Peirce
collected and analyzed by
Robert Marty
Department of Mathematics
University of Perpignan
Perpignan, France
With an Appendix of
12 Further Definitions or Equivalents
proposed by
Alfred Lang
Dept of Psychology
University of Bern
Bern, Switzerland
Abbreviations:
MS = Manuscripts
CP = Collected Papers of Charles Peirce
NEM = New Elements of Mathematics
SS = Semiotics and Significs: Letters to Lady Welby
Thing is that for which a representation stand prescinded from all that can
serve to establish a relation with any possible relation.
[...] every comparison requires, besides the related thing, the ground, and the
correlate, also a (mediating representation which) (represents the relate to be a
representation of the same correlate) (which this mediating representation
itself represents). Such a mediating representation may be termed an
(interpretant), who says that a foreigner says the same thing which he himself
says.
[...] Now a sign has, as such, three references : first, it is a sign to some
thought which interprets it; second, it is a sign for some object to which in that
thought it is equivalent, third, it is a sign, in some respect or quality, which
brings it into connection with its object. Let us ask what the three correlates
are to which a thought-sign refers.
Let us examine some of the characters of signs in general. A sign must in the
first place have some qualities in itself which serve to distinguish it, a word
must have a peculiar sound different from the sound of another word; but it
makes no difference what the sound is, so long as it is something
distinguishable. In the next place, a sign must have a real physical connection
with the thing it signifies so as to be affected by that thing. A weather-cock,
which is a sign of the direction of the wind, must really turn with the wind.
This word in this connection is an indirect one; but unless there be some way
or other which shall connect words with the things they signifie, and shall
ensure their correspondance with them, they have no value as signs of those
things. Whatever has these two characters is fit to become a sign. It is at least
a symptom, but it is not actually a sign unless it is used as such; that is unless
it is interpreted to thought and addresses itself to some mind. As thought is
itself a sign we may express this by saying that the sign must be interpreted as
another sign. [...]
A sign is in a conjoint relation tothe thing denoted and to the mind. If this
triple relation is not of a degenerate species, the sign is related to its object
only in consequence of a mental association, and depend upon a habit. Such
signs are always abstract and general, because because habits are general rules
to which the organism has become subjected. They are, for the most part,
conventional or arbitrary. They include all general words, the main body of
speech, and any mode of conveying a judgement. For the sake of brevity I will
call them tokens.
[...] A very broad and important class of triadics characters [consist of]
representations. A representation is that character of a thing by virtue of
which, for the production of a certain mental effect, it may stand in place of
another thing. The thing having this character I term a representamen, the
mental effect, or thought, its interpretant, the thing for which it stands, its
object.
11 -l901- C.P. 5-569 -CP 5-569. Truth and falsity and error .
No doubt, intelligent consciousness must enter into the series. If the series of
successive interpretants comes to an end, the sign is thereby rendered
imperfect, at least. If, an interpretant idea having been determined in an
individual consciousness it determines no outward sign, but that consciousness
becomes annihilated, or otherwise loses all memory or other significant effect
of the sign, it becomes absolutely undiscoverable that there ever was such an
idea in that consciousness; and in that case it is difficult to see how it could
have any meaning to say that that consciousness ever had the idea, since the
saying so would be an interpretant of that idea.
17 - 1903 - C.P. 1=53B- - Lowell Lectures: Lecture III, vol. 21, 3d Draught .
Every sign stands for an object independent of itself; but it can only be a sign
of that object in so far as that object is itself of the nature of a sign or thought.
For the sign does not affect the object but is affected by it; so that the object
must be able to convey thought, that is, must be of the nature of thought or a
sign. [...]
19 - 1903 - C.P. 1-540 - Lowell Lectures: Lecture III, vol. 21, 3d Draught.
20 - 1903 - C.P. 1-541 - Lowell Lectures: Lecture III, vol. 21, 3d Draught .
[...] Conversely, every thought proper involves the idea of a triadic relation.
For every thought proper involves the idea of a sign. Now a sign is a thing
related to an object and determining in the interpreter an interpreting sign of
the same object. It involves the relation between sign, interpreting sign, and
object. There is a threefold distinction between signs, which is not in the least
psuchological in its nature, but is purely logical, and is of the atmost
importance in logic.
[...] In its genuine form, thirdness is the triadic relation existing between a
sign, its object, and the interpreting thought, itself a sign, considered as
constituting the mode of being of a sign. A sign mediates between the
interpretant sign and its object. Taking sign in its broadest sense, its
interpretant is not necessarily a sign. [...]
A sign therefore is an object which is in relation to its object on the one hand
and to an interpretant on the other, in such a way as to bring the interpretant
into a relation to the object, corresponding to its own relation to the object. I
might say similar to its own for a correspondence consist in a similarity; but
perhaps correspondence is narrower.
