Volume 17, Issue 1 - Special Issue: Image, Mind, Culture: a tribute to Göran Sonesson; Edited by Sara Lenninger

Alteroception is the virtual experience of another person’s bodily movement centered in the perspective of the other person. In face-to-face interactions, human beings tend to assume a special mode of alteroception by mutually but tacitly recognizing that ‘your right is on my left and your left is on my right’. Researchers of neonatal cognition and early childhood development describe this mode of alteroception as “reverse” or “inverted”. Inverse alteroception goes beyond mirror-image mimesis to chiastic (crisscrossing) mimesis in acts of intersubjective sense-making; but the cognitive and cultural affordances of this inverse reciprocal ability are largely untreated in the literature. I argue that this unique aspect of human phenomenology deserves closer attention since it enables a broader palette of diagrammatic contrasts that extend far beyond face-to-face interaction. In this paper, I apply insights from Peircean and Greimasian semiotics to argue that salient features of the human lifeworld originate from imaginative mappings of inverse alteroception onto other domains. From diagrams of gesture space and contemporary visual design to the structures of the Proscenium stage, from historic heraldry to Aristotle’s logical square of oppositions and beyond, many visual/spatial designs and their reciprocal interaction with human experience are linked to this ability – an ability that owes its origins, in turn, to the evolution of upright posture.

Sonesson’s vision of the diversity of meaning-generation coincides well with the purview of the cultural semiotics of Jingshen , in which semiotic inquiry is envisioned to improve mental capacity, the expansion of mental/cognitive space, and ultimately the liberation of human thinking. When embracing new epistemologies for cognitive semiotics, semiotic inquiry can work well as a form of art of thinking that has the potential to maintain “cognitive homeostasis”, the tendency towards a relatively stable equilibrium that can be maintained in the holistic flux of mind, vitality, and creativity. A plausible path to this equilibrium is through a balance between the left and right hemispheres, between analytical thinking and synthetic thinking. In this sense, what we are facing is essentially a problem of “ecology of cognition” or “ecological cognition”, that is, viewing cognition from an ecological perspective or considering cognition as a form of ecological activity. The focus of cognitive semiotics nowadays must transcend not only words or other external symbols, but even the traditional sense of “humanity” needs to be reconsidered.

This inquiry demonstrates Scotus’ and Peirce’s shift from representing haecceities as momentary objects in Secondness (depending heavily upon sensation), to the recognition that haecceities force their way into the awareness as mental objects. As such, both conclude that mental objects to be haecceities. Nonetheless, it is Peirce who more clearly determines that haecceities materialize as apparitions (cognitions) – incorporating physically absent places, objects, and moments. Peirce’s continuum, and his commitment to realism are responsible for considering apparitions to be haecceities. Both Peirce and Scotus contend that although haecceities are individual, they, nevertheless should be folded into the continuum. In line with the Scholastic record, Peirce defines haecceity as “thisness,” which encompasses the riveting effect of Objects (including places) – proximate to observers (inward and outward) space and/or time. Haecceities allow for intrusion of present objects and places upon interpreters’ consciousness – noticing properties of objects with some degree of awareness. This beckoning effect of objects in single, intense experiences accounts for selection of certain objects over others in the attentional stream. As such, context illuminates the core meaning within the sign (synchronic, diachronic) – demonstrating the need for Peirce’s continuum. But, Peirce’s continuum does not stop at present objects (mental, physical); it proposes the need for “concretion,” rather than Scotus’ adherence to “contraction.” In other words, the “all cannot be in the one” (as Scotus claims) if possible objects are not incorporated into the continuum. In short, Peirce’s “concretion” supplies a fuller account of object meaning, given that it integrates future objects and future meanings (would-bes).

Sighted children drawing an apple with a pin through it show the hidden parts of the pin. That is, not only is the pin shown running towards the apple and out the other side, it is also shown inside the apple, without a single break, and so the sketch depicts the occluded parts of the pin. Several investigators have offered theories of the observation. We report here on tangible raised-line drawings by young blind people who are novices at drawing. They also include occluded segments of the pin. To explain the drawings we use the John Willats region theory. In this account, enclosed regions represent the volumes of 3D objects. According to region theory, what is in the interior of an object should be shown in the drawing even if it cannot be seen or touched. As a result, since occluded parts of the pin are inside the apple, blind children, like sighted children, include them in their drawings. In region theory, for both the blind and the sighted, long lines on a 2D pictorial surface represent elongated objects in the scene and regions on the surface represent 3D objects and their contents. The basis of region theory may be that sensory information for pins and lines has high-frequency components, and for apples and regions has lower-frequency components.

