To complete Peirce’s first trichotomy of sign types in NDTR, where the division
is according to the nature of “the sign in itself” (rather than according to
its relations to Object and Interpretant), we consider the sign which “is a
general law” (CP 2.243).
CP 2.246: A Legisign is a law that is a Sign. This law is usually established
by men. Every conventional sign is a legisign. It is not a single object, but a
general type which, it has been agreed, shall be significant.
[Here we should (as Peirce did later) “notice a source of possible confusion.
By a “General Sign,” or a “General Term,” we do not, in the ordinary language
of Logic, … mean that the Sign itself is General: we only mean that its Object
is so” (CP 8.356). Thus the generality of a Legisign (later called by Peirce a
Type or Famisign) is different from that of a logical term, although the latter
is necessarily also a legisign. The Legisign is general not because its utterer
leaves it up to its interpreter to select its actual object (though it may do
that), but because it is “something that exists in replicas” (EP2:311).
Continuing 246:]
Every legisign signifies through an instance of its application, which may be
termed a Replica of it. Thus, the word “the” will usually occur from fifteen to
twenty-five times on a page. It is in all these occurrences one and the same
word, the same legisign. Each single instance of it is a Replica. The Replica
is a Sinsign. Thus, every Legisign requires Sinsigns. But these are not
ordinary Sinsigns, such as are peculiar occurrences that are regarded as
significant. Nor would the Replica be significant if it were not for the law
which renders it so.
[Here Peirce makes a distinction between two types of Sinsigns, as he did
earlier between two types of Qualisigns (see previous post, below). There are
“ordinary” Sinsigns, such as “peculiar occurrences that are regarded as
significant,” and there are also Sinsigns which are “not ordinary,” such as the
Replicas of Legisigns. Thus the arrangement of pixels appearing on the screen
before you as “the” would be meaningless if it were not a Replica of the word
“the,” which is a Legisign. A Sinsign like a thundercrack, on the other hand,
can mean that an electrical storm is in progress without being a Replica of a
Legisign — or an eclipse of the sun can portend disaster, for some
interpreters, even though there is no necessary connection between solar
eclipses and disasters.]
To be continued with the next trichotomy …
Gary f.
} The best things in life aren't things. [Buchwald] {
<http://gnusystems.ca/wp/> http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ Turning Signs gateway
From: g...@gnusystems.ca [mailto:g...@gnusystems.ca]
Sent: 3-Dec-15 11:32
Moving on to the first trichotomy of sign types in “Nomenclature and Divisions
of Triadic Relations”:
CP 2.244: According to the first division, a Sign may be termed a Qualisign, a
Sinsign, or a Legisign.
A Qualisign is a quality which is a Sign. It cannot actually act as a sign
until it is embodied; but the embodiment has nothing to do with its character
as a sign.
[As a Sign, this “quality” must be a correlate of a triadic relation with its
Object and Interpretant, “by which triadic relation the possible Interpretant
is determined to be the First Correlate of the same triadic relation to the
same Object, and for some possible Interpretant” (CP 2.242). Yet it cannot act
as a sign until it is embodied, i.e. until it becomes involved in at least a
dyadic relation, and thus enters the universe of existence. Yet its
significance is its quality (not its embodiment), and qualities being monadic,
there is no real difference between Sign and Object (or Interpretant either).
So I think we might call this a doubly degenerate kind of triadic relation,
where the Sign is virtually self-representing, and self-determining as its own
Interpretant. Compare the “self-sufficient” point on a map which Peirce offers
as an example of doubly degenerate Thirdness in his third Harvard Lecture,
EP2:162.) Or, since this degeneracy is relative, we can say that the Qualisign
is degenerate relative to the Sinsign and to the Legisign (just as the Icon is
degenerate relative to the Index and the genuine Symbol, according to Peirce in
both the third Harvard lecture of 1903 and “New Elements” of 1904).
On the other hand, some semioticians say that all ten of the sign types defined
in NDTR, including the Qualisign, are genuine Signs. This flags a possible
ambiguity in the concepts of genuine and degenerate; and possibly this problem
is related to the concepts of embodiment, just introduced, and of involvement,
which is introduced in the next paragraph:]
245. A Sinsign (where the syllable sin is taken as meaning “being only once,”
as in single, simple, Latin semel, etc.) is an actual existent thing or event
which is a sign. It can only be so through its qualities; so that it involves a
qualisign, or rather, several qualisigns. But these qualisigns are of a
peculiar kind and only form a sign through being actually embodied.
[Evidently it is the involvement of qualisigns in a Sinsign — which, I suppose,
constitutes their embodiment — that makes them “peculiar,” because a “normal”
Qualisign is disembodied (and does not act as a Sign). But perhaps this will be
clarified by the definition of Legisign, which I’ll leave for the next post.]
Gary f.
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