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76 DEFINITIONS OF THE SIGN BY C.S.PEIRCE.
S.S. : Semiotics and Significs : Letters to Lady Welby.
1 - 1865 - MS 802 - Teleogical logic .
Representation is anything which is or is represented to stand for another and by which that other may be stood for by something which may stand for the representation.
Thing is that for which a representation stand prescinded from all that can serve to establish a relation with any possible relation.
Form is that respect in which a representation stands for a thing prescinded from all that can serve as the basis of a representation, therefore from its connection with the thing.
2 - 1867 - C.P. 1-554 - On a new list of categories .
[...] every comparison requires, besides the related thing, the ground, and the correlate, also a (mediating representation which) (represents the relate to be a representation of the same correlate) (which this mediating representation itself represents). Such a mediating representation may be termed an (interpretant), who says that a foreigner says the same thing which he himself says.
3 - 1868 - C.P. 5-283 - Consequences of four incapacities .
[...] Now a sign has, as such, three references : first, it is a sign to some thought which interprets it; second, it is a sign for some object to which in that thought it is equivalent, third, it is a sign, in some respect or quality, which brings it into connection with its object. Let us ask what the three correlates are to which a thought-sign refers.
4 - 1873 - MS 380 - Of logic as a study of signs .
A sign is something which stands for another thing to a mind. To it existence as such three things are requisite. On the first place, it must have characters which shall enable us to distinguish it from other objects. In the second place, it must be affected in some way by the object which it signified or at least something about it must vary as a consequence of a real causation with some variation of its object.
5 - 1873 - C.P. 7-356 - Logic. Chapter 5 .
6 - v. 1873,- MS 389 - On representations .
7 - 1885 - 3-360 - On the algebra of logic .
A sign is in a conjoint relation tothe thing denoted and to the mind. If this triple relation is not of a degenerate species, the sign is related to its object only in consequence of a mental association, and depend upon a habit. Such signs are always abstract and general, because because habits are general rules to which the organism has become subjected. They are, for the most part, conventional or arbitrary. They include all general words, the main body of speech, and any mode of conveying a judgement. For the sake of brevity I will call them tokens.
8 - 1896 - C.P. 1-480 - The logic of mathematics .
9 - v. 1897_- C.P. 2-228 - Division of signs .
10 - v 1899 - C.P. 1-564 - Notes on "A new list of categories" .
[...] A very broad and important class of triadics characters [consist of] representations. A representation is that character of a thing by virtue of which, for the production of a certain mental effect, it may stand in place of another thing. The thing having this character I term a representamen, the mental effect, or thought, its interpretant, the thing for which it stands, its object.
11 -l901- C.P. 5-569 -CP 5-569. Truth and falsity and error .
12 - 1902 - C.P. 2.303 - Dictionary Baldwin - "Sign" .
Anything which determines something else (its interpretant) to refer to an object to which itself refers (its object) in the same way, the interpretant becoming in turn a sign, and so on an infinitum.
No doubt, intelligent consciousness must enter into the series. If the series of successive interpretants comes to an end, the sign is thereby rendered imperfect, at least. If, an interpretant idea having been determined in an individual consciousness it determines no outward sign, but that consciousness becomes annihilated, or otherwise loses all memory or other significant effect of the sign, it becomes absolutely undiscoverable that there ever was such an idea in that consciousness; and in that case it is difficult to see how it could have any meaning to say that that consciousness ever had the idea, since the saying so would be an interpretant of that idea.
13 - 1902-2.92 - Partial synopsis of a proposed work in logic .
[...] Genuine mediation is the character of a Sign. A sign is anything which is related to a Second thing, its Object, in respect to a Quality, in such a way as to bring a Third thing, its Interpretant, into relation to the same Object, and that in such a way as to bring a Fourth into relation to that Object in the same form, ad infinitum. If the series is broken off, the Sign, in so far, falls short of the perfect significant character. It is not necessary that the Interpretant should actually exist. A being in futuro will suffice.
14 - 1902 - NEM IV pp. 20 - 2. Parts of Carnegie Applications .
On the definition of Logic.
15 - v. 1902 - C.P. 2-274- Syllabus .
A sign, or Representamen, is a First which stands in such a genuine triadic relation to a Second, called its Object, as to be capable of determining a Third, called its Interpretant, to assume the same triadic relation to its Object in which it stand itself to the same Object. The triadic relation is genuine, that is its three members are bound together by it in a way that does not consist in any complexus of dyadic relations. That is the reason the Interpretant, or Third, cannot stand in a mere dyadic relation to the Object, but must stand in such a relation to it as the Representamen itself does. Nor can the triadic relation in which the third stands be merely similar to that in which the First stands, for this would make the relation of the THird to the First a degenerate Secondness merely. The Third must indeed stand in such a relation, and thus be capable of determining a Third of its own; but besides that, it must have a second triadic relation in which the Representamen, or rather the relation there of to its Object, shall be its own (the Thrid's) Object, and must be capable of determining a Third to this relation. All ths must be equally be true of the Third's Third and so on endlessly; and this, and more, is involved in the familiar idea of a Sign; and the term Representamen is here used, nothing more is implied. A Sign is a Representamen with a mental Interpretant.
