Charles S

Cover
Page i
Charles S. Peirce’s
Philosophy of Signs
Page ii
Advances in Semiotics
Thomas A. Sebeok, General Editor
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Charles S. Peirce’s
Philosophy of Signs
ESSAYS IN
COMPARATIVE SEMIOTICS
Gérard Deledalle
Indiana
University
Press
BLOOMINGTON AND INDIANAPOLIS
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Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data
Deledalle, Gérard.
Charles S. Peirce’s philosophy of signs : essays in comparative semiotics / Gérard Deledalle.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0253337364 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Peirce, Charles S. (Charles Sanders), 1839–1914. 2. Semiotics. I. Title: Charles Sanders Peirce’s philosophy of signs. II. Title.
B945.P44 D434 2000
121′.68—dc21
00024320
1 2 3 4 5 05 04 03 02 01 00
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Contents
INTRODUCTION Peirce Compared: Directions for Use vii
Part One Semeiotic as Philosophy 1
1. Peirce's New Philosophical Paradigms 3
2. Peirce's Philosophy of Semeiotic 14
3. Peirce's First Pragmatic Papers (1877–1878): THE FRENCH VERSION AND THE PARIS COMMUNE 23
Part Two Semeiotic as Semiotics 35
4. Sign: Semiosis and Representamen 37
5. Sign: The Concept and Its Use 54
Part Three Comparative Semiotics 65
6. Semiotics and Logic: A Reply to Jerzy Pelc 67
7. Semeiotic and Greek Logic: Pierce and Philodemus 78
Semeiotic and Significs: Peirce and Lady Welby 87
9. Semeiotic and Semiology: Peirce and Saussure 100
10. Semeiotic and Semiotics: Peirce and Morris 114
11. Semeiotic and Linguistics: Peirce and Jakobson 120
12. Semeiotic and Communication—Peirce and McLuhan: MEDIA BETWEEN BALNIBARBI AND PLATO'S CAVE 127
13. Semeiotic and Epistemology: Peirce, Frege, and Wittgenstein 137
Part Four Comparative Metaphysics 145
14. Gnoseology—Perceiving and Knowing: 147
15. Ontology—Transcendentals of or without Being: PEIRCE VERSUS ARISTOTLE AND THOMAS AQUINAS 155
16. Cosmology—Chaos and Chance within Order and Continuity: PEIRCE BETWEEN PLATO AND DARWIN 162
17. Theology—The Reality of God: PEIRCE'S TRIUNE GOD AND THE CHURCH'S TRINITY 181
Conclusion—Peirce: A LATERAL VIEW 181
BIBLIOGRAPHY 191
INDEX 197
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INTRODUCTION
Peirce Compared: Directions for Use
Although the present book is a collection of essays written over fifty years, either in French or in English, according to circumstances, my way of approaching Peirce
has always followed the same line which allows me to call them Essays in Comparative Semiotics. As to the title, Charles S. Peirce’s Philosophy of Signs, I am not
responsible for the fact that Peirce’s theory of signs is philosophical, rather than “ethnological” like that of Claude LévyStrauss, or “linguistic” like that of Roman
Jakobson. That is why not only philosophy in general, including ideology, but metaphysics in particular, play a part in Peirce’s semiotics, and consequently in my book.
In spite of the fact that my papers were written to introduce Peirce to a French public, and perhaps thanks to it, my book has a unity of method which explains itself.
First, writing for French readers, I could not refer them to English or American authors whom they were not supposed to know. I could resort only to French authors
or French translations of Englishspeaking authors, dealing with the same semiotic subject matter. Unfortunately, or rather fortunately, their approach was so different
that I could stress only the differences and not the resemblances. That is why my “comparative’’ method is differential. Peirce stands alone of his kind. Second, I had
to compare Peirce, not only to French authors or foreign authors translated into French, but to himself both chronologically and contextually.
As a reader of Peirce myself, I wanted to be fair and read Peirce’s writings chronologically. One cannot reject an argument, developed, let us say in 1906, by quoting
a text from 1867 or 1877–1878. Between 1867, when Peirce proposed his new list of categories, or 1877–1878 when he proposed his “pragmatic maxim,” and
1904–1911 when he was corresponding with Lady Welby, he changed his mind. The new logic of relatives which he invented around 1875 led him to abandon the
Western “dualistic” way of thinking as promoted from Aristotle to Kant, for a “triadic” and “antiinductive” way of reasoning which experimental method and evolutive
sciences first practiced. That is why I sometimes, when necessary, give the date of my quotations from Peirce.
To be fair, one has also to read an author in context. The vocabulary of a philosopher is not the same as that of a mathematician or a biologist. When a philosopher is
also a mathematical logician and pragmatist, as was the case with Peirce, one has to specify the public to which a given text (already dated) is addressed. For instance,
Peirce uses the concept of “degenerate” when he wants to
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be understood by mathematicians or logicians. When he addresses philosophers, he uses other concepts, such as the three phenomenological or rather phaneroscopical
categories. In the first instance, he would say that a “proposition” is a degenerate case of “argument” (‘‘argument,” in Peirce’s sense, i.e., any ordered system). In the
other instance, he would say that a Third is “vague and empty,” a mere “structure” and that a Second is a single, singular, and unique replica of a Third, the best
example being the relation between “type” and “token.” But it would be nonsense to speak here in terms of “degeneracy,” because, as a First, the type is not a
“genuine” category, but an “accretive” sign.
Let us give another more simple and general case. In a paper published in the Times Literary Supplement on August 23, 1985, Jonathan Cohen insists on what he
thinks to be a contradiction in what he calls Peircean “antirealism”: The Peircean antirealist “assumes that scientific method […] is sufficient to guarantee the
convergence” between scientific consensus and truth, because “he takes such convergence to be an a priori philosophical truth.” “So though the Peircean is a fallibilist
in relation to science itself, he is an infallibilist in relation to methodology” (Cohen 1985: 929). Jonathan Cohen is mistaken here because his conception of truth is out of
context. “Inquiry” has nothing to do with “truth” and certainly not with “an a priori philosophical truth.” According to Peirce, “inquiry” can give birth only to “warranted
assertibility,” to use the expression coined by John Dewey and quoted by Cohen. The same mistake was made by the analytic philosophers when they were orthodox
and by the renegades of the next generation, whether they were “realists” or “neopragmatists.”
Of course, the reader may be tempted to unify Peirce’s thought and may be successful, provided the two conditions of chronology and contextualization are respected.
For instance, chronologically and contextually, a concept may have been dealt with by Peirce at one period and in one context. For example, consider the concept of
“object” in his correspondence with Lady Welby between 1904 and 1911, and in the context of semiotics. The distinction between the concept of immediate object
and the concept of dynamic object applies only to the idea of “semiosis.” The immediate object (Oi) is the name of the object within a given semiosis, the dynamic
object (Od) is the name of the same object without the same semiosis. In other words, dynamic object (Od) and immediate object (Oi) can be separated only
analytically. The object is existentially one and the same, only, like a coin, with a reverse (Od) and an obverse (Oi). While the nature of Oi is easy to define because it is
psychologically apprehended, the nature of Od cannot be with certainty semiotically described. Is it an “essence” or the totality of immediate objects solidified in a
transparent ideal object produced by all the interpretants as habits in a given social group for a given individual of this group?
Generalization is thus in this case and other similar cases, according to Peirce’s own ethics of terminology, to be limited to their respective proper time and context.
But when one wants to systematize a concept which Peirce discussed several times at different periods and in different contexts, it is more risky, because two
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cases have to be distinguished: the meaning of the concept may be either changed or enlarged.
When the object of the concept is changed, things are relatively easy. It is the case of the new conception of inference we mentioned earlier. The “antiinductive”
attitude that Peirce adopted at the turn of the century rested on the fact that no theory of change could prove that singular, concrete facts by themselves give birth to
“universals” or rather “generals” to use Peirce’s term. The abductive process that Peirce advanced instead was that facts can only suggest hypotheses which have to be
experimentally tested. In consequence, if this is acknowledged, facts and ideas cannot be thought as opposed as Mill’s empiricism is opposed to Descartes’s idealism.
When the concept is enlarged, the whole system has to be looked at in another way. For instance, the two main Peircean protocols: the phaneroscopical protocol
and its mathematical foundation and incidentally the socalled protocol of degeneracy, with which we will deal later on.
The main Peircean protocols or principles will serve in the present book as references:
Phaneroscopy: the principle of the hierarchy of categories;
Epistemology: primarity of Thirdness over Secondness, but necessity of Secondness for “instantiating” Thirdness;
Semiotics: three kinds of references to signs: Triadic symbol, dyadic index, and monadic icon: no symbolic sign without index and icon; no indexical sign without icon;
the iconic sign refers to itself.
To sum up, my approach is philosophical in the two senses of the word: ideological and metaphysical. I shall insist on ideology in the two sections devoted respectively
to Peirce’s pragmatism (Part I) and Peirce’s metaphysics (Part IV). Part II will deal with Peirce as semiotician. Part III is, properly speaking, comparative in the sense I
gave to the term above.
The first part: “Semeiotic as Philosophy,’’ deals respectively with Peirce’s philosophical paradigms as opposed to European paradigms and especially with the first two
pragmatic papers which were published in French in the Revue philosophique in 1878 and 1879. The circumstances of their being written in French by Peirce and
subsequently rewritten, suggest an ideological influence which is worth stressing.
The second part: “Semeiotic as Semiotics,” insists on semiotics as the theory of signaction. Without rejecting the formal aspect of the sign, the accent is put on time and
terminology, on semiosis as the action of “makingsign”: objects or words.
The third part: “Comparative Semiotics,” contrasts Peirce’s triadic semiotics with the theories of signs—most of them dualistic—as dealt with by nearly every
contemporary human science: formal logic, linguistics, semiology, theory of communication, epistemology, etcetera.
The fourth part: “Comparative metaphysics,” discusses the two ideological foundations of triadicity in the context of the quarrel of the Holy Trinity:
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equalitarian with the West and hierarchical with the East. Peirce’s hierarchical triadicity not only conforms to experimental evolutionary sciences and sheds light on all
the semiotic processes, but provides a new approach to the mystery of the Trinity, and saves metaphysics. It is as if metaphysics, which was born with the Roman
Church and of which the end was not long ago announced, can now be reborn thanks to Peirce’s hierarchically triadic philosophy of signs.
ABOUT THE TEXT
Repetitions
Over fifty years, one is bound to repeat oneself, by way of routine or necessity of the subject matter. I have suppressed all the repetition of the first kind, and kept the
second kind, to make my ideas, or rather Peirce’s ideas, clear. As Schopenhauer said: “The author may sometimes repeat himself. He should be excused on the ground
of the difficulty of the subjectmatter. The structure of the set of ideas he introduces is not that of a chain but of an organic whole, which obliges him to touch twice on
certain aspect[s] of it” (Schopenhauer 1888: Preface).
Translations
All the translations from Latin, Greek, French, and German are mine, except when otherwise specified.
Bibliography
The bibliography serves as reference and indications for further reading. As a list of references, it gives all the details necessary to find a text quoted. For instance,
(Santayana 1920: 107) refers to “Santayana, George. 1920. Character and Opinion in the United States. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons (p. 107).” As a
guide for reading, it may be used to complement my essays: by way of example, the comparison of Peirce with Marx and Lenin (Deledalle 1990: 59–70), with Rossi
Landi and Morris (Petrilli, ed. 1992), with Sherlock Holmes (Sebeok and UmikerSebeok 1979: 203–250), with Eco (Tejera 1991), and others.
The French or, in a few recent cases, English papers I wrote on the various topics which are discussed in the present book are given chronologically in the following list.
ORIGINAL PAPERS BY THE AUTHOR
The papers totally or partially used are referred to the corresponding chapters of the book.
1964. “Charles S. Peirce et les maîtres à penser de la philosophie européenne d’aujourd’hui.” Les Études philosophiques, April–June: 283–295.
1970. ‘‘ÉtatsUnis, La pensée américaine.” Pp. 637–642 in Encyclopaedia Universalis, vol. VI. Paris: Encyclopaedia Universalis France.
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1973. “Peirce (C. S.), 1839–1914.” Pp. 719–720 in Encyclopaedia Universalis, vol. XII. Paris: Encyclopaedia Universalis France.
1973. “Pragmatisme.” Pp. 441–443 in Encyclopaedia Universalis, vol. XIII. Paris: Encyclopaedia Universalis France.
1976. “Peirce ou Saussure.’’ Semiosis 1: 7–13.—Chapter 9.
1976. “Saussure et Peirce.” Semiosis 2: 18–24.—Chapter 9.
