Listers involved in the subject--- My wild probing guess at dealing with the thorny issue of determinations and also categories (but without specific references to Peircean passages) might be to differentiate and define the sorts of objects that could broadly exist both outside and inside semiotics. My thought here turns to the likelihood that for Peirce there are antecedent synechastic objects and subsequent semiosic objects.
Synechastic objects could determine just the very ontic being of a sign, but also with say the very being of a possible interpretant for a signer or mind; so that the synechastic categorial ordering might be (1) object and (2) representamen and (3) signer as the quasi interpretant effect in an effete mind. The phenomenal synechastic representamen is after all also an existent phenomenal object, but one that synechastically might not be a sign in acts of evolution, yet one that can grow semiotically to be a sign in acts of semiosis. It seems likely that synechastic objects and as nonsign representamen have the disposed bent or inclined trait to lean in the determined direction of becoming a sign, and then further the sign of a referred semiosic object, all by the natural evolutionary process of telic design, where the agent of such design is a fated drive to seek with effort a good end goal. Semiosic objects that are caused synechastically to be referents, which would subsequently grow from synechastic objects, would go on to determine the main epistemic kind a sign can be in semiosis as an icon or index or symbol; so that the semiosic categorial ordering might be (1) representamen or sign vehicle and (2) object or signed referent and (3) interpretant effect in the mind of a signer. What is determined or caused in semiosis is a restricted limit in a marginal ground, which would be the restrained relation between the vehicular representamen and its referred object, so that what remains in the ground is a link between ideal continuity and real conformity. The lawful governor that controls the grounded dyadic relation would be the determined interpretant, thereby providing signers with some triadic assurance of semiosic normality (from insister to resistor to trisistor). My ongoing semiotic struggle is for me to make some sense out of what Peirce had to say on these matters. Your kind responses to this topic have been most helpful. ---Frances
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