30 - 1905 - SS. pp. 192-193 - Letter to Lady Welby (Draft) presumably July
1905 .
(3) and is also in a triadic relation to B for a purely passive correlate, C, this
triadic relation being such as to determine C to be in a dyadic relation, , to B,
the relation corresponding in a recognized way to the relation .
In the which statement the sense in which the words active and passive are
used is that in a given relationship considering the various characters of all or
some of the correlates with the exclusion of those only which involve all the
correlates and are immediately implied in the statement of the relationship,
none of those which involve only non-passive correlates will by immediately
essential necessity vary with any variation of those involving only passive
correlates; while no variation of characters involving only non-active elements
will by immediately essential necessity involve a variation of any character
involving only active elements. And it may be added that by active-passive is
meant active and passive if the entire collection of correlates excluding the
correlates under consideration be divided into two parts and one part and the
other be alternately excluded from consideration; while purely active or
passive means active or passive without being active-passive.
31 - 1905 - S.S. pp. 193 -Letter to Lady Welby (Draft) presumably July 1905 .
This definition avoids the niceties for the sake of emphasizing the principal
factors of a sign. Nevertheless, some explanations may be desirable. But first
for the terminology. I use "sign" in the widest sense of the definition. It is a
wonderful case of an almost popular use of a very broad word in almost the
exact sense of the scientific definition. [...]
I formerly preferred the word representamen. But there was no need of this
horrid long word. [...]
I thought of a representamen as taking the place of the thing; but a sign is not a
substitute. Ernst Mach has also fallen into that snare.
32 - v. 1905 - MS 283. p.125, 129, 131. The basis of Pragmaticism .
33 - 1906 - S.S. 196 - Letter to Lady Welby (Draft) dated "1906 March 9" .
I use the word "Sign" in the widest sense for any medium for the
communication or extension of a Form (or feature). Being medium, it is
determined by something, called its Object, and determines something, called
its Interpretant or Interpretand. But some distinctions have to be borne in mind
in order rightly to understand what is meant by the Object and by the
Interpretant. In order that a Form may be extended or communicated, it is
necessary that it should have been really embodied in a Subject independently
of the communication; and it is necessary that there should be another subject
in which the same form is embodied only in consequence of the
communication. The Form, (and the Form is the Object of the Sign), as it
really determines the former Subject, is quite independent of the sign; yet we
may and indeed must say that the object of a sign can be nothing but what that
sign represents it to be. Therefore, in order to reconcile these apparently
conflicting Truths, it is indispensible to distinguish the immediate object from
the dynamical object.
The same form of distinction extends to the interpretant; but as applied to the
interpretant, it is complicated by the circumstance that the sign not only
determines the interpretant to represent (or to take the form of) the object, but
also determines the interpretant to represent the sign. Indeed in what we may,
from one point of view, regard as the principal kind of signs, there is one
distinct part appropriated to representing the object, and another to
representing how this very sign itself represents that object. The class of signs
I refer to are the dicisigns. In "John is in love with Helen" the object signified
is the pair, John and Helen. But the "is in love with" signifies the form this
sign represents itself to represent John and Helen's Form to be. That this is so,
is shown by the precise equivalence between any verb in the indicative and the
same made the object of "I tell you". "Jesus wept" = "I tell you that Jesus
wept".
First, an analysis of the essence of a sign, (stretching that word to its widest
limits, as anything witch, being determined by an object, determines an
interpretation to determination, through it, by the same object), leads to a
proof that every sign is determined by its object, either first, by partaking in
the characters of the object, when I call the sign an Icon; secondly, by being
really and in its individual existence connected with the individual object,
when I call the sign an Index; thirdly, by more or less approximate certainty
that it will be interpreted as denoting the object, in consequence of a habit
(which term I use as including a natural disposition), when I call the sign a
Symbol.
[...] That thing which causes a sign as such is called the object (according to
the usage of speech, the "real", but more accurately, the existent object)
represented by the sign : the sign is determined to some species of
correspondence with that object.[...]
For the proper significate outcome of a sign, I propose the name, the
interpretant of the sign. [...]
[...] How any sign, of whatsoever kind, mediates between an Object to some
sort of conformity with which it is moulded, and by which it is thus
determined, and an effect which the sign is intended to bring about and which
it represents to be the outcome of the object influence upon it. It is of the first
importance in such studies as these that the two correlates of the sign should
be clearly distinguished : the Object by which the sign is determined and the
Meaning, or as I usually call it, the Interpretant, which is determined by the
sign, and through it by the object. The meaning may itself be a sign, a concept,
for exemple, as may also the object. But everyboby who looks out of his eyes
well knows that thoughts bring about tremendous physical effects, that are not,
as such, signs. Feelings, too, may be excited by signs without thereby and
theorein being themselves signs. We observe that the very same object may be
several entirely different signs ; or in some way in other sign. [...] There are
meanings that are feelings, meanings that are existent things or facts, and
meanings that are concepts. [...]
