this division of signs into instrumental and formal presupposes in
the signs themselves diverse manners of stimulatively moving and
representing to the cognitive power, specifically, as an external
object or as an internal form; yet this is related presuppositively
to the rationale of sign, whereas the most formal rationale of a sign
consists in being something substituted for a significate as repre-
sentable in this or that way.

Note that Poinsot does not unfurl all the manifold implica-
tions in the diversity of representative relations. Such, in-
deed, seems a task far from finished even today. Essentially,
however, we see the basis for the distinction into formal and
instrumental as consisting in the diverse ways of the vehicle
representing the object: the means *in which* (*in quo*) as con-
stituting a formal and the means *through which* (*per quod*)
constituting the instrumental. The distinction of ablative and
accusative cases helps to indicate the differentiation of the
former as a *pure* means and the latter as an *object* through
which means arise; of the former as an *immediately* significa-
tive and the latter as a *mediately* significative means. The
object may be the same—indeed, if the object could *not* be
the same, then the words of a concrete language and thinking
could never cohere and genuine communication (not only but
especially of a specifically-human kind) would be an impos-
sibility—despite the diversity of manners in which the vehicle,
differentiated in itself, represents that object to the cognitive
power. Moreover, the diverse manners of stimulatively mov-
ing and representing objects to a power presupposed by the
division into instrumental and formal does not destroy the
univocity of “sign”;<fnref n="119" /> for, albeit diversely, each possesses pre-
suppositvely the foundational quality whereby it may affect
the relation between object and power.

But considering the effect within the power reveals that the
instrumental sign-vehicle alone, however, can never sufficient-
ly provide strictly and entirely of itself a positive cognitive
awareness. For the instrumental sign-vehicle, inasmuch as it

<footnote n="119">119 Cf. 1632: *TDS*, Book II, q.1 *in passim*.</footnote>
is really distinct from the object signified, has a contingent relationship thereto. In the absence of the significate, the instrumental sign-vehicle signifies only fundamentally or virtually. It requires provision *by* some mind of the relation to the signified object:<fnref n="120" />

> Whence not even the instrumental sign itself, which is an extrinsic object, is said to signify and to manifest, except according as it is cognized, not prior to cognition. For it is a condition of an instrumental sign that it first be something known, in order that it signify...

> Here we see Poinsot reject fully the notion that the instrumental can properly be called a sign all on its own; since it must be cognized in order that the signification occur. On the one hand, this makes manifest the necessity of a relation to a power. On the other, it implies that the instrumental sign requires some formal sign present within the power in order that the object be attained. Poinsot makes this latter point explicit just a little farther on:<fnref n="121" />

> Nor does it matter that a sound or name does not signify except by means of a concept, which is a natural sign. For this also holds for a natural instrumental sign, that it does not represent except by means of a concept making it an object of awareness, and yet the natural instrumental sign is not on this account a sign analogically, but truly and univocally. For the fact that [instrumental] signs depend on a concept in representing does not remove the univocal rationale of a sign, since indeed a concept and cognition is that to which the [instrumental] signs represent, not a means by which they represent as by a formal rationale, even though the instrumental signs [if they are stipulated or customary] may be produced from that concept and cognition.

<footnote n="120">120 1632: *TDS*, 261/32-35: "Unde nec ipsum signum instrumentale, quod est obiectum extrinsecum, signare et manifestare dicitur, nisi prout cognitum, non ante cognitionem. Est enim conditio in signo instrumentali, quod prius sit cognitum, ut significet..." Cf. 259/3, 271/22-34.</footnote>

<footnote n="121">121 1632: *TDS*, 271/22-34: "Nec obstat, quod vox seu nomen non significat nisi mediante conceptus, qui est signum naturale. Hoc enim etiam signo instrumentali naturali convenit, quod non nisi mediante conceptu et notitia sui repraesentat, et tamen non ob hoc est signum analogice, sed vere et univoce. Quod enim signa in repraesentando dependeant a conceptu, non tollit univocam rationem signi, siquidem conceptus et cognitio est, cui repraesentant, non mediante quo repraesentant tamquam formali ratione, licet effective possint ab eo esse." Cf. ibid 259/3.</footnote>
Thus in an instrumental sign-vehicle we see that the double-
relating consists not only in the formal representation of the
object in its own objective presence, but also the objective
representation of the sign as antecedent to the formal repre-
sentation. By contrast, in the formal sign-vehicle, the repre-
sentation of the significate consists not in any objective rep-
resentation to the interpretant or cognitive power; but only,
rather, an actuating of awareness such that the object is ren-
dered terminally present to that interpretant. And yet, absent
this formal representation intimate to the cognitive power, no
object becomes present to the mind cognizing at all. Thus,
the instrumental sign, despite possessing this objective repre-
sentation antecedently to being engaged in the formally-rep-
resentative relation and therefore univocally fulfilling the fun-
damental rationale of a sign, affects no relation to the object
strictly and purely of itself.

In the broader context of semiotics, particularly in the
Peircean paradigm that opens the door to considering bi-
osemiotics and perhaps even physiosemiotics, this raises the
question of how signification can occur in the absence of cog-
nitive powers within which the formal representation occurs,
and as to whether these instances of semiosis would be univo-
cal with that being described here by Poinsot. But these are
suggestions for further research.

3.3.2. Natural and Conventional Signs

Much as a misunderstanding of formal signs, such as that
found in Fonseca, opens the door wide to nominalism, so too
a misunderstanding of the relationship between natural and
conventional signification can lead to dualism. Fully expli-
cating not only how but why this dualistic tendency follows,
though a fascinating and rich inquiry, proves unnecessary to
demonstrating its occurrence as a fact: for we have hundreds of
years of history to see that, having adopted (whether with full
consciousness or not) the Fonsecan conception that the formal
sign (and thus all concepts, intellectual as well as perceptual)
are signs only equivocally-so-called, modernity severs any po-
tential connection between the natural and the conventional.
Put otherwise, *rejecting* that concepts are natural signs and
that they fulfill the rationale of a sign, but relegating them in-
stead to the status of internal terminal representations entails
that correspondence between conventional instrumental signs,
extrinsic to the mind, and natural formal signs, intrinsic to
the mind, can never truly be coherent with one another; there
is a divide, a gap, essentially unbridgeable, if we separate our
signs as equivocal in this manner. Moreover, this gap between
the mind and the world results in the further divorce between
nature and culture.

By contrast, Poinsot's conception allows us to see the fun-
damental *unity* of our sign-permeated existence. Reverting
again to the second *summulae* chapter, we see Poinsot provide
an initial definition of natural and the two kinds of conven-
tional sign thus:<fnref n="122" />

A natural sign is one that represents from the nature of a thing,
independently of any stipulation and custom whatever, and so it
represents the same for all, as smoke signifies a fire burning. A
stipulated sign [*signum ad placitum*] is one that represents some-
thing owing to an imposition by the will of a community, like the
linguistic expression “man.” A customary sign [*signum ex consue-
tudine*] is one that represents from use alone without any public
imposition, as napkins upon the table signify a meal.

Considering these provisional definitions—and looking at the
question headings for Book II in the *Tractatus de Signis*—
we might think that the division between natural, stipulated,
and customary is mutually and exhaustively threefold, and
that, indeed, the heading provided here in this article (be-
tween natural and conventional) misses Poinsot’s key point.

<footnote n="122">122 1632: *TDS*, 27/19-28: "Signum naturale est, quod ex natura rei repraesentat quavis impositione et consuetudine remota; et sic repraesentat idem apud omnes, ut fumus ignem. Signum ad placitum, quod repraesentat aliquid ex impositione voluntatis per publicam auctoritatem, ut vox homo. Signum ex consuetudine, quod ex solo usu repraesentat sine public impositione, sicut mappae supra mensam significant prandium."</footnote>
But reading the text, we notice an anomaly when we turn to question five in Book II: though the question asks, “Whether the division of signs into natural, stipulated, and customary is a sound division”, we see the point which Deely elucidates in a footnote, namely, that there is *no discussion of customary signs* in the question at all. One can speculate why this is: but the simplest answer seems to be that *nature itself* and the *imposition of an agent’s volition* bring into being an exhaustive division of two kinds of sign. Thus, customary signs, though distinct from stipulation and nature alike, are derivative from either. That is, we can identify customary signs as being either *from* stipulation or *by* nature, but arising from no other source than these two. Poinsot makes no explicit claim that this reasoning of their derivation leads to the omission of customary signs from consideration in the fifth question; but he does explicitly state that such derivation belongs to the customary sign.<fnref n="123" />

Turning our attention back to the division under which we have titled this section—natural and conventional—we run into something of a terminological and translational problem. Ordinarily, we understand “convention” to signify something belonging precisely to culture, and, most especially, we hear in the background some idea of an at-least tacit agreement. We might say, for instance, that it was a convention for men to allow women to go first; or to remove their hats when entering a building; or that one may safely go a certain speed over the posted limit while driving a car. But this is a more limited and etymologically-obtuse employment of the word. To convene, *convenire*, means simply “to come together”.

Thus, while we cannot use “conventional” to *translate* both *ad placitum* and *ex consuetudine*—such indeed would “blur one of the major theoretical contributions of the *Treatise* as a whole”<fnref n="124" />—we may use it as a generic term to comprise both.

<footnote n="123">123 See below, n. 132.</footnote>

<footnote n="124">124 Deely 1985: “Editorial Afterword” to *TDS*, 467.</footnote>
For the stipulated and customary alike consist in the attach-
ment of a signification to the vehicle which does not belong
to the vehicle solely and strictly of itself; in this they contrast
alike with the natural sign.

Indeed it belongs to the natural sign-vehicle, as that which founds
a significative relation, that it possess within itself a **mind-in-**
**dependent relation**, a *relatio realis*, to the significate:<fnref n="125" />

The relation of a natural sign to its significate by which the sign is constituted in being as a sign, is mind-independent and not mind-dependent, considered in itself and by virtue of its fundament and presupposing the existence of the terminus and the other conditions for a mind-independent or physical relation.

The knowability which belongs to the sign-vehicle precisely
as a vehicle, in other words, belongs to itself *because* of this
mind-independent relation. Quite often, this relation is one
of efficient causality; *this* being an effect of *that*, inasmuch as
*that* has caused *this* to be, means that it bears within itself a
transcendental relativity that founds a mind-independent rela-
tion to its cause. That the efficient causality of all but God
occurs through the determination of some intrinsic form in the
locus of the effect allows us to discern the formal similitude
between cause and effect. This ontological relation is evident
in the case of, say, the hoof and the hoofprint. But the causal
relation need not be constrained to the dyadic consequences of
efficient causality and intrinsic formal similitude:<fnref n="126" />

Therefore the knowable in physical objects is absolutely and in
itself something mind-independent, but relatively to a cognitive
power it is something mind-dependent. But that knowability is
greater or more manifest in one thing than in another, is not taken
from the mind-dependent relation to a power, which is found in

<footnote n="125">125 1632: *TDS*, 137/9-15: "Relatio signi naturalis ad suum signatum, qua constituitur in esse signi, realis est, et non rationis, quantum est ex se et vi sui fundamenti et supponendo existentiam termini ceterasque conditiones relationis realis."</footnote>

<footnote n="126">126 1632: *TDS*, 139/29-37: "Sic ergo cognoscibile in obiectis realibus absolute et in se aliquid reale est, sed relative ad potentiam aliquid rationis. Quod autem cognoscibilitas in uno sit maior aut mani-festior altera, non sumitur ex relatione rationis ad potentiam, quae in omni obiecto invenitur, sed ex maiori vi et efficacia movendi et manifestandi, quae in se aliquid reale est."</footnote>
every object, but from the greater force and efficacy of arousing or stimulating and manifesting, which in itself is something independent of mind.

