Preface

Do brains create material reality in thinking processes or is it the other way around, with things shaping the mind? Where is the location of meaning-making? How do neural networks become established by means of multimodal pattern replications, and how are they involved in conceptualization? How are resonance textures within cellular entities extended in the body and the mind by means of mirroring processes? In which ways do they correlate to consciousness and self-consciousness? Is it possible to explain out-of-awareness unconscious processes? What holds together the relationship between experiential reality, bodily processes like memory, reason, or imagination, and sign-systems and simulation structures like metaphor and metonymy visible in human language?

This book investigates mind-matter relationships from various perspectives because cognition entails very complex networks of biological processes and actions that encompass perception, attention, manipulation of objects, memory mechanisms, and the formation of knowledge by means of direct experience as well as by learning from others, for which forms of communication and comprehension are also necessary. Contextual aspects, such as the tools and technologies used in analytic praxis and the wider evolutionary continuum of biological, technological, and cultural change are involved at all levels. This complexity is reflected in different labels used to refer to cognitive studies since the 1980s; the so-called 4Es: embodied, embedded, enactive, and extended.

Many disciplines are involved in the study of the complex relations between mind and matter. To name but a few, we can mention neuroscience, anthropology, psychology, sociology, philosophy, semiotics, linguistics, and more recently, computational intelligence, information processing, and neural networks used in machine learning, all of which cross the boundaries between STEM and STEAM. In particular, this volume highlights the challenges and opportunities offered by cognitive semiotics in relation to other disciplines.

The book opens with an overview of cognitive semiotics provided by the editor, Asun López-Varela Azcárate. The author traces the interdisciplinary evolution of the 4Es including a discussion of Peircean semiotics that anticipates material engagement and wide cognition approaches. The final part of the chapter focuses on the modulation of human and nonhuman co-agency, a discussion that directs attention to contemporary technological and environmental concerns in the Anthropocene.

The chapter, "Where is Meaning? Mind, Matter and Meaning," by Constantin Thiopoulos examines the location of meaning in the relationship between mind, matter, and consciousness. It considers rationalistic dualism, the embodied paradigm, dialogism, as well as the implications of place. The research helps unveil how human meanings are context dependent and explores phenomenological horizons. Inner aspects that focus attention are aligned with outer context considerations, leading to different related perceptions with similar intentional context; a process that allows human imagination to consider other possible scenarios and alternative

worlds. In meaning making, objects emerge as resonances of these inner and outer voices that encompass verbal situational and autonoetic dimensions. Interestingly, the chapter explores the absence of linguistic expression in dialogue, such as the use of silence, and contemplates it as building up the horizon of expectations surrounding speech. Silence is related to soliloquy as a sort of inner dialogue that contributes to the development of self-consciousness as well as opening up other possible scenarios. In this view, consciousness and self-consciousness emerge as part of a personal inner narrative that also accompanies non-conscious experiential processes. Eventually, this inner narrative enables humans to communicate externally their internal content.

Gisela Bruche-Schulz is also interested in the relation between perception, the senses, and the human faculty of conceptualizing experiential values in her chapter, "Configuring a Concept - On Iteration and Infinity." The author argues that although phenomenological experience is a fundamental reference system in the configuration of concepts, human conceptualization is not simply the product of accumulated experiences of the world. It emerges as a semiotic complexity built upon neural biochemical substrate, the transformation of energy into signs at the level of molecular organization. To prove her point, the author explores processes of iteration in an experiment with five groups of students who read an excerpt from Saint-Exupéry's *Le Petit Prince* in their own languages. The groups are asked to jot down "what comes to mind." Their non-conscious responses reveal similar conceptual figurations. Thus, the author finds evidence that, at its most basic level, textual grammar across world languages is embodied and grounded in affective-cognitional-proprioceptive/tactile-kinesthetic dimensions. The chapter goes on to explore why different languages share the grammatical concept of iteration as related to the experience of no-end and the notions of finitude vs. infinity. In the last part of her study, the author establishes a dialogue between findings in quantum cognition, wide cognition, and the mathematical notions of iteration and projection, which, she assures, provide evidence of an experienced ongoing processuality, "enciphered" in human bodies and expressed in the grammars of world languages.

Although Bruche-Schulz mentions Charles S. Peirce amid her sources, the chapter by Maria Asuncion L. Magsino, "A Biosemiotic Modeling of the Body-"Self" Synechism," expands Peirce's doctrine of synechism as a counterargument to the Cartesian split and situates Peirce's biosemiotic continuum in relation to the physician's clinical practice. Within the second section of the volume, which considers biosemiotics modelling, her chapter explores how patients create secondary modelling systems (SMS). Magsino connects quantum consciousness theories to Peirce's synechism arguing that it is crucial for the creation of secondary models of reality that, in turn, determine the creation of tertiary models of what is called culture.

