Sergio Martinez

This paper explores the challenges posed by the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence specifically Large Language Models (LLMs). I show that traditional linguistic theories and corpus studies are being outpaced by LLMs’ computational sophistication and low perplexity levels. In order to address these challenges, I suggest a focus on language as a cognitive tool shaped by embodied-environmental imperatives in the context of _Agentive Cognitive Construction Grammar_. To that end, I introduce an _Embodied Human Language_ Model (EHLM), inspired by Active Inference research, as a promising alternative that integrates sensory input, embodied representations, and adaptive strategies for contextualized analysis and conceptual utility maximization. By incorporating Active Inference, which sees perception as inferring the world's state from sensory data, the findings reveal that the characterization of the English modal _be able to_, as a triadic construction encoding biological intelligent agency, introduces a more plausible theoretical basis for the positing of linguistic constructions. This emphasizes the crucial role of embodied human language models in the comprehension of how humans construct preferred futures through language.

This paper introduces a novel perspective on Agentive Cognitive Construction Grammar (AgCCxG) by examining the intricate interplay between mind and language through the lens of both Active Inference and Peircean semiotics. AgCCxG emphasizes the impact of intention and purpose on linguistic choices as a cognitive imperative to balance the symbolic Self (Intelligent Agent) with the dynamics of the environment. Among other things, the paper posits that linguistic constructions, particularly Constructional Attachment Patterns (CAPs), like argument structure constructions, embody experienced interactions with the world through reenactment routines via the integration of multisensory channels. Unlike traditional usage-based approaches (e.g., construction grammars), AgCCxG embraces a robust theory of signs that reveals human representation as a continuous process of semiotic hybridization for the creative prediction of uncertain scenarios. Importantly, the paper challenges the notion of the mind as a unified, rational, uncertainty-reducing machine by asserting that physical processes governing open biological systems profoundly influence the linguistic sign system. Intelligent agents’ adaptability in expressing incongruous realities thus highlights the role of semiotic hybridization in preserving an agent’s autonomy and semiotic boundary.

The aim of this paper is to explore the connections between semiotics and biology by examining the behaviors of both humans and non-cognizant agents, using Bayesian and heuristic inference. The argument is that higher-level organisms use complex predictive reasoning to deal with uncertainty, while non-cognizant species, such as SARS-CoV-2, rely on an economy-driven heuristic to enter host cells. From this viewpoint, the current pandemic is characterized as a clash of representations resulting from the anthropocentric construction of the self, which neglects the complexities of the natural world.

In this article, I introduce a semiosic translation of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The theoretical framework is Semiosic Translation, a theory that combines Peirce’s interpretive semiotics and Wittgenstein’s notions of rule-following and complex-fact. I seek to show that this approach is particularly adroit at the task of making the sometimes cryptic philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein accessible to readers. To support this assertion, I compare and analyze several canonical translations of the Tractatus with possible semiosic translations. The results show that Wittgenstein’s work throughout its different phases displays a continuity that reaches a genuine abductive peak in the Philosophical Investigations. This abductive, usage-based turn is, nonetheless, announced in the Tractatus in terms of a quest for semiotic accuracy.

The need for a comprehensive semiotic understanding of poetic translation is at the heart of the present paper. This task is framed in terms of a multidisciplinary theoretical framework termed semiosic translation that I apply in this article to the translation of Holocaust poetry. This type of poetry is characterized as a distinct sign system that poses a number of challenges to both translators and semioticians. One of the most conspicuous problems is the ineffability of nothingness, which is particularly evident in the poetry of Paul Celan. Building on the notions of abductive inference (Charles S. Peirce) and rule-following (Ludwig Wittgenstein), I introduce a method for the translation of two key poems Schwarze Flocken (‘Black Snowflakes’), corresponding to Celan’s early period, and Weggebeizt (‘Worn down,’ a poem written in 1963). The semiotic method applied shows that the underlying Firstness of Holocaust art (an anti-semiotic sign system) is the driving force behind Celan’s poetry. It is also suggested that iconicity and indexicality are not peripheral semiotic processes but central elements to elucidating how the translation across sign systems takes place.