Put in other words, the knowability of the extra-mental, instrumental sign-vehicle precisely as related to a mind is something mind-dependent, as the rock is not designated *known* from in and of itself, but from the relation that the mind has to it. Nevertheless, that it have in and of itself the knowability whereby it may be mind-dependently designated as “known” it possesses from its own mind-independent qualities—such that it can be greater or lesser in manifesting and therefore signifying the object. But this neither consists in its efficient causality of arousing or exciting alone nor in being a physical and therefore instrumentally significative thing.

In other words, the mind-independent relation by which a natural sign-vehicle signifies the object consists not only in bearing the effects of an efficient cause having impressed some form on it. Indeed, such efficient causality, while often a concurrence of the relation whereby the sign-vehicle substitutes for the object, is *merely* a concurrence and never the proper causality of signs:<fnref n="127" />

> For the fact that smoke represents fire rather than water, that the footprint of an ox represents an ox rather than a man, and that the concept of a horse represents a horse rather than a stone, is founded on some mind-independent or physical and intrinsic proportion of those signs with these significates; from a mind-independent proportion and connection with something, however, arises a mind-independent relation.

Of particular interest here is the explicit identification of the concept of the horse as a natural sign mind-independently related to the object it signifies. The horse as object clearly does not efficiently cause the concept of the horse, even though

<footnote n="127">127 1632: TDS, 140/6-14: “Nam quod fumus repraesentet potius ignem quam aquam, et vestigium bovis potius bovem quam hominem, et conceptus equi potius equum quam lapidem, in aliqua reali proportione et intrinseca istorum signorum cum illis signatis fundatur; ex reali autem proportione et connexione cum aliquo realis relatio innascitur.”</footnote>
we gain such a concept only through some impression upon
the senses (the object signified by the intellectual *concept* of
a horse being illimitable to any quantity or variety of sense
impressions). In what then, does the mind-independent rela-
tion between the natural sign-vehicle and the object consist?
In short, it is that physical (i.e., mind-independent rather than
corporeal) and intrinsic proportion. In the case of efficient
causes and effects, the mind-independent relation consists in
the form present in the effect substituting for the knowability
of the object precisely inasmuch as it is proportioned to the
form in the cause. A vague footprint in the ground—enough
to know a foot has been placed there but not whether it was
made by hoof or paw—suffices to substitute for the object only
as to a generic rather than a specific cognoscibility. But this
generic representation nevertheless does accurately if vaguely
signify the object.

The physical and intrinsic proportion of a conceptual vehicle
with its object, however, occurs not through a sameness of
intrinsic form but by the sameness of the conceptual *esse
intentionale* with the object known. The wax receives the
form of the ring without its iron; we receive the form of
what-it-is-to-be-a-ring without becoming shaped like it at
all. In either case, namely that of the natural-instrumental
or the natural-formal, signified by the "accuracy of its rep-
resentation" is the mind-independent relation of *measured*
to the *measure*.<fnref n="128" /> The smoke signifies not only that there
exists a fire, but also—by its color, opacity, and texture—in-
dicates also the qualities of the fuel, the conditions of com-
bustion, extrinsic environmental factors, and even the condi-
tions of light in the surrounding atmosphere. The depth of
the hoofprint's impression indicates both the pliability of the
ground and the weight of the animal. The better-developed
a percept of a horse, the more accurately it can be cogni-
tively represented according to, for instance, length of limb

<footnote n="128">128 Cf. 1632: *TDS*, 139/5-28.</footnote>
and size of head, or number of toes—or the more accurately
the being of the horse can be understood from its concept,
including truths such as the length of its pre-natal gestation
or age of sexual maturity or chromosomal pairings. In each
case, the conceptual sign-vehicle, just as the instrumental, is
measured in its significative quality as what is measured by
what measures.

The truth that every conceptual sign-vehicle bears this kind
of mind-independent relation of measured to measure not
as a matter of convention but as a matter of its own proper
natural being both renders nugatory the idealism character-
istic of all modern philosophy *and* opens wide the gates for
understanding culture—a point only nascently realized in
Poinsot's semiotic but to the development of which we will
turn our attention momentarily.

3.3.3. Stipulated and Customary Signs

However, prior and indeed necessary to discovering and under-
standing culture's semiotic constitution, we must delve into
the constitution and differentiation of stipulated and custom-
ary sign-vehicles and the significative relations they provenate.
To begin with, as noted above, Poinsot in the fifth question in
Book II of the *Tractatus* makes explicit distinction only be-
tween the natural and stipulated, which he articulates thus:<fnref n="129" />

If this division of signs into natural and stipulated is considered
entitatively and in the order of mind-independent being, it is an
analogous division; if it is considered in the order of the repre-
sentative or knowable, it is a univocal division, and a stipulated
sign is truly a sign in the office and capacity of an object, which
it exercises.

We must note, as always, that there exists a persistent ambi-
guity throughout Poinsot's writing rendered by the linguistic

<footnote n="129">129 1632: *TDS*, 269/8-14: "Si haec divisio signi in naturale et ad placitum entitative et in esse rei consideretur, analoga est; si in genere repraesentativi seu cognoscibilis, univoca est, et signum ad placitum est vere signum in officio et vice obiecti, quam exercet."</footnote>
indistinction of sign-vehicle and sign-relation. That natural
and stipulated signs in the order of mind-independent being
are analogously divided follows from the differences of the
sign-vehicle; conversely, the univocity in the order of the rep-
resentative or cognoscible follows from the commonality of the
sign-relation. That is, even though the sign-vehicle as fun-
dament differs as to its own essential being between natural
and stipulated—such that the former has in itself the intrinsic
proportion to the object and the latter has such only extrin-
sically—each truly renders present the object to some cogni-
tive power and therefore realizes the essential meaning of the
“sign”. Put otherwise, the sign-relation univocally results in
the representation of something other, even if the sign-vehicles
represent the objects analogically.

Thus, even though some extrinsic imposition by an agent is re-
quired for the stipulated sign's instantiation, and even though
this is by the will and therefore "arbitrary", this arbitrar-i-
ness is not that of an unconditioned or ex nihilo constitution.
Rather, and here I must quote at length, the extrinsic de-
nomination of a stipulated sign exists always and only within
a context of relations inseparable from the mind-independent
realities of existence:<fnref n="130" />

<footnote n="130">130 1632: *TDS*, 141/11-142/11: "in signis ad placitum rationem signi etiam per relationem ad signatum explicandam esse. Sed relatio ista rationis est, et non solum consistit signum in extrinseca denomina-tione, qua redditur impositum se destinatum a republica ad significandum, ut aliqui recentiores putant, eo quod sine illa fictione intellectus per solam ipsam impositionem denominatur signum. Ceterum haec impositio requiritur quidem tamquam fundamentum relationis et rationis signi, quia per illam habilita-tur et destinatur aliquid, ut sit signum, sicut per hoc, quod proportionatur et connectitur aliquod signum naturale cum tali signato, fundat relationem signi ad ipsum.</footnote>

<footnote>"Itaque ex denominatione illa extrinseca destinationis et impositionis consurgit duplex relatio rationis: *Prima* communis omni extrinsecae denominationi, quatenus concipitur per intellectum ad modum for-mae et relationis denominationis, ut esse visum ad videntem, esse amatum ad amantem. *Alia* est rela-tio particularis, qua uno denominatio distinguitur ab alia. Destinatio enim et impositio republicae ad varia munera esse potest, quae non nisi relatione distinguuntur ad ea, ad quae exercenda destinantur, sicut destinantur aliquis et sinttuititur, ut sit iudex, praeses, doctor, et aliqua, ut sint signa vel insignia horum munerum, et similiter voces destinantur, ut humane conversationi deserviant. Haec munera ex distionctione republicae oriuntur, quae denominatio extrinsica est. Ceterum distinguuntur, quia iudex ordinatur ad tales subditos iudicandum, praeses ad regendum, doctor ad docendum etc.: quae distinc-tiones sumuntur per ordinem ad sua offica seu obiecta, circa quae exercentur, et nonnisi per relationes explicantur, et non aliter; ergo relationibus ad sua munera et obiecta distingununtur. Idem ergo dicen-dum de signis ad placitum, licete denominatione extrinseca impositionis fundentur."</footnote>
...even in the case of stipulated signs the rationale of sign must be explained by a relation to a signified. But the relation in this case is mind-dependent, yet the sign does not consist only in the extrinsic denomination whereby it is rendered or imposed or appointed for signifying by common usage, as some more recent philosophers think, from the fact that, apart from the relation constructed by the understanding, the sign is denominated by the very imposition alone. Yet this imposition is indeed required as the fundament of the relation and rationale of the sign, because [1] it is through this imposition that something is habilitated and appointed to be a stipulated sign, just as it is through some natural sign's being proportioned and connected with a given significate that there is founded a relation of the sign to that significate.

From that extrinsic denomination of stipulation and imposition, thus, a twofold mind-dependent relation arises: [2] The first is one common to every extrinsic denomination, insofar as an intrinsic denomination is conceived by the understanding on the pattern of a form and a denominating relation, as, for example, being seen is conceived relative to the one seeing, being loved relative to the one loving. [3] The other is the particular relation by which one denomination is distinguished from another. For there can be appointment and imposition [4] by the community to various offices, which are not distinguished otherwise than by a relation to those functions for the exercise of which they are appointed, just as someone is appointed and installed as a judge, a president, a teacher, and other things are instituted to be signs or insignia of these offices, and similarly, linguistic expressions are appointed to serve human communication. [5] These offices or functions arise from a distinction of the requirements of public life, which is an extrinsic denomination. They are further distinguished because a judge is ordered to judging a certain population, a president to governing, a teacher to instructing, etc.: which distinctions are understood through an order to their offices, or to the objects concerning which they are exercised, and they are not explained in any other way than through relations; therefore they are distinguished by the relations to their offices and objects. [6] The same therefore must be said of stipulated signs, even though they are founded by the extrinsic denomination of imposition.

As annotated, there are six key points here deserving of attention and explication. First [1] is that the imposition of
will *habilitates* and appoints some object to function as a stipulated sign. Implicit here but worthy of note is that every stipulated sign-vehicle is instrumental. It therefore has a mind-independent entitative being of its own but a mind-dependent reliance for its significative function, unlike natural instrumental signs. By the imposition of will, however, there is attached to it a significance which *holds* to it. This is the *habilitation*. Though determined by an arbitrary act of will, once the imposition has been made, the relations of significance enter into a relational context.

