Pensiero e azione: l’habit peirceano fra enattivismo e cognizione distribuita

Abstract

The proposal of this paper is to show how the pragmatist approach to meaning developed by Pearce reveals important relations with some central trends of contemporary cognitive science. These theories, like Peircean philosophy, detach themselves from the dualistic idea of a completely inner thought, conceiving external expressions as authentic part of the cognitive system. In order to argue this, I will show how: i) the concept of belief, whose aim is to produce a readiness to act, presents interesting parallels with the enactivist conception of habit, interpreted as an immediate “know-how”; ii) the notion of habit, arising from a cultural and social dimension, puts Peircean  cognitive semiotics in contact with those theories that conceive cognition as a distributed activity; i.e. situated both pragmatically and within a social and cultural environment. Assuming these reference points, I will show how Peircean pragmatism represents an interesting theoretical background of the current needs to reconfigure the role of action, its products and its context of realization.