Semiotic Brains and Artificial Minds: How Brains Make up Material Cognitive Systems

Abstract

At the roots of thinking abilities there is a process of disembodiment of mind that presents a new cognitive perspective on the role of external models and representations. Taking advantage of Turing’s comparison between “unorganized” brains and “logical” and “practical” machines” the presentation will illustrate the centrality to cognition of the disembodiment of mind from the point of view of the interplay between internal and external representations, both mimetic and creative. The last part of the presentation will describe the concept of mimetic mind I have introduced to shed new cognitive and philosophical light on the role of computational modeling and on the decline of the so-called Cartesian computationalism.