Edwina, List: I disagree with just about everything in your last message, but I really appreciate the discussion. We evidently read Peirce very differently, or perhaps simply adopt different portions of his writings as our own positions. Hopefully others will join in and provide additional perspectives.
It sounds like you take the view that the immediate/dynamic/final interpretants are the same as the emotional/energetic/logical interpretants. I have not definitively made up my mind about that, but lean more toward seeing them as distinct trichotomies. The English word "man" is a Symbol, which makes it a Legisign or Type, which means that its Being is general. While it indeed only "exists" in its instantiations--Replicas, which are Sinsigns or Tokens--it is Real independently of them. This is NOT Platonism, it is Peircean three-category Realism. One thing on which we do agree is that "the full range of meaning falls within the purview of Thirdness." But this says nothing more than that meaning is a matter of the Interpretants--all three of them--rather than the Sign or the Objects. I am not aware of anything in Peirce's writings that warrants characterizing the Immediate Interpretant as internal to the individual, rather than internal to the Sign. Regarding determination, as I said before, I understand it mainly as constraint, not causation. The Dynamic Object can only generate certain Immediate Objects, and each of those can only be represented by certain Signs. The Final Interpretant will be one or more of the Dynamic Interpretants, which will all fall within the range of the Immediate Interpretant, which is dictated by the Sign. I am not sure what you mean when you say, "But a Sign operates within matter!" Are you suggesting that Signs ONLY operate within matter? I am pretty sure that Peirce would never condone such a statement. Again, the Immediate Object is internal to the Sign itself. I took "individual site-of-semeiosis" as a substitute for "human mind"; if this is not how you are using that term, then I guess that I need you to explain it. Regards, Jon
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