Though the relation is mind-dependent, as a relation within a larger relational context, it is not wholly separate from mind-independent reality. Thus [2], the germination of the mind-dependent imposition or extrinsic denomination has to be somehow patterned off mind-independent realities. Likewise [3], the mind-dependent denominations are held relative to one another. It would not be fitting [4] for judges to be appointed judges for the purpose of teaching, and for the purpose of governing, but rather we have different offices for the exercise of such action. These mind-dependent denominations constitute, as a whole, something which aims to befit the [5] public life of the social order, which, though it is structured through such mind-dependent relations comes into being by nature. Thus, though both offices and stipulated signs come into being by the extrinsic denomination granted only through an imposition of will, each [6] has a certain relation of fittingness to the pattern of social relations which resolves to the natural good of human beings.

Thus the context within which some *habilitation* of a stipulation arises, even as that context helps to bring forward and constitute the habilitation, is itself constituted by the signs of custom which already exist. (*This point alone gives us much to contemplate concerning evolution, the animal use of signs, and the emergence of human languages.*)

To understand why this is the case, let us turn our attention to customary signs. Poinsot writes that there arises “a
special difficulty concerning certain signs which are accom-
modated to signifying something not from any public insti-
tution, i.e., not by dimanating from a public authority, but
from the mere inclination of particular individuals frequently
to make frequent use of them.”<sup>131</sup> That is, we may recognize
immediately that such significations arise by convention be-
cause the relation of the sign-vehicle to the significate, even
if there may be a *fittingness* in their proportionality, have
this proportionality signified only from a mind-dependent at-
tachment. There may be a fittingness, for instance, to saying
a prayer of thanksgiving at noon every day: the sun, being
overhead, illuminates most fully, and for the expanse of be-
ing open to our senses and minds we ought to be thankful.
But someone, having a particularly rough day (and perhaps
amidst gloomy climate conditions) may find it circumstan-
tially appropriate instead to pray for fortitude. The former
might be more *essentially* proportionate, given the nature of
that-to-which the custom attaches, but the attachment *itself*
bears no essential necessity.

That certain times of the day, based upon customary patterns
of behavior, give rise to explicit and purposively-established
traditions is a case of custom developing into a stipulation;
thus, a bell might be rung at noon to signal it is the time for
prayer. Conversely, however, the emergence of this custom
itself may be in some way reducible to the natural sign, as
something befitting not only the nature of the vehicle alone
but also the nature of the sign-user. Thus, as Poinsot ex-
plains, the custom always is reducible to either stipulation or
nature as its root:<sup>132</sup>

<footnote n="131">131 1632: *TDS*, 278/1-6: “Specialis difficultas est circa quaedam signa, quae non publica aliqua in-
stitutione, i.e., ab auctoritate publica dimanante, sed ex sola voluntate particularium frequenter illis
utentium ad aliquid significandum accomdantur.” Two changes from Deely’s translation: first,
explicit inclusion of *dimanating* (curious to my mind given Deely’s concern with this term
in other texts, e.g., 1994: *The Human Use of Signs*, gloss on ¶4, p.135-36); second, rendering
*particularium* by its English cognate rather than “private”.</footnote>

<footnote n="132">132 1632: *TDS*, 278/10-17: “Si consuetudo respiciat aliquod signum, destinando illud et proponendo pro signo, tale signum fundatum in consuetudine erit ad placitum. Si vero consuetudo non proponat aliquid vel instituat pro signo, sed dicat simplicem usum alicuius rei et ratione illius assumatur aliquid</footnote>
If custom respects some sign by appointing and proposing it for a sign, such a sign founded on custom will be stipulated. But if custom does not propose or institute something as a sign, but expresses the simple use of the thing, and by reason of that use the thing is taken for a sign, such a sign is reduced to a natural sign.

As Poinsot goes on to explain, this entails that customs can either be the *cause* of signs—as by custom we might turn a sound into a stipulation signifying a determinate object, such as the celebratory Spanish interjection “¡olé!”—or the *effects* which lead us to know the cause from the frequent conjunction of use—as when we induce that one thing having happened or happening signifies a relation to something other (as napkins signify a meal, or a dog following someone signifies that he is its master; or a gesticulation, such as a nod, may be taken as an acknowledgment of another’s presence). That customs cause signification follows inasmuch as they accrue the force of law: “a custom introducing something for signifying introduces that thing as a sign by the same authority by which the law itself would introduce it.”<fnref n="133" />

Importantly, we must note that the relation between stipulative, customary, and natural signification has no absolute and line of demarcation. Some shifts between nature and custom may be long, slow, and subtle, but they unquestionably occur: for though what exists independently of the mind may possess *natures* which do not depend upon it, mind-dependent considerations can have mind-independent effects upon *nature as a whole*, particularly across generations. This appears evident in the dispositional alteration of domesticated animals, for instance, whereby the customs of animal husbandry come to have very real biological consequences. Even more is it evident in the way that human traditions shape the world. But even

<footnote>in signum, tale signum reducitur ad naturale.”</footnote>

<footnote n="133">133 1632: *TDS*, 279/4-6: “consuetudo introducens aliquid ad significandum eadem auctoritate introducuit rem illam in signum, qua ipsa lex introduceret.” Cf. 1270: *ST* la-liae, q.97, a.3, c.: “consuetudo et habet vim legis, et legem abolet, et est legum interpretatrix.” This final point—that not only may custom have the force of and abolish law, but that it interprets it as well—shows how profound the importance of custom in the constitution of our social behavior.</footnote>
within the life of an individual, we observe that the volitional
freedom of individual acts renders effects of a determinate and
determining consequence, influencing the mind-independent
realities upon which they come to bear:<fnref n="134" />

...when speaking of human custom, even though it proceeds from
a free cause and so is denominated a free effect, nevertheless, the
formal rationale of signifying is not any free deputation, but the
very frequency and repetition of acts, and this signifies naturally,
because it is not a moral deputation, that is to say, it is not an
extrinsic deputation which denominates only morally, but the in-
trinsic performance of acts and their frequency and multiplication
constitutes the customary sign. Therefore a signification attaches
to that sign naturally, even as multiplied free acts generate a habit
as a natural and not as a free effect, because the very multiplica-
tion of the acts does not function freely relative to generating the
habit, so neither to the signifying resulting from the force of the
repetition of the acts, even though these acts in themselves [i.e.,
singly taken] may be free.

Nota bene: “multiplied free acts generate a habit as a natural and not as a free effect”. It belongs to the nature of any agent, that is, to have as a dimanative resultance of its freely-willed action that a habit or disposition comes to reside in that very agent itself. Though it is not spelled out in Poinsot explicitly, the inherent suprasubjectivity of sign-relations entails that, as they are effected through frequently repeated intersubjective relations, the consequences of this habituation range farther and wider than any single human being can foresee or even encompass. As we signify through customs to others, we im- part to them as well certain habituations. Thus, through cer- tain signs we affect an attitude towards behaviors which may be entirely out of keeping with nature, but which come to be

<footnote n="134">134 1632: *TDS*, 280/26-43: “loquendo de consuetudine humana, quod licet a sua causa libera procedat et sic denominetur effectus liber, tamen ratio formalis significandi non est aliqua libera deputatio, sed ipsa frequentia et repetitio actuum, et haec naturaliter significat, quia non moralis, id est extrinseca deputatio, quae solum moraliter denominat, sed intrinseca processio actuum eorumque frequentatio et multiplicatio constituit signum ex consuetudine. Ergo naturaliter convenit illi significatio, sicut etiam actus liberi multiplicati generant habitum tamquam naturalem effectum et non liberum, quia multiplicatio ipsa actuum non se habet libere ad generandum habitum, sic neque ad significandum ex vi repetitionis actuum, licet ipsi in se liberi sint.”</footnote>
interpreted as natural by the strength of such habituation.<fnref n="135" />
Because these habituations are to customary sign-relations,
there exists no determinate end on their potential complexi-
ty.<fnref n="136" /> The semiosic web of human entanglement in convention,
that is, knows no natural bounds.

While there remains much more to say concerning the *divisio
signorum* proffered by Poinsot, perhaps it would be fruitful
instead to consider some of its most poignant consequences for
the human being.

4. Discovery in the Age of Relation

Here, we wish only to make passing observations: for in this
section we necessarily go beyond the *doctrina signorum* itself
and set our eyes upon the broader vista of Poinsot studies
still to be discovered, both as to the greater exposition of his
thought and as to that thought's importance today. Here we
discover not only the paths forged by Iberian scholasticism
overgrown by centuries' of ignorance, and not only the routes
scouted from other directions by semioticians, but, with the
insights of Poinsot's *doctrina signorum* to guide us, the reso-
lution of these paths in orders both experiential (i.e., to *ens
primum cognitum*) and metaphysical (within the domain of
*ens inquantum ens*).<fnref n="137" />

<footnote n="135">135 Indeed, this may occur even with behavior which we do not realize to be explicitly communicative at all; cf. Deely 1978: "Toward the Origin of Semiotic" in ed. Sebeok, *Sight, Sound, and Sense*, 1: "there is no one invariant line by means of which behavior can be separated into 'a kind that communicates and a kind that does not communicate,' for the irrecusable reason that one and the same event can fail and not fail to have significance at the same time in the here and now perceptions and sense impressions of any two distinct organism of same or different species."</footnote>

<footnote n="136">136 As Deely writes (2009: *Augustine & Poinsot*, 195): "Relations cannot be founded on relations in the physical order, but they can be in the objective order, and to infinity. Hence an animal capable of dealing with relations can both recognize that there are signs (which consist in relations formally, as distinct from the sign-vehicles which support and convey the sign-relations fundamentally) and makes signs of signs to infinity."</footnote>

<footnote n="137">137 Questions about the relationship between the experiential, semiotic direction of resolution and the metaphysical or existential direction of resolution remain in need of careful inquiry—not only as to the questions lingering today but as to historical understanding of the diverse traditions involved. Relatively few scholars have paid close attention to the question</footnote>
This broader vista that is—daunting in breadth and complexity alike—indeed demands the guidance offered by the *doctrina signorum* offered by Poinsot. Without some orientation, the twists and turns of his own thinking and the directions it points would turn us around all too quickly. But having grasped the various points outlined above, I believe we may discover here a new age of understanding. Thus, in this section I hope to give the readers of *Studia Poinsotiana* suggestions for future research. For my own part, I believe the most promising entry to these genuinely postmodern paths can be made through revisiting the Aristotelian-Thomistic psychology under the guiding light of Poinsot’s *doctrina signorum*. And indeed, the *Tractatus de Signis*—as an excerpt derived from the *Ars Logica*—has a natural and as-yet unrecognized, untranslated, and unpublished sequel: namely, the influence it has on Poinsot’s psychology. For careful scrutiny of the *Quarta Pars Philosophiae Naturalis* reveals the entire treatment of the soul to be structured through awareness of the *causalitas signorum*, albeit not always in manners immediately evident. A survey of relevant topics treated in the *Cursus Theologicus*

of the *via resolutionis* so crucial ad mente Thomam—notable ones including Jan Aertsen (1988: *Nature and Creature*), Rudi te Velde (2021: *Metaphysics between Experience and Transcendence*), and Thomas Joseph White (2009: *Wisdom in the Face of Modernity*). Later developments in the Iberian tradition, in particular, throw a wrench into these questions: concerning not only potential univocal flattening of ens said both as *primum cognitum* and *inquantum ens*, but also of related and important terms such as *res* and its derivatives, *in re*, *reale*, and *realiter*. As an example of such confusion—one earnestly trying to sort the difficulties out—we can see this article from *Semiotics 2008* by Piotr Jaroszynski, “The Sign: between Metaphysics and Ontology”, 627: “If the theory of signs is based upon an ontological conception of being [i.e., Jacob Lorhard’s term for Francisco Suarez’s ‘general metaphysics’], a metaphysician should be very careful, since the signs, no matter how rich and interesting, cannot cover existing reality considered as such. But metaphysics must consider reality as reality (being *qua* being), not reality simply as capable of being reality.

