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Discovering and Communicating through Multimodal Abduction

The Role of External Semiotic Anchors and Hybrid Representations

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Communications and Discoveries from Multidisciplinary Data

Part of the book series: Studies in Computational Intelligence ((SCI,volume 123))

Summary

Our brains make up a series of signs and are engaged in making or manifesting or reacting to a series of signs: through this semiotic activity they are at the same time engaged in “being minds” and so in thinking intelligently, in communicating and in extracting chances from the einvironment. An important effect of this semiotic activity of brains is a continuous process of “externalization of the mind” that exhibits a new cognitive perspective on the mechanisms underling the semiotic emergence of abductive processes of meaning formation. To illustrate this process I will take advantage of the analysis of some aspects of the cognitive interplay between internal and external representations and communications. I consider this interplay critical in analyzing the relation between meaningful semiotic internal resources and devices and their dynamical interactions with the externalized semiotic materiality suitably stocked in the environment. Hence, minds are material, “extended” and artificial in themselves. A considerable part of human abductive thinking is occurring through an activity consisting in a kind of reiflcation in the external environment (that originates what I call semiotic anchors) and a subsequent re–projection and reinterpretation through new configurations of neural networks and chemical processes. I also illustrate how this activity takes advantage of hybrid representations and how it can nicely account for various processes of creative and selective abduction, central to communications processes and chance/risk extraction, bringing up the question of how multimodal aspects involving a full range of sensory modalities are important in hypothetical multidisciplinary reasoning.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, and Computational Philosophy Laboratory, University of Pavia, 27100, Pavia, Italy

    Lorenzo Magnani

  2. Department of Philosophy, Sun Yat-sen University, 510275, Guangzhou (Canton), P.R. China

    Lorenzo Magnani

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  1. Lorenzo Magnani
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-8656, Japan

    Shuichi Iwata

  2. Department of Systems Innovation School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-8656, Japan

    Yukio Ohsawa

  3. Department of Medical Informatics School of Medicine, Shimane University, Enya-cho Izumo City Shimane, 693-8501, Japan

    Shusaku Tsumoto

  4. Department of Information Engineering, Maebashi Institute of Technology, 460-1, Kamisadori-Cho, Maebashi-City, 371-0816, Japan

    Ning Zhong (Director) (Director)

  5. WICI/BJUT, China

    Ning Zhong (Director) (Director)

  6. Research Center on Data Technology and Knowledge Economy, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100080, PR China

    Yong Shi (Director) (Director)

  7. College of Information Science and Technology, University of Nebraska, Omaha, NE, 68182, USA

    Yong Shi (Director) (Director)

  8. Department of Philosophy, University of Pavia, Piazza Botta 6, 27100, Pavia, Italy

    Lorenzo Magnani

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Magnani, L. (2008). Discovering and Communicating through Multimodal Abduction. In: Iwata, S., Ohsawa, Y., Tsumoto, S., Zhong, N., Shi, Y., Magnani, L. (eds) Communications and Discoveries from Multidisciplinary Data. Studies in Computational Intelligence, vol 123. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-78733-4_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-78733-4_2

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-78732-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-78733-4

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