1. Human cognition as chance-seeking system Emanuele Bardone Department of Philosophy Computational Philosophy Laboratory The University of Pavia (Italy) bardone at unipv.it http://philos.unipv.it/emabardo

2. How to account for designing activities in cognitive terms? i.e. interface design

3. All thinking is in signs The word sign includes “feeling, image, conception, and other representation” (Peirce, 1931-1958, 5.283) No symptoms, no diagnosis No evidences, no scientific explanations

4. If all thinking is in signs, how do we come up with signs? How to define sign activity? We come up with signs by sign activity, and sign activity is an inferential one, namely, abduction

5. The activities of cognitive niche construction can be described by abduction, which accounts for those hypothetical inferences that are operated through actions Abduction models niche construction activities

6. Signs activity is: explaining The explanatory dimension of abduction The physician looks for symptoms from which she can infer what is the disease the patient is affected by Symptoms (signs) Disease (explanation)

7. An abductive hypothesis can be highly implausible from the “propositional” point of view and nevertheless it can be adopted for its instrumental virtues. Instrumental abduction Magnani, 2001; Gabbay & Woods, 2005; Magnani, 2009

8. Instrumental abduction In diagnostic setting, artifacts are appropriately designed so as to permit a physician to enhance her/his ability to detect symptoms