[...] By a Sign, I mean anything that is, on the one hand, in some way
determined by an object and, on the other hand, which determines some
awareness, and this in such manner that the awareness is thus determined by
that object. [...]
Of the distinction between the Objects, or better the "Originals" and the
Interpretant of a Sign.
2/ to indicate how to identify the conditions under which .... significate has
the mode of being it is represented having [text unfinshed].
b - [...] Now any sign, of whatever kind, mediates between an object to some
sort of conformity with which it is moulded, and which thus determines it, and
an effect which it is intended to produce, and which it represents to be the
outcome of the object. These two correlates of the sign have to be carefully
distinguished. The former is called the object of the sign; the latter is the
"meaning", or, as I usually term it, the "interpretant" of the sign. [...]
c - [...] Now the essential nature of a sign is that it mediates between its object
which is supposed to determine it and to be, in some sense, the cause of it, and
its meaning, or, as I prefer to say, in order to avoid certains ambiguities, its
Interpretant which is determined by the sign, and is, in a sense, the effect of it;
and which the sign represents to flow as an influences, from the object. [...]
But thought being itself a sign the meaning must have been conveyed to that
quasi-mind, from some anterior utterer of the thought, of which the utterer of
the moulded sign had been the interpreter. The meaning of the moulded sign
being conveyed to its interpreter, became the meaning of a thought in that
quasi-mind; and as these conveyed in a thought-sign required an interpreter,
the interpreter of the moulded sign becoming the utterer of this new thought-
sign".
The object and the interpretant are thus merely the two correlates of the sign;
the one being antecedent, the other consequent of the sign. Moreover, the sign
being defined in terms of these correlative correlates, it is confidently to be
expected that object and interpretant should precisely correspond, each to the
other. In point of fact, we do find that the immediate object and emotional
interpretant correspond, both being apprehensions, or are "subjective"; both,
too, pertain to all signs without exception. The real object and energetic
interpretant also correspond, both being real facts or things. But to our
surprise, we find that the logical interpretant does not correspond with any
kind of object. This defect of correspondance between object and interpretant
must be rooted in the essential difference there is between the nature of an
object and that of an interpretant; which difference is that former antecedes
while the latter succeeds. The logical interpretant must, therefore, be in a
relatively future tense.
46 - 1908 -_NEM III/2 p. 886 - Letter to P.E.B. Jourdain dated "1908 Dec 5" .
[...] My idea of a sign has been so generalized that I have at length despaired
of making anybody comprehend it, so that for the sake of being understood, I
now limit it, so as to define a sign as anything which is on the one hand so
determined (or specialized) by an object and on the other hand so determines
the mind of an interpreter of it that the latter is thereby determined mediately,
or indirectly, by that real object that determines the sign. Even this may well
be thought an excessively generalized definition. The determination of the
Interpreter's mind I term the Interpretant of the sign. [...]
48 - 1909 - C.P. 8-177 ou NEM III/2 p. 839 - Letter to William James dated
"1909 Feb.26" .
49 - 1909 - NEM III/2 p. 840-1 - Letter to William James dated "1909 Feb.26"
.
l909 Oct.28
51 - 1909 - NEM III/2 p.867 - Letter to William James dated "1909 Dec 25".
Signs, the only thing swith which a human being can, without derogation,
consent to have any transaction, being a sign himself, are triadic; since a sign
denotes a subject, and signifies a form of fact, which latter it brings into
connexion with the former. [...]
Thus, the sentence "Cain killed Abel", which is a sign, refers at least as much
to Abel as to Cain, even if it be not regarded as it should, as having "a killing"
as a third object. But the set of objects may be regarded as making up one
complex Object. In what follows and often elsewhere signs will be treated as
having but one object each for the sake of dividing difficulties of the study. If
a Sign is other than its object, there must exist, either in thought or in
expression, some explanation or argument or other context, showing how -
upon what system or for what reason the sign represents the Object or set of
Objects that it does. Now the sign and the Explanation together make up
another sign, and since the explanation will be a Sign, it will probably require
an additional explanation, which taken together with the already enlarged Sign
will make up a still larger sign; and proceeding in the same way, we shall, or
should, ultimately reach a sign of itself, containing its own explanation and
those of all its significant parts; and according to this explanation each such
part has some other part as its Object. According to this every sign has,
actually or virtually, what we may call a Precept of explanation according to
which it is to be understood as a sort of emanation, so to speak, of its Object.
