Jon, list, I agree with you (and Gary R) that “sign-vehicle” is an unfortunate choice of term, for the reasons you’ve given. But similar reasons apply to your term “Sign-Replica,” another term that Peirce himself never used (with or without the hyphen), as far as I can tell. He did use the term “Graph-replica” to distinguish between a graph that visibly existed on paper and the imagined diagram that it “replicated”; but he stopped using the term “replica” in reference to EGs in 1904, for reasons given in a marginal note to CP 4.395: “I abandon this inappropriate term, replica, Mr. Kempe having already (‘Memoir on the Theory of Mathematical Form’ [Philosophical Transactions, Royal Society (1886)], §170) given it another meaning. I now call it an instance.”
Peirce also stopped using the term “replica” in reference to signs generally, and I doubt that you can find an instance of it in his semiotics after 1904. In the 1903 classification, he was using it as a synonym for “sinsign.” Since qualisign/sinsign/legisign is a trichotomy of signs — as is tone/token/type — a sinsign, or token, or replica, is a kind of sign. So is a legisign, or Type; in which case it makes no sense to say that all Signs are Types; which is probably why Peirce never said that, not even in “Kaina Stoicheia.” Likewise the term “Sign-Replica” makes no sense because a replica is a sign in the only classification system where Peirce actually used the word “replica,” that of 1903. And besides that, many of the examples Peirce gave of sinsigns at that time do not actually replicate anything; they are simply existing things or actual events which are determined by objects to determine interpretants. (The fact that you have to use a symbol in order to name or denote these things is irrelevant to their functioning as signs.) I’m inclined to think that Peirce’s use of “replica” in the 1903 classification of signs was already a mistake. It is misleading because for all ordinary purposes, a replica is a copy of something, usually of an existing thing. This is not necessarily the case with sinsigns, or with tokens as defined by Peirce in 1906: “A Single event which happens once and whose identity is limited to that one happening or a Single object or thing which is in some single place at any one instant of time, such event or thing being significant only as occurring just when and where it does.” Peirce does not say here, or anywhere that I know of, that a Token of a Type is a “replica” of that type, because that would be misleading: the relationship between a Token and the Type that it ‘betokens’ is not the same as the relation between a replica and what it replicates, because the latter two are ordinarily in the same mode of being. It makes sense to speak of a “replica” of a graph which has been imagined but not scribed, because both graph and replica are essentially visual. But it makes less sense to speak of written, printed or pronounced instances of the word “the” as “replicas”, because they differ radically in perceptible form — which is probably why Peirce didn’t use that term for them after 1904, not even when he was using the word as his paradigmatic illustration of the Type-Token distinction. For your “systematic” revision of Peircean terminology you could, I suppose, follow Peirce’s example and replace “replica” with “instance.” But that would be a band-aid solution to the deeper problem, which is your claim (or proposal) that all Signs are Types. For Peirce, an existing instance of a word is a sign (albeit a fragmentary and incomplete one), and calling it a “sign-instance” or “sign-replica” as if it were only an instance of a Sign is at best redundant. As for existing things or events which turn out to be significant, calling them “sign-replicas” is deeply misleading — more deeply than the notion of a “sign-vehicle.” Gary f. From: Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]> Sent: 18-Sep-18 21:07 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Terminology of Peirce's final sign classification Gary R., List: I agree with your comments about Atkins's unfortunate take on the trichotomy according to the Sign itself. It certainly does not pertain to "the Sign-Vehicle," since this is a term that Peirce himself never used. The closest that he came was when he wrote in an unidentified fragment, "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" (CP 1.339). On the other hand, he clearly distinguished a Sign from a vehicle when discussing the "somewhat imperfect example" of a mosquito transmitting a disease. CSP: ... the active medium is in some measure of the nature of a vehicle, which differs from a medium of communication in acting upon the transported object and determining it to a changed location, where, without further interposition of the vehicle, it acts upon, or is acted upon by, the object to which it is conveyed. A sign, on the other hand, just in so far as it fulfills the function of a sign, and none other, perfectly conforms to the definition of a medium of communication. (EP 2:391; 1906) At about the same time, Peirce also wrote, "One selfsame thought may be carried upon the vehicle of English, German, Greek, or Gaelic; in diagrams, or in equations, or in graphs: all these are but so many skins of the onion, its inessential accidents" (CP 4.6; 1906). Here it seems to be a Sign-Replica, rather than the Sign itself, that serves as a "vehicle." As I have said before, I find it noteworthy that Peirce's late taxonomy sometimes characterized this division as being according to the Mode of Apprehension or Presentation of the Sign, rather than its Mode of Being--although this difference becomes less significant if we understand "mode of being" in a phenomenological rather than metaphysical/ontological sense. There is certainly a parallel between Qualisign/Sinsign/Legisign, Tone/Token/Type, and Potisign/Actisign/Famisign; but to treat them as strictly equivalent is only one plausible interpretation, by no means definitive. I find Atkins's list of all ten 1908 trichotomies misleading in that he overlooks Peirce's own comments at EP 2:489 to the effect that he switched #5 to #7 (note the repetition of "Imperative"), such that #5 became ("with great hesitation") Hypothetic/Categorical/Relative. I have previously suggested that these correspond to the number of lines of identity (zero/one/multiple) needed to represent the Sign in an Existential Graph. I have also offered my own proposal and supporting rationale for ordering all ten trichotomies to produce 66 Sign classes (3, 2, 1, 4, 8, 6, 5, 9, 7, 10). Finally, Peirce's remark at EP 2:483, as quoted by Atkins, potentially provides mild warrant for the somewhat innovative framework that I posted yesterday. He went on to characterize both Potisign/Actisign/Famisign and Descriptive/Designative/Copulant as "tolerable but not thoroughly tried conception[s]," although the latter was closer to being one of which he "had a clear apprehension," if only he had been "satisfied with the distinction between Descriptives and Denominatives." Unfortunately, he did not signal his level of confidence in any of the others. Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
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