1979. “Les pragmatistes et la nature du pragmatisme.” Revue philosophique de Louvain, November: 471–486.
1980a. “Les articles pragmatistes de Charles S. Peirce.” Revue philosophique, January–March: 17–29.—Chapter 3.
1980b. “Avertissement aux lecteurs de Peirce.” Langages, n° 58: 25–27.—Chapter 3.
1981a. “English and French Versions of Charles S. Peirce’s ‘The Fixation of Belief’ and ‘How to Make Our Ideas Clear.’” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce
Society, Spring: 140–152.—Chapter 3.
1981b. “Charles S. Peirce, Un argument négligé en faveur de la réalité de Dieu.” Présentation et traduction, Revue philosophique de Louvain, August: 327–349.—
Chapter 17.
1981c. “Le representamen et l’objet dans la semiosis de Charles S. Peirce.” Semiotica, 3/4: 195–200.
1983. “L’actualité de Peirce: abduction, induction, déduction.” Semiotica, 3/4: 307–313.—Chapter 13.
1986a. “La sémiotique peircienne comme métalangage: Eléments théoriques et esquisse d’une application.” Pp. 49–63 in Semiotics and International Scholarship:
Towards a Language of Theory, ed. Jonathan D. Evans and André Helbo. Nato Asi Series. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff.
1986b. “La sémiotique de Peirce sub specie philosophiae.” Estudis Semiotics/ Estudios Semioticos, 6/7: 7–15.—Chapter 2.
1987. “Quelle philosophie pour la sémiotique peircienne? Peirce et la sémiotique grecque.” Semiotica, 3/4: 241–251.—Chapter 7.
1988a. “Epistémologie, logique et sémiotique.” Cruzeiro Semiotico, n° 8: 13–21.—Chapter 13.
1988b. “Morris lecteur de Peirce?” Degrés, n° 54–55, SummerAutumn: c 1–7.—Chapter 10.
1989a. “Victoria Lady Welby and Charles S. Peirce: Meaning and Signification.” Pp. 133–149 in Essays on Significs, ed. H. Walter Schmitz. Amsterdam/
Philadelphia: John Benjamins.—Chapter 8.
1989b. “Peirce: The Nation’s Philosophy.” [Harvard] (unpublished)—Conclusion.
1990. “Traduire Charles S. Peirce.” TTR: Traduction, Terminologie, Rédaction, 3–1: 15–29.—Chapter 5.
1991. “Reply to Jerzy Pelc’s Questions of a Logician to a Philosopher.” (VS 55/56: 13–28) (unpublished).—Chapter 6.
1992a. “La triade en sémiotique.” Pp. 1299–1303 in Signs of Humanity/L’homme
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et ses signes, ed. Michel Balat, Janice DeledalleRhodes, and Gérard Deledalle, vol. III. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
1992b. “Percevoir et connaître.” Cruzeiro Semiotico, 8: 65–76.—Chapter 14.
1992c. “Charles S. Peirce et les Transcendantaux de l’Être.” Semiosis, 65–68: 36–47.—Chapter 15.
1993. ‘‘Charles S. Peirce. Les ruptures épistémologiques et les nouveaux paradigmes.” Pp. 51–66 in Charles Sanders Peirce, Apports récents et perspectives en
épistémologie, sémiologie et logique, ed. Denis Miéville.—Chapter 1.
1996. “Peirce and Jakobson: CrossReadings.” Prague (unpublished).—Chapter 11.
1997a. “The World of Signs Is the World of Objects.” Pp. 15–27 in World of Signs/ World of Things, ed. Jeff Bernard, Josef Wallmannsberger, and Gloria Withalm.
Vienna: ÖGS.—Chapter 4.
1997b. “Media between Balnibarbi and Plato’s Cave.” Pp. 49–60 in Semiotics of the Media, ed. Winfried Nöth. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.—Chapter 12.
1998a. “Peirce’s Semiosis and Time.” Pp. 247–251 in Signs & Time / Zeit & Zeichen, ed. Ernest W. B. HessLüttich and Brigitte SchliebenLange. Gunter Narr
Verlag Tübingen.—Chapter 4.
1998b. “Peirce, Theologian.” Pp. 139–150 in C. S. Peirce: Categories to Constantinople, ed. Jaap van Brakel and Michael van Heerden. Leuven: Leuven
University Press.—Chapter 17.
1999. “No Order without Chaos.” Pp. 38–46 in Caos e Ordem na Filosofia e Nas Ciências, ed. Lucia Santaella e Jorge Albuquerque Vieira. São Paulo, Edição
especial (n° 2) da revista Face.—Chapter 16.
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PART ONE
Semeiotic as Philosophy
Philosophy is the attempt,—for as the word itself implies it is and must be imperfect—is the attempt to form a general informed conception of the All. […] Those who
neglect philosophy have metaphysical theories as much as others—only they [have] rude, false, and wordy theories.
—Peirce (7.579)*
[I]t has never been in my power to study anything, […] except as a study of semeiotic.
—Peirce (Hardwick 1977: 85–86)
Just as Saussure’s semiology is a branch of linguistics, Peirce’s semeiotic is a branch of philosophy. Not of any philosophy, but a new philosophy, the paradigms of
which are to be clearly defined if one wants to take full advantage of Peirce’s theory of signs. The question will be approached from three sides. First, from the new
philosophical paradigms which Peirce has proposed to replace the classical paradigms of Aristotle, Descartes, and Kant. Second, from a descriptive point of view, as
the new theory of signs derived from Peirce’s new paradigms. Third, in a comparative way, from the ideological aspect of pragmatism in the historical context of its
conception in the seventies.
* References in the text by volume and paragraph to the Collected Papers, vols. 1–6, ed. Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss (Boston: Harvard University Press,
1931–1935), vols. 7–8, ed. Arthur W. Burks (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1958).
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1
Peirce’s New
Philosophical Paradigms
Right from the beginning, the relations of America as New England with Europe were, from the philosophical view, ambiguous, when they were not simply difficult and,
in the end, impossible. Peirce is in himself the résumé of this story which I plan to sum up, from the rejection of the European philosophical paradigms to the creation of
a new set of paradigms which are not only Peirce’s, but the new philosophical paradigms of America, and slowly but inevitably the new paradigms of the global world
of tomorrow.
PARADIGM SHIFTS
Against Aristotle
The Syllogism: Against the Reduction to the First Figure (1866)
In Memoranda Concerning the Aristotelean Syllogism (1866), Peirce proves that no syllogism of the second or third figure can be reduced to the first, contrary to
what Aristotle maintained.
It is important to observe that the second and third figures are apagogical, that is, infer a thing to be false in order to avoid a false result which would
follow from it. That which is thus reduced to an absurdity is a Case in the second figure, and a Rule in the third. (W1: 506–507)*
* References in the text by volume and page to the Writings of Charles S. Peirce, Peirce Edition Project, Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, vol.
1 (1982), vol. 2 (1984), vol. 3 (1986).
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Of course, the second and third figures involve the principle of the first figure, “but the second and third figures contain other principles, besides” (W2: 514).
For Another Conception of the Figures of the Syllogism
In the last article of the series “Illustrations of the Logic of Science” (1878), which was revised in 1893 as chapter XIII of Search for a Method (W3: 325–326),
Peirce concludes that the three figures are therefore original and correspond to the three following types of inferences:
Fig. 1: Deduction (in the classical sense),
Fig. 2: Induction (in the classical sense),
Fig. 3: Hypothesis (Peircean abduction).
DEDUCTION
Rule.—All the beans from this bag are white.
Case.—These beans are from this bag.
Result.—These beans are white.
INDUCTION
HYPOTHESIS
At this time, Peirce’s classification is still Aristotelian, and even worse, if one may say so, since the three figures of the syllogism are no longer reducible and constitute
three different types of inference. At this stage, Peirce’s classification is Kantian (W3: 326).
We, accordingly, classify all inference as follows:
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Against Kant
Critique of Kant’s Categories (1866 and 1867)
In his article of 1867 entitled On a New List of Categories, Peirce asks himself Kant’s question: “How can the manifold of sensuous impressions be reduced to
unity?” At first he gives a Kantian answer: “The unity to which the understanding reduces impressions is the unity of the proposition” (W2: 49). But he then immediately
broaches the question of the passing from being to substance. Thus in the proposition ‘‘The stove is black,” the stove is the substance, from which its blackness has not
been differentiated and the copula “is” only explains that the blackness is confused with the substance of the stove “by the application to it of blackness as a
predicate” (W2: 50). So being does not affect substance. Being and substance are indeed “the beginning and end of all conception,” but “substance is inapplicable to a
predicate, and being is equally so to a subject” (W2: 50).
How can we pass from being to substance? The question is no longer Kantian, but Peircean. Peirce here introduces a notion on which all his subsequent thinking will
hinge: the notion of “prescission” (1.353), which is not a reciprocal process, unlike “discrimination” and “dissociation.”
In an article dated 1866, but not published until long afterwards, Peirce drew up a table showing the difference between the three possible types of distinction, of which
we give here a modified version in which 1 takes the place of “yes,” 0 the place of “no”:
Can we think
blue space color red
without without without without
red? color? space? color?
By
1 1 1 0
discrimination
By
1 1 0 0
prescission
By
1 0 0 0
dissociation
Table 1.1. The three types of distinctions
It must be noted that it is not mathematical space nor Kantian space which is in question here, but the physical, in the sense of quantitative, space that Aristotle opposed
to the intelligible, and the étendue that Descartes opposed to pensée.
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At this stage of the development of Peirce’s philosophy, an abstract concept like color could be classified in the same way, i.e., in the order of Aristotle’s passive
intelligible and of Descartes’s pensée.
In 1867, Peirce applied the process of precision to the conceptions or categories which he shows to be indispensable for the passing from being to substance: quality,
which he here calls a “ground,” the relation with a correlate, and the mediating representation which he already calls “an interpretant.” Let us remark that the Peircean
categories owe nothing either to Kant nor to Aristotle.
To say “the stove is black’’ is to say that the stove embodies blackness (W2: 52). But a quality is what it is because it is different from another. Hence the conception
of relation to a correlate (here: color). The conception of relation to a correlate itself requires that of representation. Now a comparison can be made only by a
“mediating representation which represents the relate (quality) as standing for a correlate with which the mediating representation is itself in relation” (W2: 53).
Prescission shows that the three conceptions are hierarchical. The mediating representation or interpretant (a Third) presupposes the reference or relation (a Second)
which itself presupposes quality or a ground (a First). But this relation is not reciprocal: quality or ground (First) is what it is in itself, whether there are many other
qualities or not, or whether they are compared or not, if there are. Relation (Second) does not change, whether it be interpreted or not in a mediating comparison
(Third). But relation will nonetheless imply the totality of qualities (Second) and there can be no mediating comparison (Third) without relation (Second) nor quality
(First). In short, Peirce’s categories are ordinal and not cardinal. A Third is triadic, a Second dyadic, and a First monadic (W2: 55). Which can be expressed in the
following table:
Can we prescind
quality relation the interpretant relation
(a First) (a Second) (a Third) (a Second)
from from from from
relation the interpretant relation quality
(a Second)? (a Third)? (a Second)? (a First)?
1 1 0 0
Table 1.2. Prescission
In 1867, Peirce is still Aristotelian. The three conceptions or categories he proposes are “intermediate” (W2: 54–55): between the conceptions or categories of being
and substance which he does not reject. Quality in itself (blackness) is for him, as for Aristotle, the ground of a quality embodied in a substance (the
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stove). Peirce says explicitly: “Reference to a ground cannot be prescinded from being, but being can be prescinded from it” (W2: 53).
Against Descartes
The first articles of the series “Illustrations of the logic of science” (1878) quoted above, with reference to the figures of syllogism, are aimed at Descartes. The first is a
critique of methodological doubt and the second a critique of evidence by intuition.
Critique of Methodological Doubt
In the first article, “The Fixation of Belief,” Peirce objects that one cannot, as Descartes said, begin by doubting everything, that absolute doubt, even were it
methodological, is impossible, for one cannot pretend to doubt. We begin with all our prejudices, all our spontaneous beliefs. Doubt is in fact a state of uneasiness and
dissatisfaction from which we are always struggling to free ourselves, and to pass into the state of belief.
By belief, Peirce does not mean religious belief, but what the Scottish philosopher Alexander Bain defined as “that upon which a man is prepared to act” (5.12), or, in
other words, as the establishment or constitution of a habit, with the result that the different sorts of belief are distinguished by the different modes of action to which
they give rise.