Possibly there may be Representamens that are not Signs. Thus, if a sunflower, in turning towards the sun, becomes by that very act fully capable, without further condition, of reproducing a sunflower which turns in precisely way toward the sun, and of doing so with the same reproductive power, the sunflower would become a Representamen of the sun. But thought is the chief, if not the only, mode of representation.
16 - v. 1902 - MS 599 -Reason's rules .
A Sign does not function as a sign unless it be understood as a sign. It is impossible, in the present state of knowledge, to say, at once fully precisely and with a satisfactory approach to certitude, what is to understand of a sign. ..., it does not seem that conciousness can be considered as essential to the understanding of a sign. But what is indispensable is that there should, actually or virtually, bring about a determination of a sign of the same object of which it is itself a sign. This interpreting sign, like every sign, only functions of a sign so for as it again is interpreted, that is, actually or virtually, determines a sign of the same object of which it is itself a sign. Thus there is a virtual endless series of signs when a sign is understood; and a sign neveer understood can hardly be said to be a sign.
17 - 1903 - C.P. 1=53B- - Lowell Lectures: Lecture III, vol. 21, 3d Draught .
18 - 1903 - C.P. 1-346 - Lowel Lectures: vol. I, 3d Draught .
[...] Now a sign is something, A, which denotes some fact or object, B, to some interpretant thought, C.
19 - 1903 - C.P. 1-540 - Lowell Lectures: Lecture III, vol. 21, 3d Draught.
20 - 1903 - C.P. 1-541 - Lowell Lectures: Lecture III, vol. 21, 3d Draught .
A REPRESENTAMEN is a subject of a triadic relation TO a second, called its OBJECT, FOR a third, called is INTERPRETANT, this triadic relation being such that the REPRESENTAMEN determines its interpretant to stand in the same triadic relation to the same object for some interpretant.
21 - 1903 - C.P. 5-138 - Lowell Lectures: Lecture V .
representamen involves as a consequence that it is essential to a representamen that it should contribute to the determination of another representamen distinct from itself. [...] I call a representamen which is determined by another representamen, an interpretant of the latter. Every representamen is related or is capable of being related to a reacting thing, its object, and every representamen embodies, in some sense, some quality, which may be called its signification, what in the case of a common name J.S. Mill call its connotation, a particularly objectionable expression.
22 - 1903 - C.P. 2_242 - Nomenclature and Divisions of Triadic Relations, as far as they are determined .
A Representamen is the First Correlate of a triadic relation, the Second Correlate being termed its Object, and the possible Third Correlate being termed its Interpretant, by which triadic relation the possible Interpretant is determined to be the First Correlate of the same triadic relation to the same Object, and for some possible Interpretant. A Sign is a representamen of which some interpetant is a cognition of a mind. Signs are the only representamens that have been much studied.
23 - v. 1903 - Dichotomic Mathematics .
24 - v. 1903 - MS 9. Foundations of Mathematics .
25 - v. 1903 - MS 11. Foundations of Mathematics .
A sign is supposed to have an object or meaning, and also to determine an interpretant sign of the same object. It is convenient to speak as if the sign originated with an utterer and determined its interpretant in the mind of an interpreter.
26 - 1903 - MS 462. Lowell Lectures, 2nd Draught of 3rd lecture .
[...] Conversely, every thought proper involves the idea of a triadic relation. For every thought proper involves the idea of a sign. Now a sign is a thing related to an object and determining in the interpreter an interpreting sign of the same object. It involves the relation between sign, interpreting sign, and object. There is a threefold distinction between signs, which is not in the least psuchological in its nature, but is purely logical, and is of the atmost importance in logic.
27 - v. 1903 - MS 491. Logical Tracts (note) .
I call that which represents, a representamen. A Representation is that relation of the representamen to its object which consists in it determining a third (the interpretant representamen) to be in the same relation to that object.
28 - 1904 - C.P. 8-832 - Letter to Lady Welby dated "1904 Oct.12 .
A sign therefore is an object which is in relation to its object on the one hand and to an interpretant on the other, in such a way as to bring the interpretant into a relation to the object, corresponding to its own relation to the object. I might say similar to its own for a correspondence consist in a similarity; but perhaps correspondence is narrower.
29- 1905 - MS 939 - Notes on Portions of Hume's "Treatise of1 Human Nature" .
30 - 1905 - SS. pp. 192-193 - Letter to Lady Welby (Draft) presumably July 1905 .
(3) and is also in a triadic relation to B for a purely passive correlate, C, this triadic relation being such as to determine C to be in a dyadic relation, µ, to B, the relation µ corresponding in a recognized way to the relation Þ.
In the which statement the sense in which the words active and passive are used is that in a given relationship considering the various characters of all or some of the correlates with the exclusion of those only which involve all the correlates and are immediately implied in the statement of the relationship, none of those which involve only non-passive correlates will by immediately essential necessity vary with any variation of those involving only passive correlates; while no variation of characters involving only non-active elements will by immediately essential necessity involve a variation of any character involving only active elements. And it may be added that by active-passive is meant active and passive if the entire collection of correlates excluding the correlates under consideration be divided into two parts and one part and the other be alternately excluded from consideration; while purely active or passive means active or passive without being active-passive.