56 - 1911 - MS 849 :
The word sign, as it will here be used, denotes any object of thought which
excites any kind of mental action, whether voluntary or not, concerning
something otherwise recognized. [...] Every sign denotes something, and the
anything it denotes is termed an object of it. [... ] I term the idea or mental
action that a sign exites and which it causes the interpreter to attribute to the
Object or Objects of it, its interpretant. [...] For a Sign cannot denote an object
not otherwise known to its interpreter, for the obvious reason that if he does
not already know the Object at all, he cannot possess these ideas by means of
which alone his attention can be narrowed to the very object denoted. Every
object of experience excites an idea of some sort; but if that idea is not
associated sufficiently and in the right way so with some previous experience
so as to narrow the attention, it will not be a sign.
A Sign necessarily has for its Object some fragment of history, that is, of
history of ideas. It must excite some idea. That idea may go wholly to
narrowing the attention, as in such sign as "man", "virtue", "manner".
57 - v. 1911 - MS 675
[...] In the first place, a "Representamen", like a word, -indeed, most words are
representamens-, is not a single thing, but is of the nature of a mental habit, it
consists in the fact that, something would be. The twenty odd "the" on
ordinary page are all one and the same word, - that is, they are so many
instances of a single word. Here are two instances of Representamens: "--
killed--", "a man". The first of several characters which are each of them either
essential to a sign being truly an instance of a Representamen or else
necessary properties of such an object, is that it should have power to draw the
attention of any mind that is fit to "interpret" it to two or more "Objects" of it.
[ The first of the above examples of instances of representamens has four
objects ; the second has two.] The second such character is that at least two of
the objects must be other than the representamen. A closer examination than I
have made would I am sure lead to a fuller description of the character. The
third is the property that the interpreter of the representamen must have some
collateral experiential acquaintance, direct or indirect, with each object of the
Representamen before he can perform his function [...]
Nature of a Sign . Its object is all that the sign recognize; since the sign cannot
be understood until the Object is already identically known, though it may be
indefinite. It so, it need only be known in its indefiniteness. The interpretant is
the mental action on the Object that the sign excites.
For instance the word dog -meaning some dog, implies the knowledge that
there is some dog, but it remains indefinite. The Interpretant is the somewhat
indefinite idea of the characters that the "some dog" referred to has. And we
have to distinguish between the Real Object and the Object as implied in the
sign. The latter is some one of the dogs known already by direct experience or
some one of the dogs which we more or less believe to exist.
The word dog does not excite any other notion than of the characters that .....
to possess.
The "Object" dog causes us to think of is such a dog as the person addressed
has any notion of. But the real Object includes alternatively other dogs which
are not known to the party addressed as yet but which he may come to know .
- first the essential characters which the word implies -the essential
interpretant.
- third the characters it was intended specially to excite -perhaps only a part of
the essential characters perhaps others not essential and which the word now
excites though no such thing has hitherto been known.
In order to understand a Sign better we must consider that what it excites some
sort of mental action about is in its Real Being either a history or a Part of a
history and one part of it may be a Sign of another part.
Excites the idea of a Dog....is sign of a Dog and its Interpretant is forced by
the interpreter own belief in the truth of the sign to regard its being a dog to
admit that it is possible a ratter.
The sign may appeal to the Interpreter himself to assert that the Matter of Fact
denoted does call for the....of certain character... or the Sign may exert a Force
to cause the Interpreter to attach some Idea to the Object of the Sign.
60 - MS 670 :
A Sign, then, is anythin whatsoever -whether an Actual or a May-be or a
Would-be,- which affects a mind, its Interpreter, and draw that interpreter's
attention to some Object whether Actual, May-be or Would-be) which has
already come within the sphere of his experience; and beside this purely
selective action of a sign, it has a power of exciting the mind (whether directly
by the image or the sound or indirectly) to some kind of feeling, or to effort of
some kind or to thought; [...]
The easiest of those which are of philosophical interest is the idea of a sign, or
representation. A sign stands for something to the idea which it produces, or
modifies. Or, it is a vehicle conveying into the mind something from without.
That for which it stands is called its object; that which it conveys, its meaning;
and the idea to which it gives rise, its interpretant. The object of representation
can be nothing but a representation of which the first representation is the
interpretant. But an endless series of representations, each representing the one
behind it, may be conceived to have an absolute object at its limit. The
meaning of a representation can be nothing but a representation. In fact, it is
nothing but the representation itself conceived as stripped of irrelevant
clothing. But this clothing never can be completely stripped off; it is only
changed for something more diaphanous. So there is an infinite regression
here. Finally, the interpretant is nothing but another representation to which
the torch of truth is handed along; and as representation, it has its interpretant
again. Lo, another infinite series.
