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Theory & Psychology
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Cognition as Semiosis

The Role of Inference

Donald J. Cunningham

Indiana University, cunningh{at}indiana.edu

In this paper I sketch a model of cognition from the perspective of Peircean semiotics. In this view, cognition is the action of signs or semiosis, the construction of structures of experience via signs. This process involves an irreducibly triadic relationship between three elements of sign process: sign, object and interpretant. Moreover, sign action spreads throughout an infinity of networks forming a rhizomous structure of semiosic potential. Each living organism constructs its own local connections or Umwelt based upon its unique experience and species' characteristics. In this view, the base state of human cognition is a set of beliefs characterizing the Umwelt for that person. Via an interplay between genuine doubt and fixing belief through inference, the person literally constructs and reconstructs his or her Umwelt. The paper concludes by using this model to characterize learning on the World Wide Web.

Key Words: abduction • cognition • inference • semiosis • semiotics

Theory & Psychology, Vol. 8, No. 6, 827-840 (1998)
DOI: 10.1177/0959354398086006
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