Publication 4572

Is cognition limited to psychological representations and their linguistic counterparts? Is meaning restricted to propositional contents? “Sequentiality of Meaning and Cognitive Forms” challenges the traditional assumptions in the answers to these questions. It scrutinizes the systems that produce cognitive forms from their elements and the operations they realize. These systems are systems based on meaning. Meaning systems are psychic and social systems. For our purpose, the notion of meaning is restricted to the psychic and social concretions of the interpretative processing of signals. Knowledge is described across two paths: i) as a process resulting in a cognitive form, traditionally called representation, because it has been exemplified and scrutinized in psychic systems articulated through the elements of consciousness (representations); ii) according to operations with multiple instantiation, and therefore not limited to human consciousness or psychic representations. Relevance: The text addresses the core of the constructivism’s claim concerning the operative conditioning of knowledge construction. It explores the acquisition of self-reference in systems mobilising cognitive forms, such as communicative and psychic systems, in order to understand how cognition contributes to the modification or orientation of their elements.

Key words: Cognition, meaning, communication, psychic systems, consciousness.