A sign is a thing which is the representative, or deputy, of another thing for the
purpose of affecting a mind [...]
But at this point certain distinctions are called for. That which is
communicated from the object through the Sign to the interpretant is a Form;
that is to say, it is nothing like an existent, but is a power, is the fact that
something would happen under certain conditions. This form is really
embodied in the object, meaning that the conditional relation which constitutes
the form is true of the form or it is in the Object. In the Sign it is embodied
only in a representative sense, meaning that whether by virtue of some real
modification of the Sign, or otherwise, the Sign becomes endowed with the
power of communicating it to an interpretant. It may be in the interpretant
directly, as it is in the Object, or it may be in the Interpretant dynamically, as
behaviour of the Interpretant (this happens when a military officer uses the
sign "Halt !" or "Forward march !" and his men simply obey him, perhaps
automatically) or it may be in the Interpretant likewise only representatively.
In existential graphs the Interpretant is affected in the last way; but for the
present, it is best to consider only the common characters of all signs.
For instance, ...... the sign, the sentence "Let'songster of `Heliopolis' be our
designation of the phenix" we may variously regard as B, either the phenix or
the writer's determination, etc.. In any case howewer what is essential to the
relation between the sentence and B is the writer's determination of mind to
have the phenix called the songster of Heliopolis. This determination would be
so shaped howewer whether expressed in this sentence or not. And the
subsequent statement the sense in which certain correlates of a given
relationship are said to be `active' or `passive' is that considering the different
characters of all the correlates excepting only these that are immediately
implied in the statement of the relationship none which involves only non-
passives correlates will by immediate essential necessity vary with a variation
of those involving only passive correlates; while no variation of which involve
only non-active correlates will by immediate essential necessity carry with
them variation of those which involve only active correlates; while by `active-
passive' is meant active in respect to some correlates and passive in respect to
others ........`active or passive' meaning........ active and ......without being
active passive.
[...] which is communicated from the Object through the Sign to the
Interpretant is a Form. It is not a singular thing; for if a Singular thing were
first in the Object and afterward in the Interpretant outside the Object, it must
thereby cease to be in the Object. The form that is communicated does not
necessarily cease to be in one thing when it comes to be in a different thing,
because its being is the being of a predicate. The Being of a Form consist in
the truth of a conditional proposition. Under given circumstances something
would be true. The Form is in the Object, one may say, entitatively, meaning
that that conditional relation, or following of consequent upon reason, which
constitutes the Form is literally true of the Object. In the Sign the Form may
.... be embodied entitatively, but it must be embodied representatively, that is,
in respect to the Form communicated, the Sign produce upon the interpretant
an effect similar to that which the Object would under favorable
circumstances.
68 - MS 793[On Signs] .
For the purpose of this inquiry a Sign may be defined as a Medium for the
communication of a Form. It is not logically necessary that any thing
possessing consciousness, that is, feeling or the peculiar commun quality of all
our feeling should be concerned. But it is necessary that there should be two,
if not three, quasi-minds, meaning things capable of varied determinations as
to forms of the kind communicated.
2. as related to an other;
The most characteristic form of thirdness is that of a sign; and it is shown that
every cognition is of the nature of a sign. Every sign has an object, which may
be regarded either as it is immediately represented in the sign to be, and as it is
in its own firstness. It is equally essential to the function of a sign that it
should determine an Interpretant, or a second correlate related to the object of
the sign as the sign is itself related to that object; and this interpretant may be
regarded as the sign represents it to be, as it is in its pure secondness to the
object, and as it is in its own firstness.
76 - MS 1345.
by Robert Marty
The 76 texts on the sign spread from1865 to 1911 (for 60 of them that are
dated or whose dates are estimated). A brief study of the dispersion of the
dated texts shows that more than 80% of them were produced after 1902, that
is to say when Peirce was in his sixties. The production reaches a climax in
l903, the year of the Lowell conferences. In addition, if one assesses them by
their content, most of the non dated texts, and notably the eight definitions
grouped in MS 793 are from the same period. Our purpose not being to study
the evolution of Peirce's thinking in general, we will be interested only in the
different conceptions of the sign that he proposes if, nevertheless, one can
speak first of their differences before underlining their unity. Is it necessary to
remind ourselves that the fundamental unity of these conceptions is confirmed
by the constant reaffirmation of the triadic character of the sign? By
describing the Peircean sign as triadic we simply highlight the presence in all
implicit or explicit definition of the sign according to Peirce, three constitutive
elements (but the datum of these three elements does not exhaust the Peircean
concept of the sign since the relationship that links them together is lacking).