ABSTRACT In this work we propose an interpretation about the nature of language taking Walter Benjamin's reflections as a starting point. We can find a beginning to this reflection in About a program of a philosophical future and taking this reflection we will articulate it with other texts. On the one hand, our aim is to generate a constellation with two other authors, Valentin Voloshinov and Jean-Jacques Lecercle, to enlarge Benjamin's philosophical reflection and to question the ideological formations and the political and social performativity. On the other hand, we will consider that this minor constellation of marxian philosophical thinkers of language acts in post-Kantian terms. Then, among other matters, we can remember that transformation is in the origin of thought. RESUMEN En este trabajo proponemos una lectura en torno a la naturaleza del lenguaje tomando como punto de partida algunas reflexiones de Walter Benjamin. Podemos encontrar un comienzo de esta reflexión en Sobre el programa de una filosofia venidera, para luego articularla con otros textos de Benjamin. Por una parte, atendiendo lo anterior, nuestro objetivo es generar una constelación con otros dos autores: Valentin Volóshinov y Jean-Jacques Lecercle, para expandir aquellas reflexiones benjaminianas y problematizar las formaciones ideológicas y la performatividad política y social. Por otra parte, consideraremos que esta constelación menor de pensadores filosóficos marxianos del lenguaje no actúa sino en términos poskantianos. Así, entre otras cuestiones, podríamos recordar que la transformación está en el origen del pensar.

In philosophy of science, abstraction tends to be subsumed under representation, often being described as the omission of a target’s features when it is represented. This approach to abstraction sidesteps cognitive aspects of abstraction processes. However, cognitive aspects of abstraction are important in understanding the role of historically grounded epistemic criteria supporting modeling in science. Drawing on recent work on the relation between metaphor and abstraction, we introduce the concept of paths of abstraction, and use historical and contemporary examples to point to their role in guiding the development of relevance criteria which support modeling strategies in science.

This paper offers a renewed construction grammar analysis of linguistic constructions in a diachronic perspective. The present theory, termedAgentive Cognitive Construction Grammar(AgCCxG), is informed byactive inference(AIF), a process theory for the comprehension of intelligent agency. AgCCxG defends the idea that language bear traces of non-linguistic, bodily-acquired information that reflects sémiotico-biological processes of energy exchange and conservation. One of the major claims of the paper is that embodied cognition has evolved to facilitate ontogenic mental alignment among humans. This is demonstrated by the results of a corpus study in which the patterns of association between verbs, the particle UP and argument structure in Old and Middle English have been studied. The conclusion is that, similar to biological systems, the linguistic sign system displays patterns of equilibrium and non-equilibrium. In other words, while in Old English usage near equilibrium was reached through the use of a conservative set of constructional semiotic templates (attachment patterns), associated with motor modalities, Middle English displays high rates of randomness resulting in a less stable, yet distinct, system of constructional attachment.

This article introduces Agentive Cognitive Construction Grammar, an emerging field that seeks to connect the linguistic system with speaker-meaning. The stated purpose is thus to tackle a pervasive disconnect in both cognitive linguistics and construction grammar, whereby the linguistic system and speaker selections are separated in the belief that language is essentially a mental process associated with the brain, and hence, separated from bodily experience. I contend this view by introducing a triadic model of construction in which form and function are inextricably bound up with agency. This is possible because language is tethered to senses of movement and balance that connect experiences with the physical world with the mental. A major insight of the paper is that argument structure constructions partake of both linguistic and non-linguistic signs, which provides speakers with a means to verbalize their thoughts and distribute agency in specific events.

RésuméLa présente étude aborde la question de savoir comment l’œuvre du Marquis de Sade reste sur les développements des jeux du langage wittgensteniens, c’est-à-dire des pratiques langagières associées à la communication dans un contexte donné. Tout d’abord, une identification de la règle (en tant qu’élément organique d’une pratique langagière), et du rôle de l’abduction peircienne pour son application, montre que pour Sade « faire la même chose » (c’est-à-dire suivre la règle) lui permet de créer un système sémiotique pour justifier une idéologie du privilège bourgeois. Ainsi conçue, la règle d’auteur devient expérience iconique d’hypervisibilité (fondée sur la frontalité de la sexualité) lorsqu’elle est appliquée par le lecteur (participant potentiel) à des nouveaux jeux du langage. En ce sens, les jeux du langage proposés par Sade visent à franchir les rets du livre pour justifier les illusions (im)morales de l’auteur, clés de voûte de toute son œuvre.

This paper forges links between early analytic philosophy and the posits of semiotics. I show that there are some striking and potentially quite important, but perhaps unrecognized, connections between three key concepts in Wittgenstein’s middle and later philosophy, namely, complex, rule-following, and language games. This reveals the existence of a conceptual continuity between Wittgenstein’s “early” and “later” philosophy that can be applied to the analysis of the iterability of representation in computer-generated images. Methodologically, this paper clarifies to at least some degree, the nature, progress and promise of an approach to doing philosophy and semiotics from a modally modest perspective that sees in the intellectual products of humanities, and not in unreflective empiricism, the future of scientific development. This hybrid, non-reductionist approach shows, among other things, that semiotic processes are encoded by specific types of complexes in computer-generated images that display iterability in time and space.