Critique of Evidence by Intuition
In the second article, entitled ‘‘How to Make Our Ideas Clear,” which is the founding article of pragmatism, although the word “pragmatism” does not appear in it,
Peirce asks how we can distinguish an idea which is clear from an idea which seems clear. Intuitive evidence, he replies, does not enable us to see the difference.
This is hardly unexpected. Already in 1868 Peirce had criticized intuition of any kind, as well that of the psychology of faculties as that of Descartes or of Kant. Ten
years later he is able to reply to the question he asks in “How to Make Our Ideas Clear,” thanks to “the scientific revolution that found its climax in the ‘Origin of
Species’” (Dewey 1910: 19). The quotation is from Dewey, who would advocate an identical method, on the base of quite another experience.
It is only action which can differentiate a genuinely clear and distinct idea from one which has only the appearance of clearness and distinctness. If one idea leads to
two different actions, then there is not one idea, but two. If two ideas lead to the same action, then there are not two ideas, but only one. Hence the pragmatic maxim:
“Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the
whole of our conception of the object” (W3: 266).
It will be noticed that Descartes was not far removed from pragmatism when he wrote in Discours de la méthode:
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Il me semblait que je pourrais rencontrer beaucoup plus de vérité dans les raisonnements que chacun fait touchant les affaires qui lui importent, et dont
l’événement le doit punir bientôt après s’il a mal jugé, que dans ceux que fait un homme de lettres dans son cabinet, touchant des spéculations qui ne
produisent aucun effet, et qui ne lui sont d’aucune conséquence, sinon que peutêtre il en tirera d’autant plus de vanité qu’elles seront plus éloignées du
sens commun. (Descartes 1952: 131, italics mine)
THE PEIRCEAN PARADIGMS
It was only after 1885 that Peirce was able to propose a new philosophy, for he had just conceived, to replace Aristotelian logic, a logic of relatives which could do
without substance. Indeed, it was with the substantive conception of the world and the mind that Peirce had always had difficulties. And it was the logic of relatives
which enabled him to deliver a new Discourse of Method and to evolve a new phenomenology, which he called “phaneroscopy,” in which substance has no place.
After saying a few words about the logic of relatives and describing briefly Peirce’s new methodology, I shall examine phaneroscopy in greater detail, as without it one
cannot understand and appreciate Peirce’s semeiotic, which is only the application of phaneroscopy to the problem of knowledge.
The Logic of Relatives
It is a fact that Peirce became interested in the logic of relatives long before he read De Morgan in 1866, even if he drew the epistemological implications from it after
writing his “Description of a Notation for the Logic of Relatives,” derived from Boole, in 1870, and the phaneroscopic implications after writing his article ‘‘On the
Algebra of Logic,” published in 1885 in the American Journal of Mathematics. Briefly, Peirce substituted, for De Morgan’s “relative terms” (W2: 359), and
Aristotle’s inference by “substantive” inclusion, inference by “transitive” inclusion (W2: 367).
The New Methodology
In 1903, in his sixth lecture on pragmatism, Peirce no longer divides inference into analytic and synthetic inference in the Kantian way, but describes it as a dialectical
process in three stages, the order of which is: abduction (already proposed by Peirce in 1878 under the name of hypothesis), deduction, and induction. It is unfortunate
that Peirce used classical terms to denote two of these stages, as empirical induction has nothing to do with the process of testing deduction which constitutes Peircean
induction.
Abduction is the process of forming an explanatory hypothesis. It is the only logical operation which introduces any new idea; for induction does nothing
but determine a value, and deduction merely evolves the necessary consequences of a pure hypothesis.
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Deduction proves that something must be; Induction shows that something actually is operative; Abduction merely suggests that something may be.
Its only justification is that from its suggestion deduction can draw a prediction which can be tested by induction, and that, if we are ever to learn anything
or to understand phenomena at all, it must be by abduction that this is to be brought about. (5.171)
Phaneroscopy
Phaneroscopy replaces Kantian phenomenology. Peirce maintains, like Kant, that we can apprehend the world only by reducing the manifold of phenomena or
phanera to unity by recourse, not to the a priori forms of “sensibility,” and the a priori categories of understanding, but by recourse to those modes of being which
Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness are for him.
The substitution of “phaneron” for “phenomenon” must not be underestimated. It is not another one of Peirce’s terminological “quirks’’ (no more than are the other
neologisms he introduced), but the expression of a genuine paradigm shift. The phenomenon is no longer what appears to consciousness—which is the literal meaning
of φαινόμενον, and which consequently has to do with psychology—but what is apparent, independent of the fact that we perceive it—which is the literal sense of
φανερόν and which has to do with logic.
Historically, Peirce was first, from 1851 to 1867, an outandout nominalist: only Seconds—concrete individual existents—were real. Reality and existence were then
synonymous. In 1857, he wrote: “Reality [refers] to the existence of the object itself” (W1: 18).
From 1867 onwards, more precisely during the winter of 1867–1868, in an unpublished item in which he criticized positivism, Peirce distinguished between existence
and reality. What is real is “that which is independently of our belief and which could be properly inferred by the most thorough discussion of the sum of all impressions
of sense whatever” (W2: 127). It will be remarked that this kind of reality, although general, is a sort of very classical Third, since it appears as the generalization of
Seconds. It was not before the logic of relatives and the new methodology that Thirds were no longer abstractions, but operative rules, a priori empty, of the type “if p,
then q.” Are they still realities?
It was not until much later, about 1890, that Peirce conceded that Firsts are also real. In 1891, he wrote: “In the beginning […] there was a chaos of impersonalized
feeling, which being without connection or regularity would properly be without existence.” However, “this feeling, sporting here and there in pure arbitrariness, would
have started the germ of a generalizing tendency” (6.33).
FIRSTNESS
This Firstness is no longer the Firstness of the New List of 1867. Whereas in 1867 it could not be prescinded from being and was consequently not really first, in 1890
“the idea of the absolutely first must be entirely separated from all conception of or reference to anything else” (1.357).
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The contrast is striking:
(1) 1867: “[T]he conception of this stove is the more immediate, that of black the more mediate” (W2: 52).
1890: “The first must […] be […] immediate” (1.357).
(2) 1867: Quality is what synthesizes the manifold of sense. Thus in ‘‘‘The stove is black,’ the stove is the substance, from which its blackness has not been
differentiated, and the ‘is,’ while it leaves the substance just as it was seen, explains its confusedness, by the application to it of blackness as a predicate” (W2: 50).
1890: The first “precedes all synthesis and all differentiation; it has no unity and no parts” (1.357).
(3) 1867: “The conception of being arises upon the formation of a proposition. A proposition always has, besides a term to express the substance, another to express
the quality of that substance” (W2: 52).
1890: The first “cannot be articulately thought: assert it, and it has already lost its characteristic innocence” (1.357).
(4) 1867: Quality is “a pure abstraction” (W2: 53). “The Ground is the self abstracted from the concreteness which implies the possibility of an other” (W2: 55).
1890: The first is “present, immediate, fresh, new, initiative, original, spontaneous, free, vivid, conscious and evanescent” (1.357).
SECONDNESS
There is no more substance, not because Peirce has come back to his original nominalism, but because the logic of relatives has transformed his conception of the
proposition. In 1867, to Secondness still belonged “those [representations] whose relation to their objects consists in a correspondence in fact, and these may be
termed indices or signs” (W2: 56). In 1885, the index no longer denotes a plurality of objects (1.563); it has become, with the help of O. H. Mitchell, the existential
quantifier. It was then that Peirce, in his article in the American Journal of Mathematics (1885), quoted above, divided the constitutive elements of the proposition
into two classes, which Peirce called respectively “token” and “index.” To be more precise, the token is the replica—case, instance, occurrence—of a legisign or type.
It is therefore a degenerate third, and it is in this sense that “symbol” must be understood here as it is used in mathematics: a “symbol” is general by description, but
always singularly inscribed within the space of its representation. On the contrary, the index is a genuine second:
Without tokens there would be no generality in the statements, for they are the only general signs; and generality is essential to reasoning. […] But tokens
alone do not state what is the subject of discourse; and this can, in fact, not be described in general terms; it can only be indicated. The actual world
cannot be
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distinguished from a world of imagination by any description. Hence the need of pronouns and indices, and the more complicated the subject the greater
the need of them. (3.363)
The forefinger or index finger shows very well what an index is:
The index asserts nothing; it only says “There!” It takes hold of our eyes, as it were, and forcibly directs them to a particular object, and there it stops.
Demonstrative and relative pronouns are nearly pure indices, because they denote things without describing them; so are the letters on a geometrical
diagram, and the subscript numbers which in algebra distinguish one value from another without saying what those values are. (3.361)
Although logicians are satisfied with these two quantifiers, Peirce goes further in his analysis and shows that they are insufficient for reasoning; for reasoning we also
need logical diagrams and sensorial—most of the time visual—“images,” which are icons:
With these two kinds of signs alone [symbols and tokens] any proposition can be expressed; but it cannot be reasoned upon, for reasoning consists in the
observation that where certain relations subsist certain others are found, and it accordingly requires the exhibition of the relations reasoned within an icon.
(3.363)
The article of 1885 thus marks a definitive break in Peirce’s philosophy of logic: the index is no longer conceptual, as it was in 1867, but, properly speaking,
“existential”—a Second.
Take the proposition “This is red.” I do not take the proposition “The stove is black,’’ since Peirce has now rejected the subject as substance, although I could have
done so, as we shall see. In the proposition “This is red,” “this” is obviously not a substance, although it denotes an object. Of course, one could object that “This is
red” is not a proposition, but is rather, as Peirce suggested in 1867, an incomplete sign. Incomplete, because, although implying the concepts of denotation and object,
the object itself would never be known immediately. Would it refer to an object among other objects that another previous sign represented, but which could no longer
be precisely named?
My questions are in the conditional mood for two reasons: (1) After 1885, Peirce no longer maintains this idea; and (2) Many logicians and philosophers still think, as
Bertrand Russell did, that “This is red” is an incomplete sign.
What is the existential quantifier for Peirce after 1885 and what does it imply? The answer is in the description he gives of it in terms of “haecceity,” a word he
borrowed from Duns Scotus, but which he uses in Ockham’s sense. I can say “This is red,” not because “this” is a general term standing for a singular thing existing in
the external world; on the contrary, if I can say “This is red,” it is because the “thisness”—haecceity—makes something exist. Haecceity is a principle of individuation
and existence.
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Principle of Individuation This is an experience which does not consist in a “sensory perception.” Of course, Peirce said in 1903: “[w]e perceive objects brought before
us; but that which we especially experience—the kind of thing to which the word “experience” is more particularly applied—is an event” (1.336), something
indescribable, unique, individual.
A whistling locomotive passes at high speed close beside me. As it passes the note of the whistle is suddenly lowered from a wellunderstood cause. I
perceive the whistle, if you will. I have, at any rate, a sensation of it. But I cannot be said to have a sensation of the change of note. I have a sensation of
the lower note. But the cognition of the change is of a more intellectual kind. That I experience rather than perceive. It is [the] special field of experience to
acquaint us with events, with changes of perception. Now that which particularly characterizes sudden changes of perception is a shock. […] It is more
particularly to changes and contrasts of perception that we apply the word “experience.” (1.336)
Principle of Existence This uniqueness of experience is thus the effect of a coupling: actionreaction, effortresistance. Because haecceity is a principle of individuation, it
is a principle of existence:
Existence is that mode of being which lies in opposition to another. To say that a table exists is to say that it is hard, heavy, opaque, resonant, that is,
produces immediate effects upon the senses, and also that it produces purely physical effects, attracts the earth (that is, is heavy), dynamically reacts
against other things (that is, has inertia), resists pressure (that is, is elastic), has a definite capacity for heat, etc. To say there is a phantom table by the side
of it incapable of affecting any senses or of producing any physical effects whatever, is to speak of an imaginary table. A thing without oppositions ipso
facto does not exist. (1.457)
In short, I can say ‘‘This is red,” although not because “this” stands for a substance, as, in this case, the existential quantifier would be only a constitutive element of the
universal quantifier and would have no proper part or function, as was the case in Aristotle’s logic. I can say “This is red,” because the existential quantifier is a sui
generis function whose nature is radically different from that of the universal quantifier and because, in addition, it constitutes the act of foundation of the world of
existents without which the universal quantifier could not exercise its function of generalization.
THIRDNESS
The universal quantifier is Third. It says: “For every x, if x is a, then x is b.” It is not an inductive generalization from particular cases. It is a rule or law of which the
cases are instances. The relation of the universal and the singular is that of the type and the token. The token is a replica of the type, a replica which is an existent whose
very existence was not of course necessary, but necessarily possible, according to the hierarchy of categories.
