Frances to Theresa... You partly wrote that for Peirce the word "representamen" is more a technical term than the word "sign" at least within logical contexts.
One thorn here is whether "signs" in some extended nonlogical sense are to be admitted or allowed in the nonhuman biotic arena, or even in the nonorganic dead world prior to life, given that matter is deemed semiotically a quasi mind and that mind is after all of matter. Aside from this issue, much that Peirce writes of about "representamens" is as they might exist within semiosis, and then as logical "signs" of which claim there is no dispute for me. This placing of "representamens" as "signs" in semiosis is seemingly however not the final word on "representamens" in Peircean philosophy. The fact is that Peirce clearly states there are "representamens" that are not tridential and not signs, and that do not determine interpretants, and that are not mental thoughts. It is difficult for me to simply ignore these distinctions, especially since they may turn out to indeed be substantive, albeit outside logical contexts. It is still unclear to me nonetheless whether this mixture of the terms is mere substitution on his part, or if in fact he sought a prior nonsemiotic arena for "representamens" where all things in the world are such, rather than their being signs. This would make "representamens" the primordial genus umbrella under which falls as species that of existent objects, and objects as signs, and objects of signs, and interpretants of signs. If this intent by Peirce is so, then it may very well introduce semioticians to the logical categories of nothingness, like zeroness as an empty class holder ready to be filled with the phenomenal terness of firsts and seconds and thirds; or even to the logical categories of enthness, like fourths and beyond into anythingness and everythingness and allthingness. Perhaps this could be the neglected argument for collateral "representamens" like ephemeral or ethereal recognizants, and supereal aliens or deity. This musing of mine is a guess that maybe the world of phenomena is not as broad as previously thought for logical categories or representamens. If the phenomenal world is in fact bracketed by other possible aspects of the world, like the nomenal world and the epiphenomenal world, then phenomena is categorically and trichotomically only a secondness itself, and thus not even a sign. --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
