In a message dated 3/15/10 1:06:28 PM, [email protected] writes:
> I think Peircean terms have consistent descriptions used by > Peirceans- this list of 76 definitions of a sign includes also a global > description of the definitions. > > http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/rsources/76defs/76defs.htm > Here is a selection from the 76 "definitions" from Peirce. I find three faults here. 1, they are often incomprehensible. 2, they include key terms that are not defined anywhere in the 76. 3. they expose key assumptions that are flat errors. And "consistent" they're not, in good part because they are from four decades of statements by Peirce, and he changed his mind a lot. I don't expect any lister to read all of the following. 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. 31 1905 But first for the terminology. I use "sign" in the widest sense of the definition. It is a wonderful case of an almost popular use of a very broad word in almost the exact sense of the scientific definition. [...] I formerly preferred the word representamen. But there was no need of this horrid long word. [...] 32 1905 32 - v. 1905 - MS 283. p.125, 129, 131. The basis of Pragmaticism . [...] A sign is plainly a species of medium of communication and medium of communication is a species of medium, and a medium is a species of third.[...] 34 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. 35 - v, 1906 - C.P. 5-473 - Pragmatism . [...] That thing which causes a sign as such is called the object (according to the usage of speech, the "real", but more accurately, the existent object) represented by the sign : the sign is determined to some species of correspondence with that object.[...] For the proper significate outcome of a sign, I propose the name, the interpretant of the sign. [...] Whether the interpretant be necessarily a triadic result is a question of words, that is, of how we limit the extension of the term "sign"; but it seems to me convenient to make the triadic production of the interpretant essential to a "sign", calling the wider concept like a Jacquard loom, for example, a "quasi-sign". [...] 37 - 1907 -MS 321. Pragmatism, pp. 15-16 . [...] How any sign, of whatsoever kind, mediates between an Object to some sort of conformity with which it is moulded, and by which it is thus determined, and an effect which the sign is intended to bring about and which it represents to be the outcome of the object influence upon it. It is of the first importance in such studies as these that the two correlates of the sign should be clearly distinguished : the Object by which the sign is determined and the Meaning, or as I usually call it, the Interpretant, which is determined by the sign, and through it by the object. The meaning may itself be a sign, a concept, for exemple, as may also the object. But everyboby who looks out of his eyes well knows that thoughts bring about tremendous physical effects, that are not, as such, signs. Feelings, too, may be excited by signs without thereby and theorein being themselves signs. We observe that the very same object may be several entirely different signs ; or in some way in other sign. [...] There are meanings that are feelings, meanings that are existent things or facts, and meanings that are concepts. [...] 38 - 1907 - MS 612. Chapter I - Common Ground (Logic) . [...] By a Sign, I mean anything that is, on the one hand, in some way determined by an object and, on the other hand, which determines some awareness, and this in such manner that the awareness is thus determined by that object. [...]