Does this conception of the universal condemn us to an aggravated form of
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nominalism? I do not think so, for the reason that the opposition between nominalism and realism has no longer any sense since pragmatism defined the idea as what it
does. We are beyond nominalism and realism. The mind is in the world and in continuity with it. The law is a natural as well as a logical process. As a third without
occurrences, the law is empty and as a second, the occurrence without law is blind. As for direct experience, a first, it is indeed “purely and simply,” but it is not a
cognition, because there is nothing intrinsically substantial to know beyond the triadic process which confers generality (thirdness) on the singular object (secondness) of
one’s direct experience (firstness).
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2
Peirce’s Philosophy of Semeiotic
Just as the Newtonian notion of Space as God cannot be separated from Newton’s physics, nor Einstein’s strict determinism from his physics of relativity, the following
facts concerning the thought of Charles S. Peirce, the inventor of triadic semiotics, cannot and must not be neglected. Peirce is an evolutionist empiricist whose
intellectual mentor was Kant and whose science of reference was chemistry and method of thinking the experimental method of the laboratory. Peirce’s empiricism is
not factual empiricism, “factual” in the material sense of the term. It is empiricism rescued from facts, rescued from itself: the phenomenological empiricism of Kant. Of
course, Peirce is not saved from this danger by the a priori forms (space and time) of sensibility, but by the transformist belief in the continuity of experience in space
and time. That Peirce, like Plato, has a special taste for mathematical explanations of nonmathematical (and sometimes mathematical) concepts is indubitable. I am
thinking in particular of his theory of infinitesimals which are as “real” for him as the “continua,” and which justify in his view the discrete uniqueness of existents. We
shall see in a moment how Peirce proves mathematically that three categories are necessary to “think the world.’’ However, mathematics is not the key to his semiotic
thought, or rather, to his thought, for, as we shall see, semiotics is not a theory proposed by Peirce concerning what are nowadays called signs, but the very definition of
thought. The key to Peirce’s thought is chemistry. The constituent elements of the continuum, although discrete, are not “atomic” for him as they are for Wittgenstein,
they have “valencies” which enable them to combine with other elements and indefinitely to constitute and reconstitute the continuum, spatially, temporally, and mentally.
The continuum proceeds and extends irreversibly. How many “valencies” may an element have? In fact, we do not know, for the infinitesimal
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is inconceivable outside of any conception as will later be shown by the new realist Ralph Barton Perry. What is certain, according to Peirce, is that we can think only in
terms of three: the monadic relation (if this expression means anything), the dyadic relation, and the triadic relation. Of the first we can say nothing: it is pure possibility;
of the second we could say nothing if the third were not there to recognize it: the second can only be acknowledged, it is a “brutal shock,” a pure “fact” of interaction;
of the third we cannot say everything, and even if we could it would not be enough. The third is thought mediating between man and the world: a continuous
construction or rather reconstruction which is logical and not psychological, experimental and not descriptive.
The three modalities of valency have engendered Peirce’s three phenomenological categories: firstness, secondness, and thirdness, respectively, the mode of being as
first, the mode of being as second, and the mode of being as third.
The new categories are the result of Peirce’s critique of Kant’s phenomenology. I shall not expatiate on that point. I shall limit myself first to describing Peirce’s
mathematical proof of the necessity of those three categories and then to analyze the paper of 1866/1867 in which Peirce proposed his new list.
There are three categories, no less and no more. Let us suppose that the world is a unique sheet of assertion. Let us call it “1.’’ What can we say of “1”? Nothing—
and, of course, as it is “unique,” nobody is there to say anything. So to speak, “1” is not even there. It is not “something,” and it is not “nothing,” unless as nonbeing, in
the Aristotelian sense of sheer “possibility.” To conceive of “1,” “1” has to have a limit and consequently we cannot have “1” without a “2” which delimits “1” on the
sheet of assertion:
“1” can only exist in a pair. But, as Peirce points out, “it is impossible to form a genuine three by any modification of the pair without introducing something of a
different nature from the unit and the pair” (1.363).
In other words, to have a pair (1, 2) one needs a “3” which mediates between “1” and “2”:
Which Peirce explains in an iconic way:
The fact that A presents B with a gift C, is a triple relation, and as such cannot possibly be resolved into any combination of dual relations. Indeed, the
very
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idea of a combination involves that of thirdness, for a combination is something which is what it is owing to the parts which it brings into mutual
relationship. But we may waive that consideration, and still we cannot build up the fact that A presents C to B by any aggregate of dual relations between
A and B, B and C, and C and A. A may enrich B, B may receive C, and A may part with C, and yet A need not necessarily give C to B. For that, it
would be necessary that these three dual relations should not only coexist, but be welded into one fact. Thus we see that a triad cannot be analysed into
dyads. (1.363)
This is the mathematical proof of the necessity of the three categories of Peirce, and of the principle of their “hierarchization”: No three without two, no two without
one. Consequently, a first is monadic: it has only one element, i.e., itself; a second is dyadic: it has a dyadic relation with a first with which it forms an indecomposable
dyad; a third is triadic: it has a triadic relation with a second and a first with which it forms an indecomposable triad. Thus the categories are “ordered”: they are ordinal
and not cardinal.
To sum up, the three categories are thus Firstness, which is sheer possibility, Secondness, which is a singular or unique existent (feeling, fact or thought, or whatever),
and Thirdness, which is mediation as formal relation.
Let us remark that the above definitions are themselves formal. Now, a Third cannot be an empty mediation; it includes a Second, which is not an idea of existent, but
this or that existent, and if this existent happens to be, it is because it has been a possible First.
Why do we stop at three? Peirce shows, still in an iconic way, that “a four can be analyzed into threes”:
Take the quadruple fact that A sells C to B for the price D. This is a compound of two facts: first, that A makes with C a certain transaction, which we
may name E; and second, that this transaction E is a sale of B for the price D. Each of these two facts is a triple fact, and their combination makes up [as]
genuine [a] quadruple fact as can be found. The explanation of this striking difference is not far to seek. A dual relative term, such as ‘‘lover” or “servant,”
is a sort of blank form, where there are two places left blank. I mean that in building a sentence round “lover,” as the principal word of the predicate, we
are at liberty to make anything we see fit the subject, and then, besides that, anything we please the object of the action of loving. But a triple relative term
such as “giver” has two correlates, and is thus a blank form with three places left blank. Consequently, we can take two of these triple relatives and fill up
one blank place in each with the same letter, X, which has only the force of a pronoun or identifying index, and then the two taken together will form a
whole having four blank places; and from that we can go on in a similar way to any higher number. But when we attempt to imitate this proceeding with
dual relatives, and combine two of them by means of an X, we find we only have two blank places in the combination, just as we had in either of the
relatives taken by itself. A road with only threeway forkings may have any number of termini, but no number of straight roads
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put end on end will give more than two termini. Thus any number, however large, can be built out of triads; and consequently no idea can be involved in
such a number, radically different from the idea of three. I do not mean to deny that the higher numbers may present interesting special configurations from
which notions may be derived of more or less general applicability; but these cannot rise to the height of philosophical categories so fundamental as those
that have been considered. (1.363)
A NEW LIST OF CATEGORIES (1866/1867)
The new list was born from the critique of Kant’s list of categories. I should like to draw from this critique, which can be read in “A New List of Categories” which
appeared in the Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in May 1867, a conception of mental distinctions which it would be very helpful, I
think, to evoke when use is made of the distinctions proposed by Peirce in semiotics and elsewhere. But we must not forget that the three new categories were born in
a dualistic context.
Already in the first paragraph, Peirce says that the theory of categories gives rise to “a conception of graduation” (1.546). Whence the necessity of not confusing
“prescission,” which Peirce applies to the three categories, with the other two distinctions, which are “discrimination” and “dissociation’’ (1.549). Peirce does not say
that all the distinctions he will ever make in the future will be “prescissions”; he simply says that these three types of distinction must not be confused, and that
“prescission” is the type of distinction which best explains the hierarchized character of categorial relations. We must, I think, take seriously this warning of Peirce’s,
and not “formally” apply “prescission” to “every kind of separation” (1.549). Thus some Peircean distinctions are not hierarchized and consequently cannot be
assimilated to the categorial modes of being.
“Discrimination” does not imply any hierarchization of terms, it only distinguishes their meaning: “red” is not “blue,” “color” is not “space” nor “space” “color,” but “red”
is a “color.”
“Dissociation” does not imply hierarchization either. It pertains to the association of ideas. Some associations impose themselves of necessity, others do not: “red” does
not necessarily evoke “blue,” but “red” cannot be dissociated from “color,” “color” from “space,” nor “space” from “color.”
“Prescission” introduces hierarchization. The word “prescission” comes from the verb “praescindere” (“prescind”). “Prescission” “is not a reciprocal process” (1.549)
as are the other two distinctions. Prescission is not simply a conventional mental distinction like discrimination, and does not take into account, as dissociation does,
habits or associations which are purely accidental. Prescission is a logical process which “consists in a definite conception or supposition of one part of an object,
without any supposition of the other.” Thus, if I have, by definition, only the conception or supposition of the “red” of an object without
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the conception or supposition of anything else, I can prescind “red” from “color” and a fortiori from “space.” If I have the conception of ‘‘space,” I cannot prescind it
either from “color” or from “red” (1. 549).
We have here the principle of the hierarchization (by prescission) of the categories which we have described mathematically above.
SEMIOSIS AND ITS COMPONENTS
Formally, the interplay of the three categories may take multiple aspects according to its sphere of activity. Whatever the latter is—the universe or communication—
semiosis is always the triadic process by which a first determines a third to refer to a second to which itself refers. Semiosis, which is a process of inference, is the
proper object of semiotics. The word “semiosis” was borrowed by Peirce from the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus for whom σημιοσι is an inference from signs

(5.484). Semiosis is, of course, an experience which everyone has at every moment of life, but semiotics, which is the theory of this experience, is another name for
logic, “the quasinecessary, or formal, doctrine of signs” (2.227). Peirce distinguishes signaction, which is itself another name for semiosis, from the sign
representamen, which is the point of departure of semiotic inference. This dual function led Peirce to use the word “sign” when speaking of the sign in action, and
“representamen” when analyzing the constitutive elements of semiosis. But, unfortunately, this usage is not constant, and varies (which is totally justified from a semiotic
point of view) according to the audience Peirce is addressing. For my part, I will abide by this distinction (in the sense of discrimination and not of prescission). The
formal constituents of semiosis are thus the representamen, the interpretant, and the object, which Peirce calls the Immediate Object within semiosis in order to
distinguish (discriminate) the object outside the sign, or rather outside semiosis, and which he calls the Dynamical Object. The representamen is first, the object second,
and the interpretant third. These three constituents have no separate existence of their own, no more than have the signifiant (“signifier”) and the signifié (“signified”) in
the Saussurean sign. It must always be remembered that for Peirce, semiosis as triadic sign is indecomposable. Its components are subsumed; they are that without
which there would be no semiosis.
A REPRESENTAMEN is a subject of a triadic relation to a second, called its OBJECT, FOR a third, called its INTERPRETANT, this is triadic relation
being such that the REPRESENTAMEN determines its interpretant to stand in the same triadic relation to the same object for some interpretant. (1.541)
The representamen, the object, and the interpretant stand for relations or functions and not terms in relation. In other words, they can never have other relations or fulfil
other functions in another semiosis. In fact, it is the other way round.
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The interpretant in one semiosis will become a representamen in another. It is the “terms” whose functions change and not the reverse. In short, the three constituents of
semiosis or signaction are “signrepresentamens” playing one of the three roles: “subject,” ‘‘immediate object,” and “interpretant,” of the triadic relation (2.274).
If we develop our analysis by trichotomizing each of these components, we can distinguish (discriminate) nine types of relation or function instead of three, namely, for
the representamen: the qualisign, the sinsign, and the legisign; for the object: the icon, the index, and the symbol; for the interpretant: the rhema, the dicisign, and the
argument. If we make triads of these, we shall be able to distinguish (by prescission) ten classes of possible semioses.
