Profesor Lorenzo Magnani
W dniu 18 grudnia 2008 r. we Wrocławiu gościł Pan Profesor dr Lorenzo Magnani z Universita di Pavia, z wykładem „Semiotic brains and artificial minds; how brains make up material cognitive systems”. Organizatorem wykładu była Wyższa Szkoła Filologiczna wspólnie z Komisją Nauk Filologicznych Oddziału Polskiej Akademii Nauk we Wrocławiu.
Abstrakt wykładu
Semiotic Brains and Artificial Minds
How Brains Make Up Material Cognitive Systems
Prof. dr Lorenzo Magnani
Department of Philosophy and Computational Philosophy Laboratory,University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy and Department of Philosophy, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou (Canton), P.R. China lmagnani@unipv.it
Abstract: 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. 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. In this perspective we can see that at the root of thinking abilities there is a process of externalization/disembodiment of mind that presents a new cognitive perspective on the role of external models and representations. To illustrate this process I will take advantage of Turing’s comparison between unorganized brains and logical and practical machines and of the analysis of some aspects of the cognitive interplay
between internal and external representations. 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 reification in the external environment and a subsequent reprojection and reinterpretation through new configurations of neural networks and chemical processes.