Peirce has varied the denomination of these three elements for reasons that he
has sometimes clarified. We should not forget that he is the author of a very
rigorous moral terminological (C.P.2-219 to 2 - 226). To designate the object
of direct experience necessarily at the origin of all semiotic phenomena, Peirce
uses the words "representation", "representamen" and especially "sign". He
uses the term "representation" to this end only in texts n1(1865), 6(1873) et
74 (n.d.), the other utilizations of the term designating the act or the fact of
representing, as found in texts 10, 19, 27, 50, 52. In the text n61, this word is
given as a synonym for "sign ". There is thus no reason to retain this term.
On the other hand, it is interesting to examine very closely the different uses
and distinctions between sign and representamen that Peirce first considers as
synonymous (n 9,1897) before making a distinction (n19, l903) and finally
deciding to abandon "representamen" (n31, l905) since he explains that the
popular usage of the word "sign" is very close to the exact sense of the
scientific definition. In saying this, he makes the decision to put aside the
formal distinction clearly established in l903 (n 22, l903). We find the
fundamental reason for abandoning this distinction in the statement, so often
repeated by Peirce, that it was impossible to observe a single representamen
that was not a sign. This conclusion is at odds with a number of authors, but in
agreement, it seems to me, with Peirce (since from l905 he no longer uses the
word representamen in any definitions except towards 1911 in the text n57.
However, the date attributed to this text being an estimation, it is possible to
put it in doubt, and as in any event Peirce uses it in this text in a restricted
sense, equivalent to legisign, there is no need to preserve this " horrible word "
and "sign" should be quite suitable. There would have perhaps been some
interest, on the other hand, in preserving representamen so as to concretize the
different conceptualizations of semiotic phenomena as between the Saussuro-
hjelmslevian tradition and the Peircean tradition. But the adoption of this
viewpoint would be a sort of renunciation of the debates on the profound
nature of these phenomena according to these two traditions ; the passive
acceptance of the fact that both traditions should develop independently would
thus deprive us of the clarity that the opening of conflicts can bring about in
the semiotic field.
To designate the object of the sign, Peirce employs on nearly every occasion
the word "object" accompanied with considerations that render it, explicitly or
implicitly, that which is connected to this object of direct experience that is the
sign. Sometimes Peirce designates it by the expression "some thing " and even
in the text n23 the sign is said to represent an aspect of the "True" (the
"Truth", the true universe), another representamen in the text n21, and a
subject in the n53. Moreover, the object is often qualified: Real, Natural or
Original in addition to the distinction between immediate object and dynamic
objects.
That mind must conceive it to be connected with its object so that it is possible
to reason from the sign to the thing.
"a special mental effect upon a mind in which certain associations have been
produced".
A systematic list of the words that Peirce uses to give content to the concept of
the interpretant shows that he attributes the following characteristics,
according to what he is saying at that moment and to the maturation of his
thinking: - it is a thought or interpretant thought in texts n,8, l0, 18, 28.
- it is a sign of the same object in 11, 12, 16, 24,25, 26, 27, 29, 54.
One sees that these characteristics (by excluding the last that is of a radically
different nature), can be classified in two groups:
- Those that refer to a sign in actu, that describe therefore this third element of
the semiotic phenomenon in its particularity and that are practically reducible
to an effect on a person or again to a determination of a mind, in the here and
now of the perception.
- Those that refer to an abstract sign which come from the logical analysis of
the phenomenon and form part of a formal construction, in which the
interpretant is described as a correlate of a triadic relationship.
Peirce had a great deal of difficulty getting people to accept this conception,
quite banal today, of a formal model of the sign. In his letter to Lady Welby
dated 23 December l908 he complains about his difficulties by writing : "I
have added 'on a person' so as to throw a cake to Cerberus, because I despair
of making people understand my own conception which is larger. " In
conclusion then, peircean conceptions of the sign lead us to retain three
fundamental elements as theoretical universals resulting from the logical
analysis of semiotic phenomena,:
The reader will have noticed that these groups and subgroups of definitions
possess common elements since the characteristics fundamental to them are
not exclusive of each other. However by observing the placings of texts
constituting the subgroups and by reminding ourselves that numbers l to 60
are classified by chronological order, this distribution shows a significant
change, if not of doctrine, at least of his approach to this connection of the
Sign to its Object. It suffices indeed to observe the pre-eminence from n29
(l905) of the characterization of this connection in terms of determination of S
by O to arrive at the conclusion that Peirce has decided to take into account,
round about l905, the dissymetric character of this relationship, which he has
expressed by writing that if, in a sign, O acts on S, the reverse is not
necessarily true. The consequence of this change will be the abandoning of the
central position granted to the triad in the global approach to the sign. Indeed,
to define a priori the sign as triadic implies that diadic relationships between
two elements that are induced by the triadic relationship are symmetrical.
