Gary R., List: I suppose that I should take a step back and clarify what my semiosic ontological hypothesis purportedly explains. The surprising fact, the universe is intelligible, is observed; but if the One root of all being--the identical being of which all the different subjects within the universe partake--were the being of a sign, then the intelligibility of the universe would be a matter of course; hence, there is reason to suspect that the root of all being is the being of sign. This formulation summarizes the abductive/retroductive stage of my inquiry, and now I am in the deductive stage of explicating my hypothesis, initially by exploring an obvious question that arises--what exactly *is* the being of a sign?
Peirce offers more clues to his own answer in three quotations that I included in my reply to Ivar last week ( https://list.iu.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2025-07/msg00072.html), which I will not reiterate here. He elaborates on the first of them later in the same text, as well as in a contemporaneous manuscript. "It is of the nature of a sign to be an individual replica and to be in that replica a living general" (EP 2:324, 1901). "Now it is very true that a word is not a thing, and there is a sense in which a sign is not a reality; although in another sense the very entelechy of reality is of the nature of a sign" (NEM 4:297, 1901). In summary, what Peirce says about propositions and symbols in the following remarks is true of *all* signs. CSP: I have not fully defined a proposition, because I have not discriminated the proposition from the individual sign which is the embodiment of the proposition. By a proposition, as something which can be repeated over and over again, translated into another language, embodied in a logical graph or algebraical formula, and still be one and the same proposition, we do not mean any existing individual object but a type, a general, which does not exist but governs existents, to which individuals conform. (CP 8.313, 1905 Jan 22) CSP: We have to distinguish Symbols, which are not themselves existent things from *Instances *of them, which are Icons of them. Just as if the word 'the' occurs 20 times on my copy of a certain page of a certain book, those are 20 'lnstances' of a single Symbol. (NEM 3:887, 1908 Dec 5) These distinctions inform Peirce’s late trichotomy for classifying a sign according to its own mode of being, apprehension, or presentation. As I hinted at the end of my previous post ( https://list.iu.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2025-07/msg00100.html), I advocate reconceiving it as designating different aspects of the *same *sign, not *different *signs, consistent with these definitions. CSP: Such a definitely significant Form [as the one English word 'the'], I propose to term a *Type*. A Single event which happens once and whose identity is limited to that one happening or a Single object or thing which is in some single place at any one instant of time, such event or thing being significant only as occurring just when and where it does, such as this or that word on a single line of a single page of a single copy of a book, I will venture to call a *Token*. An indefinite significant character such as a tone of voice can neither be called a Type nor a Token. I propose to call such a Sign a *Tone*. In order that a Type may be used, it has to be embodied in a Token which shall be a sign of the Type, and thereby of the object the Type signifies. I propose to call such a Token of a Type an *Instance* of the Type. (CP 4.537, 1906) Type, token, tone, and instance respectively replace legisign, sinsign, qualisign, and replica in Peirce’s earlier writings. While conceding that in one sense, a sign is not *real*, he nevertheless describes its nature as the very *entelechy* (perfection) of reality, presumably because "there can be no reality which has not the life of a symbol" (EP 2:324, 1901). Moreover, his main point in all these passages is that a sign does not *exist *in itself--"react with the other like things in the environment" (CP 6.495, c. 1906)--nor as a general type within a language or other system of signs, because it is "capable of repetition." Instead, a sign only *exists* in its instances, which are individual tokens, each of which is "a unique embodiment" that can possess different tones while always representing the type (iconically) in addition to the latter’s dynamical object. Again, more to come, but that seems like enough for now. Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Structural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christian www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt / twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt On Fri, Aug 1, 2025 at 8:47 PM Gary Richmond <[email protected]> wrote: > Jon, List, > > I cannot yet support your hypothesis that the universe’s variety is > unified through the notion that the fundamental root of all Being is the > being of a sign. Yet I fully agree (with you and Peirce) that a sign cannot > be conceived in isolation, that it must always be connected with its object > and interpretant. This is simply to say that the nature of a sign is > essentially triadic, mediating between its object and its interpretant -- > no news there! > > The excellent Peirce’s example you offered (close to my heart as I, on > occasion, take the ferry boat from Lower Manhattan over to Governor's > Island) does indeed show that *a sign always embodies relations beyond > itself.* So, prescinding any sign requires also prescinding not only its > object and interpretant, but also their relations, both triadic and > dyadic. That logically makes sense. Extrapolating that to argue that it > follows that the 'fundamental root of all Being is the being of a sign', is > not yet convincing: prescision is a logical move, not *necessarily* a > metaphysical one. > > I do, however, most certainly agree that this analysis explains why Peirce’s > classification of signs uses multiple trichotomies as they are all needed for > a full analysis of what a sign *is*. > > Beyond that, I've nothing further to offer for now. Perhaps others do. > > Best, > > Gary R >
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