1 2 3
Representamen Qualisign Sinsign Legisign
Object Icon Index Symbol
Interpretant Rhema Dicisign Argument
Table 2.1. The three trichotomies of signs
R O I
I R1 O1 I1 Rhematic Iconic Qualisign
II R2 O1 I1 Rhematic Iconic Sinsign
III R2 O2 I1 Rhematic Indexical Sinsign
IV R2 O2 I2 Dicent Indexical Sinsign
V R3 O1 I1 Rhematic Iconic Legisign
VI R3 O2 I1 Rhematic Indexical Legisign
VII R3 O2 I2 Dicent Indexical Legisign
VIII R3 O3 I1 Rhematic Symbolic Legisign
IX R3 O3 I2 Dicent Symbolic Legisign
X R3 O3 I3 Argument Symbolic Legisign
Table 2.2. The ten classes of signs. All expressions, such as R1, O2, I3, should be read according to Peirce in the following way: a Representamen “which is” a First,
an Object “which is” a Second, an Interpretant “which is” a Third (8.353).
We must here insist once again on the functional character of these distinctions: what is an index in one semiosis may be a symbol in another. Take, for instance, the
symptom of an illness. As representamen it is a legisign, for both as a word and as a phenomenon it belongs to a system ruled by laws. But its relation to the object
differs according to the type of interpretant functioning in the semiosis. If this symptom is referred to in a lecture on medicine as always characterizing
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a certain illness, the symptom is a symbol. If the doctor encounters it while he is examining a patient, the symptom is the index of an illness. Once again, nothing is in
itself icon, index, or symbol. It should be pointed out here that this misapprehension is often present in the discourse of linguists and literary critics who have
appropriated this part of Peirce’s theory without troubling to find out in what context he uses this terminology. It is the analysis of a given semiosis (and not the formal
analysis of the semiotic triad) which will tell us the “nature” of its constituents. And this analysis must respect the hierarchy of the categories. If a representamen is a
sinsign, and as such singular and unique, it is a second which cannot be prescinded from a first, but can be prescinded from a third. By consequence of its relation with
its object it can only be an index, and this index can in no case assume the role of a symbol, because the symbol is third. Nothing is more flexible, more open, more
dynamic than Peirce’s semiotic theory. To confuse the formal rigor of his definitions with a mechanical empirical description is to misunderstand the matter completely.
Which does not mean, on one hand, that Peircean semiotic analysis is easy:
It is a nice problem to say to what class a given sign belongs; since all the circumstances of the case have to be considered. But it is seldom requisite to be
very accurate; for if one does not locate the sign precisely, one will easily come near enough to its character for any ordinary purpose of logic. (2.265)
And which does not mean, on the other hand, that analysis is the ultimate aim of the Peircean analysis. Semiosis, before becoming an object of formal analysis, is an
experienced inference which cannot be other than triadic, but which, because it is experienced, cannot analyze itself without destroying itself. An experienced semiosis
is, as John Dewey said, a pure transaction in which the terms in relation cannot be distinguished from one another, nor from the transaction. In William James’s words,
it is a “transitive,” not a “substantive’’ experience.
SEMIOSIS, INQUIRY, AND TRUTH
To say of a semiosis that it is an inference, is thus not to make of it exclusively an object of formal analysis. Inference is a method of thought. That is why Peircean
semiotics, rather than being another name for logic in the formal sense in which we use the word today, is another name for epistemology. Peircean semiotics answers
the question: How do we think? Is inference the synonym of induction or of deduction? Peirce’s reply is qualified. According to him, we are not doomed to suffer under
the double yoke of the imperialism of facts and the imperialism of laws. To think is to “enquire,” to “grope” for something, to think we have found it and act “as if” we
had for a time, before recommencing that “quest” for truth which Peirce calls “fallibilist”:
Truth is that concordance of an abstract statement with the ideal limit towards which endless investigation would tend to bring scientific belief, which
concordance
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the abstract statement may possess by virtue of the confession of its inaccuracy and onesidedness, and this confession is an essential ingredient of truth.
(5.565)
Like semiosis, inference, which is its epistemological equivalent, is a triadic process; and if it is true that its three constitutive movements—abduction (introduced by
Peirce), induction, and deduction—differ from one another, it would be a mistake to conceive of them as three methods of thinking which are distinct. They can
certainly be distinguished, but the process is one. Abduction is first; it is “a method of forming a general prediction without any positive assurance that it will succeed
either in the special case or usually, its justification being that it is the only possible hope of regulating our future conduct rationally” (2.270). Induction is second; it is
founded on “past experience” and henceforth “gives us strong encouragement to hope that it will be successful in the future” (2.270). Deduction is carried out on the
third level; it is ‘‘an argument whose Interpretant represents that it belongs to a general class of possible arguments precisely analogous which are such that in the long
run of experience the greater part of those whose premisses are true will have true conclusions” (2.267). The passage from one to another, of course, reproduces the
process of semiosis: an unverifiable abduction suggests a general idea from which deduction draws various consequences which are put to the test by induction.
Inference, of whatever kind—from that of pure mathematics to that of the most ordinary conversation—is, like semiosis, experimental.
CONCLUSION
A problem raised constantly in discussions about Peircean semiotics is that of the distinction between the immediate object in a semiosis and the dynamical object
outside a semiosis. What we have said should help to solve this problem. In the first place, the distinction is a discrimination, a distinction of meaning and not a de facto
separation. The immediate object is a formal object. In the second place, semiosis defined as inference is an epistemological process which knows no boundaries (there
is not thought on one side and the world on the other): there is only one “object” which can take the name of immediate or dynamic according to the point of view from
which one is speaking, but which is what it is, and whose genuine nature appears more clearly as far as research or inquiry or the semiotic process proceeds in time and
space, not toward a truth which would correspond to a preestablished reality, but toward the truth of a reality which is constructed at the same time. Reality is not
making signs to us, it is we who produce the interpretants which become signs which will be tomorrow—a cumulative tomorrow to the end of time—the truthreality
eternally temporary and fallible.
Peirce’s semiotics is a philosophy of lucid—that is to say, blind—hope. As Jean Wahl said:
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Thus, on crutches, does Philosophy limp forward,
She has not all eternity to arrive,
Like the wisdom of God,
But knows that where she will sit,
There will she be as well
As anywhere else.
Blindfold, she sees
A long, long road
Beyond her and behind.
Her brows are horned, she weeps,
Over her tomb at the threshold
Of Chanaan.
(Wahl 1944: 6)
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3
Peirce’s First Pragmatic Papers
(1877–1878)
THE FRENCH VERSION AND THE PARISH COMMUNE
Two of Charles S. Peirce’s articles—both linked to pragmatism—published in The Popular Science Monthly: “The Fixation of Belief” in November 1877: 1–15 and
“How To Make Our Ideas Clear” in January 1878: 286–302, appeared in French in the Revue philosophique: “Comment se fixe la croyance” in December 1878:
553–569 and “Comment rendre nos idées claires” in January 1879: 39–57.
We know from a letter written by Peirce to Christine LaddFranklin in 1904 and published in The Journal of Philosophy in 1916, that in the course of his voyage to
Europe, “between Hoboken and Plymouth,’’ Peirce wrote “an article about pragmatism in French,” “by way of practice,” since he was to speak in French at a meeting
of the Geodesic Association in Paris. He then translated his article “of November 1877” into French. The article which he wrote directly in French is therefore
“Comment rendre nos idées claires” and that which he translated is “The Fixation of Belief.”
About this pair of articles, Peirce says in a note clipped inside the volume entitled “Papers in Logic” which contained them and which he had left to the Johns Hopkins
University Library: “The two French versions, which I prefer to the English of the same papers, derive their merit from the skill of M. Léo Seguin, who was killed in
Tunis in 1881.”
This poses two problems which are closely connected: Firstly, are the French versions of these articles better than the English versions, and secondly, what does the
French of the articles published in the Revue philosophique owe to Léo Seguin?
It is certain that Peirce always considered the French version of “Comment rendre nos idées claires” as the authoritative text for his pragmatic thought. And
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it is the French version of the maxim of pragmatism that he quoted in his first lecture on pragmatism in Cambridge on March 26, 1903:
The Maxim of Pragmatism, as I originally stated it, Revue philosophique VII, is as follows:
Considérer quels sont les effets pratiques que nous pensons pouvoir être produits par l’objet de notre conception. La conception de tous ces effets est la
conception complète de l’objet. Pour développer le sens d’une pensée, il faut donc simplement déterminer quelles habitudes elle produit, car le sens d’une
chose consiste simplement dans les habitudes qu’elle implique. Le caractère d’une habitude dépend de la façon dont elle peut nous faire agir non pas
seulement dans telle circonstance probable, mais dans toute circonstance possible, si improbable qu’elle puisse être. Ce qu’est une habitude dépend de
ces deux points: quand et comment elle fait agir. Pour le premier point: quand? tout stimulant à l’action dérive d’une perception; pour le second point:
comment? le but de toute action est d’amener au résultat sensible. Nous atteignons ainsi le tangible et le pratique comme base de toute différence de
pensée, si subtile qu’elle puisse être. (5.18)
A detailed analysis of the French versions of the articles will, however, lead us to question the merit of “Comment se fixe la croyance” and, though to a lesser degree,
those of “Comment rendre nos idées claires.”
But, beforehand, we have to determine what ‘‘merit” in the French versions of these articles is actually derived from the “skill” of Léo Seguin. An active participant in
the revolt of the Paris Commune, Léo Seguin was banished from France in 1871. In 1872, he fled to England where he stayed until 1876 when he went over to
America. He lived in New York from 1876 to the end of 1880 at the latest. There he had several jobs, one of which was teaching French. We do not know how he
came into contact with Peirce, but we do know that in the spring of 1878 Peirce recommended him for the chair of French at the University of California and that
Seguin did not obtain the post. Benefiting from the amnesty which was proclaimed on May 17, 1879, Seguin returned to France. He became the military correspondent
of Le Télégraphe and followed the French army to North Africa. He was wounded at Béja, Tunisia, on May 29, 1881, by an Algerian deserter from the French army
and died the next day in Tunis. Léo Seguin was only 24 when the revolt of the Commune broke out. He was a brilliant student and intended to make the army his
career, but after obtaining his baccalauréat èslettres and his baccalauréat èssciences he sat for the entrance examination to the Ecole Normale Supérieure, which he
failed. His activities were many and diverse. He fenced and could read cuneiform, and was interested in Indian poetry and politics. A Republican, a patriot, and
Freemason, the defeat of 1870 made him a rebel and a member of the Paris Commune. On leaving France for England, he knew not a word of English and learned the
language only after his arrival in the United States, for in England he frequented mainly fellow refugees.
Such was the man from whose skill the articles published in French in the
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Revue philosophique derive their merit. In view of the facts that, on one hand, there is no reason to doubt Peirce’s statement that he wrote “Comment rendre nos
idées claires” directly in French, and translated “The Fixation of Belief” into French himself, and, on the other hand, that Seguin’s knowledge of English was poor, it
was certainly the latter’s skill as a teacher of French that Peirce was calling upon when he asked him to reread his own French versions of the pragmatic articles of
1877–1878. Seguin must have appealed to Peirce. He was an outsider and a scientificallytrained philosopher whose independence of spirit and manners and whose
brilliance were bound to impress a man like Peirce.
After a careful study of all the points in which the French versions of the articles of 1878 and 1879 differ from the English versions, we come to the following
conclusions:
1. If we compare the French text of the articles of 1877 and 1878 with the other writings in French by Peirce in our possession—for example, the memoir “Sur la
valeur de la pesanteur à Paris’’ (Comptes rendus des Séances de l’Académie des Sciences, 1880), of which we have the manuscript and the published text; the
“Notes pour un traité de logique” (October 1898, Ms 339), which I edited (Peirce 1985: 3–9); and the letters to Juliette (Ms L. 340, the latter in French), A. Robert
(Ms L. 378; Deledalle 1978: 192–199), and André Lalande (Ms L. 240, letter of November 22, 1905; Deledalle 1969: 37)—we can distinguish certain characteristics
to be found in the French versions of the two pragmatic articles: short sentences with a minimum of conjunctive words in cases where the English sentence is far more
lengthy owing to a repeated use of “but,” “then,” “now,” “and”; a systematic use of “on” where the passive voice is used in English; and the almost total absence of the
first person singular and a frequent use of the more impersonal “nous.”
The vocabulary also is homogeneous. To give only a few instances, “intellectuel” generally corresponds to “mental,” and “intelligence” to “mind” when knowledge is
referred to, but “esprit” is used to translate “mind” in expressions like “dans notre esprit” (“in our minds”). “Investigation” is frequently used in French as well as in
English in relation to the theory of inquiry.
