADA CANDI PRAMBANAN JOGJAKARTA

The research resulted in the Reconstruction of Accounting Philosophy, and Auditing, Dialectical Approach, especially based on the Logic, Hermeneutic, Semiotic, and Rhetorical approaches. The originality of this research is the innovative philosophy of science in Indonesia. This research is expected to be the basis for the development of thinking through research on Ethnographic and Hermeneutic Studies at Prambanan Temple, Jogjakarta. Transubstantial Hermeneutics and semotics in Trimurti: Sang Hyang Wenang (Brahma), Sang Hyang Wening (Wisnu), Sang Hyang Guriang Tunggal (Siwa). In the third hermeneutic meaning (Trimurti) or Symbol, the ontological meaning is shifted or interpreted hermeneutically to become "The Prambanan Text Book" resulting in three modes of "Being" in humans, namely being in himself, being for himself, and being for others. The Prambanan Textbook or “The Prambanan Textbook” is a method of Hegel's dialectical system consisting of three stages. The first is that the thesis is represented by Sang Hyang Wenang (Brahma), which is to construct a certain doctrine of statements. The second is the antithesis (Sang Hyang Guriang Tunggal (Siwa), which is an argumentative statement that rejects the thesis. The third is synthesis (Sang Hyang Wening (Wisnu), which is an attempt to reconcile the tension between the thesis and the antithesis. Then the text "The Prambanan Text Book" is represented by Sang Hyang Guriang Tunggal (Siwa) is to build a framework of "consciousness (thinking), and material dialectics" using themes in the approaches of Paradox (Antithesis), Anomaly, Antinomy, Alienation, Anomie, and Contradiction. The Trans Substance using hermeneutics Schleiermacher 1768-1834), Dilthey (1833-1911), Heidegger (1889-1976), Ricoeur (1913-2005), Derrida (1930-2004), Gadamer (1900-2002), Bultmann (1884- 1976), Habermas, to explain the Prambanan Myth into Episteme, and Idiology. To support the trans substance of the meaning of Prambanan Temple, a method of understanding is used with cognitive semiotics, Pierce (1839-1914), Saussure (1857-1913), Barthes, Ogden, Richards (1949). The results of research on the Philosophy of Accounting and Auditing (Ethnographic Study of Hermeneutic Reinterpretation Prambanan Temple, Jogjakarta) "are as follows: Accounting is a dialectic of writing behavior conveyed to readers, after reviewing: Criticism 1, and Criticism 2,3. In accordance with the rules of writing, and the rules are made to protect users or stakeholders. Accounting Science as a function of producers to consumers in the form of text financial statements that are reliable and relevant. The Prambanan theme in the Auditing context is that the dialectical method has elements of Paradox (Antithesis) and Contradiction, as its virtues. The relationship between accounting and auditing is the building of a shared awareness (thinking) framework after public testing using the Paradox (Antithesis) approach. Contradiction is carried out through critical thinking & critical reading. Relational Dialectics states that connected life is characterized by continuous tensions between contradictory impulses. Paradox (Antithesis), contradiction in the field of economics-accounting is a formation of the capitalist system, with the instrumental ratio of material dialectics as the main driving force for human "alienation". The meaning of work is alienation itself. The episteme and truth of accounting and auditing are only "Perspectivism" as a need to interpret the world and its relations. So through dialectics is a way to harmonize "Perspectivism" trapped in "space and time. And the truth of "Perspectivism" is in time.

A Critical Realist Theory of Money and Finance: Social Cognitive Semiotics as Metatheory

A nagging question for cognitive semiotics is, “What is the relationship between social structure and agency?” Answers to that question are as elusive as they are essential for explaining the social cognitive facets of meaningful interactions. Elusive in the sense that the social sciences have traditionally lacked ontological rigor in the investigation of social structures and their relationship to individuals. Indeed, the very idea of a social structure is a hotly contested ground. Critical in the sense that many participants within the cognitive semiotics programme aim to explain meaning-making as an emergent property of coordinated activities within normative institutions and organizations. This article aims to provide some measure of ontological rigor to social cognitive semiotics from a critical realist perspective as it applies to the semiotics of money and finance.

What is Cognitive Semiotics

What is Cognitive Semiotics

How Do We Hear: Cognitive Semiotics Notes on Music Perception

How Do We Hear: Cognitive Semiotics Notes on Music Perception

A dialogue on cognitive semiotics: minds, and machines

Technologies of Intelligence and Digital Design, abbreviated tidd, the interdisciplinary postgraduate program of the Catholic University of São Paulo, founded by Lucia Santaella, was inaugurated in 2006. In its 15th year of existence, it is offering a number of series under the name “tidd digital”, each dealing with topics from the program’s various study fields. We have had series on artificial intelligence and art, artificial intelligence and law, artificial intelligence and ethics, and on intelligent business technologies. Today, I am pleased to introduce a new series on cognitive semiotics. It is divided into two episodes.Today, in English, the question is “Cognitive semiotics: What is it?” The interdisciplinary ma and PhD program tidd deals with the contemporary challenges posed by the digital technologies. It counts on the cooperation of the following interdisciplines: computation, information technologies, social network, cognition and education, design and esthetic technologies, and artificial intelligence. Today’s focus is on cognition, a research field of an interdiscipline of its own, called cognitive science. Collaborators of this research field are scholars from the disciplines of cognitive psychology and philosophy, linguistics and anthropology, computer science, and artificial intelligence.

