Dear Ben, Jean-Marc, list--
For what its worth, it also struck me that Peirce's use of the terms
"first", "second" and "third" in the context cited by Jean-Marc is as
Jean-Marc suggests merely a way of indicating the three elements involved
when (A) Something --a sign, (B) stands for Something -an object, (C) to
something -- an interpretant. I think it is mistaken to suppose a sign (as
a function) is a example of a Peircean Firstness. A sign (as I understand
the matter) is pre-eminently an example of Pericean Thirdness.
OTOH is also seems to me (as Ben and others are suggesting) that Peirce's
trichotomies of signs are in some fundamental way related to his categories
and less arbitrary than it seems to me that Jean-Marc is suggesting.
But I make both of the above comments mainly from the standpoint of an
interested bystander who is both enjoying and learning from this interesting
discussion which I hope will continue.
That said, I am somewhat puzzled by what Peirce means when he refers to a
sinsign as not actually functioning as a sign and yet having the
characteristics of a sign. The only tentative explanation I can come up
with is that for Peirce all that we conceive or experience (and thus all we
can or do speak of ) are signs. So to speak of a quality is necessarily not
to speak of a qaulity iself (because by defintions qualities are in or as
themselves non existant) but to speak of the sign of a quality. IOWs a
sinsign is something that stands for a quality that stands for something to
something.
And since this is more or less open forum I'd like to comment on a special
interest of mine and that is the logic of disagreements but I will do that
in a separate post.
Best wishes,
Jim Piat
---
Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
