Neuro-multimodal Abduction

Abstract

In chapter three I have illustrated the main features of the so-called disembodiment of mind from the point of view of thecognitive interplay between internal and external representations, where the problem of the continuous interaction betweenon-line and off-line intelligence can be properly addressed. I consider this interplay critical in analyzing the relationbetween meaningful semiotic internal resources and devices and their dynamical contact with the externalized semiotic materialityalready embedded in the artificialized environment. Hence, minds are “extended” and artificial in themselves. It is from thisdistributed perspective that I will further stress how abduction is essentially multimodal, in that both data and hypotheses can have a full range of verbal and sensory representations, involving words, sights, images,smells, etc., but also kinesthetic experiences and other feelings such as pain, and thus all sensory modalities. The presenceof kinesthetic aspects plainly demonstrates that abductive reasoning is basically manipulative. Again, both linguistic andnon linguistic signs have an intrinsic semiotic life, as particular configurations of neural networks and chemical distributions(and in terms of their transformations) at the level of human brains, and as somatic expressions. However they can also bedelegated to many external objects and devices, for example written texts, diagrams, artifacts, etc. We can also see, in thisregard, how unconscious factors take part in the abductive procedure, which consequently acquires the character of a kindof “thinking through doing”.