Символические характеристики образа холода в традиционной культуре северных сообществ (на примере эвенов и эвенков)

The paper considers the calendar traditions, rites and customs of the northern Tungus – Evens and Evenks. The sources were the author's expeditionary materials collected in the northern regions of Yakutia. The main rituals of calendar holidays are analyzed: cleansing rites, as well as the rite of admission to the birth fire. These traditions are considered in the context of the representation of the image of cold as a multidimensional category, thanks to which the spiritual practices of the northern Tungus were formed. The image of cold and the reception of its experience have become important concepts of the cultural heritage of northern communities, united into a complex multifunctional system, including symbolic practices and life and natural scenarios. In this study, from the standpoint of cognitive semiotics, the author analyzed the value attitudes and the sign-symbolic program of the Tungus’ communicative and behavioral strategies, which acted as an ethnic component of the image of a northern person and a cold world. It is revealed that it is the concepts associated with cold that formulated the basic tenets of the culture of hospitality. Thus, it has been established that the antipode of the cold world is warm hospitality, the main constants of which are the rituals of meeting and honoring the guest.

Interpreting the concept of sedimentation in Husserl’s Origin of Geometry

In the influential text Origin of Geometry, Edmund Husserl argues that even the invariant meaning found in theoretical disciplines like geometry has a historical becoming: through gradual abstraction and stabilization, ending in a completely rational discipline. This is a process which Husserl proposes is due to language and other symbolic systems. In the absence of a system allowing for stable communication of meaning, geometry or any other tradition would constantly have to begin anew. At the same time Husserl also sees the historical process of meaning stabilization in linguistic form as detrimental. It allows for a reception of an established meaning, which simultaneously entails the forgetfulness of the experiential basis and intuitive knowledge that made ideality possible in the first place. Husserl calls this Janus-faced dialectical process between discovery and forgetfulness sedimentation. This paper analyzes this concept in Origin of Geometry and places it in the context of Husserl’s thought more generally. In contrast to Husserl’s negative view of the effects that sedimentation has for an authentic meaning, I discuss four interpretations of sedimentation that provide more constructive perspectives on the concept. These interpretations also differ considerably from one another, a fact which speaks both to the richness and the tensions in Origin of Geometry.
 
 Author Biography
 Johan Blomberg has a PhD in General Linguistics from 2014, for the dissertation Motion in Language and Experience. He has since then worked in the Division for Cognitive Semiotics at Lund University, to which he continues to be affiliated. His main interests include motion semantics and the relations between language and thought, on which he has published extensively in journals like Cognitive Linguistics, Frontiers of Psychology and Language and Communication.

Coloring Feelings: Concept Books Making and Remaking Racialized Color Meanings

Working with cognitive literary theory, affect theory, semiotics, and recent picturebook scholarship, this essay looks at the ways the concept book (as a subtype of the picturebook format) connects color to emotion. In doing so, it suggests that one of Western culture’s most commonly accepted ideas of color and color meaning may contribute to ongoing social inequities and injustices. The essay identifies a set of techniques the concept book uses to attach emotion meaning to color, highlighting that such connections are not merely embodied within concept books, but they are also nurtured by them. As the essay also re-introduces “nurture” into cognitive studies literary scholarship, it suggests that, while the innate, cognitive brain structure of schema and script might be immutable, the content of those structures is flexible and therein offers possibility for change. This possibility is in fact itself embodied in a small but growing body of concept books that seem to resist and push back against conventional, emotionalized color meaning, leaving meaning potentials open and promoting cognitive flexibility by engaging empathy.

Review of the Relationship Between Space, Time and Number in the West

Recently in the west, the relationship between space, time, and number have become a hot topic in cognitive science, which rouse a lot interests. In this paper, we mainly review the relationship between them, including time and space studies, time and number studies, number and space studies, and the relationship between space, time, and number in the past researches in the west. Finally, taking the west literature review as reference, I propose my view of the relationship between them in the YiChing. “Space, time and number study” is a hot issue in recent growing literature. For the current cognitive linguistics research trend, there are two new turns. One is about the quantitative turn in methodology, the other one is about the social turn in theory. It is no exception for time and space study, about my topic I will focus on interdisciplinary approaches (Cognitive semiotics, Cultural semiotics and Cognitive cultural linguistics, historical linguistics, cognitive social linguistics etc) to probe into temporal, spatial and numeral concept and representation in ancient China.

Pantomime as the original human-specific communicative system

AbstractWe propose reframing one of the key questions in the field of language evolution as what was the original human-specific communicative system? With the help of cognitive semiotics, first we clarify the difference between signals, which characterize animal communication, and signs, which do not replace but complement signals in human communication. We claim that the evolution of bodily mimesis allowed for the use of signs, and the social-cognitive skills needed to support them to emerge in hominin evolution. Neither signs nor signals operate single-handedly, but as part of semiotic systems. Communicative systems can be either monosemiotic or polysemiotic—the former consisting of a single semiotic system and the latter, of several. Our proposal is that pantomime, as the original human-specific communicative system, should be characterized as polysemiotic: dominated by gesture but also including vocalization, facial expression, and possibly the rudiments of depiction. Given that pantomimic gestures must have been maximally similar to bodily actions, we characterize them as typically (1) dominated by iconicity, (2) of the primary kind, (3) involving the whole body, (4) performed from a first-person perspective, (5) concerning peripersonal space, and (6) using the Enacting mode of representation.

Speakers are creative, within limits — a response to Peter Uhrig

Abstract In his contribution to the present volume, Uhrig (2020. Cognitive Semiotics 13, 1) focusses on an interesting question: When is a novel utterance considered “creative” and when is it seen as “wrong?” As I will show, Uhrig offers many important answers to this question. At the same time, I argue 1) that deliberateness is not (always) important for linguistic creativity; 2) that appropriateness requires a closer look; and 3) that frequency does not (always) play the most important role.