“At [this] point metaphysics and ontology take different paths. Metaphysics has being as its object, and ontology has the concept of being as its object. Metaphysics is concerned with real being, ontology is concerned with possible being. The matter, however, is not so simply, because ontology treats possible being as if it were real being, and thus removes any difference between metaphysics and ontology. Perhaps this is why the ontological concept of being is treated as a metaphysical conception.”

That Jaroszynski mistakenly identifies Poinsot’s position with that of Suarez is understandable—but easily clarified by wider reading in the *Cursus Philosophicus*. Cf. also Kemple 2019: “Signs and Reality” in *Reality: a journal for philosophical discourse*.
likewise indicates its importance there, too—for instance, in
the treatments of human action, passions, and habits (not to
mention the sacramentology expounded in the final treatises).
Here, we will focus on three particular areas in which these
Poinsotian insights into signs will prove greatly illuminative
for this tradition of philosophical psychology. First is the rec-
ognition that semiosis occurs in *all* our cognitive operations,
including sensation. Such recognition might seem incidental
to the psychology of the human being, but, in truth, the intel-
lectual distinction of the human person is interwoven with the
corporeal animality so tightly that attempts to regard them
hypostatically often misinterpret *both* aspects of our cogni-
tive bearing. Second is the process of concept formation and
the attainment of formal awareness in specifically-human cog-
nition. Arguably, the key modern philosophical errors leading
to the epistemological quagmire are rooted in the nominalist
misunderstanding of both what it is that our concepts signify
and how. Third, we will touch lightly upon language and the
development of culture, which topic goes well beyond any-
thing produced in Poinsot's writings, but to which they are
and will prove ultimately germane.

## 4.1. Sensation and Semiosis

As we noted above (3.2.3), Poinsot distinguishes himself from
Descartes in their respective considerations of animal life; the
latter relegating their being to naught discernible but the op-
erations of an unfeeling automaton, while Poinsot observes
their semiosic nature. This may follow simply enough from
reflection upon our own experience of sensation, for in every
act of sensation we recognize that not only is there a natural
or entitative immutation, but necessarily and most properly
an intentional one:<fnref n="138" />

<footnote n="138">138 1635: *Quarta Pars Philosophiae Naturalis*, “De anima sensitiva, et potentiis eius in communi”, q.4, a.1 (DAS hereafter, R.III.102b31–36): “Potentia sensitiva passive se habet respectu specierum, quibus vice obiectorum actuatur tam in esse entitativo quam in esse intentionali, sed per se et principaliter in esse intentionali.”</footnote>
A sensitive power holds itself passively in respect of the species standing in for the object, by which the power is actuated, both in entitative and in intentional existence—but, according to its own proper nature and principally, in intentional existence.

Put otherwise, the sensitive power though it depends upon the entitative immutation for its actuation, nevertheless has that actuation properly through the intentional immutation—becoming the object *in alio esse*. Neither I nor the dog entitatively become the grilling meat that we smell, even as the reception of olfactory particles does render a change in our physical beings; but both creatures do, in a way, become that meat in *esse intentionale*, just as my eyes do not become the flat blue surface that is the door to my office, but I gain a certain intentional identity with it.

This intentional being already has within it a compressed semiosic structure: for in seeing the door, I see the proper sensible of color—the differentiation of light—and by this, grasp also the common sensible of the extended surface. This occurs simultaneously and yet nevertheless by a kind of significative representation. As Poinsot writes:<fnref n="139" />

> Because the proper sensible reaches directly and through itself primarily to the specification of the senses, and the common sensible affects that specification as a mode of a proper sensible, this modification is nevertheless intrinsically required for the sake of sensation.

Put otherwise, we could never have any sensible experience of proper sensibles without the necessarily concomitant modality of a common sensible. In this, Poinsot seemingly anticipates the claim of Locke, who posits the sensory primacy of their “primary sensibles” to consist in their efficiently-causal necessity to the experience of “secondary sensibles”. But there follow from this two important qualifications, and first (to continue from the previous text):

<footnote n="139">139 1635: DAS a.2 (R.III.112a31–36): “quia sensibile proprium pertinet directe et per se primo ad specificationem sensationis, sensibile commune pertinet ut modus ipsius sensibilis proprii, per se tamen requitur eius modificatio ad sensationem... circa sensibile commune continget deceptio sensus, non tamen circa sensible proprium.”</footnote>
Deception of the senses may occur with respect to the common sensible, but not with respect to the proper sensible.

This importantly distinguishes Poinsot's position from that of Locke: for it places the *receptive priority* of the sensible in the proper (or Locke's "secondary"), rather than the common ("primary"). Though the modalities of common sensibles may be necessary for the entitative imutation, that is, they occupy a secondary place with respect to the intentional. Thus, as Poinsot adds just a bit farther on (emphasis added):<fnref n="140" />

> The common sensible does not immute the sense through a species distinct from the species of the proper sensible, but in that same species *the common sensible is represented* as a condition and modification of the proper sensible.

Now, as we have already seen, it is important to recognize that *representation* may itself signify *either* self-representation or other-representation. What does it mean, we must ask, to say that the common sensible is represented *in* the same specification as the proper sensible? Clearly, the two are different, and so it cannot be a *self-representation*. Thus, the proper sensible *signifies* the common. Indeed, as Poinsot writes in the *Tractatus*:<fnref n="141" />

> ...sense cognizes the significate in a sign in the way in which that significate is present in the sign, but not only in the way in which it is the same as the sign. For example, when a proper sensible such as color is seen, and a common sensible, such as a profile and movement, the profile is not seen as the same as the color, but as conjoined to the color, and rendered visible through that color, nor is the color seen separately and the profile separately; so when a sign is seen and a significate is rendered present in it, the signifi-

<footnote n="140">140 1635: DAS, a.2 (R.III.113a42-47): "Sensibile commune non immutat sensum per speciem condistinctam a specie sensibilis proprii, sed in eadem specie repraesentatur sensible commune tamquam conditio et modificatio sensibilis proprii."</footnote>

<footnote n="141">141 1632: TDS, 208/35-47: "sensus cognoscit signatum in signo eo modo, quo in signo praesens est, sed non eo solum modo, quo cum signo idem est. Sicut cum videtur sensibile proprium, v.g. color, et sensibile commune, ut figura et motus, non videtur figura ut idem cum colore, sed ut coniuncta colori, et per illum visibilis reddita, nec videtur seorsum color et sorsum figura; sic cum videtur signum et in eo praesens redditur signatum, ibi signatum attingitur ut coniunctum signo et contentum in eo, non ut seorsum se habens et ut absens."</footnote>
cate is attained there as conjoined to the sign and contained in it,
not as existing separately and as absent.

Put otherwise, the difference between sign-vehicle and signifi-
cate requires *only* a modal distinction between the one and the
other; they may be present in wholly the same specifying form.
In sensation, we make use of signs *without having to create
them* (and in this sensation is distinguished from perception
and intellection). That the proper and common *sensibilia* are
modally distinct and yet the former really signifies the latter
gives us, I believe, much greater precision in understanding sen-
sory operations, including how it is that we might be deceived
even at the level of sensation concerning the common. We may
think of simple examples: such as the straight stick appearing
bent when half-submerged in water, or the extension of the sky
in an inferior mirage, or when stable objects may appear to
move when seen out of the corner of the eye.

But the specifying form which presents the proper and common
sensibles *also* presents that which is sensible *per accidens*. The
sensible truly delivers not only the specifications of sense facul-
ties, that is, but also their perceptual objects which are in no
way separate objects of sensation—but which are, necessarily
separable as perceived and interpreted. Poinsot writes:<fnref n="142" />

The incidentally [*per accidens*] sensible is represented in the same
specifying form as the sustaining subject of both these, namely,
the sensible and common... [And] the incidentally sensible is the
substance within which the proper and common sensibles inhere
as the object [of sensation]; and the incidentally sensible is distin-
guished from that which is sensible through itself, because the in-
cidentally sensible does not belong to the object of the senses, ex-
cept insofar as it is the subject of the objects of the senses, whence
it is placed into the rationale of the sense powers' objects, and thus

<footnote n="142">142 1635: DAS, a.2 (R.III.113a48–b3): “Sensibile autem per accidens repraesentatur in eadem specie tamquam subiectum sustentativum utriusque scilicet sensibilis proprii et communis.” And ibid, (R.III.114b44–115a9): “Sensibile per accidens est substantia, cui tamquam obiecto inhaerent sensibilia propria et communia. Et distinguitur sensibile per accidens a sensibili per se, quia sensibile per accidens non pertinet ad obiectum sensus, nisi in quantum est subiectum obiecti sensus, unde subiective trahitur ad rationem obiecti sensus, et sic vere et proprie attingitur a sensu, non ut ratio formalis immutans sensum, sed ut subiectum, cui per accidens inest talis ratio.”</footnote>
truly and properly it is attained through the senses—not as the formal rationale by which the senses undergo immutation, but as the subject within which such a rationale exists incidentally.