31 - 1905 - S.S. pp. 193 -Letter to Lady Welby (Draft) presumably July 1905 .
I thought of a representamen as taking the place of the thing; but a sign is not a substitute. Ernst Mach has also fallen into that snare.
32 - v. 1905 - MS 283. p.125, 129, 131. The basis of Pragmaticism .
It seems best to regard a sign as a determination of a quasi-mind; for if we regard it as an outward object, and as addressing itself to a human mind, that mind must first apprehend it as an object in itself, and only after that consider it in its significance; and the like must happen if the sign addresses itself to any quasi-mind. It must begin by forming a determination of that quasi-mind, and nothing will be lost by regarding that determination as the sign.
33 - 1906 - S.S. 196 - Letter to Lady Welby (Draft) dated "1906 March 9" .
I use the word "Sign" in the widest sense for any medium for the communication or extension of a Form (or feature). Being medium, it is determined by something, called its Object, and determines something, called its Interpretant or Interpretand. But some distinctions have to be borne in mind in order rightly to understand what is meant by the Object and by the Interpretant. In order that a Form may be extended or communicated, it is necessary that it should have been really embodied in a Subject independently of the communication; and it is necessary that there should be another subject in which the same form is embodied only in consequence of the communication. The Form, (and the Form is the Object of the Sign), as it really determines the former Subject, is quite independent of the sign; yet we may and indeed must say that the object of a sign can be nothing but what that sign represents it to be. Therefore, in order to reconcile these apparently conflicting Truths, it is indispensible to distinguish the immediate object from the dynamical object.
The same form of distinction extends to the interpretant; but as applied to the interpretant, it is complicated by the circumstance that the sign not only determines the interpretant to represent (or to take the form of) the object, but also determines the interpretant to represent the sign. Indeed in what we may, from one point of view, regard as the principal kind of signs, there is one distinct part appropriated to representing the object, and another to representing how this very sign itself represents that object. The class of signs I refer to are the dicisigns. In "John is in love with Helen" the object signified is the pair, John and Helen. But the "is in love with" signifies the form this sign represents itself to represent John and Helen's Form to be. That this is so, is shown by the precise equivalence between any verb in the indicative and the same made the object of "I tell you". "Jesus wept" = "I tell you that Jesus wept".
34 - 1906 - C.P. 4-531 - Apology for pragmaticism .
First, an analysis of the essence of a sign, (stretching that word to its widest limits, as anything witch, being determined by an object, determines an interpretation to determination, through it, by the same object), leads to a proof that every sign is determined by its object, either first, by partaking in the characters of the object, when I call the sign an Icon; secondly, by being really and in its individual existence connected with the individual object, when I call the sign an Index; thirdly, by more or less approximate certainty that it will be interpreted as denoting the object, in consequence of a habit (which term I use as including a natural disposition), when I call the sign a Symbol.
35 - v, 1906 - C.P. 5-473 - Pragmatism .
36 - v. 1906 - MS 292. Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmaticism .
A sign may be defined as something (not necessarily existent) which is so determined by a second something called its Object that it will tend in its turn to determine a third something called its Interpretant in such a way that in respect to the accomplishment of some end consisting in an effect made upon the interpretant the action of sign is (more or less) equivalent to what that of the object might have been had the circumstances been different.
37 - 1907 -MS 321. Pragmatism, pp. 15-16 .
38 - 1907 - MS 612. Chapter I - Common Ground (Logic) .
39 - 1907 - MS 277. The Prescott Book .
Of the distinction between the Objects, or better the "Originals" and the Interpretant of a Sign.
By "Sign" is meant any Ens which is determined by a single object or set of Objects called its Originals, all other than the Sign itself, and in its turn is capable of determining in a Mind something called its Interpretant, and that in such a way that the Mind is thereby mediately determined to some mode of conformity to the original or Set of originals. This is particularly intended to define (very imperfectly as yet) a complete Sign. But a complete sign has or may have Parts which partake of the nature of their whole; but often in a truncated fashion.
1°/ to affect a mind which understands its "Grammar" or method of signification, which signification is its substance significate or Interpretant.
2°/ to indicate how to identify the conditions under which .... significate has the mode of being it is represented having [text unfinshed].
40 - v.1907 - MS 318, Pragmatism.
e - [...] A sign is whatever there may be whose intent is to mediate between an utterer of it and an interpreter of it, both being repositories of thought, or quasi-minds, by conveying a meaning from the former to the latter. We may say that the sign is moulded to the meaning in the quasi-mind that utters it, where it was, virtually at least (i.e. if not in fact, yet the moulding of the sign took place as if it had been there) already an ingredient of thought.
