Ulysses, List,
my second post today, but I will not post more than 7 a week. As far as I have understood, is this ok?
I never have liked the type, token- distinction, and feel like being close to finding out, why. There is the top-down- think, and the bottom-up-think. And there are distinctions, that work in one of these, but can easily be refuted by applying the other think. In the top-down-think, every item must have a predecessor. This must include the item, as the idea of bottom-up is involution. In the bottom-up-think, items emerge, evolve, and so on, the idea there is not involution, but evolution. In the top-down-think, this inclusion is platonic ideas, and in the bottom-up-think, it is possibility. The idea of platonic ideas suggests a god who is helplessly crafting about, according to the "try-and-error"- method, until his ideas come into existence, and the idea of possibility is just blurred vagueness, you can call the type of any token "chaos", or "something". "Top down versus bottom-up" is cosmology, religion, ivory tower philosophy, that leads to nothing, because it is not about things, that concern anything due to veri- or falsification. Why can´t we stop trying to explain the cosmos, but start trying to explain ourselves, and the relations we have with each other. There is a deficit about that, people are shooting at each other, so I`ve seen in the TV. I suggest we talk about relations.
Best, Helmut
Right. We can conceive of a rhematic iconic sinsign without conceiving of it being a replica/token of a legisign. And yet, a rhematic iconic sinsign could still be a token of a legisign. For example a sensory experience of redness could be an icon conceived without relation to a legisign or law. But we can also understand red as a manifestation of laws governing the electromagnetic spectrum (or regularities governing human perception).
So even if it is quite clear only certain signs have replicas, it is not clear that certain sinsigns don’t have conceivable “types” or legisigns. Pure random chaos might be a candidate … but even that is an instance of the type “chaos” which has general characteristics that distinguish it from other things and thus is a token of a type. Even some things we might have once assumed were noise, such as cosmic background radiation, turn out to be important indices of larger processes (ie of the big bang).
I don’t know this means every possible sign token can be mapped to at least one sign type but it does suggest we can work with the hypothesis that a sinsign is a replica of some conceivable legisign.
On Fri, 7 Nov 2025 at 3:37 pm, Jack Cody <[email protected]> wrote:
Robert, ListRobert, having read your work presented by you in the last post, I note that you deductively demonstrate that there are only six classes of signs to which the notion of token corresponds at all.Am I right, then, in assuming that the answer to JAS's general question is, as I suspect, "no"? That is, not all is an instance of token/type correspondence but rather there is a delimitation?Cheers,Jack
From: [email protected] <[email protected]> on behalf of robert marty <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, November 7, 2025 7:50 AM
To: [email protected] <[email protected]>; Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Sign Tokens and Sign Types (was Peirce's Categorial Involution, and Contemporary Peirce Scholarship)_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _List,A few years ago, I posted a short note online that accurately addresses this issue.
Regards,Robert MartyHonorary Professor ; PhD Mathematics ; PhD Philosophy
Le ven. 7 nov. 2025 à 02:10, Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]> a écrit :_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _Gary R., List:I changed the subject line to reflect the narrower focus of this discussion.I agree with you and those other scholars that even a "first-time" sign token is an instance of a sign type because its (definitely significant) form is capable of repetition in subsequent sign tokens, and the same is true of natural signs. In fact, anything that we can describe using words, which as sign tokens are always instances of sign types, must likewise be either a general itself or an instantiation of a general. Only an entirely unique sign token would not be an instance of a sign type--something brute, unrepeatable, and indescribable; pure 2ns, with no 3ns whatsoever, which of course is impossible for anything involved in semiosis.In a communicational context, there can be a disconnect between the intention of the utterer, which pertains to the object of the sign, and the understanding of the interpreter, which pertains to its interpretant. Put simply, the utterer can be unsuccessful in conveying his/her intention in the sign's immediate interpretant, resulting in an unexpected dynamical interpretant; everyone has experienced this. In your example, the sender wanted to utter an instance of the sign whose type in English is "hide," but the receiver interpreted it as an instance of the sign whose type in English is "run." Did the receiver misinterpret, or did the sender misspeak (using his/her hands)?Who can say, since there was no pre-established definition of that particular gesture, corresponding to its immediate interpretant? Although like every sign token, it was an instance of a sign type, that type had not yet been associated by both parties with any sign in itself, such that it was capable of being translated into "hide," "run," or some other English word. The sender presumably thought something equivalent to "hide," which he/she translated into a certain hand signal; but when the interpreter saw it, he/she instead thought something equivalent to "run."I do not know how to answer your concluding question, "how wide should we consider 'type' and 'law' to be in Peirce's semiotic?" What does "wide" mean in this context? By contrast, what would "narrow" mean?Regards,Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USAStructural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christian
On Wed, Nov 5, 2025 at 8:14 PM Gary Richmond <[email protected]> wrote:Jon, List,
Is it possible that any of these -- a unique (first time) hand signal, or a lightning flash, or a hiccup -- is an example of a token that is not an instance of a type?
Some Peirce scholars, including Joe Ransdell (but also Short, Liszka, and Parker), wondered about 'first-time' or 'natural' signs that at "first blush" (as Joe would say) look type-less. But, as I recall, these scholars, each and all, concluded that such (e.g., 'natural signs') function under some generality: a natural law, a habit, or an 'interpretive generalization', even if that interpretation were formed on the spot (and even, say, if that first time unique hand signal were misinterpreted to mean 'run' when the signaler meant 'hide'.)
So my own answer to the question would be that there really isn't a sign-token that isn’t, in some way, an instance of a type.
But then another question arises: how wide should we consider 'type' and 'law' to be in Peirce's semiotic?
Best,
Gary R
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