Clark, List: CG: Don’t confuse the sign with the sign-vehicle.
I generally avoid the term "sign-vehicle," because Peirce did not use it. The closest I could find was in CP 1.339 (undated), where he wrote, "A sign stands *for *something *to *the idea which it produces, or modifies. Or, it is a vehicle conveying into the mind something from without." CG: So in the sign of water the substance water is the dynamic object, the immediate object is the average understanding of water in the speaker, the sign-vehicle is the word “water”, the immediate interpretant is what comes to mind when someone says water, the final interpretant is the final understanding about water by the ideal community. My impression was that the Immediate Object is internal to the Sign, not necessarily internal to the speaker; and that the Immediate Interpretant is internal to the Sign, not necessarily internal to the hearer. So I am having trouble with your whole analysis here. It seems to me that the Immediate Object is more like the the average understanding of the word "water" in the English language, not just that in the speaker. Furthermore, what (actually) comes to mind when someone says "water" in a particular context is the Dynamic Interpretant (which you left out), not the Immediate Interpretant. The latter is instead the entire range of what could possibly come to mind, or perhaps manifest instead as an action or feeling, when someone says "water." As for the Final Interpretant, "I confess [with Peirce] that my own conception of this interpretant is not yet quite free from mist" (CP 4.536, 1906); but I am starting to think of it as perhaps the *habit *of feeling, action, or thought that *would *emerge from self-controlled repetition of a particular Dynamic Interpretant. CG: We say the immediate object is internal to the sign because it’s in understanding in use. I do not understand what you mean here. Please clarify, or perhaps provide citations from Peirce that illustrate what you take him to mean by "internal to the Sign" in this sense. CG: Likewise semiotically water the substance determines water the universal which in turn determines all these things. JS: How do we reconcile this with "water the substance" being an actual and "water the universal" being a necessitant? CG: Again I don’t see the problem. Could you clarify somewhat? According to Peirce, in semeiosis an Actual cannot determine a Necessitant; so a Dynamic Object that is an Actual (Concretive) cannot determine an Immediate Objective that is a Necessitant (Copulant). Since you stated that water the substance semiotically determines water the universal, I took you to be suggesting that water the substance is the Dynamic Object, while water the universal is the Immediate Object. I now suspect that this is not what you meant at all, but that is what "semiotically determines" entails in my mind. JS: And if "H2O ... is virtually within water," which is the virtual X and which is the X in Peirce's dictionary definition? CG: Depends upon the analysis in question, but in common speech the X is the water being spoken about (which might be a particular body of water or might actually be the universal of water) So to say that water virtually contains H2O is to say that H2O is virtual water--it is not water, it does not have the *nature *of water, but it has the *efficiency *of water. Is that right? Thanks, Jon
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