But thought being itself a sign the meaning must have been conveyed to that quasi-mind, from some anterior utterer of the thought, of which the utterer of the moulded sign had been the interpreter. The meaning of the moulded sign being conveyed to its interpreter, became the meaning of a thought in that quasi-mind; and as these conveyed in a thought-sign required an interpreter, the interpreter of the moulded sign becoming the utterer of this new thought-sign".
f - I am now prepared to risk an attempt at defining a sign, -since in scientific inquiry, as in other enterprises, the maxim holds : nothing hazard, nothing gain. I will say that a sign is anything, of whatsoever mode of being, which mediates between an object and an interpretant; since it is both determined by the object relatively to the interpretant, and determining the interpretant in reference to the object, in such wise as to cause the interpretant to be determined by the object through the mediation of this "sign".
The object and the interpretant are thus merely the two correlates of the sign; the one being antecedent, the other consequent of the sign. Moreover, the sign being defined in terms of these correlative correlates, it is confidently to be expected that object and interpretant should precisely correspond, each to the other. In point of fact, we do find that the immediate object and emotional interpretant correspond, both being apprehensions, or are "subjective"; both, too, pertain to all signs without exception. The real object and energetic interpretant also correspond, both being real facts or things. But to our surprise, we find that the logical interpretant does not correspond with any kind of object. This defect of correspondance between object and interpretant must be rooted in the essential difference there is between the nature of an object and that of an interpretant; which difference is that former antecedes while the latter succeeds. The logical interpretant must, therefore, be in a relatively future tense.
46 - 1908 -_NEM III/2 p. 886 - Letter to P.E.B. Jourdain dated "1908 Dec 5" .
47 - 1908 - S.S. .p. 80 - Letter to Lady Welby dated "1908 Dec.23" .
48 - 1909 - C.P. 8-177 ou NEM III/2 p. 839 - Letter to William James dated "1909 Feb.26" .
A sign is a Cognizable that, on the one hand, is so determined (i.e. Specialized, bestimmt ), by something other than itself, called its object (or, in some cases, as if the Sign be the sentence "Cain killed Abel", in which Cain and Abel are equally Partial Objects, it may be more convenient to say that that which determines the Sign is the Complexus, or Totality, of Partial Objects. And in every case the object is accurately the Universe of which the special object is member, or part), while, on the other hand, it so determines some actual or potential Mind, the determination whereof I term the Interpretant created by the sign, that that interpreting mind is therein determined mediately by the Object.
49 - 1909 - NEM III/2 p. 840-1 - Letter to William James dated "1909 Feb.26" .
50 - 1909 - MS 278 : [Unidentified fragments] .
Another endeavour to analyze a Sign.
A Sign is anything which represents something else (so far as it is complete) and if it represents itself it is as a part of another sign which represents something other than itself, and it represents itself in other circumstances, in other connections. A man may talk and he is a sign of that he relates, he may tell about himself as he was at another time. He cannot tell exactly what he is doing at that very moment. Yes, he may confess he is lying, but he must be a false sign, then. A sign, then, would seem to profess to represent something else.
Either a sign is to be defined as something which truly represents something or else as something which professes to represent something.
51 - 1909 - NEM III/2 p.867 - Letter to William James dated "1909 Dec 25".
52 - v. 1909 - C.P. 6-347 -Some Amazing Mazes, Fourth Curiosity.
[...] Suffice it to say that a sign endeavours to represent, in part at least, an Object, which is therefore in a sense the cause, or determinant, of the sign even if the sign represents its object falsely. But to say that it represents its object implies that it affects a mind, and so affects it as, in some respect, to determine in that mind something that is mediately due to the Object.
53 - v. 1909 - C.P. 6-344 - Some Amazing Mazes, Fourth Curiosity .
Bya sign I mean anything whatever, real or fictive, which is capable of a sensible form, is applicable to something other than itself, that is already known, and that is capable of being so interpreted in another sign which I call its interpretant as to communicate something that may not have been previously known about its object there is thus a triadic relation between an sign, an Object, and an Interpretant.
55 - 1910 - C.P. 2-230 - Meaning .
The word sign will be used to denote an Object perceptible, or only imaginable, or even unimaginable in one sense -for the word "fast", which is a sign, is not imaginable, since it is not this word itself that can be set down on paper or pronounced, but only an instance of it, and since it is the very same word when it is written as it is when it is pronounced, but is one word when it means "rapidly" and quite another when it means "immovable", and a third when it refers to abstinence. But in order that anything should be a Sign, it must "represent" , as we say, something else, called its Object, although the condition that a sign must be other than its Object is perhaps arbitrary, since, if we insist upon it we must at least make an exception in the case of a sign that is a part of a sign. [...] A sign may have more than one Object.
Thus, the sentence "Cain killed Abel", which is a sign, refers at least as much to Abel as to Cain, even if it be not regarded as it should, as having "a killing" as a third object. But the set of objects may be regarded as making up one complex Object. In what follows and often elsewhere signs will be treated as having but one object each for the sake of dividing difficulties of the study. If a Sign is other than its object, there must exist, either in thought or in expression, some explanation or argument or other context, showing how -upon what system or for what reason the sign represents the Object or set of Objects that it does. Now the sign and the Explanation together make up another sign, and since the explanation will be a Sign, it will probably require an additional explanation, which taken together with the already enlarged Sign will make up a still larger sign; and proceeding in the same way, we shall, or should, ultimately reach a sign of itself, containing its own explanation and those of all its significant parts; and according to this explanation each such part has some other part as its Object. According to this every sign has, actually or virtually, what we may call a Precept of explanation according to which it is to be understood as a sort of emanation, so to speak, of its Object.