Ann Hemingway provides an example of the kind of modelling systems that Magsino presents theoretically in her chapter. In "The Embodied Nature of Horse Human Communication: A Feasibility Study of an Equine Assisted Intervention; Benefits for Horses and Humans," Hemingway presents the findings from a feasibility study of an equine-assisted intervention (EAI) in patients with mental health problems and emotional issues during the Covid-19 pandemic. Animal-assisted therapy has already shown some positive effects in treating behavioural issues. The success of the intervention and the benefits of equine experiential therapies has been recognized by various groups involved in social care, mental health, domestic violence, and drug and alcohol services within the National Health Services in southern England.

The discussion of results emphasizes embodied forms of pedagogy in educational and intervention programs, thus highlighting the importance of a biocentric, biosemiotic continuum (and in this case, not merely anthropocentric) in cognitive processes.

Moving to the third section of the volume, which considers mind–machine scenarios, the chapter by Janine Knight, "Rethinking 'Affordance', 'Agency' and 'User' from a Semiotic Technologies Perspective: The Emergence of a Typology of Signs-as-Agents" establishes a dialogue between distributed and social cognition theory, humancomputer interaction, and digital literacy as applied to three examples taken from various educational scenarios. Connecting STEM and STEAM fields, the analysis involves the identification of screen-based signs-as-agents and provides a typology of signs-as-agents that shape active participation in educational social practices. Thus, the chapter explores how agency becomes distributed between humans and machines. As we move towards artificial intelligence (AI), the distribution of agency is a central concern.

The chapter by Nektarios Moumoutzis, Desislava Paneva-Marinova, and Lilia Pavlova, "Onlife Drama: Towards a Reference Framework for Hyper-Connected Activity," relates information and communications technology (ICT), performativity, and dramatic interaction. The authors claim that the deep engagement promoted by digital technologies can be explored by adopting a conceptual framework traditionally used in theatrical performances. Although ICT can be considered an enhancement of human actions, the chapter reflects on the false realities it creates. Ethical and anthropological concerns are framed on the same philosophical ground as ancient Greek drama, a major pillar in the development of democracy, which served to educate citizens as responsible actors (and agents) in decision-making processes.

Cary Bazalgette researches the impact of TV on children younger than three years of age. Based on the author's own ethnographically styled family research, and drawing on embodied cognition theories, the study describes three examples of viewing behaviour in toddlers watching movies. The three types are "focused attention," "emotional responses," and "self-directed viewing." In the chapter, these forms of viewing behaviour are interpreted as potential evidence of learning in progress. The author argues that although toddlers' responses might be mainly instinctive and below the level of consciousness, they communicate important aspects about how focused attention begins to be developed through directed point of view by means of visual and audio signs. In movies, narrative point-of-view directs and concentrates attention, helping see through the eyes of the characters, spatially re-positioning the watcher inside the character in order to access their feelings, thus triggering empathy. In this way, intersubjective behaviour arises in the most basic challenges of childhood experiences; particularly in those that involve simulation and strong emotions such as fear and disappointment. Feelings that generate curiosity, expectation, anticipation, and investigation, which the author terms "seeking," are also essential to logical thought and reflection, and help create causal connections, develop memory, learning, and self-learning. The study argues that, while watching movies, toddlers' mesmerized and apparently passive behaviour might offer signs of the intensity of the semiotic processes taking place. Bodily gestures such as bracing are committed to concentrating energy to maintain the level of focused attention. Thus, the chapter highlights the potential value of exploring mind–machine engagement in toddlers' movie watching behaviour to understand situated pre-verbal semiotic communication and learning.

The last section in the collection focuses on the relations between semiotic systems and aesthetics. The chapter by Sônia Campaner Miguel Ferrari, "Images beyond Representation: Evidence and Depth of Meaning," looks at images from a philosophical point of view, exploring the dialectic between the visible and the invisible and considering previous research by Roland Barthes, Georges Didi-Huberman, Marie-Jose Mondzain, and Walter Benjamin. While her chapter concentrates on challenging artistic images, the chapter by Fatma Nazh Köksal studies "Metaphoric Representation and Aesthetic in Advertising," examining a television commercial inspired by Johannes Vermeer's painting *Girl with a Pearl Earring*, which the author uses to highlight the layers of metaphorical expressions used in advertisements, where images with an aesthetic value are instrumentalized. While fulfilling a communicational function, art also has a layer of aesthetic value that needs to be carefully considered. The volume closes with a chapter by Filippo Silvestri, who examines Michel Foucault from a philosophical perspective. In particular, the Italian professor of psychology and communication examines Foucault's ideas on madness and literature as discourses outside the norm and the order of things.
