Douglas Niño / Programs
Research
Six connected programs explore meaning, inference and the organization of action. Their shared concern is how agents make sense of situations and find ways to proceed.
Agentive Semiotics
How does meaning take shape in what we do?
Agentive Semiotics approaches meaning through agents pursuing goals with the resources available to them. It asks how signs, bodily capacities and cultural practices participate in the organization of action.
Research direction
The current direction develops this approach to meaning by examining how agents anticipate situations and adjust their activity as events unfold.
- Meaning and action
- Agendas and resources
- Embodied habits
Abduction and Induction
What criteria govern abduction and induction, and what roles do they play in inquiry?
This program examines criteria, validity, justification, and the roles of abduction and induction in inquiry. It connects the historical development of Peirce’s logic with the naturalization of logic and the conditions under which real agents reason.
Research direction
Abducing Abduction provides a sustained study of Peirce’s account and its consequences for contemporary debates. The relation between inference and the purposes of an agent is a point of contact with Agentive Semiotics.
- Peirce’s logic
- Hypothesis formation
- Inquiry
- Evidence
- Naturalization of logic
Peircean Pragmatism
What difference does a concept make to possible conduct?
Peirce’s pragmatism offers a way to investigate the relation between meaning and the conceivable consequences of action. This line of work studies the connections among signs, habits and inquiry within his philosophical project.
Research direction
A central concern is how habits contribute to meaning and how inquiry can revise them. This provides a meeting point for historical interpretation and the study of situated action.
- Pragmatic maxim
- Habits
- Theory of signs
Cognitive Semiotics and Meaning
How do bodily experience and cultural practices contribute to meaning?
This research brings questions about meaning into dialogue with the study of cognition. It considers how acquired capacities and shared practices shape our encounters with signs and cultural objects.
Research direction
Work on embodied habits examines the relation between accumulated experience and the meaning that arises in a particular situation. It connects semiotic analysis with the conditions of actual interpretation.
- Embodiment
- Situated interpretation
- Cultural meaning
Agency, Social Ontology and Epistemic Regulation
How do shared practices organize what agents can do and know?
This line examines agency in relation to the social arrangements within which people act. It asks how collective practices establish roles and expectations, and how these bear on the assessment of claims and the organization of knowledge.
Research direction
Questions about testimony, epistemic authority and the regulation of inquiry connect this program with the study of meaning and agentive systems.
- Social practices
- Testimony
- Epistemic authority
- Regulation
Agentive Semantics and Narrativity
How do agents organize events, and what changes when they narrate them?
This ongoing research develops the study of event meaning through agentive eventology and eventography. It distinguishes what occurs in a universe of reference from its informational organization by an agent.
Research direction
The model examines event segmentation, anticipation and the readjustment of event models, and the relation between the capacity to connect episodes and their elaboration through narrativization.
- Agentive semantics
- Eventology
- Eventography
- Narrativity