Frances to Armando... My tentative and current use of the term "object" is derived from the pragmatist tradition in realist philosophy, and may indeed be quite different from the idea of an object that you may have in mind. My understanding of the concept under angloamerican pragmatism is that all phenomenal things that seem to exist in nature are manifested as substantive objects, whether felt or sensed and known or not. Furthermore, all objects are fated by evolutionary representation to be assigned as the determinants of signs and then reassigned by disposed tendencies to be determined as signs of other objects. The referential object thus determines the kind a formal sign vehicle will be as mainly a formal icon or causal index or conventional symbol. The sign vehicle in turn determines an interpreted effect and the kind of yet a further object it shall become. The referent of a sign here under pragmatism is thus an object, but in fact there are progressively two kinds of objects potentially signified by the sign vehicle. The first referred object is an immediate object, which is initiate yet static. The next referred object is then an intermediate object, which is first obstinate yet also static, and last remediate but dynamic and energetic.
The object of a sign at this fundamental informative stage of semiosis is not yet held to be endowed with value or meaning or worth, or even force and power, until designed and resigned as such by signers. The content and subject matter and definition of a critically signed object are likely realized only by normal mature humans with such signing ability. There is therefore no group of objects set aside especially as signs waiting to stand for referred objects, because all objects are representative signs of yet other objects. The referred object of a represented sign is realized as such when together they are found to be joined in a relative ground or relation with each other, and then related with the interpreted effect of the controlling signer. Any objective object within nature acting as a sign vehicle, but with no relation reported to another object in a ground or perhaps also with no related connection to a signer, is irrelevant to semiosis, because such an unknowable object is pointless and meaningless and useless. The users of signs in the act of signing are further objects called signers, which signers may be mechanisms of matter or organisms of life. The kind of signs such signers can use will however depend on the ability of the signers. The theory of objects in nature and its culture as being deemed "aesthetic objects" is a further use of objects that then leads toward a theory of artistic objects. This theory of objects and signs under realist pragmatism of course may be too broad for some thinkers and theorists. Armando wrote... To clarify my view; It is my understanding that object reflect only the percipient potential's sense of understanding them.