Therefore if one wants to preserve the dissymmetry of this relationship, it is
necessary either to abandon the idea of basing the sign on the notion of triad,
or to add correctives (which would be difficult), or to change the perspective,
which does not imply the renunciation of the triadicity but simply causes it to
intervene at another level. We will see later, that a third approach, based on
the notion of communication, will tend to unify the two precedent
perspectives.
It is in text n32 that the change appears fully with the notion of "medium of
communication ". The next text (n33) is more precise: a sign is"a medium for
the communication or the extension of a form (or figure)". One finds this idea
of form in n 53 and 54 (19l0). It would seem that Peirce has attempted to
explain the fact that the determination of the Sign by the Object was such that
it produced the indirect determination of the Interpretant by the Object taking
into account that a certain "form"was present in each of the three elements of
the sign, as soon as the sign was established, and that the process of
establishment of the sign consisted in communicating (or conveying) this form
from the Object to the Interpreter through the Sign. This step does not exclude
triadicity insofar as it is precisely the presence of this "form"that, we think,
allows us to link triadically the three elements of the semiotic phenomenon
(by being incorporated in each of them). It would be the ground evoked by
Peirce in 2-228 (text n9, v.1897). One sees therefore that the two main
theoretical approachs that we have just elucidated in this group of texts, are
not exclusive. In conclusion we will distinguish therefore, without opposing
them, two Peircean conceptions of the sign: - a conception that, for
convenience, we will call "global triadic " derived from an analysis of
semiotic phenomena which considers as essential the fact that the three
elements therein are necessarily linked by a triadic relationship. - a conception
that we will call" analytic triadic" derived from a finer analysis in terms of the
determination of some elements by others (of the sign by the object and the
interpretant by the sign), the interplay of these two determinations leading to
the establishment of a triadic relationship between the three elements
necessarily present in semiotic phenomena (it is the presence of the conveyed
Form in the course of these successive determination that creates the triadic
relationship). To grasp this second conception better it is necessary to clarify
what Peirce understands by "determination" in the precise case of the sign, or,
in view of the difficulty of the task, to try to discern this notion better. Because
the explanations given by Peirce as to the sense in which he uses the words
"active" and "passive"in texts n30 and 66 appear to us to be no longer
operative. To the extent that we have been able to understand his thinking, it
seems to us that Peirce considers that there is character determination of one
correlate by those of another, the correlate B being active with reference to the
correlate A, if all characters of this latter which are involved in the semiotic
phenomenon are implied by the characters of B. Friday's footprint in the sand
perfectly illustrates this notion since it is just what it is, that is to say possessed
of characters that make it a sign, because the foot that has produced it has
communicated them without being modified itself, and it is thus a purely
active correlate. The imprint itself is a purely passive correlate for opposite
reasons . However if now one photographs this imprint, it is going to produce
an image on the film which owes all its characters to the imprint itself. In
relation to this photographic image the imprint will be therefore an active
correlate and it is clear that, for Peirce, the interpretant C is a purely passive
correlate determined by the imprint, this interpretant, triadic in nature, being
such that it incorporates, as an induced diadic relationship, the diadic
relationship established between Friday's foot and its imprint. However the
example that we quote is particular, it is a scholastic example. Nevertheless it
is, we think, by generalizing the case of signs of this type ( index) that Peirce
obtained the definition n 30.In others texts he has used terms that allow us to
higthlight somewhat this conception:
- in texts n37 and 40a, the sign is said to be "modeled to a sort of conformity
with its object".
- in 40c the Object is, in a certain sense, the cause of the sign which represents
the influence of this object, and that this influence is "indirect and is not of the
nature of a force" (40 d).
APPENDIX
12 Further Sign Definitions or Equivalent
proposed by Alfred Lang
Psychology, Univ. Bern, Switzerland (lang@psy.unibe.ch)
======================================
There are three aspects under which every phenomenon may be considered
and which may be regarded also as three elements of the phenomenon. Every
phenomenon is in the first place an image; so that it may be considered to be
or to contain a representation. In the second place, the phenomenon may be
objectified, or looked upon as a reality; in this way it is said to be or (more
usually) to contain _matter_. For matter is that by virtue of which everything
is. In the third place, the differences of its parts and its qualities may be
considered, and in this point of view, it is said to be or (more usually) to
contain _form_. For form is that by virtue of which anything is such as it is.
[...] Corresponding, then, to internal representation we have a representation,
in general, internal or external; which is a supposed thing standing for
something else. Corresponding to the matter of phenomena we have the
supposition of external realities or _things_; and corresponding to the matter
of phenomena we have _qualities_. Of these, representation is not altogether
hypothetical since we have at least something precisely similar in
consciousness. _Things_ are legitimate hypotheses, as we shall see when we
have developed the logic of hypothesis. _Qualities_ are fictions; for though it
is true that roses are red, yet redness is nothing, but a fiction framed for the
purpose of philosophizing; yet harmless so long as we remember that the
scholastic realism it implies is false. When the element of quality is eliminated
from _things_ by abstraction,; we have noumenal matter. When the
connection with things is eliminated from qualities, we have Pure Forms.
