Claudio Paolucci, “Cognitive Semiotics. Integrating Signs, Minds, Meaning and Cognition” (Springer, 2021)

Abstract

Claudio Paolucci’s Cognitive Semiotics is an ambitious and original contribution to contemporary semiotics, particularly within the realm of cognitive semiotics, where he puts forth a bold thesis: cognitive semiotics should not be seen as a subfield or applied domain of semiotic research, but rather as the core voca­tion of semiotics itself. Adequately understood, semiotics is an inquiry into how human beings come to know, act within, and transform their world through sign systems. The book builds on the legacy of Umberto Eco and Peircean pragma­tism while placing semiotics into direct conversa­tion with three major currents in contemporary cognitive theory: Radical Enactivism, Pragma­tism, and Material Engagement Theory (MET). The result is a theoretical synthesis that is both conceptually robust and surprisingly unified, especially given the diversity of traditions it brings together.

The book consists of five chapters, beginning with a substantial Preface in which Paolucci places his work within Eco’s semiotic tradition. The Preface is particularly noteworthy, articulating Eco’s core question—how we come to understand the world—as a fundamental issue for any semiotics that seeks not simply to explain how signs mirror our understanding but to address how signs actively create and shape it. In this context, Paolucci’s formulation - “the object of cognitive semiotics is the way in which semiotic systems represent the background of our perception of the world and define the conditions under which cognition and knowledge are possible” (p.VI, Preface) serves as a pivotal entry point for the argument that semiotics should be considered not as a passive reflection of reality but as an active constructor of cognitive possibilities. This perspective enables a nuanced dialogue with contemporary cognitive theories, emphasizing how semiotic scaffolding not only facilitates cultural distinctions but also enhances our capacity to interact with and transform the world we live in. In fact, this is a recurring theme throughout the book and involves rejecting the long-standing dichotomy between nature and culture that has structured semiotic investigation. This rejection of the classical threshold between nature and culture represents one of Paolucci’s most significant theoretical commitments and marks a major shift from the semiotic tradition. He associates semiotics not only with cultural systems (as in Eco’s earlier “logic of culture”) but with any system capable of enabling cognition. This perspective allows for Paolucci to unify continental semiotics—particularly the structuralist and Gremasian traditions—with the pragmatism of Charles S. Peirce, biosemiotics, and contemporary theories of embodied and distributed cognition.