As Poinsot goes on to explain this point, objects are not able to move faculties in the order of cognition except that they suppose existence of some kind, and thus the proper and common sensibles must have existence from that which has it of itself: substance. Thus, substances are incidentally sensible, such that the objects sensed have a subject from which their existence comes.<fnref n="143" />

*Is this not a robust suggestion for an intelligible account of realism?* Does this mean that, to be a realist, one must be a “semiotic realist”?<fnref n="144" />

## 4.2. Concepts and Awareness

We will leave this discussion of sense-realism for further exploration. For sensation does not properly complete the cognitive operations of animal or human alike; the purpose of sensation can be found only in some further perfection which more fully completes the principal orientation of the being's nature. For the sake of brevity, we will here elide over most pressing and important questions concerning the formation and function of phantasms in our cognitive lives (on which Poinsot's subtle distinctions in the *Quarta Pars Philosophiae Naturalis* offer much to explore) and focus instead upon the intellectual concept. Both constitute formal

<footnote n="143">143 Interestingly, as Poinsot points out at the conclusion of his exposition, if one could preserve the sensible without the subject, then the effect upon the sense faculties would be the same. Understanding better as we do now, for instance, the nature of light, we can see that there is a kind of preservation of the proper sensible by which is communicated the common *without* the subject yet existing—as the light reaching us today from a star long-since-dead—we yet see that the existence of the sensible depended upon the existence of the subject.</footnote>

<footnote n="144">144 Cf. Deely 2008: *Descartes & Poinsot, 86-87*. As a final note on this section, it is worth considering that, although the particulars of physical causality may have been misunderstood in Poinsot's time, his analysis of exterior sensation yet stands rife with fascinating distinctions and insights worthy of exploration nonetheless—not for their explanatory power of corporeal phenomena, that is, but for their general philosophical acumen useful for better understanding the idioscopic revelations rendered up unto and beyond our own day.</footnote>
signs, but where the percept signifies the object inasmuch as
it grasps the incidentally sensible together with certain pat-
terns of the *per se sensibilia* (common and proper alike), the
intellectual conception distinguishes the incidentally sensible
so as to render present for itself the actuality of the intelli-
gible: grasping them under the light of *being*.<fnref n="145" />

What we have seen concerning the semiosis of sensation gives
us, I would say, one of the necessary integral ingredients for
a semiotic realism. But another is to be found in the notion
of the intellectual concept as a formal sign. That the intel-
lect truly knows *beings* as they are *in themselves*, certainly
requires that they become known to us somehow; requires
an *awareness* of the *being* of the object, and not merely its
objective presentation. I cannot see or touch or feel directly
and immediately the substantiality of the sensed thing.<fnref n="146" /> I
know it only *through* those signs which are sensed. But since
the being of it is contained, as it were, in the same *species
impressa* of sensation, some further action beyond sensation
is required in order that the substantiality implicitly signi-
fied by the sensible object be distinguished from the proper
sensibles and common modalities thereof so as to result in an
intellectual awareness.<fnref n="147" />

But the development of intellectual awareness should not be
thought to come all at once. We accomplish the distinction
of intelligible from sensible—of the intellectually-grasped

<footnote n="145">145 Cf. Maritain 1959: *The Degrees of Knowledge*, 202: "According to the terminology that it has seemed to us opportune to adopt, the cisobjective subject attains, in order to become them intentionally, things themselves, or transobjective subjects posited in extramental existence. It does so by means of constituting them its objects, or by positing them for itself—by means of the concept or of the uttered presentative form [*species expressa*]—in ‘known’ existence, *in esse objective seu cognito*."</footnote>

<footnote n="146">146 It is for just this reason that I find Maritain's threefold distinction of "perinoetic, diano-
etic, and ananoetic" intellceptions unhelpful: for *all* kinds of knowing are through some sort of
substitutive signification, which substitution nevertheless does not mean we do not really get
to the things themselves.</footnote>

<footnote n="147">147 In the words of Aquinas, something must be done to make it *actually* intelligible. 1266-68: ST Ia, q.84, a.6, c.: "quia phantasmata non sufficiunt immutare intellectum possibilem, sed oportet quod fiant intelligibility actu per intellectum agentem; non potest dici quod sensibilis cognitio sit totalis et perfecta causa intellectualis cognitionis". Poinsot elaborates on this point at length in 1635: *Quarta Pars Philosophiae Naturalis*, q.10, especially, a.1-2 (R.III295b4-313b26).</footnote>
meaning from the apparent deliveries of our lower faculties—
not by any magical insight, x-ray vision, or cognitive *leap*,
but by a process of *inductive ascent and descent*. As Poin-
sot writes in the *summulae*:<fnref n="148" />

And induction, with respect to its motion of ascent, is ordered
towards discovering and proving universal truths, insofar as they
are universal, that is, insofar as they are established from the sin-
gulars contained under them. Nor can it be proven that something
is universally such unless the singulars belonging to it are such.
Thus the descent from universals to singulars especially is ordered
towards demonstrating the falsity of a universal, insofar as it is
universal; for the falsity of a universal is best shown by descending
down from them and showing some singular not to be such. But,
nevertheless, supposing the truth of a universal proven discov-
ered and proven through ascent, likewise the descent preserves this
truth by showing the correspondence of that universal to those
singulars contained under it.

Though not given extensive elaboration in this text, it is clear
that this inductive ascent and descent—which clearly, com-
bined with the ordinary and widely-accepted and agreed-upon
operations of deduction, anticipates the threefold procession
of scientific inquiry discussed by C.S. Peirce of abduction and
induction—engages the intellectual discovery in a process of
experimentation upon singulars and particulars. This experi-
mentation, of course, need not be the laboratory inquiries of
idioscopic investigation, but the intellectual discovery of truth
clearly relies upon thinking-through the intelligibility of uni-
versals not in the abstract but the particular. Poinsot confirms
this return to the concrete as necessary in his consideration of

<footnote n="148">148 1631: *Prima Pars Ars Logicae*, summulae, lib.3, c.2, “De inductione” (R.I.60a35–b12): “Et in-
ductio, quantum ad *ascensum*, ordinatur ad inveniendas et probandas veritates universales, ut uni-
versales sunt, id est in quantum constant ex singularibus sub eis contentis. Nec enim potest probari,
quod aliquid universaliter sit tale, nisi quia eius singularia sunt tali. *Descensus* autem ab universali ad
singularia praecipue ordinatur ad demonstrandam falsitatem universalis, ut universale est; optime enim
ostenditur falsitas universalis descendendo sub illo et ostendendo aliquod singulare non esse tale. Sed
tamen supposita veritate universalis comprobata et inventa per ascensum, etiam descensus deservit
ad ostendendam correspondentiam universalis ad ipsa singularia sub eo contenta. Praecipuum tamen
inductionis munus est reducere ad sensum probationem universalis a singularibus ascendendo.”</footnote>
phantasms' necessity to the actuality of understanding.<fnref n="149" /> Put otherwise, the concept—the formal sign—most fully signifies the terminal meaning it represents as *it belongs to things*, and not merely in the abstract. The process of discovery (*via inventionis*) requires resolution (*via resolutionis*) between the object as *informing* and as *terminating*. That is, as Poinsot writes in q.4, a.1 of the *Quarta Pars*:<fnref n="150" />

An object informs a power in a twofold manner: first, as a principle of cognition by means of the impressed specifying form; second, as a terminus of cognition in the expressed specifying form, that is, the word of the intellect. And when the object terminates in such an expressed specifying form, it also has the relationship of informing, insofar as—through that cognition being terminated at the very object in a cognitive existence and through the mode of a terminus—the object is made one with that power perfectly and in ultimate actuality. And through this union the relationship of informing is formally included in the cognitive existence; but this nevertheless still presupposes a required operation, which is the very cognition elicited by the one cognizing. Otherwise it would neither inform vitally nor be the very object in cognitive existence through the expressed specifying form. It also presupposes the operation not only in order that there be cognizing but also in order that the expressed specifying form or word be produced; but this belongs to the operation insofar as it is speech, not precisely as it is cognition.

Thus to highlight two points, and first: Poinsot distinguishes here between a *power*—that is, the receptive cognitive fac-

<footnote n="149">149 See 1635: *Quarta Pars Philosophiae Naturalis*, q.10, a.4 (R.III.331a34–333a46; see especially 332a36–47).</footnote>

<footnote n="150">150 1635: *DAS*, a.1 (R.III.106b35–107a17): “Obiectum enim dupliciter informat potentiam, uno modo ut principium cognitionis media specie impressa, alio modo ut terminus cognitionis in specie expressa seu verbo intellectus. Et quando obiectum terminat in tali specie expressa, etiam habet habitudinem informantis, quatenus per cognitionem terminatam ad ipsum obiectum in esse cognito et per modum termini fit unum cum ipsa potentia perfecte et in actu ultimo. Et in hac unione formaliter importatur habitudo informantionis in esse cognito, praesuppositive tamen requirit operationem, quae est ipsa cognitio elicita a cognoscente, alias non informaret vitaliter et in esse cognito ipsum obiectum in specie expressa. Praesupponit etiam operationem non solum ut cognoscentem, sed etiam ut producentem ipsam speciem expressam seu verbum, sed hoc habet illa operatio, in quantum dictio, non ut praecise cognitio est.” Cf. 1632: *TDS*, 261/35-42: “Est enim conditio in signo instrumentali, quod prius sit cognitum, ut significet, et quando Divus Thomas vocat speciem impres- sam medium cognitionis, dicit esse medium *quo*, non *in quo*; medium autem quo est principium cognoscendi, non actu manifestativum obiecti seu rei cognitae.”</footnote>
ulty—and a *specifying form or specifier*, by saying that both,
“concern an object, but a specifier as vicegerent of the object
and containing it as its substitute, the power as tending to-
ward the object as a thing to be apprehended”<fnref n="151" />. Put other-
wise, through the relationship engendered by the concept, the
faculty is toward the thing as the terminative object, while the
*specifying form* is concerned with the object insofar as it *sub-
stitutes* for it, and precisely in that vicegerentive substituting
for it, stimulates a cognitive power towards that object. This
stimulative operation of the specifying form is the *obiectum
movens* of which Aquinas speaks.<fnref n="152" />

It is thus, second, that through the signification of the *ver-
bum* informing the intellect that it realizes the vitality of its
own action. It is important to realize the intimate relation-
ship (and simultaneous distinction) between these two: the act
of understanding and the *verbum* through which that act is
brought into unitive being with the object. Among the many
passages in which Poinsot explains their relation, we read:<fnref n="153" />

<footnote n="151">151 1632: *TDS*, 124/21-25: “utraque quidem versantur circa obiectum, sed species ut vices geners obiecti et ipsum continens quasi eius substitutum, virtus autem potentiae ut tendens ad obiectum apprehendendum.”</footnote>

<footnote n="152">152 This exact phrase (*obiectum movens*) appears in the work of St. Thomas Aquinas precisely six times: i.1256-59: *De veritate*, q.6, a.2, ad.3; i.1266-70: 1259/65: *SCG*, lib.2, c.73, n36; *De malo*, q.6, c. and q.14, a.3, c.6; and 1271-72: *ST IIa-IIae*, q.145, a.2, ad.1. Aquinas also says that *obiectum movet* in i.1256-59: *DV q.5, a.10, c. and q.27, a.3, c.*, as well as 1271: *ST Ia-IIae, q.9, a.1, c. and q.10, a.2, c.* A handful of other examples exist in different and less clear formulations.</footnote>

<footnote n="153">153 1635: *Quarta Pars Philosophiae Naturalis*, q.11, “De intellectione et conceptu” (*DIEC hereafter*), a.2, 356a1-22: “verbum manifestare repraesentando, intellectionem autem manifestare operando et cognoscendo, et verbum dicitur notitia terminative seu per modum termini, in quo fit notitia, non formaliter et per modum operationis, ut etiam advertit S. Thomas 1 p. q. 34 a. 1 ad. 2. Differt autem esse manifestatium et expressivum per modum repraesentationis vel per modum operationis et actus. Quorum primum dicit rationem imaginis et similitudinis tamquam res expressa et dicta, secundum autem dicit rationem actus ultimi et tendentiae ad obiectum ut cognitum, non faciendo illud praesens per modum similitudinis, sed praesens factum vitali actu attingendo et operatione ipsa seu actu ultimo repraesentatum obiectum cognoscendo.” In the years between 2008 and 2012, a dispute occurred between John Deely and John O’Callaghan. It began with Deely’s review (2008: “How to Go Nowhere with Language”) of O’Callaghan’s 2003 book, *Thomist Realism and the Linguistic Turn: Toward a More Perfect Form of Existence*, in which Deely levelled a number of criticisms. O’Callaghan responded in 2010 (“Concepts, Mirrors, and Signification: Response to Deely”), and Deely offered (in the context of a broader consideration of the relationship between semantics and semiotics) response to the response in 2012 (“Analytic Philosophy and The Doctrine of Signs: Semiotics or Semantics: What Difference Does It Make?”).</footnote>
It belongs to the word to manifest by representing, but to the un-
derstanding it belongs to manifest by operating and cognizing; and
awareness is said to belong to the word terminatively or through
the mode of a terminus on the basis of which awareness comes
to be—not formally and through the mode of operation, as St.
Thomas shows in ST Ia, q.34, a.1, ad.2. Now the existence of what
is manifestative and expressive is differentiated through the mode
of representation or the mode of operation and act. The first of
these expresses the rationale of an image and similitude, as a thing
expressed and said; while the second expresses the rationale of the
ultimate act and the tendency towards the object as known, not
by making that thing present through the mode of a similitude,
but—that having been made present in a vital act—by reaching
and cognitively grasping the represented object through the very
operation or ultimate act.