When the material and mental element is eliminated from representations we
have Concepts or, as I prefer to say in order to avoid the apparent connection
with the mind, Logoi. The three prescinced elements are fictions. The
embodiment of a pure form in noumenal matter makes a thing with qualities.
The realization of a pure form in the mind makes a mental representation. The
embodiment of a pure form in a _logos_ united with noumenal matter gives an
outward representation. The use of these phrases is to formulate the analysis of
a thing, a thougth, and a representation into three several elements on the one
side and one common element on the other.
The relevancy of this analysis consists in this, that if logic deals with the form
of thought, it can be studied just as well in external as in internal
representations, while by so doing we shall avoid all possible entanglement in
the meshes of psychological controversy. Logic then deals with
representations. But not with all kinds of representations.
What else is a thing but that which a _perception_ or _sign_ stands for? To say
that a quality is denoted is to say it is a thing. And this gives a hint of the
veritable nature of such terms. They were framed at a time when all men were
realists in the scholastic sense and consequently things were meant by them,
entities which had not quality but that expressed by the word. They, therefore,
must denote these things and connote the qualities they relate to.
[3] W1:490-504, 1866, Lowell Lecture XI, most of it, but with omission, also
in CP 7.579-596 [The lecture is sort of studies for Some Consequences of the
Four Incapacities and related papers and quite extensely deal with semiotic
topics such as the true analogy between man and word and so of signs,
symbols, things, meaning, stories etc.]
[4] Robin 404 1893 (Grand Logic -- The art of reasoning. Chapter II. What is
a sign?) [Selected parts of it appear in CP 2.281, 2.285, 2.297-302 and a
complete German translation is in Kloesel & Pape, Semiotische Schriften,
Vol. 1:191-201. This text presents Similies, Indices and Symbols and their
role in reasoning.]
Symbols grow. They come into being by development out of other signs,
particularly from icons, or from mixed signs partaking of the nature of icons
and symbols. We think only in signs. These mental signs are of mixed nature;
the symbol-parts of them are called concepts. If a man makes a new symbol, it
is by thoughts involving concepts. So it is only out of symbols that a new
symbol can grow. _Omne symbolum de symbolo_. A symbol, once in being,
spreads among the peoples. In use and in experience, its meaning grows. Such
words as _force, law, wealth, marriage_, bear for us very different meanings
from those they bore to our barbarous ancestors. The symbol may, with
Emerson's sphynx, say to man, Of thine eye I am eyebeam.
The regenerated logic When an assertion is made, there really is some speaker,
writer, or other signmaker who delivers it; and he supposes there is, or will be,
some hearer, reader, or other interpreter who will receive it. It may be a
stranger upon a different planet, an aeon later; or it may be that very same man
as he will be a second alter. In any case, the deliverer makes signals to the
receiver. Some of these signs (or at least one of them) are supposed to excite
in the mind of the receiver familiar images, pictures, or, we might almost say,
dreams -- that is, reminiscences of sights, sounds, feelings, tastes, smells, or
other sensations, now quite detached from the original circumstances of their
first occurrence, so that they are free to be attached to new occasions. The
deliverer is able to call up these images at will (with more or less effort) in his
own mind; and he supposes the receiver can do the same.
I define logic very broadly as the tudy of the formal laws of signs, or formal
semiotic. I define a sign as something, A, which brings something, B, its
interpretant sign determined or created by it, into the same sort of
correspondence with something, C, its object, as that in which itself stands to
C. In this definition I make no more reference to anything like the human
mind than I do when I define a line as the place within which a particle lies
during a lapse of time. At the same time, by virtue of this definition, has some
sort of meaning. That is implied in correspondence. Now meaning is mind in
the logical sense.
There must be an action of the object upon the sign to render the latter true.
Without that, the object is not the representamen's object. [] So, then, a sign,
in order to fulfill its office, to actualize its potency, must be compelled by its
object. This is evidently the reason of the dichotomy between the true and the
false. For it takes two to make a quarrel, and a compulsion involves as large a
dose of quarrel as is requisite to make it quite impossible that there should be
compulsion withouth resistance.
There are three kinds of interest we may take in a thing. First we may have a
primary interest in it for itself. Second, we may have a secondary interest in it,
on account of its reactions with other things. Third, we may have a mediatory
interest in it, in so far as it conveys to a mind an idea about a thing. In so far as
it does this, it is a sign; or representamen. (MS 278, p. 34; 1909)