Robert, I thought that the following paragraph in your article was especially informative: >From the "Five paths" article": We now have a semiotic tool of greater scope than the lattice itself, since it does not only classify signs, but also "streams of signs", that is, interpretative habits that have been inscribed in these paths and, as a result, have become communal semiotic characteristics. The lattices of the five paths (Table 5) therefore also classify the social histories of the modes of interpretation of signs The words 'communal' and 'social' remind me of Peirce's discussion of the "collateral experience" that the reader, viewer or listener uses to interpret signs. Following is the definition from the Commens Dictionary: 1908 [c.] | Letters to Lady Welby | MS [R] L463:14: "A Sign may bring before the Mind, a new hypothesis, or a sentiment, a quality, a respect, a degree, a thing, an event, a law, etc. But it never can convey anything to a person who has not had a direct experience or at least original self-experience of the same object, collateral experience." Depending on their collateral experience, the person who interprets a sign may ffine a degenerate interpretation or an accretive interpretation. The five paths show the possible kinds of differences -- degenerate or accretive. Although there are just five kinds of paths, each kind may have very different accretions or deletions, depending on the collateral experience of the person who interprets the sign. In my case, I had collateral experience that suggested some rather distracting thoughts while I was reading your article. The words 'nicotine', 'stream', and 'French' reminded me of a class in fluid mechanics that I attended many years ago. The professor recommended Gaulois Cigarettes -- not for smoking, but for wind-tunnel experiments. The Gaulois smoke is so thick that it doesn't dissipate in a wind tunnel. It shows very clear streams in the flow. Locke and others talked about "association of ideas". Peirce said that those ideas roughly correspond to his "experiences in the phaneron". There is an enormous range of possible variations among different interpreters, John
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