But when one reads Peirce’s texts which had not been corrected, one also notices his marked tendency to transpose English words into French, especially verbs, and
to give French prepositions their English meanings. Thus Peirce writes, in a letter to A. Robert, that “A investe C avec B,” the transposition of “A invests C with B”
instead of “A met C en possession de B” (Deledalle 1978: 198); in his notes on logic, Peirce writes: “il n’y a [sic] le moindre avantage à gagner de [from] l’étude de la
théorie du raisonnement,” “la psychologie, au contraire, ne demande rien de [from] la métaphysique.” Like many foreigners, Peirce commits mistakes in spelling, in
gender, in agreement, in moods, and in tenses. In the same notes on logic, we read: “quelque chose de nouveaux [nouveau] à laquelle [auquel] je veux fixer la date,”
“comment la pensée trouvetelle existance [existence], c’estàdire comment s’exprîmetelle [s’exprimetelle]?,” “la [le] mode d’être?,” “cette [ce] signe,” “mais la
logique n’est bornée à la psychique pas plus
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que la métaphysique soit bornée à la physique” [la logique ne se ramène pas plus à la psychologie que la métaphysique à la physique], “mais tout cela n’intéresse point
au logicien à qui il ne fait rien qu’un raisonnement fait une gratification d’un gout logique” [mais tout cela n’intéresse point le logicien pour qui il importe peu qu’un
raisonnement satisfasse notre goût logique] (October 1–4 1898, Ms 339).
It is in this clearly defined field that, to my mind, Peirce was appealing to Léo Seguin’s skill, when he entrusted to him the rereading of his manuscripts.
2. “The Fixation of Belief” was thus translated by Peirce and corrected by Séguin: What are the respective parts of Peirce and Seguin in the text which appeared in the
Revue philosophique under the title “Comment se fixe la croyance”?
A. By and large, and taking into account Peirce’s corrections of the English text in 1893, 1903, and 1910, we can say that one may attribute to Peirce a certain number
of mistakes that Seguin did not correct, the title, and an omission.
The mistakes left uncorrected by Seguin are mistranslations of words having similar forms in English and French: “deceived,’’ “deceptive” (7) rendered by “déçu” (560)
and “décevant” (561), instead of “trompé” and “trompeur”; “agreeable to his reason” (10) translated by “agréable à la raison” (564) instead of “ce qui est conforme à
la raison” ou “ce qui convient à la raison.” It will be noticed that Peirce did not make these mistakes when he wrote “Comment rendre nos idées claires” directly in
French and then translated his text into English: “deception” (291 and 292) is used to translate “erreur” and “méprise” (46), although, unlike “deception” in English,
“erreur” and “méprise” are not intentional, and “ce qui agréait à la raison” (40) is rendered by “agreeable to reason” (287). Other notable mistakes are “such and such”
translated by “tel et tel,” “such a formula” by “une semblable formule,” and “rest on” by “se poser sur.”
The title of the article, “Comment se fixe la croyance,” is probably Peirce’s own. “Comment rendre nos idées claires,” having been written before the translation of
“The Fixation of Belief,” the rendering of the latter’s title by “Comment se fixe la croyance” was more or less a matter of course.
Amongst all the modifications introduced into the French text which we are now going to examine, only one was adopted by Peirce when he corrected his pragmatic
articles: the omission of the last paragraph which he probably thought too personal.
B. The changes made by Seguin in Peirce’s translation had one aim: to present a version which would be more correct in style, more precise in meaning, and more
easily understandable for French readers. Three sorts of modifications can be discerned: (a) improvements in style; (b) corrections of what Seguin considered to be
mistakes; (c) clarifications or rather what Seguin thought to be clarifications.
(a) Improvements in style. They are undeniable, but insufficient in number, whence the unequal level of the translation which is sometimes polished and sometimes quite
awkward. It is not surprising to find that awkwardness of style invariably corresponds to an incomprehension of Peirce’s text.
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(b) Corrections. The “twentytwo” (2) irrational hypotheses successively proposed by Kepler to explain the epicycles of Mars become “vingt et une” (554) in the
translation, apparently for the reason that the twentysecond, which was the right one, could not be irrational—a “mistake” which Peirce did not correct in the later
versions of his English text.
The translation of “transubstantiation of bread’’ (1) by “transmutation des espèces” (554) can be placed in this category. It is true that it is not only the bread which is
transubstantiated, but also the wine. But why “transmutation” when the proper term is “transubstantiation”? It is the latter term that Peirce or Seguin uses in the French
text of “Comment rendre nos idées claires” (47).
We may also include in the corrections the omission in the translation of the passage which says that “no religion has been without one” (i.e., priesthood) (9), because
this is not true, Islam having no priests.
In another passage (568), it is the example of Islam which has been retained (“reformed Mussulman”) and the allusion to Protestantism omitted (“or to a reformed
Catholic who should still shrink from reading the Bible” [14]).
We can also include in this category the correction of a detail which had become out of date: Pius IX is replaced by Leo XIII (562) in the translation of “from the days
of Numa Pompilius to those of Pius Nonus” (9), because between the date of writing of the English text and that of the revision of Peirce’s translation, Pius IX had died
and been succeeded by Leo XIII (1878). This has no implications concerning the date of Peirce’s translation, as he did not modify the aforesaid detail in his later
revision of the text and might well have kept the name of Pius IX in his French translation after the latter’s death.
Was it also out of concern for accuracy that Seguin did not translate, on 565, “In Lord Bacon’s phrase” (11), because he did not know himself whether Lord Bacon
was Roger Bacon (553) or “l’autre Bacon, le plus célèbre” (554), the author of the Novum Organum, or else did he think that Peirce had made a mistake, or more
probably that the French reader would not understand the allusion?
(c) Clarifications. Few, if any, of these clarifications can be considered improvements on the English text, even when they appear to make the translation more
comprehensible. Peirce writes: “But it so happens that there exists a division among facts such that one class […], while the others […]” (4). The translation says: “mais
les faits se trouveront etre divisés en deux classes” (557), which is stylistically clearer, but less accurate, as the classes are not limited to two.
For those today who are more familiar with Peirce’s thought, the socalled clarifications for which Seguin is responsible are more of a hindrance than a help. Let us
examine three main points: the theory of inquiry, realism, and the criticism of the method of authority.
The Theory of Inquiry
Seguin does not seem to have understood the part played by doubt in inquiry. He appears to think that the aim of inquiry is the elimination of doubt which is to be
replaced by belief, without seeing that doubt is a necessary condition for
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arriving at a true belief, i.e., a belief capable of directing our actions, and that one cannot reject a belief “which does not seem to have been so formed as to insure this
result” only “by creating a doubt in the place of that belief” (6). The omission of this last sentence in the translation proves that Seguin does not see why doubt should be
created in order to fix belief, since the aim of inquiry is precisely to eliminate doubt. For Seguin, inquiry means the discovery of what is already there, not the creation of
something new. Seguin shared the prescientific conception of science of most of the French scholars of his time.
Neither did Seguin understand that inquiry is a social, cooperative, and cumulative process. He conceives of it as a private, nonpublic affair, which is the contrary of
Peirce’s conception. Thus he does not understand why Peirce says that no one ‘‘can really doubt that there are realities,” for this is a hypothesis that “every mind
admits” “so that the social impulse does not cause me [or ‘men,’ as he says later] to doubt it” (12). That is why Seguin did not translate the last sentence.
It is also to an erroneous interpretation of Peirce’s theory of inquiry that we can impute the translation of “the most that can be maintained is that we seek for a belief
that we shall think to be true” (6, my italics) by “ce qu’on peut tout au plus soutenir, c’est que nous cherchons une croyance que nous pensons vraie” (599), and that
of “The feeling which gives rise to any method of fixing belief is a dissatisfaction of two repugnant propositions. But here already is a vague concession that there is
some one thing to which a proposition should conform” (12, my italics) by “Le sentiment d’où naissent toutes les méthodes de fixer la croyance est une sorte de
mécontentement de ne pouvoir faire accorder deux propositions. Mais alors on admet déjà vaguement qu’il existe quelque chose à quoi puisse être conforme une
proposition” (566). The translation of “we shall think” by “nous pensons” in the first sentence, and of “should” by “puisse” in the second one transforms a dynamic
conception of inquiry into a static and stereotyped pattern.
Realism
It is the social character of the process of inquiry which links the theory of inquiry to the theory of reality. Now the use of the word “réalité” to translate “fact” (2 and
11), as well as “real thing” (11) and “reality” (12), obscures the fact that what Peirce is defending here is the reality of universals (“generals”) whose characteristics are
completely independent of what we feel, believe, or think. This translation makes an ontological theory of universals into an epistemological theory of the reality of the
external world. It is true that the word “reality” used by Peirce at that time was confusing, and that he was soon to replace it by the word “Real,” used as a substantive
(5.384) to express the nature of universals, but he never thought that the latter could be “realities” in the sense of “facts.”
Criticism of the Method of Authority
Seguin’s mistrust of the “instinct social,” which is probably at least partly responsible for his incomprehension of the preceding theories, explains perfectly
Page 29
why, on the other hand, as a strong individualist, he enthusiastically adopts Peirce’s theses on the method of authority, at the same time distorting the latter, for Peirce
rejects arbitrary authority, but not that of the “communauté des chercheurs.” The French text of these pages is characterized by a polished style and a resonance quite
different from that of the English text, and inevitably evokes echoes of the voice of the Paris Commune.
Finally, it must be pointed out that at least two mistranslations are not to be attributed either to Peirce or to Seguin, since they are printer’s errors: “who originated” (10)
is translated by “les créatures” (564) instead of “les créateurs,” and “Men who pursue it are distinguished for their decision of character, which becomes very easy with
such a mental rule’’ (13) is translated by “Ceux qui en font usage sont remarquables par leur caractère décidé, la décision devenant très faible avec une pareille règle
intellectuelle” (568), a sentence which makes sense only if one replaces “faible” (weak) by “facile” (easy).
3. With “Comment rendre nos idées claires,” our work is simplified: it is a text written directly in French and not a translation. The only problems here are to identify the
modifications of the corrector by comparing the text with its English translation written by the author himself, and to ascertain whether the original French version is in
fact superior to the English translation, as Peirce claims.
My answer is threefold.
A. The French text of “Comment rendre nos idées claires” is unquestionably superior to that of “Comment se fixe la croyance.” It is homogeneous and it never distorts
Peirce’s doctrines.
B. The English translation, which is more explicit, helps to clarify several points of the French version.
C. The modifications of the corrector are fewer, or at least less apparent, than in “Comment se fixe la croyance.”
A. I shall be brief about the first point. There is none of the imprecision of vocabulary which often distorts the meaning in “Comment se fixe la croyance.” “Epreuve” (40
and 48) exactly expresses the idea of “test” (287 and 294), which is translated by “criterium” in “Comment se fixe la croyance” (567). A word like
“engendrement” (43), of which the equivalent in the English translation is “production” (290) and which might appear somewhat clumsy, in fact aptly expresses the
process of inquiry. There is nothing ambiguous here in the description of belief, of habit, and of the part played by doubt (45), nor in Peirce’s idea of “reality”:
“L’opinion prédestinée à réunir finalement tous les chercheurs est ce que nous appelons le vrai, et l’objet de cette opinion est le réel. C’est ainsi que j’expliquerai la
réalité […]. Mais la réalité du réel ne dépend pas de ce fait que l’investigation, poursuivie assez longtemps, doit enfin conduire à y croire” (56).
B. The English translation is, however, superior to the French original which it clarifies. Whereas in the French text of “Comment se fixe la croyance,” there were
modifications and omissions which obscured the meaning, we have here mainly additions which complete and explain the French text. A few examples will suffice. The
expression: “Les premiers principes” (41) becomes the more explicit “The first principles of science” (286); “Accordingly in adopting the distinction
Page 30
of clear and distinct, he described the latter quality as the clear apprehension of everything contained in the definition” (288) is clearer than “C’est pourquoi en
discernant entre les idées claires et les idées distinctes, il décrivit ces dernières comme les idées dont la définition ne contient rien qu’on ne saisisse clairement” (41); in
the sentence: “Le résultat final de pensée est l’exercice de la volonté, fait auquel n’appartient plus la pensée” (45), the reader does not know what the word “fait” refers
to, but the English translation is unambiguous: “The final upshot of thinking is the exercise of volition, and of this thought no longer forms a part” (291); the modification
of the sentence: ‘‘Cependant on peut concevoir que cela apparaisse au premier abord et qu’un homme de deux propositions présentées d’une façon analogue, puisse
accepter l’une et rejeter l’autre” (46) which becomes “Yet it is conceivable that a man should assert one proposition and deny the other” (291), is an improvement and
so is the transformation of “une qualité essentiellement mystérieuse de l’objet” (46) into “a quality of the object which is essentially mysterious” (292); “we deceive
ourselves and mistake a mere sensation accompanying the thought for a part of the thought itself” (293) is clearer than “c’est s’abaisser et prendre une simple sensation
accompagnant la pensée pour une partie de la pensée ellemême” (48); again, the sentence: “Il est absurde de dire que la pensée contient quelque élément qui soit sans
rapport avec son unique fonction” (48) is rendered clearer by the use of “meaning” instead of “élément”: “It is absurd to say that thought has any meaning unrelated to
its only function” (293); even the expression of the maxim of pragmatism is better in English than in French: “effects [having] practical bearings” (293) being more
precise than “effets pratiques” (48).