A logical Criticism of some articles of Religious Faith .
The word sign, as it will here be used, denotes any object of thought which excites any kind of mental action, whether voluntary or not, concerning something otherwise recognized. [...] Every sign denotes something, and the anything it denotes is termed an object of it. [... ] I term the idea or mental action that a sign exites and which it causes the interpreter to attribute to the Object or Objects of it, its interpretant. [...] For a Sign cannot denote an object not otherwise known to its interpreter, for the obvious reason that if he does not already know the Object at all, he cannot possess these ideas by means of which alone his attention can be narrowed to the very object denoted. Every object of experience excites an idea of some sort; but if that idea is not associated sufficiently and in the right way so with some previous experience so as to narrow the attention, it will not be a sign.
A Sign necessarily has for its Object some fragment of history, that is, of history of ideas. It must excite some idea. That idea may go wholly to narrowing the attention, as in such sign as "man", "virtue", "manner".
A Sketch of logical critic .
58 - v. 1911 - MS 676 : A Sketch of logical critics .
59 - 1911 - MS 854 - Notes on logical critique of the essential Articles of religious Faith (20.11.1911) .
Nature of a Sign . Its object is all that the sign recognize; since the sign cannot be understood until the Object is already identically known, though it may be indefinite. It so, it need only be known in its indefiniteness. The interpretant is the mental action on the Object that the sign excites.
For instance the word dog -meaning some dog, implies the knowledge that there is some dog, but it remains indefinite. The Interpretant is the somewhat indefinite idea of the characters that the "some dog" referred to has. And we have to distinguish between the Real Object and the Object as implied in the sign. The latter is some one of the dogs known already by direct experience or some one of the dogs which we more or less believe to exist.
The word dog does not excite any other notion than of the characters that ..... to possess.
The "Object" dog causes us to think of is such a dog as the person addressed has any notion of. But the real Object includes alternatively other dogs which are not known to the party addressed as yet but which he may come to know .
- first the essential characters which the word implies -the essential interpretant.
- second the idea it actually does excite in the particular interpreter.
- third the characters it was intended specially to excite -perhaps only a part of the essential characters perhaps others not essential and which the word now excites though no such thing has hitherto been known.
In order to understand a Sign better we must consider that what it excites some sort of mental action about is in its Real Being either a history or a Part of a history and one part of it may be a Sign of another part.
Excites the idea of a Dog....is sign of a Dog and its Interpretant is forced by the interpreter own belief in the truth of the sign to regard its being a dog to admit that it is possible a ratter.
The sign may appeal to the Interpreter himself to assert that the Matter of Fact denoted does call for the....of certain character... or the Sign may exert a Force to cause the Interpreter to attach some Idea to the Object of the Sign.
61- C.P. 1-339 - unidentified fragment1.
The easiest of those which are of philosophical interest is the idea of a sign, or representation. A sign stands for something to the idea which it produces, or modifies. Or, it is a vehicle conveying into the mind something from without. That for which it stands is called its object; that which it conveys, its meaning; and the idea to which it gives rise, its interpretant. The object of representation can be nothing but a representation of which the first representation is the interpretant. But an endless series of representations, each representing the one behind it, may be conceived to have an absolute object at its limit. The meaning of a representation can be nothing but a representation. In fact, it is nothing but the representation itself conceived as stripped of irrelevant clothing. But this clothing never can be completely stripped off; it is only changed for something more diaphanous. So there is an infinite regression here. Finally, the interpretant is nothing but another representation to which the torch of truth is handed along; and as representation, it has its interpretant again. Lo, another infinite series.
62 - NEM IV - p. XXI - From MS.142.
63 - NEM IV - P. 239 - Kaina stoïcheia.
Any sign, B, which a sign, A, is fitted so to determine, without violation of its A's, purpose, that is, in accordance with the "Truth", even though it, B, denotes but a part of the objects of the sign, A, and signifies but a part of its, A's characters, I call an interpretant of A.
64 - MS 381 -On the nature of Signs .
65 - MS 793 : [On Signs] .
But at this point certain distinctions are called for. That which is communicated from the object through the Sign to the interpretant is a Form; that is to say, it is nothing like an existent, but is a power, is the fact that something would happen under certain conditions. This form is really embodied in the object, meaning that the conditional relation which constitutes the form is true of the form or it is in the Object. In the Sign it is embodied only in a representative sense, meaning that whether by virtue of some real modification of the Sign, or otherwise, the Sign becomes endowed with the power of communicating it to an interpretant. It may be in the interpretant directly, as it is in the Object, or it may be in the Interpretant dynamically, as behaviour of the Interpretant (this happens when a military officer uses the sign "Halt !" or "Forward march !" and his men simply obey him, perhaps automatically) or it may be in the Interpretant likewise only representatively. In existential graphs the Interpretant is affected in the last way; but for the present, it is best to consider only the common characters of all signs.
66 - MS 793 - [On Signs] .