Los centros penitenciarios poseen módulos educativos donde se procura dotar de enseñanza reglada a los internos para favorecer su reinserción, como se recoge en la Constitución Española de 1978 así como en los decretos de Enseñanza Secundaria para personas adultas. En este marco, se ofrece aquí una propuesta educativa para desarrollar un tema controvertido, como es el del Holocausto, en un ámbito educativo especialmente sensible a procesos educativos en situaciones de confinamiento, un aula de 4º de ESPA en un centro penitenciario, a través del conocimiento de las responsabilidades criminales consideradas en los Juicios de Núremberg. Utilizando la representación dramática como recurso didáctico, ya que los internos tendrían que reproducir los distintos roles de los participantes en los juicios, se pretende, en las diferentes sesiones en las que está estructurada esta propuesta, tratar de las responsabilidades morales, entender la necesaria existencia de unas instituciones fuertes con códigos de convivencia adecuados y desarrollar la empatía con las víctimas del régimen nazi, con el objetivo de que sean desarrollados valores cívicos entre los internos.

In this response paper, I trace the origins of semiosic translation and explain why Jia’s interpretations are theoretically problematic. I also demonstrate that the view of translation endorsed by Jia is untenable from a cognitive perspective, since both perception and action are affordances of the living organisms and hence are not restricted to the “thinking mind” within a Lotmanian semiosphere. Finally, since translation is not a special case of semiosis, I show that semiosic processes, and not individual signs, are the source of all types of translations.

En el presente trabajo nos aproximaremos a Gilles Deleuze problematizando lo que él llama potencias de lo falso. Para argumentar esto, buscaremos relacionar aquellas potencias con lo que el filósofo francés denomina caos-cosmos. En principio, consideraremos, como una guía para sostener aquella relación, la inversión del platonismo propuesta por Deleuze. Pues bien, quizá el problema que presentan las potencias de lo falso es el de la verdad en tanto producción. Será en este último sentido que sostendremos que se encontraría la verdad de lo falso en la relación entre arte y pensamiento.

Resumen: En este trabajo nos gustaría aproximarnos a uno de los planteamientos deleuzeanos a propósito de Kant, este es, el que busca dar cuenta de la génesis de lo trascendental. Para esto nos enfocaremos en el asunto del “ser de lo sensible” y luego lo relacionaremos a la génesis de las facultades. Y para ello propondremos una suerte de diálogo entre ciertos pasajes de Diferencia y repetición y el texto La idea de génesis en la estética kantiana, Finalmente, considerando el problema genético que nos ha guiado, buscaremos en la pregunta por las artes en Kant, leído por Deleuze, un atisbo de lo que significaría pensar lo sensible.: In this work we propose an elaboration of one of the lectures of Kant by Deleuze. Specifically, we consider the one that investigates the genesis of the trascendental. For that, we focus on the issue of the “being of the sensible”, and then relate it with the problem of genesis of the faculties. And for this, we expose a dialogue between some passages of Difference and repetition and the text The Idea of Genesis in Kant's Esthetics. Finally, we search in the question about arts in Kant, read by Deleuze, a hint of what would mean to think on the sensible.

En este trabajo buscamos proponer una teoría del color de inspiración deleuzeana, esto es, propondremos una teoría que atenderá al color en cuanto multiplicidad y acontecimiento. Para ello, ensayaremos un recorrido a través de ciertos pasajes deleuzeanos que nos permitirán avanzar en dicha propuesta y llevarla al territorio artístico para establecer una interferencia que implicará variar la dirección de nuestro trabajo al proponer un diálogo con Paul Klee. En definitiva, intentaremos desarrollar las siguientes preguntas: ¿Cómo pensar una teoría del color de inspiración deleuzeana? ¿Cómo llevarla al terreno artístico? ¿Cómo concebir su relación con un cosmos-Klee? Y esto, para intentar establecer a través de una conversación que podría sostenerse con la obra de Paul Klee otra perspectiva de trabajo en torno a la obra de Gilles Deleuze.

This paper introduces and defends a way to translate Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and the Philosophical Investigations from a semiotic standpoint. This turn builds on Semiosic Translation. 102–130), a framework that advances the interaction of sign systems as a necessary point of departure in the translation process. From this vantage, the key term “Bild,” is analyzed, explained and retranslated into English. This term evinces high levels of complexity and variability that cannot be captured by traditional linguistic translations. In applying a semiotic approach, any iteration of Bild is characterized as reflecting the author’s intentions at a given moment. This semiotic reading seeks to provide semioticians, translators, and philosophers with new conceptual tools leading to an understanding of translation as a systemic operation not confined to the realm of subjective interpretation.