C. The modifications of Seguin are difficult to identify. Thus if we compare: “Lorsqu’on a mis en face de l’absurdité d’une telle vue certains philosophes, ils ont imaginé
une vaine distinction entre des conceptions positives et des conceptions négatives, dans un effort pour donner à leur idée une forme moins manifestement
saugrenue” (52) with “The truth is, there is some vague notion afloat that a question may mean something which the mind cannot conceive; and when some hairsplitting
philosophers have been confronted with the absurdity of such a view, they have invented an empty distinction between positive and negative conceptions in the attempt
to give their nonidea a form not obviously nonsensical” (297), we shall find that the English text is more downright: “some hairsplitting philosophers” translates “certains
philosophes”; “nonidea,” “idée vide”; “nonsensical,” “idée saugrenue.” Was it Peirce who exaggerated the antiphilosophical tone of this paragraph, or was it Seguin
who watered down Peirce’s French text in order to avoid offending French philosophers?
Is it to Peirce or to Seguin that we must attribute the style of the following French sentence: “un trajet est déterminé par la direction que prend et par la distance que
franchit un point qui le parcourt depuis son origine” (51) which is better than the English: “a path is determined by the varying direction and distance of the point which
moves over it from the startingpoint” (296)?
It was certainly Peirce who wrote that the Cartesian theory, “ce joyau de la
Page 31
logique,” is “assez jolie,” but that “il est grand temps de reléguer au musée des curiosités cet antique bijou” (41), if we may judge from the English translation in which
‘‘ornament of logic” is in inverted commas and bijou in italics, not to speak of the expression “our cabinet of curiosities” (288).
In the same way, we can be fairly sure that Peirce was responsible for the transposition of a situation concerning the payment in French money (piece d’argent, billon),
of an “emplette” in the French text (43) and the payment in American money (nickel, copper) of a “fare” in the English text (288).
Can one be as certain that the expression “dans tous les genres de culture intellectuelle” (42), translated in the English version by “in every branch of mental
acquirement” is Peirce’s? And who is responsible for the rendering of “microscope moral” (43) as “mental microscope” in English (289)?
When we have in the French version “arrangements d’idées” (49) and in the English version “arrangements of facts” (294), is this a mistake made by Peirce or one of
Seguin’s corrections? For here it is in actual effect a question of “faits” and not of “idées,” and this is confirmed by the French version which, a few lines further on, also
uses the expression “arrangements de faits.”
Did Peirce use the term “certitude” to express the idea of “infallibility” (287)? He might have done so in order not to offend his Catholic readers. But Seguin might have
done just the same.
As for the parenthetical clause, typical of Peirce’s writing, which figures in the English version, but not in the French: “but if mathematics are unsupportable to him, pray
let him skip three paragraphs rather than we should part company here” (295), is this a case of an addition made by Peirce for the English text or of an omission by
Seguin?
Finally, it is highly improbable that Peirce should have written in French and afterwards omitted the end of the article in which he announces the other articles of this
series, the publication of which was not scheduled for the Revue philosophique.
One last point on which the French version is authoritative: after alluding to the ideas to which some men dedicate their lives and which, one fine day, vanish like
“Mélusine, la belle fée,” Peirce says: “J’ai connu moimême un de ces hommes [this man was himself and “Mélusine, la belle fée,” who, one day, disappeared, was his
first wife Harriet Melusina Fay, who left him in 1876], and goes on: “Qui pourrait compter tous les quadrateurs de cercle, métaphysiciens, astrologues, que saisje
encore, dont les annales de la vieille Allemagne pourraient nous redire l’histoire?” (42–43). The shorter English version: “Who can tell how many histories […] may not
be told in the old German story” (289) misled the editors of the Collected Papers, who thought Peirce was referring to the story of Melusina which was French and
not German, and who placed after the word “German” the comment “French” in brackets with an exclamation mark: [French!] (5.393).
What conclusion can we draw from this analysis? Peirce loved France, its language, its wines, its liberalism, and its culture. There can be no other reason
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than this blind love to account for the fact that Peirce preferred the French versions of his articles on pragmatism to the English versions, for the French version of
“Comment se fixe la croyance,” apart from several wellwritten passages and a few elegantly turned phrases is positively bad, and that of “Comment rendre nos idées
claires,” although unquestionably superior to “Comment se fixe la croyance,’’ lacks the clarity and precision of the English translation.
THE POSTCRIPTUM OF 1893:
FROM LIBERTARIANISM TO
DEMOCRATIC COLLECTIVITY
In a postscriptum of 1893 published in the Collected Papers (5.402, n. 2), which he intended to include in his Search for a Method, Peirce recognizes that, in his first
version of the papers of 1877 and 1878, pragmatism could be “said to be a sceptical and materialistic principle, [although] it is only an application of the sole principle
of logic which was recommended by Jesus: ‘Ye may know them by their fruits,’” for the reason that “this rule” was then understood in too individualistic a sense. It was
so, on one hand, because of Seguin’s reading of Peirce: There were two kinds of “anarchism” in the 1870s in France: a “libertarian” and a “collective.” And Seguin
belonged to the first tribe. On the other hand, Peirce was inclined to “nonauthoritarianism” which is the main characteristic of “libertarian anarchism.”
Anyhow, it is not a reason why we should understand “the practical in any low and sordid sense. Individual action is a means and not our end. Individual pleasure is not
our end; we are putting our shoulders to the wheel for an end that none of us can catch more than a glimpse at—that which the generations are working out. But we can
see that the development of embodied ideas is what it will consist in” (5.402, n. 2).
Ten years earlier, in “Some Consequences of Four Incapacities,” Peirce had shown that “the real” is independent of what we think:
The real […] is that which, sooner or later, information and reasoning would finally result in, and which is therefore independent of the vagaries of me and
you. (5.311)
Consequently, “the very origin of the conception of reality shows that this conception essentially involves the notion of a COMMUNITY, without definite limits, and
capable of a definite increase of knowledge” (5.311). Is this community of knowers and reasoners the only possible community which pragmaticism can produce?
Before the Paris Commune, it was certainly the case, for Peirce’s pragmatism was a theory of action, but not of any action; it was a theory which “makes thought
ultimately apply to action exclusively—to conceived action” (5.402, n. 3). After the Commune, “collective anarchism” had its say: Their fruit is, therefore, collective; it
is the achievement of the whole people.
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When we come to study the great principle of continuity and see how all is fluid and every point directly partakes the being of every other, it will appear
that individualism and falsity are one and the same. Meantime, we know that man is not whole as long as he is single, that he is essentially a possible
member of society. Especially, one man’s experience is nothing, if it stands alone. If he sees what others cannot, we call it hallucination. It is not “my”
experience, but “our” experience that has to be thought of; and this “us” has indefinite possibilities. (5.402, n. 2)
The nature of this society, as described here, is closer to Dewey’s idea of democracy than to Peirce’s idea of the “community of inquirers.’’ It is no longer a “club” for
the élite, but the whole people’s democracy.
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PART TWO
Semeiotic as Semiotics
Logic, in its general sense, is, […] only another name for semiotic (σημειωτική), the quasinecessary, or formal, doctrine of signs.
—Peirce (2.227)
Know that from the day when at the age of 12 or 13 I took up, in my elder brother’s room a copy of Whately’s Logic, […] it has never been in my power to study
anything,—mathematics, ethics, metaphysics, gravitation, thermodynamics, optics, chemistry, comparative anatomy, astronomy, psychology, phonetics, economic, the
history of science, whist, men and women, wine, metrology, except as a study of semeiotic.
—Peirce (Letter to Lady Welby,
1908, Dec. 23 in Hardwick 1977: 85–86)
The present part will be devoted to Peirce’s theory of signs. In the first chapter (ch. 4), I shall describe semeiotic as semiotic, that is to say as a method for analyzing
anything which appears as a “sign” and, in the second chapter (ch. 5), I shall approach the question of interpreting Peirce or the way of understanding or translating
Peirce in another language, yours or mine, English, French, or in any other context: linguistic, private, or ideological.
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4
Sign
SEMIOSIS AND REPRESENTAMEN
For Peirce, as already noted above (p. 18), the word “sign” has two acceptations: signaction and signobject. He calls the first semiosis, the second representamen.
Semiosis is the action of the sign, the sign in action, that is to say: in process. For there to be a semiosis, an event A (the signobject or representamen: e.g., the order
given by an officer to his troops) must produce a second event B (the interpretant: the signified result of the signobject or representamen) as a means of producing a
third event C (the object as such: here, the execution by the soldiers of the order given by the officer—the execution or object being for the officer the cause of the
signobject or representamen (encoding) and for the soldiers its effect (decoding) (cf. 5.473).
The representamen is an “object serving to represent something to the mind” (Century Dictionary, 1887). Peirce borrowed the idea of the representamen as sign
object from Hamilton, to whom Peirce refers in the Century Dictionary. Hamilton wrote:
The LeibnitioWolfians […] distinguished three acts in the process of representative cognition: 1° the act of representing a (mediate) object to the mind; 2°
the representation, or, more properly speaking, representamen, itself as an (immediate or vicarious) object exhibited to the mind; 3° the act by which the
mind is conscious immediately of the representative object, and, through it, mediately of the remote object represented. (Reid 1863: 877 note)
Peirce himself explicitly makes the distinction in the context of representation where ‘sign’ is given as a synonym of ‘representation’ defined as ‘semiosis’ and opposed
to ‘representamen’. “I confine the word representation to the operation
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of a sign or its relation to the object for the interpreter of the representation. The concrete subject that represents I call a sign or representamen’’ (1.540). The sign,
the concrete subject of the representation, or representamen, is the signobject which must not be confused with the common idea of the sign defined as “anything
which conveys any definite notion of an object in any way” (1.540).
This latter definition refers to semiosis, which is the object of semiotic analysis. By virtue of this, the signaction or semiosis is the point of departure of the analysis and
the signobject or representamen “whatever that analysis applies to” (1.540), i.e., the repertory of representamens. Consequently, the representamen of the semiosis is,
like the latter, triadic: it comprises the signrepresentamen, the objectrepresentamen, and the interpretantrepresentamen.
A Representamen can be considered from three formal points of view, namely, first, as the substance of the representation, or the Vehicle of the
Meaning, which is common to the three representamens of the triad, second, as the quasiagent in the representation, that is as the Natural Object, and
third as the quasipatient in the representation, or that modification in the representation makes its Intelligence, and this may be called the Interpretant.
Thus, in looking at a map, the map itself is the Vehicle, the country represented is the Natural Object, and the idea excited in the mind is the
Interpretant. (Ms 717)
And, in fact, Peirce always defines the signobject, the object, and the interpretant as representamens.
A Sign, or Representamen, is a First which stands in such a genuine triadic relation to a Second, called its Object, as “to be capable of determining a
Third, called its Interpretant, to assume the same triadic relation to its Object in which it stands to itself to the same Object.” (2.274)
A REPRESENTAMEN is a subject of a triadic relation to a Second, called its OBJECT, FOR a Third, called its INTERPRETANT, this triadic
relation being such that the REPRESENTAMEN determines its interpretant to stand in the same triadic relation to the same object for some
interpretant. (1.541)
These two passages describe the process of signaction or semiosis, set off by the presentation of the signobject or representamen. “Representamens are of three
kinds, icons (or likenesses), indices, and symbols (or general signs)” (“Logic (Exact)” in Baldwin’s Dictionary, 1902). Thus “an Icon is a Representamen whose
Representative Quality is a Firstness of it as a First. That is, a quality that it has qua thing renders it fit to be a representamen” (2.276).
