Papers by Stéphanie Walsh Matthews
Recherches sémiotiques, 2019
Toute quête identitaire nous conduit forcément à un questionnement sur nos origines. Qu’est-ce qu... more Toute quête identitaire nous conduit forcément à un questionnement sur nos origines. Qu’est-ce qui nous distingue de nos proches? Quels sont nos premiers traits humains apomorphes? Quelle est la première instance de notre humanité? Plus généralement, en tant qu’êtres vivants, de quelle manière sommes-nous propulsés vers l’humanisation? La trajectoire des hominides nous parait ici centrale. Si, à l’évidence, l’ensemble des sciences humaines s’y intéressent, la sémiotique intervient principalement pour questionner notre phéno-réalité dans sa dimension biosémiotique (voire aussi paléosémiotique, archéosémiotique, etc.) Notre travail consiste ici à relever les éléments propres à cette trajectoire. Pourra-t-on mieux comprendre nos traits singuliers en étudiant leur inimitabilité? La robotique humanoïde, toujours incapable malgré ses prétentions de reproduire l’être humain, pourrait-elle nous aider à y voir plus clair? En opposant biosémiose et robosémiose, cet article propose de faire un pas dans ce débat, dont l’enjeu consiste à déceler en nous le trait humain le plus significatif et à saisir comment l’inégalable summum de notre humanité pourrait enfin se dévoiler.All identity quests forcibly lead us to questioning our origin. What distinguishes us from others that resemble us? What are our first human apomorphic traits? Where lies the initial manifestation of our humanity? And more broadly, how are we, as living beings, propelled toward humanisation? The overall trajectory of hominids is central to those questions. Whereas most of the human sciences are concerned by it, the role of semiotics is to investigate our phono-reality in its biosemiotic (as well as paleosemiotic, archeosemiotic, etc.) aspects. This article seeks to examine various elements that belong to this trajectory. Might we achieve a better understanding of our specific human traits by studying their inimitability? Might humanoïd robotics, which, regardless of its pretentions, is still incapable of reproducing human beings, help us nonetheless in this task? In opposing biosemiosis and robosemiosis, the author treads this path in an effort to determine the most specific human traits and thus uncover how to best reveal the unequaled Apex of our humanity
Core (minimal) data sets analyzed for Studies 1 and 2 in "Testing ritual knot tracing for co... more Core (minimal) data sets analyzed for Studies 1 and 2 in "Testing ritual knot tracing for cognitive priming effects rules out analytic analogy". Note: In keeping with Ryerson University Research Ethics Board protocol #REB 2017-065, data sets are fully anonymized, revealing coded values only and removing all personal information and metadata peripheral to the main study (including reported age, gender, language proficiency, and language usage coding). See main paper and supporting materials for discussion of measures, parameters, conditions, and variables. Corresponding author contact: jpelkey@ryerson.ca
The American Journal of Semiotics, 2016
Evolutionary Semiotics; Bio Semiotics
Page 1. LE RÉALISME MAGIQUE DANS LA LITTÉRATURE CONTEMPORAINE QUÉBÉCOISE by Stéphanie Walsh Matth... more Page 1. LE RÉALISME MAGIQUE DANS LA LITTÉRATURE CONTEMPORAINE QUÉBÉCOISE by Stéphanie Walsh Matthews A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of French University of Toronto ...
Oxford Bibliographies Online Datasets
Symmetry, 2021
Ritual knots are symmetrical crisscrossing designs that appear in distant cultures around the wor... more Ritual knots are symmetrical crisscrossing designs that appear in distant cultures around the world. Their independent emergence is plausibly due to shared features of human cognition and experience that such patterns represent. Since empirical investigation of this possibility is lacking in the literature, our aim is to open up this research area. We do so by asking whether the cultural production and appreciation of ritual knots could be conditioned or motivated by alignments and affordances linked to creative human cognition-advanced analogical modeling processes that are themselves often discussed in terms of bidirectional blending and symmetrical mapping. If manual tracing of a traditional knot design had positive priming effects on such reasoning processes, as we hypothesize, this would suggest an explanatory link between the two. To begin testing this hypothesis, we selected a basic, traditional knot design from Tibet, along with three established measures of formal analogical reasoning and one original measure of syntactic preference involving reciprocal constructions. We then undertook a series of cognitive trials testing for potential cognitive benefits of manually tracing the design. We contrasted prime condition results with a control group and an anti-prime condition group. The data show observable effects of time across multiple measures but no significant effects of time or condition, controlling for reported mindfulness. While this rules out the short-term priming effects of enhanced analogical reasoning at the analytic level following brief manual tracing of this design, the research opens the way for further empirical experimentation on the nature and emergence of symmetrical knots and their potential relationships with patterns of human thought.