(3) in a triadic relation to B for a purely passive correlate, C, this triadic relation being such as to determine C to be in a relation, µ, to B, the relation µ corresponding in a recognized way to the relation Þ, its dyadic relation to A would belong to it just the same even if A did not exist.
For instance, ...... the sign, the sentence "Let'songster of `Heliopolis' be our designation of the phenix" we may variously regard as B, either the phenix or the writer's determination, etc.. In any case howewer what is essential to the relation between the sentence and B is the writer's determination of mind to have the phenix called the songster of Heliopolis. This determination would be so shaped howewer whether expressed in this sentence or not. And the subsequent statement the sense in which certain correlates of a given relationship are said to be `active' or `passive' is that considering the different characters of all the correlates excepting only these that are immediately implied in the statement of the relationship none which involves only non-passives correlates will by immediate essential necessity vary with a variation of those involving only passive correlates; while no variation of which involve only non-active correlates will by immediate essential necessity carry with them variation of those which involve only active correlates; while by `active-passive' is meant active in respect to some correlates and passive in respect to others ........`active or passive' meaning........ active and ......without being active passive.
67 - MS 793 -[On Signs]1.
[...] which is communicated from the Object through the Sign to the Interpretant is a Form. It is not a singular thing; for if a Singular thing were first in the Object and afterward in the Interpretant outside the Object, it must thereby cease to be in the Object. The form that is communicated does not necessarily cease to be in one thing when it comes to be in a different thing, because its being is the being of a predicate. The Being of a Form consist in the truth of a conditional proposition. Under given circumstances something would be true. The Form is in the Object, one may say, entitatively, meaning that that conditional relation, or following of consequent upon reason, which constitutes the Form is literally true of the Object. In the Sign the Form may .... be embodied entitatively, but it must be embodied representatively, that is, in respect to the Form communicated, the Sign produce upon the interpretant an effect similar to that which the Object would under favorable circumstances.
68 - MS 793[On Signs] .
For the purpose of this inquiry a Sign may be defined as a Medium for the communication of a Form. It is not logically necessary that any thing possessing consciousness, that is, feeling or the peculiar commun quality of all our feeling should be concerned. But it is necessary that there should be two, if not three, quasi-minds, meaning things capable of varied determinations as to forms of the kind communicated.
As a medium the Sign is essentially in a triadic relation, to its Object which determines it and to its Interpretant which it determines. In its relation to the Object, the sign is passive, that is to say, its correspondence to the Object is brought about by on effect upon the sign, the Object remaining unaffected. On the other hand, in its relation to the Interpretant the sign is active determining the interpretant without bein itself thereby affected.
69 - MS 793 -[On Signs, quatre versions d'une certaine page 11] .
a - A Sign would be a Priman Secundan to something termed its Object and if anything were to be in a certain relation to the sign called being Interpretant to it, the Sign actively determines the Interpretant to be itself in a relation to the same Object, corresponding to its own.
c - A Sign would be in some respects Priman, and its determination as Priman are called its Material characters. But in addition it is Second to what is termed its Real Object, which is altogether active, and immediately unmodified by this Secundanity, and in so far as the Sign is second to it, it is termed the immediate Object. The Sign is conceivably adapted to being third to its Immediate Object for something in so far termed its Intended Interpretant; and the Sign only functions as such so far as the Intended Interpretant is Second to it for an Actual Interpretant which thus becomes adapted become a sign of the Immediate [there is a question mark above this word] Object for a further intended Interpretant, and in so far as the Interpretant is such Third it is termed Reflex Interpretant.
73 - MS 801 : Logic: Regarded as a Study of the general nature of Signs (Logic) .
By a sign I mean any thing which is in any way, direct or indirect, so influenced by any thing (which I term its object) and which in turn influence a mind that this mind is thereby influenced by the Object; and I term that which is called forth in the mind the Interpretant of the sign. This explanation will suffice for the present; but distinctions will have to be drawn are long.
74 - MS 810 :[On the formal Principles of Deductive Logic] .
3. as bringing a second into relation to a third.
75 - MS 914 : [ Firstness, Secondness, Thirness, and the Reductibility of Fourthness] .
The most characteristic form of thirdness is that of a sign; and it is shown that every cognition is of the nature of a sign. Every sign has an object, which may be regarded either as it is immediately represented in the sign to be, and as it is in its own firstness. It is equally essential to the function of a sign that it should determine an Interpretant, or a second correlate related to the object of the sign as the sign is itself related to that object; and this interpretant may be regarded as the sign represents it to be, as it is in its pure secondness to the object, and as it is in its own firstness.
On the Classification of the Sciences .
A Representamen can be considered from three formal points of view, namely, first, as the substance of the representation, or the vehicle of the Meaning which is common to the three representamen of the triad, second, as the quasi-agent in the representation, conformity to which makes its Truth, that is, as the Natural Object, and third, as the quasi-patient in the representation, or that which modification in the representation make its Intelligence, and this may be called the Interpretant. Thus, in looking at a map, the map itself is the vehicle, the country represented is the Natural Object, and the idea excited in the mind is the Interpretant.
