| 1. |
- Mendoza-Collazos, Juan Carlos
(författare)
-
From tool making to pictures : a design semiotics approach
- 2019
-
Ingår i: ; , s. 76-77
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Studies on cultural evolution from archaeology, neuroscience and cognitive semiotics have shown the role of tool making for development of novel cognitive capabilities in early humans. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that tool making was a cognitive threshold from nonhuman primates to hominins. Tool making begun with rudimentary skills for tool production based on motor patterns, learned socially by direct imitation. Further evolution led to a continuous improvement of tools with refined technology, supported by bodily mimesis (Zlatev 2014) as a device for learning, rehearsal and skills enhancement. Ultimately, the process led to a developed society with language, technology and symbolic culture. In this paper, I propose that tool making could be connected with the origin of pictures. I present a design semiotics explanation of tool-making based on the cognitive resources of a typical design process. The elaboration of this thesis focuses on the evolution of design (Mendoza-Collazos, in progress). Proto-design emerged along with tool production in nonhuman hominids. It evolved into design, preserving and improving its original cognitive resources in early humans (perceptual-motor adaptations, controlled motion patterns, observation, bodily mimesis, social cognition, social learning and cultural transmission). These cognitive resources resulted in two payoffs for design. First, perceptual-motor adaptations, controlled motion patterns and observation are capacities required both to shape stone tools (in proto-design and early forms of design) and to shape prototypes and 3D scale models in modern design. Second, bodily mimesis along with the improvement of working directly with materials (see Malafouris 2013), and the need for social learning and cultural transmission evolved to the capacity of drawing and sketching. Thus, I argue that this process marked the emergence of pictures in early hominids. Today, the abilities of sketching and modelling still are primary in design processes.
|
|
| 2. |
- Mendoza-Collazos, Juan Carlos
(författare)
-
On the importance of things : A relational approach to agency
- 2020
-
Ingår i: Cognitive Semiotics. - : Walter de Gruyter GmbH. - 2235-2066 .- 1662-1425. ; 13:2
-
Recension (refereegranskat)abstract
- The present review is conceived to be a contribution from the double perspective of a semiotician and a designer to the current debate on the extended mind and on distributed cognition, focusing on the role of things (artefacts, material culture) for the emergence of agency in animate beings. The theory of material engagement as conceived by Lambros Malafouris was formally introduced seven years ago, proposing an idea of boundless cognition and reformulating key notions such as agency, intentionality, and mental representations, philosophically framed with the help of approaches such as postphenomenology (; ). There is much to commend about a non-hierarchical, interdependent relationship between the world and living organisms — and more specifically between material things and human beings. Nevertheless, a balanced review of the notion of “material agency” is still called for. In this review, I show that an asymmetry can be introduced into the relationship between artefacts and human beings without committing the “sin” of anthropocentrism.
|
|
| 3. |
- Mendoza-Collazos, Juan Carlos, et al.
(författare)
-
Responsibility of Action and Situated Cognition in Artefact—User Relationship
- 2021
-
Ingår i: Proceedings of the 21st Congress of the International Ergonomics Association (IEA 2021) : Volume 1: Systems and Macroergonomics - Volume 1: Systems and Macroergonomics. - Cham : Springer International Publishing. - 2367-3389 .- 2367-3370. - 9783030746025 - 9783030746018 ; 219, s. 211-216
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- I discuss the dilution of responsibility of action and the idea of a symmetrical relationship between artefacts and humans. In doing so, I argue that meaning making is an activity unilaterally performed by agents, leading to an asymmetrical relationship between agents and artefacts. Therefore, the study of the one who is responsible for the action, the meaning-maker (with the capability to act) is crucial for a theory of action responsibility. The latter should not be transferred to derived agents, an abstract brand or impersonal technologies. The study of the origin of actions is crucial for a better understanding of situated cognition in relation to responsibility. Therefore, the role of artefacts in human actions has to be reconsidered, since artefacts acquire functions by means of designing and they do not act for themselves. These issues have consequences for our understanding of situated cognition and for the current debate on responsibility of AI technologies, as well as for work analysis and design.
|
|
| 4. |
- Mendoza-Collazos, Juan Carlos, et al.
(författare)
-
Revisiting the life of things : A cognitive semiotic study of the agency of artefacts in Amazonia
- 2021
-
Ingår i: The Public Journal of Semiotics. - : Public Journal of Semiotics, Lund University. - 1918-9907. ; 9:2, s. 30-52
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Many contemporary scholars have recently defended the idea that the agency of things is symmetrical and equivalent to human agency. We propose an alternative approach to artefacts’ agency based on a field study concerned with contextually situated observations of the process of design of artefacts in Amazonia. By means of participant observation and interviews, we address the role of artefacts in relation to human agency. In so doing, we focus on the human-unique capacity for design as it is related to cognitive resources such as intentionality, decision-making, planning, and volitional adaptations of the material world to human purposes. We argue that such cognitive resources are ultimate manifestations of human agency. The findings allow us to conclude that artefacts possess a special form of agency, which operates in different ways from the agency of true agents. This agency is derived: it depends on the actions of true agents, with either function as remote intentions or are required for the artefact to work at the moment of use. Thus, the relation between artefacts and agents is asymmetrical. Given that the derived agency of artefacts allows people to expand their own agency, we propose the notion of enhanced agency for the prosthetic incorporation of artefacts into the agentive capabilities of human agents.
|
|
| 5. |
- Mendoza-Collazos, Juan Carlos
(författare)
-
The notion of agency and the material engagement theory : An Agentive statement
- 2019
-
Ingår i: ; , s. 27-27
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Malafouris (2013) proposes that agency is an emergent product of the relational ontology of our material engagement. However, I suggest a distinction between meaning and agency for a better understanding of our relational ontology with things. Meaning is the payoff of the relational ontology, meaning emerges when an agent act within the world. Agency is the capability to act, signify, produce and obtain meaning, and this capability is exclusive of living organisms. The distinction does not imply to fall in Cartesianism. Agentive semiotics (Niño 2015; Mendoza-Collazos 2016), for instance, is far from an anthropocentric or Cartesian conception of the way the agency operates. The treatment that agentive semiotics proposes for the exclusiveness of agency in living organisms could enhance the force of Malafouris' relational approach, explaining the key role of material culture without methodological fetishism.
|
|