That the understanding accomplishes a vital activity of becom-
ing the object in intentional being *through* the word it pro-
duces<sup>154</sup> for this very purpose brings to light the highest accom-
plishment of a sign-relation in human existence—but also, at
the same time, shows the indeterminacy our specifically-human
lives. Construed as they are not only to *this* or *that* object,
but, the union with such objects being a kind of *vital actuality*,
the sign-relations through which cognition always and only ever
(for we human beings, at least) can be realized have an impor-

O'Callaghan argues that the act of understanding and the concept are two ways of naming the
same thing. He claims this to be the position of Aquinas. In the course of the argument, he
further claims that Poinsot advocates for a representationalist consideration of concepts, such
that they “concept-mirrors”. Two key errors undermine O'Callaghan's position: first, Aquinas
manifestly and repeatedly indicates a *real relation* between the act of understanding and the
*verbum*; and, moreover, he claims that the *verbum* is distinct from the *species intelligibilis*,
indicating that, even if he does not use the language of *species impressa* and *species expressa*,
he does make the same distinction.

Second, O'Callaghan's reading of Poinsot is based upon a text from the *Cursus Theologicus*, concerning the Divine Ideas (i.1637-44: *Cursus Theologicus*, d.21, a.1, 538 in the Solemnies edition, t.3, q.15, d.1, a.1 in the Vives), in which O'Callaghan fails to acknowledge or properly interpret the dialectical context, in which Poinsot is giving a minor interpretative concession to Pater Vasquez that only insofar as they are considered as *ideas* and not as founding relations to objects known can concepts be considered as mirrors. By contrast, as Deely more than amply demonstrates, in those texts where Poinsot explicitly considers concepts in their role as sign-vehicles provenating relations to objects known, the notion that concepts function as mirrors is explicitly denied.

<footnote n="154">154 Cf. 1632: *TDS*, 243/19–244/30 for more on the simultaneity of the intellectual awareness and concept-formation.</footnote>
tance far beyond any mere extrinsic system or “epistemology”. The awareness we possess—an awareness always either intuitive or abstractive—constitutes the world of our experience. Every *object* has presence to us; and sometimes these objects are present also as things. But very often, the object present to us not only through a sign but also in itself as a thing, because of the manner in which that object is signified, we misunderstand that presence. Thereupon ensue myriad difficulties: not only of individual cognition but also of cathexis and of social and cultural constitutions. The more deeply obscured the semiosic nature of such awareness, the more uncontrollably problematic become our relations with the world and with one another.

### 4.3. Language and Culture

Permeating these complexities of semiosic relations constituting social realities and cathctic bearings alike are the institutions of language and culture, which phenomena constitute by far the prevailing majority of our experiences today.155 Language, often, is a phenomenon misunderstood by being regarded only as the particular concrete systems through which we establish material vehicles of signification. Conceived, rather, as most fundamentally the constitution of those *species expressae* through which we make the world present to ourselves at not merely the perceptual but the intelligible level, by contrast, we see the deeper importance of language: as the universally necessary means by which we execute our most life-constituting act of being-human. To begin with, as a way of clarification, by speaking of the “universal necessity” of the word, two things are meant by “universal”. First, inasmuch as one is human, there is need for the word: our *humanity* indeed issues forth in language, the *abundantia cordis*:156

<footnote n="155">155 Which truth should not be misconstrued as though this entailed no need of knowledge about nature; to the contrary, a knowledge of cultural complexities and intricacies sans knowledge of nature proves a remarkably dangerous thinking.</footnote>

<footnote n="156">156 1632: *TDS*, 242/14-23: “ex abundantia cordis os loquitur, et sic verbum dicitur conceptus, qua-</footnote>
...it is from the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks, and so a concept is called a word, inasmuch as it is expressed and formed by the power for manifesting those things which are known. For the understanding naturally seeks and breaks out in manifestation; and such an expressive manifestation is called an expression or interior discourse, and the word itself is a form of specification or some likeness expressed and spoken.

To seek and break out in manifestation, to bring into *being* what we possess and have within ourselves: this is *of our very nature* as intellective beings. We cannot leave to reside in ourselves, inert and passive, the truth that we ascertain. It spills forward, not as a mere effusion of excess but as that very *vital* cognitive life affected by the formal awareness characteristic of our intellectual being. We realize our humanity through the linguistic and post-linguistic.

But second, and closely related to this first, *culture* needs the word. To some extent, this necessity is patently obvious—could any culture, in the true sense of what we signify by this term, arise without language?—and need not be stated; and yet, today, we see culture increasingly shaped by the inarticulate, by a kind of raw feeling only obliquely significant, or with its significance muted, suppressed, under wordless and often unconsciously-thinking activity. The mode of our inherently-social animality consists in a shared conduct of verbally-infused rationality. To see what I mean, let us consider this passage from Poinsot's *De intellectione et conceptu* a.2, where he writes:<fnref n="157" />

> According to St. Thomas and his school, the word is required in the intellect, not on the part of the power or its operation as productive, but on the part of the object itself: either [1] such that

<footnote>tenus exprimitur et formatur a potentia ad manifestandum ea, quae cognoscuntur. Naturaliter enim intellectus manifestationem quaerit et in eam prorumpit; et talis manifestatio expressiva vocatur dictio seu locutio interior, et ipsum verbum est species seu similitudo aliqua expressa et dicta.”</footnote>

<footnote n="157">157 1635: *DIEC*, a.2 (R.III.356b16–29): “apud D. Thomam et eius scholam verbum requiritur in intellectu, non ex parte potentiae aut operationis eius ut productivae, sed ex parte ipsius obiecti, vel ut reddatur praesens, si sit absens, vel ut reddatur sufficienter immateriale et spirituale in ratione termini intellecti et cogniti intra intellectum, nec solum sit intelligibile in actu primo per modum speciei impressae, vel denique ut reddatur obiectum manifestatum in aliqua representatione tamquam res dicta et locuta.”</footnote>
it can render the object present, if it is absent; or [2] to render it sufficiently immaterial and spiritual so as to fulfill the rationale of a terminus of something understood and cognized within the intellect (nor should it only be intelligible in actuality first by the mode of the impressed specifying form); or [3], finally, to render the object manifest in some representation as a thing said and spoken.

There exists a certain *fittingness*, that is, on the part of the power as productive, which fittingness consists in that contracting and focusing of the faculty through an expressed specification completing that act of understanding; the perfection of that act, that is. Conversely, the need on the part of the object, as Poinsot here states, can be threefold: first, in the rendering in objective presence what is physically absent; or, second, the rendering "sufficiently immaterial and spiritual... to fulfill the rationale of a terminus of something understood"; and third, rendering the object manifest in a representation. Now, we can understand these first two dependencies on the part of the object as pertains to fulfilling the act—that is, as rendering the object in relation to the act of understanding. The vital operation of understanding requires the presence of the object if the thing understood is not itself present; simultaneously, it requires an object of sufficient spirituality or immateriality, which conditions pertain to none of the things which we encounter in their physical presence according to this state of life (such that, even when the thing is present, to be *intellectually* grasped, we need something contributed by the *verbum mentis*). But we can also understand these two as dependencies for rendering the object *communicable*, which necessity appears explicitly in the third dependency: that by the word, we manifest the object *as a thing said and spoken*. That the vibrations of my voice or the text of my article affect your understanding towards the objects signified comes only incidentally to the physical immutation of your ears or eyes. I speak or write of language—and the sounds and shapes serve as material vehicles for a commonality of expression to be obtained by you with me. But I can convey no intelligible meaning except by somehow rendering that meaning present, not
only in the material representation, but also in the immaterial pattern whereby you grasp that which I signify. Indeed, it is only through language itself that we are able to make objectively present that which can never be intuitively present to us, at least, in this life: such as relations or spiritual entities, or, even the full cognitive grasp of our own souls, acts of understanding, and concepts—realities present to us in a different manner, perhaps, but never intuitive present as objects.<fnref n="158" /> Doubtless we all have had the experience of striving to articulate something and finding it to remain somehow absent—not only in communication to others but for our own sense of completion—so long as we lack the proper *words* for signifying *what it is*.

Given that culture consists essentially in relations (however much those might be attached through convention to physical objects), most especially complex patterns of relations constituted as customary significations, it is not difficult to see the importance of objective presence through language. Increasingly, I believe, as we find ourselves relating to objects not physically but only representationally-present—as is the case when life becomes increasingly mediated through networked digital technologies—we must reckon with the essentially (if often obscurely) linguistic constitution of those objects’ being. Put otherwise, we linguistically constitute and shape every phenomenon as culture—and, indeed, our very use of language renders natural things as culturally-encompassed—and yet think so very little about the means of this, namely, the words we speak and from whence they come. We are thus threatened by an *inopia cordis*. By contrast, as Poinsot elaborates on the *abundantia cordis* in his *De intellectione et conceptu*:<fnref n="159" />

<footnote n="158">158 I.e., present to us in the “lived experience” of “being the one who experiences” and therefore disclosed in a manner rather different from the relational and objectivizing disclosure of things made known through signs.</footnote>

<footnote n="159">159 1634: *DIEC*, a.1 (R.III.349a11-20): “Procedit verbum ex abundantia intelligendi quatenus intellectus quanto perfectius intelligit, tanto magis facit impetum ad manifestandum se; naturaliter enim intellectus est manifestativus et communicativus sui, et quia manifestat res ut intellectas, oportet,</footnote>
The word proceeds from the abundance of the understanding to the extent that, as much as the intellect understands more perfectly, it is subject to a great impetus to manifesting itself; for the understanding is naturally manifestative and communicative of itself, and because it manifests things as understood, it is necessary that it articulate or express that act of understanding substantially.

