Icon and abduction

situatedness in Peircean cognitive semiotics

Pedro Atã

João Queiroz

pp. 301-313

in: Lorenzo Magnani (ed), Model-based reasoning in science and technology, Berlin, Springer, 2014

Abstract

Differently from the anti-cartesianism defended by some embodied-situated cognitive scientists, which is predominantly anti-representationalist, for C. S. Peirce, mind is semiosis (sign-action) in a dialogical form, and cognition is the development of available semiotic material artifacts in which it is embodied as a power to produce interpretants (sign-effects). It takes the form of development of semiotic artifacts, such as writing tools, instruments of observation, notational systems, languages, and so forth. Our objective in this paper is to explore the connection between a semiotic theory of mind and the conception of situatedness and extended mind through the notions of iconicity and abductive inference, taking advantage of an empirical example of investigation in distributed problem solving (Tower of Hanoi).

Cited authors

Peirce Charles Sanders