Frances to Ben and Claudio and others: Forgive the interjection, but here are some interpretations of mine on Peircean ideas that may be related to your present concerns in signs and my current interests in designs. Let me state my speculations and invite corrections to them.
The initial grammatic division of semiosis, or the fundamental structure of signs as information they bear, does rightly consist of: (1) representamens; and (2) referred objects; and (3) interpretants. This grammatic division however is only the first of three divisions, where interpretants in fact go on to permeate the other two divisions, which divisions are roughly critics and rhetorics. The "recognizant" as a sign force therefore may be merely a further development of an interpretant supersign beyond the information it is sensed to bear, and perhaps mainly within the rhetoric division. The "recognizant" thus would be part of a tridential and trichotomic system of signs, and should then not be held as the basis of some extended tetradic model of signs. If further quasi categories are to be found or deemed beyond the trichotomic phenomenal categories of terness, in the familiar plan of firstness and secondness and thirdness, then they might be of nomenal zeroness as an empty class holder in waiting, or even perhaps of epiphenomenal enthness to include fourthness and beyond. This however takes mind into some extra semiotic arena of the celestreal or ethereal or supereal world, which is not phenomenal or existential or experiential, nor logically categorical for that matter. States of thingness beyond phenomenal terness are after all senseless and illogical, because they are absolutely of nothingness or vaguely of anythingness and everythingness, which when outside the existence and experience of tridential phenomena makes them pointless and meaningless and useless. It is not known by me if Peirce admitted any aspects of the world that might be held to precede or succeed the phenomenal world. It is clear however that only phenomena can be felt or sensed or known, and that any other aspect before or beyond phenomena must then be done so by analogy using phenomenal representamen that are signs. Now, there are continuent phenomenal representamen or eternal things that are seemingly not objects nor signs, but that are felt by all phenomena or phanerons, to include physiotic mechanisms of dead matter and biotic organisms of live life; and if evolution takes things that far, there are existent phenomenal representamen or synechastic objects that are semiosic signs of semiosic objects. These are certainly felt, but may and can also be sensed and willed and known by phenomena acting as signers. Exactly just how phenomena evolve into being representamens, and then into infinite continua and definite or indefinite existentia is open to exploratory probes, but it is likely by some process of representation, upon which the logic of relations or relativity could be brought to bear. The whole wide world nonetheless is surely permeated and fully perfused with representamen, if not with signs. Phenomena is thus more of metaphysical "seeming" than of nomenal or epiphenomenal being. What thus "seems" to sense is likely that all objects are phenomenal and existent representamen, but that there are objects that are not signs. This makes the representamen of phenomena the umbrella over all else, and means that representamen is not necessarily a synonym of sign. The sequential layout of phenomenal synechastic representamen might thus range from (1) object to (2) sign to (3) signer, where signer might embrace the recognizant. The sequential layout of phenomenal semiosic representamen might then range in acts of semiosis from (1) sign to (2) object to (3) purpose like effect or worth or response or some other outcome. One issue here for me is whether existent phenomenal objects can be classed as synechastic and as semiosic justly within a Peircean scheme. One point on the "semiotic square" as a diagrammatic model is that for me tentatively it is seemingly not dyadic or tetradic or polyadic, but is basically triadic. My view holds that it consists of related poles whose signs are of: (1) horizontal contradictarity or opposition, such as false and true on the top plane with doubt and belief on the bottom plane; and (2) diagonal contrariety or reposition, thereby allowing for the critical judgement of say a doubted truth or a believed falsity; and (3) vertical complimentarity or apposition, such as a doubted falsity or a believed truth. In using the model, my experience furthermore has been that any attempt to fit too much of divisional semiosis and semiotics into one square may often fail. It is also usually the diagonal poles that yield the enlightening brute position of secondness, which is after all the key to factuality and sensibility and reality. This kind of restructuring for the "semiotic square" does violate its semiological origins, but seems useful. In any event, the pragmatist application of Peircean categorics and semiotics to the act of design and its many fields of study, to include architecture, is an intriguing one for me. Such a design model or diagram for use by designers however must likely reverse the categoric and semiotic order, from say syntactics and semantics and pragmatics, to that of pragmatics and semantics and syntactics, because the design process starts with the plan of a project or product first. In other words, the signer as designer must consider the outcome initially in their mapping, which is to logically hold to a presumed and presupposed conclusion as a result, before the rules and cases are presented. The consequential truth of the design matter may of course not yield the conclusion sought, and that may be a flaw in the design process and in this design model. Furthermore, a design that works pragmatically in one environmental or ecological and ideological context may not necessarily work the same way in another. This might go to the very limits of pragmatism itself. --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
