This is the IRG (Iconicity Research Group) — an interdisciplinary group dedicated to investigating iconic processes in art, science, philosophy, and literature. The IRG is especially interested in how external sign systems reorganize cognition. We study poems as thinking devices, diagrams as engines of discovery, translation as experimental semiosis, and technologies [including AI] as components of distributed cognitive systems.

scope

• Cognitive Semiotics
• Cognitive Science
• Philosophy of Science
• Cognitive Aesthetics
• Intermediality
• Digital Humanities

research topics

• Art and poetry as cognitive niche construction
• Creativity and cognitive artifacts
• Translation, creativity, and abductive inference
• Creativity and diagrammatic reasoning
• AI and creativity
• Metacognition and cognitive externalism
• Intersemiotic translation, creativity, and cognitive artifacts
• Translation as problem solving
• Intermediality and semiosis

references

• Charles Sanders Peirce — Pragmatism and Semiotics
• Andy Clark — “extended mind”
• Edwin Hutchins — Cognition in the Wild (1995)
• David Kirsh — work on epistemic action, and problem-solving
• Pedro Atã & João Queiroz — Mind as an External Sign (2025)
• Lars Elleström — Media transformation and intermediality

journals of interest

• Cognitive Semiotics
• Semiotica
• Chinese Journal of Semiotics
• Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society
• Topics in Cognitive Science
• Trends in Cognitive Sciences