Atila, List: Your quotation from Sebeok brings us full circle--a number of recent List discussions can be traced back to the key premiss of Peirce's simple and decisive argumentation for the meaninglessness of Kant's *Ding an sich*. "It has been shown that in the formal analysis of a proposition, after all that words can convey has been thrown into the predicate, there remains a subject that is indescribable and that can only be pointed at or otherwise indicated, unless a way, of finding what is referred to, be prescribed" (CP 5.525, c. 1905). It is a concise summary of the logical principle that every proposition has *indexical *parts--either indices themselves, or precepts for finding indices--to denote its dynamical objects, with which interpreters must be acquainted from past collateral experience or present collateral observation in order to understand it.
Peirce's "important distinction between two classes of indices," called "designations" and "reagents," is unique to the first text quoted by Sebeok (R 142, CP 8.368n23, c. 1899-1900). Designations "merely stand for things or individual quasi-things," and examples include "personal, demonstrative, and relative pronouns, proper names, the letters attached to a geometrical figure, and the ordinary letters of algebra," all of which "act to force the attention to the thing intended." Reagents "may be used to ascertain facts," and examples include how "water placed in a vessel with a shaving of camphor thrown upon it will show whether the vessel is clean or not"; how a one-foot ruler "might be successively laid down on the road from my house to Milford, 13200 times," such that "the expression 'two miles and a half' is, not exactly a reagent, but a description of a reagent"; and how a "scream for help is not only intended to force upon the mind the knowledge that help is wanted, but also to force the will to accord it," such that it is "a reagent used rhetorically." Collateral experience or observation is required for both--"Just as a designation can denote nothing unless the interpreting mind is already acquainted with the thing it denotes, so a reagent can indicate nothing unless the mind is already acquainted with its connection with the phenomenon it indicates." I suggest that designation vs. reagent in that manuscript corresponds closely to rhematic index vs. dicent index in Peirce's 1903 taxonomy for sign classification. His examples include the shout of "hullo," the demonstrative pronoun "that," and the exclamation "hark" as rhematic indexical legisigns; any actual instance of these as a rhematic indexical sinsign; a weathercock and a photograph as dicent (indexical) sinsigns; and a street-cry as a dicent indexical legisign (CP 2.254-65, EP 2:294-7). In his later taxonomies, he defines the dynamical object as "the Object outside of the Sign" and adds, "The Sign must indicate it by a hint; and this hint, or its substance, is the *Immediate *Object," which is "within the Sign" (SS 83, EP 2:480, 1908 Dec 23). In other words, the immediate object is *internal* to the sign itself, and its primary function is to *indicate* the sign's dynamical object. Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Structural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christian www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt / twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt On Sat, Sep 20, 2025 at 5:29 PM Atila Bayat <[email protected]> wrote: > Jon, > > I misquoted the Century Dictionary Volume 3 from 1902 with the heavy > green boards, and with my magnifying glass. I wrote ‘simple’ and not > ‘single’ from memory. Good catch! > > Thanks for sharing Sebeok’s updated essay. It must be considered one of > the finest papers of our time in Semiotics. To me it was a lecture that > rendered Semiotics palpable and accessible. A superb example of scholarship > throughout. At the time I thought some scholars would not agree with him, > but his arguments were sound, and Rulon Wells too. He passed when I was > there in grad school. > > Sebeok made a strong argument for the neglected importance of 2ns. I loved > the quote from it attached here; > > "Peirce contended that *no *matter of fact can be stated without the use > of some sign serving as an index, the reason for this being the inclusion > of *designators *as one of the main classes of indexes. He regarded > designations as 'absolutely indispensable both to communication and to > thought. No assertion has any meaning unless there is some designation to > show whether the universe of reality or what universe of fiction is > referred to' (8.368n23, from the undated 'Notes on Topical Geometry'). > Deictics of various sorts, including tenses, constitute perhaps the most > clear-cut examples of designations. Peirce identified universal and > existential quantifiers with selective pronouns, which he classified with > designations as well (2.289, c. 1893)." > > Atila >
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