Furthermore, every representamen may be considered as a reagent, its intellectual character being neglected; and both representamen and reagent may be considered as quales, their relative character being neglected. This we do, for example, when we say that the word man has three letters.
ABSTRACT: We show that one can clearly distinguish two successive conceptions. The first (before 1905) which we qualify as "global triadic" and the second, more precise than the first, that we qualify as "analytic triadic" .
The 76 texts on the sign spread from1865 to 1911 (for 60 of them that are dated or whose dates are estimated). A brief study of the dispersion of the dated texts shows that more than 80% of them were produced after 1902, that is to say when Peirce was in his sixties. The production reaches a climax in l903, the year of the Lowell conferences. In addition, if one assesses them by their content, most of the non dated texts, and notably the eight definitions grouped in MS 793 are from the same period. Our purpose not being to study the evolution of Peirce's thinking in general, we will be interested only in the different conceptions of the sign that he proposes if, nevertheless, one can speak first of their differences before underlining their unity. Is it necessary to remind ourselves that the fundamental unity of these conceptions is confirmed by the constant reaffirmation of the triadic character of the sign? By describing the Peircean sign as triadic we simply highlight the presence in all implicit or explicit definition of the sign according to Peirce, three constitutive elements (but the datum of these three elements does not exhaust the Peircean concept of the sign since the relationship that links them together is lacking).
Peirce has varied the denomination of these three elements for reasons that he has sometimes clarified. We should not forget that he is the author of a very rigorous moral terminological (C.P.2-219 to 2 - 226). To designate the object of direct experience necessarily at the origin of all semiotic phenomena, Peirce uses the words "representation", "representamen" and especially "sign". He uses the term "representation" to this end only in texts n°1(1865), 6(1873) et 74 (n.d.), the other utilizations of the term designating the act or the fact of representing, as found in texts 10, 19, 27, 50, 52. In the text n°61, this word is given as a synonym for "sign ". There is thus no reason to retain this term.
On the other hand, it is interesting to examine very closely the different uses and distinctions between sign and representamen that Peirce first considers as synonymous (n° 9,1897) before making a distinction (n°19, l903) and finally deciding to abandon "representamen" (n°31, l905) since he explains that the popular usage of the word "sign" is very close to the exact sense of the scientific definition. In saying this, he makes the decision to put aside the formal distinction clearly established in l903 (n° 22, l903). We find the fundamental reason for abandoning this distinction in the statement, so often repeated by Peirce, that it was impossible to observe a single representamen that was not a sign. This conclusion is at odds with a number of authors, but in agreement, it seems to me, with Peirce (since from l905 he no longer uses the word representamen in any definitions except towards 1911 in the text n°57. However, the date attributed to this text being an estimation, it is possible to put it in doubt, and as in any event Peirce uses it in this text in a restricted sense, equivalent to legisign, there is no need to preserve this " horrible word " and "sign" should be quite suitable. There would have perhaps been some interest, on the other hand, in preserving representamen so as to concretize the different conceptualizations of semiotic phenomena as between the Saussuro-hjelmslevian tradition and the Peircean tradition. But the adoption of this viewpoint would be a sort of renunciation of the debates on the profound nature of these phenomena according to these two traditions ; the passive acceptance of the fact that both traditions should develop independently would thus deprive us of the clarity that the opening of conflicts can bring about in the semiotic field.
To designate the object of the sign, Peirce employs on nearly every occasion the word "object" accompanied with considerations that render it, explicitly or implicitly, that which is connected to this object of direct experience that is the sign. Sometimes Peirce designates it by the expression "some thing " and even in the text n°23 the sign is said to represent an aspect of the "True" (the "Truth", the true universe), another representamen in the text n°21, and a subject in the n°53. Moreover, the object is often qualified: Real, Natural or Original in addition to the distinction between immediate object and dynamic objects.
That mind must conceive it to be connected with its object so that it is possible to reason from the sign to the thing.
"a special mental effect upon a mind in which certain associations have been produced".
A systematic list of the words that Peirce uses to give content to the concept of the interpretant shows that he attributes the following characteristics, according to what he is saying at that moment and to the maturation of his thinking: - it is a thought or interpretant thought in texts n°, 8, l0, 18, 28.
- - it is an effect created or determined or modelled by the sign on a person, a mind or a quasi -mind in textsn°9, 12, 14, 16, 21, 32, 33,39, 40 (b,c,d, e), 46, 47, 48, 49, 51, 56, 58, 61, 73, 75.
-- it is a determination of a mind or quasi -mind or an influence on a person or a mind, this determination or influence being realised through the sign, the object by being the mediate cause in texts n°34, 37, 40(a,b,c,e,f,) 52.
- It is a Third that according to the case is a third correlate of a triadic relationship or a "Tertian", (that is to say a member of the Third universe, a Thirdness) in texts n°13, 15, 20, 22, 36, 69(b,c,d,e). Moreover, in n°30 iit is described as a "passive" correlate and in n°76 it is a quasi - patient.
- it is a meaning, or cognition, or a result which it produces in textsn°35, 37, 38, 40(a,b).
- it is a sign of the same object in 11, 12, 16, 24,25, 26, 27, 29, 54.
