Semióticas cognitivas y posthumanismo

Este artículo explora los avances en semiótica y ciencias cognitivas. En particular, se centra en los enfoques recientes denominados "cognición extendida" y "Teorías de aco plamiento material" -"Material Engagement Theory"- para situarlos en relación al poshu manismo. El objetivo final es abordar la cuestión fundamental de la agencia material no humana en el Antropoceno desde una perspectiva semiótica.This paper explores cognitive semiotics in relation to advances in other cognitive sciences. In particular, it focuses on the recent approaches labelled "extended cognition" and "Material Engagement Theory" in order to situate them in relation to posthumanism. The final aim is tackle the fundamental question of material non-human agency in the Anthropocene from a semiotic perspective

From chaîne opératoire to material engagement theory as perspectives for mingu studies

研究ノー

Beyond writing: The development of literacy in the Ancient Near East

Previous discussions of the origins of writing in the Ancient Near East have not incorporated the neuroscience of literacy, which suggests that when southern Mesopotamians wrote marks on clay in the late-fourth millennium, they inadvertently reorganized their neural activity, a factor in manipulating the writing system to reflect language, yielding literacy through a combination of neurofunctional change and increased script fidelity to language. Such a development appears to take place only with a sufficient demand for writing and reading, such as that posed by a state-level bureaucracy; the use of a material with suitable characteristics; and the production of marks that are conventionalized, handwritten, simple, and non-numerical. From the perspective of Material Engagement Theory, writing and reading represent the interactivity of bodies, materiality, and brains: movements of hands, arms, and eyes; clay and the implements used to mark it and form characters; and vision, motor planning, object recognition, and language. Literacy is a cognitive change that emerges from and depends upon the nexus of interactivity of the components

Updating the “abstract–concrete” distinction in Ancient Near Eastern numbers

The characterization of early token-based accounting using a concrete concept of number, later numerical notations an abstract one, has become well entrenched in the literature. After reviewing its history and assumptions, this article challenges the abstract–concrete distinction, presenting an alternative view of change in Ancient Near Eastern number concepts, wherein numbers are abstract from their inception and materially bound when most elaborated. The alternative draws on the chronological sequence of material counting technologies used in the Ancient Near East—fingers, tallies, tokens, and numerical notations—as reconstructed through archaeological and textual evidence and as interpreted through Material Engagement Theory, an extended-mind framework in which materiality plays an active role (Malafouris 2013)

Material Engagement Theory and Extensive Enactivism Within the 4E Cognitive Debate: A Phenomenological Approach to Material Agency and Application to Current Technology

4E Cognition is a fairly new field of study within cognitive science, cognitive psychology, and cognitive philosophy. The various approaches to cognition namely embodied, embedded, extended and enacted cognition; provide multi-faceted approaches to cognition. A common claim of these approaches is that cognition may have various contributing factors such as the role of the brain, body and its environments. Thus challenges the traditional idea that cognition exists purely mentally within the confines of the brain and skull. However, even within the 4E Cognition family, some nuanced arguments are hotly debated, particularly among the proponents of Embedded Theories (EmT) and Extended Theories (ExT). The main area of dispute centres on the idea of what process(es) can be classified as ‘cognitive’. Both enterprises try to answer the pertinent question regarding what makes a cognitive state the process of a particularly cognitive kind. In other words, both theories try to answer what and where the mark of the cognitive is. EmT argues that a particular context, situation, or an environment where the body is located shapes one’s cognition. The environment, context, or situation constitutes the mark of the cognitive. However, although the body is deeply embedded with the surrounding environment, the processes that can be considered ‘cognitive’ remain within the domain of the neural system. ExT on the other hand, through the coupling principle, argues that if external resources have the same functionality with internal processes located inside the brain, then these external processes can be considered ‘cognitive’ processes. For ExT, cognition extends to external resources if and only if, extracranial resources have the same functionality as internal or neural processes inside the brain and the skull. Although, ExT and EmT vary to some degree on what constitutes the mark of cognition, they agree on where cognition predominantly resides – both agree that it is very much a “heady” affair! Still, both ExT and EmT are susceptible to the assumption that the only processes that can be classified as ‘cognitive’ processes are the internal or neural processes. However, this does not tell us how ‘cognition’ comes to be, nor does it answer the question of what makes a cognitive state the process of a particularly cognitive kind. My main aim in this thesis is to provide a possible theory, an alternative theory that can tease out the mark of the cognitive we need to settle the dispute between EmT and ExT. The first commitment we require from this theory is that it needs to renounce any knowledge claim assumption that ‘cognition’ has an a priori location inside the head. Therefore, this thesis will propose a theory that will not assume ‘cognition’ as mainly a “heady” affair, it will instead, start from the assumption that 5 | P a g e ‘cognition’ has no a priori location. Drawing from Lambros Malafouris’ framework of Material Engagement Theory (MET) seen through the lens of Extensive Enactivism (EE), I will argue that this is the theory required to tease out the mark of cognition. In addition, by giving special attention to the phenomenological perception of material things, which is that things matter and should be taken seriously since the default mode of our place in the world is ours always, and already involved in habitual engagement with things or technologies in the world. In that sense, our cognitive engagement with external things do not just scaffold or extend cognition, but rather, it is radically embodied and dynamically conflated – incorporating our brains, bodies, things, technologies, and environments. These conglomeration of contributing factors to our cognitive processes, I believe, form the mark of cognition

