Research / Research program
Agency, Social Ontology and Epistemic Regulation
The relations between agents’ purposes, social expectations and the assessment of what we claim and do.
Agendas and argumentative practices
This program examines agents’ activity within shared practices. An agenda specifies the kind of result towards which they orient their activity. Attention to these agendas allows us to ask about the variety of purposes a practice can fulfil for its participants.
In the 2015 work with Danny Marrero, argumentation is studied in relation to the agendas agents seek to advance or fulfil. The proposal aims to explain practices whose purposes may differ, together with the conditions under which performance is assessed.
Roles and social standards
The same work distinguishes the demands an agent adopts for an activity from those socially assigned to that agent. The assessment of performance can take both into account. Expectations associated with professional practice provide a case in which this distinction becomes visible.
Agendive roles comprise activities and agendas associated with social roles and constituted socially and historically. A role is articulated with others: a teacher’s activity relates to that of a student, and a doctor’s to that of a patient. These relations offer a way to examine how possibilities for action and the demands of a context are organized.
Trust and epistemic regulation
Questions about knowledge include the trust we place in those who provide information and the demands we apply to their claims. The work on fiduciary range and framework examines this relation between trust, context and standards of justification.
The 2009 text on the logic of cognitive systems for law, with Danny Marrero and Carlos Andrés Gómez, proposes attention to the reasoning of law-users and the conditions of their practices. The study of expert testimony forms another strand of this research, connected with the assessment of claims in specialized contexts.
Selected reading
Work on argumentation, trust and institutional contexts, alongside the foundational account of Agentive Semiotics.
2015
The Agentive Approach to Argumentation: A Proposal
With Danny Marrero: agendas, argumentative practices and the assessment of performance.
Full bibliographic record2013
Agentes y circunstancias. Consideraciones en torno a factores epistémicos y fiduciarios en la argumentación intercultural
Epistemic and fiduciary factors in intercultural argumentation.
Full bibliographic record2011
El rango y el marco fiduciario. Reflexiones ulteriores sobre la duda y la creencia
Trust and standards of justification across contexts.
Full bibliographic record2015
El testimonio de un experto. Una perspectiva agentiva
An agentive perspective on expert testimony.
Full bibliographic record2009
Prolegómenos a una lógica de los sistemas cognitivos para el derecho
With Danny Marrero and Carlos Andrés Gómez: a proposal on legal reasoning through cognitive systems.
Full bibliographic record2015
Elementos de Semiótica Agentiva
An account of the foundations of the agentive program.
Full bibliographic record
Recent presentations
Presentations from 2026 on joint activity, social reality and clinical inquiry.
Semiótica Agentiva y Realidad Social
Conferencia por invitación. Coloquio Investigaciones Filosóficas y Científicas sobre el Lenguaje, Facultad de Humanidades, Universidad del Valle, Colombia. Julio de 2026.
Event detailsJoint Commitment without Plural Subjects: Agentive Systems, Joint Agendas, and the (In)determinacy of Social Meaning
Ponencia. Sixth Conference of the International Association for Cognitive Semiotics (IACS-6): (In)determinacy of Meaning. Sapienza Università di Roma, Roma, Italia. 4 de junio de 2026.
Event detailsFrom Suspicion to Settled Uptake: Agentive Semiotics and the Regulation of Epistemic Stances in Clinical Inquiry
Ponencia. Sixth Conference of the International Association for Cognitive Semiotics (IACS-6): (In)determinacy of Meaning. Sapienza Università di Roma, Roma, Italia. 4 de junio de 2026.
Event detailsRealidad social, relaciones de poder y declarativos: una propuesta desde la semiótica agentiva
Conferencia por invitación. Foro Lenguaje, Discurso y Cognición: Perspectivas en Desarrollo, Facultad de Humanidades, Universidad del Valle, Colombia. Mayo de 2026.
Event details
Connection with Agentive Semiotics
The notions of agent and agenda provide a starting point for studying how meaning-making and social practices are articulated.
Read about Agentive Semiotics
Questions about social reality
The 2026 presentations raise questions about joint agendas and the determination of social meaning, as well as the relations between declarations and power. These themes extend the inquiry towards the conditions under which agents’ activity participates in the organization of social reality.
The presentation on clinical inquiry delivered in Rome addresses the regulation of epistemic stances. Its title frames a movement from suspicion to settled uptake. The selected talks locate these current questions alongside the earlier work on argumentation and trust.