B8820 - Cognitive Semiotics and Digital Intelligence (1) (LM)

Learning outcomes

The main goal of the course is to introduce the students to the theories, the models and the applications of cognitive semiotics, reflecting on how signs, languages, and meaning shape our cognitive processes and constitutive a Semiotic Mind. Starting from perception, beliefs, language and habits, the course will prompt a deep rethinking of both classical theoretical models of human cognition and traditional and contemporary models of artificial and digital intelligence. Finally, the course aims at showing how, from the very beginning, artificial intelligence relies on a semiotic intelligence that shape both our biological and our digital world.

Course contents

The course aims at introducing the cognitive approach to semiotics, with special emphasis on the problem of perception, the perception-language relationship, social cognition, meaning, subjectivity and mind. Special attention will be given to Large Language Models and the problems they pose for contemporary semiotics.

Readings/Bibliography

U. Eco - Kant and the Platypus: Essays on Language and Cognition, Mariner Books, 2000. Only chapters 2 and 6.

U. Eco - "The Threshold and the Infinite", in From the Tree to the Labyrinth, Harvard University Press, pp. 515-538

C. Paolucci - Cognitive Semiotics. Integrating Signs, Minds, Meaning and Cognition, Dordrecht: Springer, 2021.

C. Paolucci - "A Semiotic Lifeworld. Semiotics and phenomenology: Peirce, Husserl, Heidegger, Deleuze, and Merleau-Ponty" in Semiotica, N. 260 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1515/sem-2024-0152

C. Paolucci - "The myth of meaning: generative AI as language-endowed machines and the machinic essence of the human being", in Semiotica, N. 262 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1515/sem-2024-0204

A. Clark - The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality, Pantheon, 2023

Teaching methods

The course will integrate lectures and textual analysis

Assessment methods

Oral questions about the texts and the books listed above.

Exam sessions
During the 2025/2026 academic year, exam sessions are scheduled in the following months: January, March, June (two), September and December

Vote is assigned according to the following evaluation levels:

30 cum laude: excellent performance showing soundness of knowledge, rich discursive articulation, appropriate expression, interest of critical contribution;

30: Excellent performance, complete, and appropriate knowledge, well-articulated and appropriately expressed, with interesting critical contributions;

29-27: Good performance, more than satisfactory knowledge, correct expression.

26-24: Standard performance, essential knowledge, but not comprehensive and/or not always correctly expressed;

23-21: Sufficient performance, general but superficial knowledge; often inappropriate expression and/or confused articulation of speech;

20-18: Poor performance, sufficient expression and articulation of speech with significant gaps;

<18: Insufficient performance, knowledge absent or very incomplete, lack of orientation in the discipline, poor and seriously flawed expression.

Students with disabilities and Specific Learning Disorders (SLD)

Students with disabilities or Specific Learning Disorders have the right to special adjustments according to their condition, following an assessment by the Service for Students with Disabilities and SLD. Please do not contact the instructor but get in touch with the Service directly to schedule an appointment. It will be the responsibility of the Service to determine the appropriate adjustments. For more information, visit the page: https://site.unibo.it/studenti-con-disabilita-e-dsa/en/for-students.
It is recommended that students contact the University office in advance. Any proposed adjustments must be submitted at least 15 days in advance for the instructor’s approval, who will evaluate their appropriateness in relation to the learning objectives of the course.

Teaching tools

Digital and audio-visual supports

Office hours

See the website of Claudio Paolucci