Kant and the Platypus

Blurb

Kant and the Platypus : Essays on Language and Cognition is a book by Umberto Eco which was published in Italian as Kant e l'ornitorinco in 1997. An English edition, translated by Alastair McEwen, appeared in 1999.
The book develops some aspects of Eco's A Theory of Semiotics which came out in 1976.
In the first chapter Eco argues against Nietzsche's assertion that the truth is a poetically elaborated "mobile army of metaphors, metonymies and anthropomorphisms" that subsequently get into knowledge, "illusions whose illusory nature has been forgotten".
In chapter two, working with ideas derived from Charles Sanders Peirce and Immanuel Kant, Eco compares linguistic and perceptual meaning when confronted with the unencountered.
Chapter three explores the Aztec encounter with the horse in terms of Cognitive Type, the private mechanism that allows identification of an object, and of Nuclear Content, which clarifies the relevant features inter-subjectively. To this is added Molar Content, which provides a much broader range of knowledge, even if restricted to specific competences. From these he develops an understanding of social elements in the organisation of knowledge.