COVID, clay, and the digital: the role of digital media in pottery skill development during the COVID-19 pandemic in Britain

The COVID-19 lockdowns in Britain during 2020 and 2021 deprived people of access to studios and workshops in which we typically understand the learning and practising of skilled crafts to occur through working amongst others with materials. Recent literature on skill and craft has argued that it develops through social, participatory, and embodied processes in shared situated contexts. I argue that attention to the role of digital media within these ecologies is key to understanding how people continued to learn new craft skills during the pandemic. Drawing on Material Engagement Theory and the concept of digital materiality from digital sensory anthropology, I develop a case study around people practising pottery in Britain during the pandemic. I demonstrate how engagements with digital media are central to skill development, highlighting how the ‘digital’ and ‘terrestrial’ cannot be disentangled, and thus emphasising the importance of attending to the total hybrid learning ecology

The material origin of numbers: Insights from the archaeology of the Ancient Near East

What are numbers, and where do they come from? A novel answer to these timeless questions is proposed by cognitive archaeologist Karenleigh A. Overmann, based on her groundbreaking study of material devices used for counting in the Ancient Near East—fingers, tallies, tokens, and numerical notations—as interpreted through the latest neuropsychological insights into human numeracy and literacy. The result, a unique synthesis of interdisciplinary data, outlines how number concepts would have been realized in a pristine original condition to develop into one of the ancient world’s greatest mathematical traditions, a foundation for mathematical thinking today. In this view, numbers are abstract from their inception and materially bound at their most elaborated. The research updates historical work on Neolithic tokens and interpretations of Mesopotamian numbers, challenging several longstanding assumptions about numbers in the process. The insights generated are also applied to the role of materiality in human cognition more generally, including how concepts become distributed across and independent of the material forms used for their representation and manipulation; how societies comprised of average individuals use material structures to create elaborated systems of numeracy and literacy; and the differences between thinking through and thinking about materiality

Computational and conceptual blends: Material considerations and agency in a multi-material design workflow

The assimilation of functionally graded (or multi-) materials into architecture is deemed to enable the rethinking of current architectural design practice and bring back material considerations at the heart of the early design process. In response, the paper outlines a functionally graded material (FGM) design workflow that departs from standard early-stage CAD, which is typically performed via computer elements devoid of materiality. It then analyses this workflow from a theoretical perspective, namely through Edwin Hutchins' materially anchored conceptual blending, Lambros Malafouris' Material Engagement Theory (MET) and John Searle's concepts of intentionality. The aim is to demonstrate that due to the superimposition of material considerations that precede and succeed the CAD operation, working with material-less entities during early-stage FGM design is not logically sustainable. Additionally, multi-materiality allows for the questioning of authorship in the design process and leads to a repositioning of agency from the subject to the locus of engagement with digital materials and their affordances

Materiality and human cognition

In this paper, we examine the role of materiality in human cognition. We address issues such as the ways in which brain functions may change in response to interactions with material forms, the attributes of material forms that may cause change in brain functions, and the spans of time required for brain functions to reorganize when interacting with material forms. We then contrast thinking through materiality with thinking about it. We discuss these in terms of their evolutionary significance and history as attested by stone tools and writing, material forms whose interaction endowed our lineage with conceptual thought and meta-awareness of conceptual domains

Placing Matter: A Summary of a Convenient Vocabulary, for the experiencing of Metaplasticity, Spatial Assemblages and Typological Boundary Conditions

This paper addresses the topic of ‘Placing matter’ into spatial assemblage. It discusses the role of experiences and materials within the intersection of experience design and material agency to address how we may ‘energise’ the Material Surface, as an emotive experience built upon universal, spatial and gridded structures from spatial thinking. With the aim of positioning the notion of spatial assemblage as a primary concern of material engagement theory (MET), we may view experience as a change in perspective to the material role of architecture to emotions. This may enable us to ‘attach matter’ to emotive experiences and the design strategy of architectural projects. Taken from recent discourse in material engagement theory the paper takes the position of reframing ‘Thinging’ from being a mere material concern, to a notion as a ‘Framing’ of materials to reveal certain ‘typological boundary effects’ in matter. Such effects establish the assemblage process to meta-plasticity with 3 states of assembly being indicated: minimal, topical, and comprehensive, which can then be utilized to in-fluence the meta-plasticity from one event to another. We illustrate how this may avert spatial illusions in cognitive and abstract thought