Welcome to this seminar where Prof. Hongbing Yu will introduce a new framework: Critical Cognitive Semiotics (CCS), which happens to share the abbreviation of the former Centre for Cognitive Semiotics, which this seminar series is heir to. As the rich abstract below shows, be prepared for acts of syntheses that are even bolder that those that we are used to in cognitive semiotics. The presentation will be given on zoom, but those who can will meet in the room as usual, or on the zoom link, from 15:00 for self-introductions.

In my talk, I will provide a synoptic reflection and formative synthesis of my own sustained inquiry over recent years, establishing what I would like to call Critical Cognitive Semiotics (CCS) as a transformative framework and fundamental methodology for understanding human existence at the intersection of biosemiotics, cognitive science, and Eastern radical ontologies. This framework provides the dynamic theoretical armature for an explicit instantiation: the Cultural Semiotics of Jingshen (精神), through which the methodology of CCS is realized. Within this inquiry, Jingshen is reaffirmed as the holistic flux of mind, vitality, and creativity: the primordial semiotic energy that drives the "Becoming of Being". I argue that while humans are biologically driven to model their worlds through "supersession" (where the model obscures the dynamical object for the sake of utility), this process inevitably leads to "semiotic capture" and existential suffering (Duḥkha) when models become rigid, frozen, and opaque. To counter this depletion, I propose "cognitive homeostasis" as the desirable state of equilibrium within the Jingshen flux, achieved through the dynamic management of hemispheric attention. By analyzing the "historization" of figures like Confucius and the ritualistic nature of "languaging", we can come up with a "conceptual signpost" to remind us about and to expose the "objective illusion" that traps the modern subject within a brittle, and often digitalized, semiosphere. Ultimately, I explore a hierarchy of three layers of freedom, culminating in "antisemiosis" and "drifting" (游). These are presented as necessary cognitive technologies to liberate Jingshen from symbolic stasis, transitioning the subject from a "user of signs" to an "agent of presence" in an ultra-semiosic state.