- Those that refer to a sign in actu, that describe therefore this third element of the semiotic phenomenon in its particularity and that are practically reducible to an effect on a person or again to a determination of a mind, in the here and now of the perception.
- Those that refer to an abstract sign which come from the logical analysis of the phenomenon and form part of a formal construction, in which the interpretant is described as a correlate of a triadic relationship.
- the Sign S, an object of direct experience ("external"or "internal"object").
- the Object O, present in the semiotic phenomenon because it is connected with the sign.
- the Interpretant I, present because it is a mental element which ensures this connection.
The reader will have noticed that these groups and subgroups of definitions possess common elements since the characteristics fundamental to them are not exclusive of each other. However by observing the placings of texts constituting the subgroups and by reminding ourselves that numbers l to 60 are classified by chronological order, this distribution shows a significant change, if not of doctrine, at least of his approach to this connection of the Sign to its Object. It suffices indeed to observe the pre-eminence from n°29 (l905) of the characterization of this connection in terms of determination of S by O to arrive at the conclusion that Peirce has decided to take into account, round about l905, the dissymetric character of this relationship, which he has expressed by writing that if, in a sign, O acts on S, the reverse is not necessarily true. The consequence of this change will be the abandoning of the central position granted to the triad in the global approach to the sign. Indeed, to define a priori the sign as triadic implies that diadic relationships between two elements that are induced by the triadic relationship are symmetrical. Therefore if one wants to preserve the dissymmetry of this relationship, it is necessary either to abandon the idea of basing the sign on the notion of triad, or to add correctives (which would be difficult), or to change the perspective, which does not imply the renunciation of the triadicity but simply causes it to intervene at another level. We will see later, that a third approach, based on the notion of communication, will tend to unify the two precedent perspectives.
With regard to the connection between Sign and Interpretant, it is invariably conceived, each time than it is evoked, as a relationship of determination (when it is evoked in a formal model), an effect on interpreter or a determination of the mind of an interpreter (when it concerns the description of a sign in actu). In text n°49 (l909) lthe Interpretant is even called "a creature of the sign ", a conception which is problematic if one thinks of the necessity, many time underlined by Peirce, that an association is a prerequisite in the mind in order that a sign might function as such, which obviously excludes the possibility that the sign could create the Interpretant ex-nihilo. It is what Peirce resumed in this text by specifying that the Interpretant is created by the Sign "in its capacity to support its determination by the Object". In one of his most formal approaches in which the triadic relationship is his point of departure, (C.P.2-233 and s.q.q., Division of Triadic Relations) Peirce defines the Representamen ( see n°22, v.l903) as the first correlate of an authentic triadic relationship. In other words he considers that this first correlate determines the third correlate. Thus, at that moment, he approaches the sign through its triadicity to which he adds a corrective: the determination of the interpretant by the sign, the connections signs-object and object-interpretant being induced by the triadic relationship, the sign itself being a particular representamen , namely a representamen that determines a particular interpretant that is the "act of cognition of a mind".
By taking into account the dissymmetry of the relationship Object-Sign he has therefore, as we have noticed, abandoned the triadicity as founder principle and has resorted to a new notion, linked to the higthlighting of successive determinations (of the Sign by the Object and the Interpretant by the Sign) in the analysis of the sign in actu, the notion of mediation. It concerns a resumption of this notion already present in 1867 (" mediate representation "in text n°8) and in l902 (" the authentic mediation is the character of a sign"in text n°13).In l904, triadicity and mediation appear in the same text (n°28). However one can observe that in the majority of texts after l905 that mention the two determinations cited above, one of words "mediation"or"medium "or the verb"to mediate"is present (texts n°: 33, 37, 39, 40 (a,b,c,e,f) 46, 47, 48, 49,51, 52). It concerns a new theoretical approach (because the term" triad"does not figure in any of these texts) that is based this time on the determination of the Interpretant by the Object through the sign. This conception is partially clarified and formalized in text n° 30 (l905) in which the triad is still present: the Sign is presented there as a passive correlate in its relationship to the Object, which relationship is incorporated in a triadic relationship in such a manner that the Interpretant is put in a diadic relationship with the Object, induced by this triadic relationship. What does not figure in this definition assuredly the most formalized of all, (and that one finds in text n°66 in the undated manuscript n°793) is precisely the determination of the Interpretant by the Sign.
- in texts n°37 and 40a, the sign is said to be "modeled to a sort of conformity with its object".
- in 40c the Object is, in a certain sense, the cause of the sign which represents the influence of this object, and that this influence is "indirect and is not of the nature of a force" (40 d).
-in 46 and 48 the sign is said to be specialized (that Peirce strengthens by calling it in German "bestimmt") and in 47 and 48 he writes that the determination of the Sign by the Object is such that consequently it determines the Interpretant, what means that if the Sign is passive in relation to the Object and active when related to the Interpretant, it owes this last possibility to the action of the Object, as a pool ball becomes capable of moving another after having itself been knocked by another one. Moreover, in text n°65, Peirce makes it clear that when the Form which comes from the Object is incorporated in the Sign the former becomes "endowed with the power to communicate it to an Interpretant".

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