This *expressive bursting forth* entails not only a full grasp of what has been impressed upon us from without, I would argue, but a fullness in our discovery of the *relations* between the things impressed upon us, the relations between our grasp of them and ourselves, and one another, and the discovery of the possibilities for unity in being among all the diverse elements and aspects of our human experience: for the exploration of our cognitive being within the illimitable suprasubjectivity which grows with every new emanation of understanding and the *signa verborum* whereby those emanations are made known, to ourselves and to others. While Poinsot offers little in the way of direct exposition concerning the constitution of our particular languages and lacks much of the sophistication and nuance of modern semiological inquiries, his fundamental insights into the nature of stipulative and customary signification, as well as his deeper understanding of the sign-relational constitution of human experience, promises a rich area of future research and inquiry. Flipping through the thousands of pages of his *Cursus Theologicus*, for instance, one discovers profound insights into the relationship between customs and habits;<fnref n="160" /> or how determinate objective specifications render knowledge within or related to this or that science;<fnref n="161" /> or how signs play an integral role in the constitution and efficacy of the sacraments;<fnref n="162" /> and so on and on. With nearly every page turned, one finds not only a fascinating insight on the very words intuitively present to the eyes, but ever-unfolding resonance with all that is conjured abstractively present by the names “John Poinsot” and, even more suggestively, “Joannes a Sancto Thoma”.

<footnote>quod illud dicere seu exprimere sit substantialiter intelligere.”</footnote>

<footnote n="160">160 E.g., i.1637-44: *Cursus Theologicus*, “De distinctione habituum”, d.13, a.3 (Vives t.6, 275)</footnote>

<footnote n="161">161 Ibid, “De distinctione virtutum intellectualium”, d.16, a.1 (Vives t.6, 436-39, etc.).</footnote>

<footnote n="162">162 Ibid, Vives t.9, 1-384 in *passim*.</footnote>
5. Conclusion: Discovering and Nour-
ishing Our Roots

As the “black hole” of late Latin Scholasticism (1350–1650)<fnref n="163" /> gradually falls under the light of dedicated scholarship, it may be revealed that nothing in John Poinsot’s doctrine of signs prove truly and entirely *original from him*,<fnref n="164" /> even if conceived *independently by* him. That is, all the key points of his doctrine may have first been advocated by some other. Roger Bacon, for instance, boldly challenged the Augustinian definition of signs in the thirteenth century.<fnref n="165" /> Scotus proposed a distinction between intuitive and abstractive cognition in the early fourteenth, and Pierre d’Ailly may have instigated the distinction between instrumental and formal signs in the latter half of the same. Domingo de Soto indeed distinguishes between the *relativum secundum dici* as naming the *esse-in* qualities which found relative habitudes, while the *relativum secundum esse* signifies the *esse-ad* itself.<fnref n="166" /> Some other figure—perhaps one lost, or obscured, or who spoke this truth

<footnote n="163">163 Cf. Deely 2004: “Iberian Fingerprints on the Doctrine of Signs”, *The American Journal of Semiotics* 20.1-4: 97-101. Cf. Deely 2008: “Introductory Remarks on the Value of Poinsot’s Work to Philosophy Today” in the Reiser edition of the *Cursus Philosophicus* reprinted by Georg Olms Verlag, xii-xiii: “it remains that they [the *Cursus Philosophicus* and *Theologicus* of Poinsot] are veritable mines of gold for any postmodern effort to retrieve and understand from our own perspective and for our own interests (in the postmodern morning light) what were the achievements of the Latin Age.” Or as another confrere in studying this period (namely, Domenic D’Ettore) remarked to me at a conference in 2023, echoing this sentiment, this period of intellectual history is “a gold mine into which hardly anyone has wandered.”</footnote>

<footnote n="164">164 A critique offered by both E.J. Ashworth (1988: “The historical origins of John Poinsot’s *Treatise on Signs*”) and Marmo (1987: “The Semiotics of John Poinsot”)—as though this mitigated the enormous merit of Poinsot’s contributions. Though an accomplished scholar in the history of medieval philosophy, Ashworth’s review article unveils a deficit of understanding. As Deely wrote in an unpublished “review of reviews”, Ashworth’s critique “rests wholly on a material identity of terminology without any examination of the differences in supposition of the materially same terms.” We might extend this repudiation to Marmo’s criticism as well, whose misunderstanding (cf. his p.120-21) seems rooted in a profound misunderstanding of the Thomistic doctrines of relation and analogy alike. Cf. Deely 1988: “The semiotic of John Poinsot: Yesterday and tomorrow”, *Semiotica* 69.1/2: 31-127 in *passim*; see especially 35-36 and 38-44, which respond directly to Ashworth (though omit mention of Marmo).</footnote>

<footnote n="165">165 c.1267: *De signis in Opus maius*, reference to the English translation by Thomas S. Maloney, *On Signs*.</footnote>

<footnote n="166">166 1543: *In Porphyrii Isagogen, Aristotelis Categorias, librosque de Demonstratione, Absolutissima Commentaria*, 204b.</footnote>
without writing it—may have proposed that the relation of
sign-vehicle, object, and cognitive power stands necessary to
the sign’s actuality.

But, original though these contributions may have been with
other thinkers, each seems to reach its perfection in the teach-
ing of Poinsot: brought thereby not into a mere collection of
others’ insights but truly a cohesive *doctrine* concerning the
nature and functioning of *signs*. This synthesis and emer-
gence seems to show, perhaps more than any particular doc-
trinal adherence or moral aspiration, the Thomistic nature
of Poinsot’s mind—for St. Thomas himself seems largely un-
original if the distinct points of his teaching are viewed out of
context; nearly all are mentioned or defended by earlier think-
ers. Yet the synthesis of Augustine and Aristotle, of Boethius
and Pseudo-Dionysius, of Avicenna and the Church Fathers
(even when only related through their commonality in his one
mind): this truly produces a scope of brilliance not only his-
torically unique but philosophically singular. It is a mistake to
believe that merit of human thinking consists in the *ex nihilo*
of “wholly new” doctrines; for nothing exists in the human
mind that is “wholly new”. “Originality” in thinking, always,
stems from beings outside ourselves, and in those, too, there
exists a history and a development. Nothing from nothing
comes. Brilliance, rather, comes from insight into the truths
and falsehoods, the insights and mistakes that one encounters,
in himself and in others. To perceive clearly the reality and,
conversely, articulate it—despite the confusion of opinions and
doctrine—this is what one finds so admirably constituted in
the oeuvre of St. Thomas Aquinas. So too, I believe, will
prove the works of John Poinsot.<fnref n="167" />

<footnote n="167">167 As Henri Du Lac wrote in a commentary delivered at the American Catholic Philosophical Association's annual meeting of 1951: "On Being Thomistic (Commentary)" in *Proceedings of the ACPA*, 151: "I certainly want to join Mr. Mullaney in his condemnation of the two extremes he cites—that of cultural relativism which regards philosophy not as true or false but as an examination of different sets of opinions in their historical settings; also of that extreme which regards a quotation from St. Thomas as a substitute for the student's own thought. However, I do not think that John of St. Thomas touches this second extreme [of which error</footnote>
Deely often wrote that Charles Peirce was the last of the moderns, first of the postmoderns. In the strictest sense, this is true. But the postmodernity which Peirce brings to light through his foundational work in the development of semiotics was already advanced further in some areas (such as the causality proper to signs) by someone deceased nearly 200 years prior to his birth. Poinsot cannot be called “postmodern” in a literal sense, as his death occurred just as modernity began. Yet as the Way of Signs begins treading new and brighter paths in the Age of Relation, we would be fools to ignore one of the greatest trailblazers along that Path.

<footnote>Mullaney accuses Poinsot]. My reading of John of St. Thomas has not been exhaustive, but I recall no place where he merely cites a teaching of St. Thomas without giving reasons which establish the truth of that teaching. He may find the reasons in the writings of St. Thomas, but he uses them because they prove the point under discussion—not simply because some one said so.”</footnote>
with consultation of the translation by Shapcote.

1265-66. *Opera omnia iussu Leonis XIII P. M. edita, t. 24/1: Quaestiones disputatae de anima.* Ed. B. C. BA-ZÁN (Rome-Paris: Commissio Leonina-Éditions Du Cerf, 1996).

i.1266-70. *Quaestiones disputatae de malo in Quaestiones Disputatae*, Volumen II, cura et studio P. Bazzi, M. Calcaterra, T.S. Centi, E. Odetto, P.M. Pession, in Studio Generali Fratrum Praedicatorum Taurinensi, S. Theologiae Lectorum, editio viii revisa (Taurini-Romae: Marietti, 1949): 438-699.

1266-68. *Summa theologiae, prima pars* in the Latin-English edition, Latin text based on the Leonine Edition, translation by Laurence Shapcote (1864—1947) of the English Dominican Province, revised by The Aquinas Institute (Lander, WY: Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, 2012). English translations are original to the author unless otherwise noted, with consultation of the translation by Shapcote.

1268. *Opera omnia iussu Leonis XIII P. M. edita, t. 45/1: Sentencia libri De anima* (Rome-Paris: Commissio Leonina-J. Vrin, 1984).

1268. *Opera omnia iussu Leonis XIII P. M. edita, t. 45/2: Sentencia libri De sensu et sensato cuius secundus tractatus est De memoria et reminiscencia* (Rome-Paris: Commissio Leonina-J. Vrin, 1984).

1269-70. *Summa theologiae, prima secundae* in the Latin-English edition, Latin text based on the Leonine Edition, translation by Laurence Shapcote (1864—1947) of the English Dominican Province, revised by The Aquinas Institute (Green Bay, WI: Aquinas Institute, Inc., 2012). English translations are original to the author unless otherwise noted, with consultation of the translation by Shapcote.

BACON, Roger (c.1214—1292)
c.1267. *De signis* in *Opus Maius*. Reference is to the English translation by Thomas S. Maloney, *On Signs* (Toronto, CA: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2013).

CANNON, James J.

1961. "The Development of Logic in the Dominican School" (PhD Dissertation, Yale University).

CONIMBRICENSES (publ. i.1592—1606/07).

1606/07. *De signis* in *Commentarii Collegii Conimbricensis e Societate Iesu in universam dialecticam Aristotelis* originally published in Coimbra, Lyons, and Cologne with some variation between texts. (Köln: Georg Olms Verlag, 1976). Translation in 2001 by John P. Doyle, *The Conimbricenses: Some Questions on Signs* (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2014).

DEELY, John (26 April 1942—2017 January 7)

1985. "Editorial Afterword" and critical apparatus to *Trac-tatus de Signis: The Semiotic of John Poinsot* 2nd ed. (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine's Press, 2013).

1988. "The semiotic of John Poinsot: Yesterday and tomor-row", *Semiotica* 69.1/2: 31-127.

1994. *New Beginnings: Early Modern Philosophy and Postmodern Thought* (Toronto: University of Toronto Press).

1994. "A Morning and Evening Star: Editor's Introduction" in ACPQ 68.3: 259-77.

1994. *The Human Use of Signs or: Elements of Anthropo-semiosis* (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, Inc).

2001. *Four Ages of Understanding: the first postmod-ern survey of philosophy from ancient times to the turn of the 20th century* (Toronto: University of Toronto Press).
2004. "The Semiosis of Angels" in *The Thomist* 68.2: 205-58.