This reflection on Göran Sonesson’s writings and theoretical engagement in art is also a survey of a set of semiotic concepts related to this area. As a semiotician Sonesson wrote about varying sub-genres like fine art, photography, film and architecture. The reflection is also a personal recollection – as a colleague, friend and participant in the Lund circle of semiotics – of ideas and discussions highlighting the relation between semiotics, art theory and artistic practice. This reflection captures a couple of notions of importance in Sonesson’s contributions to semiotic theory relating to pictoriality, art and culture, such as “secondary iconicity”, “projected Ego, Alter and Alius”, “sedimentation of impressions”, “picture subject and picture object”, etc. The reflection ends in stating the importance of the specifically Lifeworld-based semiotic contribution by Sonesson to art theory, a contribution perhaps yet to be fully appreciated, and how this contribution also corresponds with how practicing artists reach out to, but also goes beyond, the art world itself.

Visual thinking is a systematic way to produce knowledge in design by means of mental imagery, spatial reasoning, and the use of an array of visual representations. Pictorial representations such as sketches are crucial for the activity of designing at the early stage of the creative process. Designers see more information in sketches than was actually drawn. The ability to see more information than is sketched out can be seen as an enhanced visual capacity of human agency. Enhanced agency is the prosthetic incorporation of artifacts to improve the original agentive capacities. The incorporation of artifacts to draw raises some fundamental questions: Is the pencil an extension of the mind? Can we think with our hands? What agentive capacities are increased with the use of the pencil? What is the representational status of sketching? The chapter is structured around these key questions to suggest some answers inspired by the work of Göran Sonesson. Using the notion of enhanced agency and the layered model of agency, I explore the way in which the pencil improves the visual thinking of design. In doing so I found that it is important to maintain the principle of asymmetry in cognitive systems to reconsider relational ontology in favor of ecological relationships.

This paper will evaluate the quantitative content analysis of visual rhetoric which has been put forward by George Rossolatos in the context of audio-visuality and marketing research. Rossolatos bases his taxonomy of visual rhetorical figures on Groupe µ’s adaptation of classical rhetoric in Rhétorique génerale (1970). With the aim of creating a systematic model for marketing analysis, he and his collaborators have coded and classified an extensive number of audiovisual commercials from the top international strata of economically valuable brands. For comparison, I have during a period of four years given undergraduates the task of collecting and categorizing a minimum of ten audio-visual commercials, each of which should exemplify one of the figures referred to by Rossolatos. The outcomes of the task indicate that a random explorative study with a minimum of operationalization and training of coders is enough for obtaining results akin to those reported by Rossolatos. This may be regarded as a positive outcome from a pedagogical point of view, but it may also raise the suspicion that Rossolatos’s criteria are merely intuitive. If the incidence of visual rhetorical figures is to be studied as an independent content variable of audio-visual enunciations, the values/figures should be described with greater caution.

This essay begins with a brief account of the French linguistic structuralism and very briefly some aspects of the post-structuralist critique of it, here represented by Lacan and, Deleuze, and Guattari as a response to it. Against this backdrop, the purpose of the essay is to show a critique of structuralism that came earlier than the post-structuralist one, namely that of the Russian philosopher of the dialogic speech and literary scholar Mikhail Bakhtin in the 1920s. The concept of the dialogical word has had a major influence in cultural semiotics, literary – and film studies and existential psychotherapy. A second purpose of this essay is to briefly show in what way the ethics of the dialogical word is important in the latter, in existential psychotherapeutic work. Translations from Swedish and French are mine.

This essay discusses the notion of ‘semiotic development in child development’ and highlights potential concerns for ‘psychologism’ when semiotics turns into cognitive semiotics. The notion of ‘semiotic development in child development’ indicates a transdisciplinary approach involving both semiotics, the general study of meaning and signs, and child psychology. This, however, invites the criticism of committing the fallacy of psychologism. Piaget was aware of this dilemma when developing his theory of the semiotic function as a united capacity in children’s cognitive development. Sonesson’s proposal of a general definition of signs in meaning-making is suggested to, at some points, meet the dilemma with psychologism in studies of children’s semiotic development. Starting from a phenomenological point of view in semiotics and integrating Piaget’s theory on cognitive development and meaning-making meet the study of subjectivity in intersubjectivity. On the one hand, the sign as a theoretical object is not reducible to any given psychological process or processes; on the other hand, sign meaning can only exist if there are beings (consciousnesses) capable of grasping and using signs.