[peirce-l] Re: Sinsign, Legisign, Qualisign

[Benjamin Udell]

Gary, list,   Well, I can't remember any more just what conversation it might have been that started that notion going in my mind till it turned into something mythical. Any record is lost on my old ruined hard drive. I simply have to stop relying on these vague recallings when I post to peirce-l. In the old days, it didn't seem to matter too much, somebody could always correct me. But now the peirce-l posts go to mail-archive.com, and there get picked up by the big search engines, so for the foreseeable future there I am saying "Gary Richmond said x" etc. When it comes to this sort of thing, from now on I must get it right the first time. (Speaking of wishing not to rely solely on my memory, also I have to save things from the Internet oftener. I once found a fascinating discussion of how it turned out that deductive math theory of information turned out to be equivalent to areas in abstract algebra. Now it's gone!)   Best, Ben     Gary wrote,   Ben wrote: qualisign = tone = potisign sinsign = token = actisign legisign = type = famisign   While these are often called alternate names of the same things, Gary has said that they aren't just sets of synonyms but instead reflect some differences of conception. I.e., for some purposes we treat them as 9 qualisigns correlated to the same 3 legisigns, but maybe they're really 9 legisigns. My position has rather been that these are three sets of synonyms (with perhaps some subtle changes of emphasis) with the exception of "token" which is used by Peirce for a brief time as equivalent to "symbol". See, for example in "On the Algebra of Logic": CP 3.360  A sign is in a conjoint relation to the thing denoted and to the mind. If this triple relation is not of a degenerate species, the sign is related to its object only in consequence of a mental association, and depends upon a habit. Such signs are always abstract and general, because habits are general rules to which the organism has become subjected. They are, for the most part, conventional or arbitrary. They include all general words, the main body of speech, and any mode of conveying a judgment. For the sake of brevity I will call them tokens.†3 And the editors' footnote: Peirce: CP 3.360 Fn 3 p 210     †3 More frequently called 'symbols'; the word 'token' is later (in 4.537) taken to apply to what in 2.245 is called a 'sinsign. Unfortunately at the moment I won't be able to get further into this matter or some of the other points of Ben's interesting post. Gary --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com