2004. "Iberian Fingerprints on the Doctrine of Signs", *The American Journal of Semiotics* 20.1-4: 97-101

2007. *Intentionality and Semiotics: A Story of Mutual Fecundation* (Chicago: Scranton University Press).

2008. *Descartes & Poinsot: The Crossroad of Signs and Ideas* (Scranton, PA: Scranton University Press).

2008. "How to Go Nowhere with Language", *ACPQ* 82.2: 337-59

2008. "Introductory Remarks on the Value of Poinsot's Work to Philosophy Today" in vol.1, *Cursus Philosophicus Thomisticus*, ed. B. Reiser in 3 vols. (New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 2008): v-xiv.

2009. *Augustine & Poinsot: The Protosemiotic Development* (Chicago: Scranton University Press).

2010. *Semiotic Animal: A Postmodern Definition of "Human Being" Transcending Patriarchy and Feminism* (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine's Press).

2010. *Medieval Philosophy Redefined: The Development of Cenoscopic Science, AD354 to 1644 (From the Birth of Augustine to the Death of Poinsot)* (Chicago: Scranton University Press). A second posthumous edition has been published by St. Augustine's Press.

2012. "Analytic Philosophy and The Doctrine of Signs: Semiotics or Semantics: What Difference Does It Make?", *The American Journal of Semiotics*, 28.3-4: 325-63

DE FONSECA, Pedro, S.J. (1528—1599)

1564. *Institutionum Dialecticarum Libri Octo* (Lyon: Petri Rigaud, 1610).

D'ORS, Angel
2001. "Peter Hispanus O.P. Auctor Summularum (II): Further Documents and Problems" in *Vivarium* 39.1-2.

DE SOTO, Domingo (1495—1569).

1543. *In Porphyrii Isagogen, Aristotelis Categorias, librosque de Demonstratione, Absolutissima Commentaria* (Venice: Guerraenos Fratres et Socios, 1573).

DU LAC, Henri

1951. "On Being Thomistic (Commentary)" in *Proceedings of the ACPA*, 25: 147-51.

GRABMANN, Martin (5 January 1875—1949 January 9).

1923. *Das Seelenleben des hl. Thomas von Aquin: Nach seinen Werken und den Heiligsprechungsakten dargestellt* (Freiburg: Paulusverlag, 1949), originally delivered as a series of lectures and later published and expanded. Reference to the English translation by Nicholas Ashenbrener, *The Interior Life of St. Thomas Aquinas* (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Company, 1951).

GRADIM, Anabel

2022. "The Semiotics of John of St. Thomas" IO2S Deely [DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.6753592].

HEIDEGGER, Martin (1889—1974).

1927a. *Sein und Zeit* (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2006), originally published in the *Jahrbuch fur Phänomenologie und phänomenologische Forschung*, ed. E. Husserl. English translation by John Macquarie and Edward Robinson, *Being and Time* (New York: Harper and Row, 1963).

1939. *Vom Wesen und Begriff der Φύσις. Aristoteles, Physik B, 1*, in *Wegmarken* (Frankfurt am Main: Vitorio Klostermann, 1976): 239-302. English translation
tion by Thomas Sheehan in *Pathmarks* (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998): 183-230.

HENNINGER, Mark

1989. *Relations: Medieval Theories 1250-1325* (New York: Oxford University Press).

JAROSZYNSKI, Piotr

2008. "The Sign: between Metaphysics and Ontology" in *Deely and Sbrocchi (eds.), Semiotics 2008: 627-39*.

KEMPLE, Brian (31 May 1986—).

2017. *Ens Primum Cognitum in Thomas Aquinas and the Tradition: The Philosophy of Being as First Known* (Boston: Brill).

2019. "Signs and Reality: an advocation for semiotic realism" in *Reality: a journal for philosophical discourse*, "The Philosophy of Realism", 1.1: 75-123.

KREMPEL, A.

1952. *La doctrine de la relation chez saint Thomas: exposé historique et systématique*

1959. "S. Thomas et la notion de relation transcendentale" in *Revue des Sciences Philosophiques Et Théologiques* 43:87-94

LEBLANC, Hélène

2022. "Formal sign in Coimbra", IO2S Deely [DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.6770575].

LYONS, Nathan

2019. *Signs in the Dust*
MARITAIN, Jacques (18 November 1882—1973 April 28).

1959. *Distinguish to Unite, or the Degrees of Knowledge*, trans. from the 4th French ed. of original 1932 edition, *Distinguer pour unir: ou, Les degrés du savoir* (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer), under the supervision of Gerald B. Phelan (New York: Scribner's).

MARMO, Constantino

1987. "The Semiotics of John Poinsot" in *Versus* 46: 109-29.

MINERD, Matthew Kenneth

2017. "The Logic of Intentionality in Hervaeus Natalis".

O'CALLAGHAN, John

2003. Thomist Realism and the Linguistic Turn: Toward a More Perfect Form of Existence

2010. "Concepts, Mirrors, and Signification: Response to Deely", *ACPQ*, 84.1: 133-62

PEIRCE, Charles Sanders (10 September 1839—1914 April 19).

References of Charles Sanders Peirce are to three distinct editions of collected works: *CP* refers to Peirce, Charles Sanders, *Collected Papers*, vols. 1-6 edited by Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss; vols. 7-8 edited by A.W. Burks (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1958-1966). This is also available in a digital edition, located on the InteLex Past Masters Online Catalog <www.nlx.com>. Citations of the format *CP*.1.100 refer to the edition, volume, and paragraph number, respectively.

*EP* refers to the two-volume set of the Peirce Edition Project, *The Essential Peirce*, where *EP*.1 covers 1867-1892 and *EP*.2 covers 1893-1913 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1992 and 1998). References of the format *EP*.2: 260-62 refer to edition, volume, and page numbers, respectively.

*W* refers to the *Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition*, vols.1-8 (out of a planned 30) edited by Edward C. Moore, Max H. Fisch, Christian J.W. Kloesel, Don D. Roberts, and Lynn A. Ziegler (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1982—).
Included here also are the *New Elements of Mathematics*, a four-volume set edited by Carlyn Eisele (The Hague: Mouton Publishers, 1976) referenced by *NEM*.

1878. "How to Make Our Ideas Clear" in *W*.3

1895. "Of Reasoning in General" in *EP*.2

1902. "Parts of Carnegie Application (L 75)", *NEM* 4: 13–73.

1902. "Minute Logic", *CP*.2.

POINSOT, John, O.P. [Joannes a Sancto Thoma] (1589—1644).

The works of John Poinsot have gone through a number of editions over the centuries. While no fully-critical edition of the *Cursus Philosophicus* has been published, the edition prepared by Beatus Reiser and published by Marietti in 1931 has been generally recognized as of sufficiently-high quality and precision so as to be regarded definitive. This edition was republished in 2008 by Georg Olms Verlag, including an introduction contributed by John Deely.

The *Cursus Theologicus*, on the other hand, has been undergoing critical preparation at the Abbaye Saint-Pierre de Solemes since 1931. To date, the first five of eight volumes have been produced. As these are prohibitively expensive, however, the author of this text has relied upon the Vives edition (reprinted in 2023 by the Lyceum Institute) and it is these volumes which here are cited. It is also important to note that only the first three volumes were published in Poinsot's own lifetime. To simplify the presentation of this uncritical edition, we have simply included the dates inclusive of its writing to the death of its author, noting here that these volumes were not completed until 1667 (some 23 years after Poinsot passed away).

1631. *Prima Pars Artis Logicae*, vol.1., in *Cursus Philosophicus Thomisticus*, ed. B. Reiser in 3 vols. (New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 2008).

1631. *Prima Pars Artis Logicae*, in the edition prepared by John Deely, *Tractatus De Signis*, 2nd edition (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine's Press, 2013).

1632. *Secunda Pars Artis Logicae*, vol.1., in *Cursus Philosophicus Thomisticus*, ed. B. Reiser in 3 vols. (New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 2008).

1632. *Secund Pars Artis Logicae*, in the edition prepared by John Deely, *Tractatus De Signis*, 2nd edition
(South Bend, IN: St. Augustine's Press, 2013).

1633. *Prima Pars Naturalis Philosophiae*, vol.2, in *Cursus Philosophicus Thomisticus*, ed. B. Reiser in 3 vols. (New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 2008).

1634. *Secunda Pars Naturalis Philosophiae*, vol.2, in *Cursus Philosophicus Thomisticus*, ed. B. Reiser in 3 vols. (New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 2008).

1635. *Quarta Pars Naturalis Philosophiae*, vol.3, in *Cursus Philosophicus Thomisticus*, ed. B. Reiser in 3 vols. (New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 2008).

i.1637-44. *Cursus Theologicus* eds. Ramirez and Combefis (Paris: Vives, 1885) in nine volumes (t.1-9). Reprinted (New York: Lyceum Institute, 2023).

RAPOSA, Michael.

1994. "Poinsot on the Semiotics of Awareness", *ACPQ* 68.3: 395-408

RATZINGER, Joseph (16 March 1927—).

1970. *Introduction to Christianity* (New York: Herder and Herder).

ROENSCH, Frederick (8 April 1928—2013 December 20).

1964. *Early Thomistic School* (Dubuque, IA: The Priory Press).

SUÁREZ, Francisco, S.J. (5 January 1548—1617 September 25)

1597. *Disputationes Metaphysicae XXVIII-LIV*, in *Opera Omnia*, a Carolo Berton, t.26 (Paris: Ludivocum Vives, 1861).

TE VELDE, Rudi (8 December 1957—).
2021. *Metaphysics between Experience and Transcendence: Thomas Aquinas on Metaphysics as a Science* (Münster: Aschendorff Verlag).

TORRELL, Jean-Pierre, O.P. (1927—).

1993. *L'Initiation à Saint Thomas d'Aquin: Sa personne et son œuvre* (Paris: Editions du Cerf). Reference to the English translation by Robert Royal, *Saint Thomas Aquinas: Volume 1: The Person and His Work* (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2005).

WHITE, Thomas Joseph, O.P.

2009. *Wisdom in the Face of Modernity: A Study in Thomistic Natural Theology* (Ave Maria, FL: Sapienza Press).
<figure><img src="image_14.png" /></figure>
Studia Poinsotiana

IEF — INSTITUTE FOR PHILOSOPICAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF ARTS AND HUMANITIES UNIVERSITY OF COIMBRA

https://www.uc.pt/fluc/ief/publica/poinsotiana

<figure><img src="image_15.png" /></figure>

CONTRA ERRORES
PUBLISHING HOUSE

<figure><img src="image_16.png" /></figure>

MEDIEVAL PUBLISHING HOUSE

<figure><img src="image_17.png" /></figure>

<figure><img src="image_18.png" /></figure>

12
FACULDADE DE LETRAS
UNIVERSIDADE D
COIMBRA

FCT
Fundação
para a Ciência
e a Tecnologia

<figure><img src="image_19.png" /></figure>

GOVERNO DE
PORTUGAL

The Institute for Philosophical Studies is sponsored by
Portuguese funds via the FCT- Foundation for Science and
Technology, I.P., under the UID/FIL/00010/2025 project.