Robert, Jack, Ulysses, List: Ulysses has helpfully restated the point that I have been trying to make--thank you.
Just to clarify, Robert's linked paper is not about *all *tokens (sinsigns), it is specifically about "replicas"--a term that Peirce discarded in favor of "instances" as his speculative grammar continued to develop after 1903, just like he discarded "representamen" in favor of "sign." CSP: An individual existing embodiment of such a type is called a *graph-instance*, or a[n] *instance *of a graph. I formerly called it a *replica*, forgetting that Mr. Kempe, in his Memoir on Mathematical Forms, §170, had already preempted this word as a technical term relating to graphs, and that in a highly appropriate sense, while my sense was not at all appropriate. I therefore am glad to abandon this term. (LF 2/1:171, 1904) CSP: 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. (SS 193, 1905 July) My question as posted is whether *every *sign token is an instance of a sign type, so using the earlier terminology, I am asking whether *every *sinsign is a replica of a legisign. Robert's paper does not address this, nor what I requested from anyone advocating a negative answer--a specific example of a sign token that *cannot *be understood as an instance of a sign type, i.e., a sinsign that *cannot *be understood as a replica of a legisign. This is my seventh post of the week, so I will voluntarily begin complying with the new rule that is going into effect next week by not posting again until Sunday at the soonest. Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Structural Engineer, Synechist Philosopher, Lutheran Christian www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt / twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt On Fri, Nov 7, 2025 at 12:47 PM Ulysses <[email protected]> wrote: > 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, List >> >> Robert, 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. >> https://www.academia.edu/61335079/Note_on_Signs_Types_and_Tokens >> >> Regards, >> Robert Marty >> >> Honorary Professor ; PhD Mathematics ; PhD Philosophy >> fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Marty >> *https://martyrobert.academia.edu/ <https://martyrobert.academia.edu/>* >> >
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