Introduction: What's so Special About Faces? Visages at the Crossroad Between Philosophy, Semiotics and Cognition

In this introduction we offer an overview of the 15 articles of the special issue What’s so special about faces? Visages at the crossroad between philosophy, semiotics and cognition, sorting them into five broad topics, i.e. (i) the attempt at overcoming the notion that there is a one-to-one mapping between certain emotions and facial expressions, (ii) the nature of some properties at play in face perception, (iii) the special status of faces (especially our own) in cognition, (iv) facial tools such as masks, (v) the socio-cultural meaning of represented faces.