In this paper, I explore a new type of semiotic translation in the context of Audiovisual Translation Studies (AVTS). To that end, a set of formulaic sequencesbestowed of pragmalinguistic value (hedging strings) is analysed. It is argued that the semiotic analysis of conversational features in English may contribute to facilitate their pedagogical exploitation in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms. This analysis builds theoretically on a semiotic translational framework termed Semiosic Translation (and its subset, Semiosic Subtitling) predicated upon three types of translation: (i) Metaleptic translation; (ii) indexical translation; and (iii) translation as dynamic discontinuity. Th e translational rationale thus arrived at is deemed to account for what it is that binds together linguistic signs with other sign systems.

En su ensayo Para una crítica de la violencia, Walter Benjamin reivindica el fenómeno social de la huelga general revolucionaria teorizada por Georges Sorel en su obra Reflexiones sobre la violencia, como una figura ejemplar de lo que sería un “medio puro de la política”, al margen de cualquier forma legitimada de poder. En este marco, pocos comentadores contemporáneos advierten una discordancia conceptual entre ambos filósofos: para Sorel, la huelga revolucionaria es un mito social, mientras que el mito, categoría esencialmente negativa en Benjamin, describe la violencia que aprisiona la vida y que se traduce en una forma de poder político superior. En este artículo quisiéramos demostrar esta discordancia conceptual para examinar en seguida cómo ha sido comentada por otros pensadores contemporáneos. La filosofía de la historia, la posibilidad de una acción política ética y la temporalidad mesiánica aparecen en el horizonte teórico que emparenta a estos filósofos y por el cual podría descifrarse su impasse conceptual. Esto se confirma si se despliega la idea de un “medio puro de la política”, pista que Benjamin ofrece sin profundizar y sobre la cual reenvía al pensamiento de un filósofo poco explorado, Erich Unger. En la última parte de este artículo desarrollaremos las claves dadas por Unger, que entran justamente en sintonía con la mención de la huelga general como medio puro de la política. In his Critique of violence, Walter Benjamin claimed that the social phenomenon of the revolutionary general strike was an example of what would be a “pure political mean”. In this context, not many contemporary commentators note an important conceptual incoherence between those two philosophers: for Sorel the revolutionary general strike is a social myth, while in Benjamin the category of myth, essentially negative, describes the violence that imprisons life and crystallizes it in a higher form of political power. In this article, we demonstrate this conceptual discrepancy in order to examine the way it has been approached by other philosophers. The philosophy of history, the possibility of an ethical political action, and messianic temporality, all appear on the theoretical horizon linking these philosophers, and through these ideas a conceptual impasse can be decoded. Moreover, this horizon can be confirmed if we follow the idea of a “pure political means” that Benjamin proposes and which moves forward to the thought of an unexplored philosopher mentioned by him: Erich Unger. In the last part of this article we will develop the keys given by Unger, which fall right in line with the notion of the general strike as a pure political mean

A partir de la divergencia de M. Foucault con Th. Hobbes con respecto a la guerra como principio y fundamento del poder, se muestra la importancia de esa diferencia conceptual para los análisis políticos contemporáneos. Foucault sostiene que, en las sociedades modernas de Occidente, la comunidad política, y más precisamente la política misma, ha sido el terreno de la guerra librada por otros medios. Por extensión, esta tesis significa invertir el principio de von Clausewitz; a saber, que la guerra es la continuación de la política por otros medios. On the basis of the difference between M. Foucault and Th. Hobbes regarding war as a principle and foundation of power, the article shows the importance of this conceptual difference for contemporary political analyses. Foucault argues that in modern Western societies, the political community and, more specifically, politics itself, has been the space of a war waged by other means. By extension, this thesis entails the inversion of von Clausewitz's principle, namely, that war is the continuation of politics by other means. A partir da divergência de M. Foucault com Th. Hobbes sobre a guerra como princípio e fundamento do poder, mostra-se a importância dessa diferença conceitual para as análises políticas contemporâneas. Foucault sustenta que, nas sociedades modernas do Ocidente, a comunidade política, e mais precisamente a política em si, tem sido o terreno da guerra travada por outros meios. Por extensão, esta tese significa inverter o princípio de von Clausewitz; a saber, que a guerra é a continuação da política por outros meios