Symmetry
Ritual knots are symmetrical crisscrossing designs that appear in distant cultures around the wor... more Ritual knots are symmetrical crisscrossing designs that appear in distant cultures around the world. Their independent emergence is plausibly due to shared features of human cognition and experience that such patterns represent. Since empirical investigation of this possibility is lacking in the literature, our aim is to open up this research area. We do so by asking whether the cultural production and appreciation of ritual knots could be conditioned or motivated by alignments and affordances linked to creative human cognition—advanced analogical modeling processes that are themselves often discussed in terms of bidirectional blending and symmetrical mapping. If manual tracing of a traditional knot design had positive priming effects on such reasoning processes, as we hypothesize, this would suggest an explanatory link between the two. To begin testing this hypothesis, we selected a basic, traditional knot design from Tibet, along with three established measures of formal analogica...
Chinese Semiotic Studies
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a powerful new form of inquiry unto human cognition that ... more Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a powerful new form of inquiry unto human cognition that has obvious implications for semiotic theories, practices, and modeling of mind, yet, as far as can be determined, it has hardly attracted the attention of semioticians in any meaningful analytical way. AI aims to model and thus penetrate mentality in all its forms (perception, cognition, emotion, etc.) and even to build artificial minds that will surpass human intelligence in the near future. This paper takes a look at AI through the lens of semiotic analysis, in the context of current philosophies such as posthumanism and transhumanism, which are based on the assumption that technology will improve the human condition and chart a path to the future progress of the human species. Semiotics must respond to the AI challenge, focusing on how abductive responses to the world generate meaning in the human sense, not in software or algorithms. The AI approach is instructive, but semiotics is ...
Chinese Semiotic Studies, 2014
Canada’s relationship to semiotics has been one of engagement, isolation, continued interest, and... more Canada’s relationship to semiotics has been one of engagement, isolation, continued interest, and convergence. Semiotics in Canada has existed for a considerable period of time and, recently, has made itself a niche in the academic landscape by focusing on applications in three specific fields-forensics, robotics, and mathematics. Through our survey of the evolution of semiotics in adjacent and parallel fields, we demonstrate how semiotics serves as a veritable bridge between the sciences and the humanities. Providing a historical, contextual, and heuristic mapping of semiotics as it is currently used in Canadian institutions provides new inroads and applications that are required for the continued success of semiotics.
Symmetry
Ritual knots are symmetrical crisscrossing designs that appear in distant cultures around the wor... more Ritual knots are symmetrical crisscrossing designs that appear in distant cultures around the world. Their independent emergence is plausibly due to shared features of human cognition and experience that such patterns represent. Since empirical investigation of this possibility is lacking in the literature, our aim is to open up this research area. We do so by asking whether the cultural production and appreciation of ritual knots could be conditioned or motivated by alignments and affordances linked to creative human cognition—advanced analogical modeling processes that are themselves often discussed in terms of bidirectional blending and symmetrical mapping. If manual tracing of a traditional knot design had positive priming effects on such reasoning processes, as we hypothesize, this would suggest an explanatory link between the two. To begin testing this hypothesis, we selected a basic, traditional knot design from Tibet, along with three established measures of formal analogica...
Evolutionary Semiotics; Bio Semiotics
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Papers by Stéphanie Walsh Matthews
Semiotics 2014 includes a selection of revised, peer-reviewed papers originally presented at the 39th Annual Meeting of the Semiotic Society of America, Seattle, Washington, 2–5 October 2014. The Semiotic Society of America is an interdisciplinary professional organization that supports innovative scholarship linking analytical and critical approaches to the postmodern world. The SSA Yearbook is an annual peer-reviewed publication series sponsored by the Semiotic Society of America, providing both a timely overview of current developments in Semiotic research and a regular outlet for members of the society to publish aspects of their current work.
pdf includes Masthead, Preface and Table of Contents for 2014 Yearbook of the Semiotic Society of America. Ottawa: Legas. xiv, 694 pp.