Mind as an External Sign: A Semiotic Externalist Philosophy of Cognitive Science

Pedro Atã is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Linguistics and Language Practice, Free State University, South Africa. Atã earned a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Linnaeus University, Sweden. His work focuses on modelling surprise, creativity and semiotic complexity in distributed cognitive processes, in fields such as Philosophy of Cognitive Science, Semiotics, Intermediality Studies, and Process Philosophy. He has published on topics such as intersemiotic translation between music and poetry, oral poetry improvisation, cognitive artifacts in dance, artwork authorship, situated problem solving, and cognitive niche construction.João Queiroz is a professor at the Institute of Arts and Design, Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Brazil. Queiroz earned a Ph.D. in Communication and Semiotics from the Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP), received a post-doctoral fellowship in Intelligent Systems and Artificial Life at the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (FEEC-DCA), State University of Campinas (UNICAMP) and in Philosophy of Biology at the Institute of Biology, Federal University of Bahia (UFBA). He has been teaching courses on Cognitive Semiotics, Peirce’s Philosophy, Intermediality Studies, and supervised Ph.D. and Master students in the fields of Semiotics, Art & Technology and Cognitive Semiotics. He has several publications in international journals, books, and conferences. He is co-editor of the Commens Digital Companion to Charles S. Peirce. Queiroz is a member of the International Association for Cognitive Semiotics (IACS), member (expert panel) of the Linnaeus University Centre for Intermedial and Multimodal Studies, Vaxjo (Sweden), member of Group for Research in Artificial Cognition (UEFS, Brazil), and associate researcher of the Linguistics and Language Practice Department, University of the Free State (South Africa). Queiroz was visiting scholar at several international universities, and institutions, including Bloomington Indiana University (EUA), Indiana University of Indianapolis (EUA), Universidad del Pais Vasco (Spain), Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain), Universidad de Málaga (Spain), Linnaeus University (Sweden), Aarhus University (Denmark), Université de Perpignan (France), Universidad de la Republica (Uruguay), Free State University (South Africa), Leuven University (Belgium), Universidade de Coimbra (Portugal), University of Tartu (Estonia).

• 1 Semiotic turn in distributed cognition.- 2 Active semiotic externalism.- 3 Semiosis as an emergent process.- 4 The emergence of sign action: the case of Classical ballet.- 5 Artifacts in problem solving: iconicity and abductive inference.- 6 The object of iconic artifacts: why an underground system is a semiotic problem.- 7 Poetry improvisation as problem-solving in distributed cognitive systems.- 8 Semiosis as problem-solving, problem-solving as semiosis.- 9 Meaning is niche construction: semiotic artifacts and cognitive externalism.- 10 Artwork authorship as a legisign-in-action.- 11 Towards a typology of artistic experimentation -- metasemiotic experiment as niche construction 'pump'.- 12 Conclusion.- References.