Hugo, List: Thank you for sharing a link to your paper, along with its abstract, and for including a reference to my own paper on Peirce's interpretant trichotomies. I am not in a position to digest it fully right now, but I must confess that my initial assessment is that it exhibits a serious misunderstanding of semiotics in general and Peirce's doctrine of signs in particular. For one thing, the division of the sign into immediate and dynamic correlates is obviously incompatible with his careful phaneroscopic analysis establishing that any *one *sign has *two *objects and *three *interpretants. The "really efficient sign" (p. 16) in any *actual *event of semiosis is not "the dynamical sign," it is a sign *token *as distinguished from a *tone *or a *type *in Peirce's late taxonomies (replacing qualisign/sinsign/legisign). For another, the *directionality *of semiosis--from the object through the sign toward the interpretant--is absolutely fundamental, as spelled out in what I consider to be Peirce's clearest definition, which you quote on pp. 8-9.
CSP: 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 determines 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. (EP 2:410, 1907) You claim that this is "just one type of sign action" (p. 18), but as Peirce says here and throughout his relevant writings, it is in fact the *only *type of sign action. Accordingly, in *any *genuine triadic relation of mediation, the source is the object, the mediator is the sign, and the outcome is the interpretant. Your five other "ways of mediation" confuse not only this terminology, but also the underlying concepts. That which mediates is *always *the sign, *never *the object or interpretant, although one or both of these might likewise *be *a sign with *its own* object and interpretant. The object *always *determines the sign *to *determine the interpretant, *never *any other arrangement. In fact, after giving the quoted definition, Peirce goes on to reiterate that "the *essential *difference there is between the nature of an object and that of an interpretant ... is that the former antecedes, while the latter succeeds the sign" (ibid., emphasis mine)--the object *always *antecedes the sign, and the interpretant *always *succeeds the sign. Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Structural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christian www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt / twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt On Sun, Jun 15, 2025 at 4:16 AM Hugo F. Alrøe <[email protected]> wrote: > List, Cécile > > The paper on the six types of sign action that I mentioned on the list a > little while ago has now been published online in Semiotica. The paper is > open access, and I have included a link and the abstract below. > > As I write in the paper, I am thankful for inspiration from Peirce-L over > the years and in particular for the spiral-shaped drawing of the triadic > sign in semiosis provided by Cécile Cosculluela in the thread “Graphical > Representations of the Sign by Peirce,” January 2024, which inspired my > depiction of a "mediating representation" in the paper. > > All the best, > Hugo > > Alrøe, Hugo F. (2025) The six types of sign action. Semiotica. > https://doi.org/10.1515/sem-2024-0112 > > Abstract > The Peircean doctrine of signs is incomplete. This paper rethinks the > standard model of sign action to provide a common framework for analyzing > all the different kinds of semiotic processes, including the workings of > thinking creatures, sentient beings, single cell organisms, social systems, > and sciences. Through a detailed theoretical analysis, the paper shows how > we can separate *mediation *(featuring the steps: source, mediator, and > outcome) from *representation* (featuring the conventional sign > correlates: object, sign, and interpretant) in Peircean semiotics and > combine the two to establish a general model of sign action. This leads to > the fundamental and, in a Peircean context, somewhat controversial ideas > that there are not two but three dynamical sign correlates and, notably, > that there is not one direction of mediation in the sign triad, but six > directions, which constitute six fundamental types of sign action: > *perceiving*, *acting*, *interpreting*, *expressing*, *sensing*, and > *reacting*. The sixfold model of sign action is a step toward a general > theory of semiosis, it promises to reconcile the split in biosemiotics, and > it provides a coherent semiotic foundation for a general theory of > observation in science. Chiefly, it offers a workable framework for > semiotics. > > -- > Hugo F. Alrøe, PhD > Email: hugo.f.alroe \at/ gmail.com > Web: hugo.alroe.dk >
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