A representamen, or sign, is anything which stands at once in a relation of correspondence to a second thing (not necessarily real), its object and to
another possible representamen, its interpretant, which it determines to correspondence with the same object. (“Logic [Exact]” in Baldwin’s
Dictionary, 1902)
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Another consequence of the distinction between signaction or semiosis and signobject or representamen: every sign is a representamen (1.540), but
possibly there may be Representamens which are not Signs. Thus, if a sunflower, in turning towards the sun, becomes, by this very act, fully capable,
without further condition, of reproducing a sunflower which turns in precisely corresponding ways toward the sun, and of doing so with the same
reproductive power, the sunflower would become a Representamen of the sun. (2.274)
In other words, “all signs convey notions to human minds; but I know no reason why every representamen should do so” (1.540), although it must be conceded that
“thought is the chief, if not the only, mode of representation” (2.274). It will accordingly be granted that one may “call a thing considered as having a signification, a
representamen” (Ms 796), and that a representamen is a third:
A ‘representamen’, like a word,—indeed, most words are representamens,—is of a single thing, but is of the nature of a mental habit, it consists in the fact
that something would be. (Ms 695)
However, the representamen can exist only as materialized in some singular thing, a replica.
The Representamen and the Object of the Sign
Representamen and Representative
The representamen is not the sensory image, the sensorial reproduction of the object which it represents (although it may be). It stands for something, just as an
ambassador stands for his country, represents it in a foreign country; just as a deputy represents his electors in an assembly (Hardwick 1977: 193).
Semiosis and Representative
The simile must not lead us to confuse semiosis or signaction with representamen or signobject. The representamen represents its object, and the action of the sign as
such (i.e., as representamen) does not affect the object represented. Which is not the case of ‘‘a legislative representative” who “is, on the contrary, expected in his
functions to improve the condition of his constituents” (ibid.).
This does not mean that the signaction does not affect the world in which it functions. On the contrary, semiosis, which can come into existence only by means of a
signobject, takes place in the world of things: it is a process immanent to the things of which signs are a part—thoughtsigns and mansigns—and which it informs and
transforms (principle of pragmaticism). The representamen may indeed be considered “as the quasiagent in the representation” (in other words, the signaction or
semiosis) which, as far as the representation conforms to it, constitutes its truth (Ms 717)—a conformity which is not given once and for all, but is the “ideal
limit” (5.565) which semiosis “is fated” to attain
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(407). Properly speaking, semiosis starts because a representamen is opaque, but, when the representamen is transparent, semiosis becomes a blind process.
The Object in Semiosis and the Object Outside Semiosis
The representamen is the quasiagent of the natural object in signaction or semiosis (Ms 717). We must distinguish between the natural object outside semiosis which
Peirce calls the dynamical or mediate object, and the immediate object in semiosis and of which the representamen is the quasiagent (Hardwick 1977: 83). The
representamen refers immediately to the immediate object and mediately to the natural object. But this distinction is a methodological or functional one, or, properly
speaking, a semiotic one.
Object and Representamen
Every signrepresentamen has an object which it represents. Every sign has a single object, but this object may be a single set or continuum of objects (5.448). “In
order that anything should be a Sign it must ‘represent,’ as we say, something else, called its Object, although the condition that a Sign must be other than its Object is
perhaps arbitrary, since, if we insist upon it, we must at least make an exception in the case of a sign which is part of a sign” (2.230). But, even in this case, the one
becomes the object of the other, for “on the map of an island laid down upon the soil of that island, there must, under all ordinary circumstances, be some position,
some point, marked or not, that represents qua place on the map, the very same point qua place on the island” (2.230).
Every object is not represented by a signrepresentamen. The whole universe “is perfused with signs, if it is not composed exclusively of signs” (5.448). The universe of
firstness being the universe of possibles, only those objects that come “before thought and the mind in any usual sense’’ are represented by signs, whether they be
“perceptible, imaginable and even unimaginable” (2.230).
Only objects already known in the universe of secondness, that of existence, objects known by collateral acquaintance (Hardwick 1977: 72) can signify. “The Sign can
only represent the Object and tell about it. It cannot furnish acquaintance with or recognition of that Object” (2.231). To the reader who might question this idea, Peirce
gives an answer which explicits its meaning:
If there be anything which conveys information and yet has absolutely no relation nor reference to anything with which the person to whom it conveys the
information has, when he comprehends that information, the slightest acquaintance, direct or indirect—and a very strange sort of information that would
be—the vehicle of that sort of information is not, in this volume, called a Sign. (2.231)
Elsewhere, Peirce explicits this still further:
A person who says Napoleon was a lethargic creature has evidently his mind determined by Napoleon. For otherwise he could not attend to him at all.
But
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[…] the person who interprets that sentence (or any other Sign whatsoever) must be determined by the Object of it through collateral observation quite
independently of the action of the Sign. Otherwise he will not be determined to thought of that object. If he never heard of Napoleon before, the sentence
will mean no more to him than that some person or thing to which the name “Napoleon” has been attached was a lethargic creature. For Napoleon cannot
determine his mind unless the word in the sentence calls his attention to the right man and that can only be if, independently, [a] habit has been established
by him by which that word calls up a variety of attributes of Napoleon the man. (8.178)
Much the same thing is true of every sign. In the sentence quoted, Napoleon is the immediate object of a semiosis, an object known in other respects outside this
semiosis as a “natural object” possessing many other attributes than lethargy. And lethargy is also an immediate object that “collateral experience had taught its
interpreter” is a ‘‘natural object” whose attribution is not limited to Napoleon (8.178).
Consequently, an object may determine “a lying or erroneous sign” and an object may be “brought into existence by the sign”: “The object of ‘Napoleon’ is the
Universe of Existence so far as it is determined by the fact of Napoleon being a member of it,” just as “the Object of the sentence ‘Hamlet was insane’ is the Universe
of Shakespeare’s Creation so far as it is determined by Hamlet being a part of it” (8.178).
All the objects of the Universe of Thirdness, which is that of mediating thought, are by definition represented by signs: “All thought […] must necessarily be in
signs” (5.251).
From the Sign to the Object
In a letter to Lady Welby of December 14, 1908, Peirce writes:
I do not make any contrast between Subject and Object, far less talk about “subjective and objective” in any of the varieties of the German senses, which
I think have led to a lot of bad philosophy, but I use “subject” as the correlative of “predicate”, and speak only of the “subjects” of those signs which have
a part which separately indicates what the object of the sign is. A subject of such a sign is that kind of object of the sign which is so separately indicated.
(Hardwick 1977: 69)
A first and fundamental clarification is given here: “object” is not opposed to “subject.” We are not in a dualistic universe where the “subject”—a human being—refers
a “subjective” sign to an “object”—the “objective” world—outside itself.
“Object” says nothing more than the Latin word objectum. The object is “thrown” (jectum) “in front of” (ob). This calls forth two interrogative remarks: (1) Could not
“objectum” (what is thrown in front of) be rather the definition
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of the object? (2) Does it not imply that there is an obstacle, and consequently that the sign—since it is the sign which is in question here—should not normally
encounter an obstacle, not have an object? But the sign has an object. Peirce writes:
I use the term “object” in the sense in which objectum was first made a substantive early in the XIIIth century; and when I use the word without adding
“of” what I am speaking of the object, I mean anything that comes before thought or the mind in any usual sense. (ibid.)
The preceding remarks must therefore be more precisely formulated. On one hand, there is an object because there is a thought. On the other hand, it is when the
object constitutes an obstacle for the thought that the thought gives itself a sign, not in order to know the object, but to try to get round the obstacle, or rather, to set up
a screen in front of it. Which is why the sign is not transparent, but opaque. If the sign were transparent, the thought would not have to designate the object; it would
not have to propose a sign to represent it. Now Peirce says explicitly: “The sign can only represent the Object and tell about it. It cannot furnish acquaintance with or
recognition of that Object” (2.231).
These preliminary remarks lead us to ask in what conditions one can say something about the object. First, there is an ‘‘object” only for a thought which “sees” it on the
sole condition that it represents in its own right this object in a sign. Is idealism the only other solution? Yes, unless we distinguish between an object in the sign and an
object outside the sign. Which is what Peirce does: “It is usual and proper to distinguish between two Objects of a Sign, the Mediate without, and the Immediate within
the Sign” (Hardwick 1977: 83). He usually calls the first “dynamical.” Elsewhere he refines this distinction:
we have to distinguish the Immediate Object which is the Object as the Sign itself represents it, and whose being is thus dependent upon the
Representation of it in the Sign, from the Dynamical Object, which is the Reality which by some means contrives to determine the Sign to its
Representation. (4.536)
As it is clear that it is either the thought or the mind which “determines” the sign to represent the object, the dynamical object appears as the projection out of the sign of
the immediate object which is the only one produced by thought, unless thought be the Thought which created the Universe.
If Peirce thus appears to define the sign by this distinction between object in the sign and the object outside the sign, he is in fact only displacing the difficulties: the
“outside” is in itself a problem if one rejects dualism. We shall examine this question later on. But the real difficulty resides in the nature of the sign itself as subordinate
to thought. What is a sign? What is thought?
I do not want to deal thoroughly with these questions here, but they cannot be eluded if one wishes to understand what constitutes the object so defined. Despite
Peirce’s terminological laxity, which must, paradoxically, be condemned in
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the name of the strict terminological ethics which he himself defended, it is possible, and even relatively easy, to answer these questions.
What is a sign? Taking into account only the texts quoted above, the written, gestural, or spoken sign, which is a determinable physical token, is usually confused with
the “mental” sign in thought. In order to avoid this confusion, Peirce proposes to substitute two other terms, without always respecting his own rule of substitution: the
sign, representing (by means of thought) the object, is called the “representamen”; the sign, as an act of attribution of an (immediate) object to a signrepresentamen, is
called signaction, or usually semiosis or more rarely “semeiosy” (5.473). Semiosis is thus the production and attribution by a thought of the signinterpretant, or more
simply interpretant, of a signrepresentamen to an immediate object, i.e., the sort of object that the thought takes for the object, given the action or semiosis it has
accomplished. What is thought? It is what it does: a semiosis, thought in action, obviously. Thought in itself, if it can be distinguished from its actions, is the possibility of
drawing up plans of action: a mind or quasimind, as Peirce termed it. But that is another story.
The Object in the Sign
At this point we can say that the object produced by the interpretant is in the semiosis or signaction. The immediate object is thus closely connected with and, to be
exact, is determined by, the nature of the interpretant. We have seen that Peirce used the word “interpretant” with various meanings. I shall distinguish three types of
meanings of the word. A formal one and two others I shall call temporal: one which is more social and public and the other one which is more individual and private, or,
let us say “subjective,’’ not by opposition to “objective,” but to “social.” It is not at all certain that the latter two are the formal interpretant incarnate, nor that the
“subjective” interpretant is the same as the “social” interpretant seen from the point of view of the subject. I shall endeavor to be as clear as possible concerning the
type of interpretants I am discussing.
1. Formally speaking, the interpretant is another sign or representamen that is occasioned but not “determined,” properly speaking (although Peirce does sometimes use
the word), by the representamen which sets off the semiosis. A sign (or representamen) is “anything which determines something else (its interpretant) to refer to an
object to which itself refers (its object) in the same way, the interpretant becoming in turn a sign, and so on ad infinitum” (2.303). In this formal context, the word
“determine” obviously cannot have the same meaning as in a spatiotemporal context, which is the scene of action for the interpretants which I shall now examine.
2. This regressus ad infinitum makes any definite grasp of the object theoretically impossible. But the sign as an act, the signaction, a semiosis, is not formal and
intemporal. It is in time. It starts, goes on, and stops. The play of signs and objects is thus possible, providing the interpretant is defined, not formally, but in space and
time. Whence the wellknown Peircean trichotomy of the interpretant: immediate, dynamical, and final. Of course, there are not three interpretants, but
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only one interpretant which assumes different roles distinguished by the words: immediate, dynamical, and final. This distinction of roles is itself no more than a
convenient means of expression, and not a distinction between roles that could be assumed independently of one another.
The immediate interpretant could be called the sign of interpretability. It is “familiarity with a sign and readiness in using it or interpreting it” (8.185).
The dynamical interpretant is interpretation in action hic et nunc. It is the “actual effect” of the signrepresentamen on the interpreter (8.314). Here we must insist on
the terms used by Peirce. “Actual effect” must be understood as the expression is used in physics: the result produced in certain conditions which obtain at the moment
at which it is produced. ‘‘Interpreter” is not a “sop to Cerberus” thrown to the reader in order to appease his or her incomprehension of the real nature of the
interpretant. It means here the interpreter in possession of the immediate interpretants he or she has acquired and with which he or she is familiar to the point of
interpreting certain signs in certain ways in a given situation.
3. The final interpretant I shall call “interpretantation.” It is not a given “final interpretant,” no more than the immediate interpretant is a given “immediate interpretant.”
The latter is a disposition, the former a set of rules for interpreting which have become the interpreter’s habits of interpreting signs as representamens.
This is so true that Peirce sometimes insists on a trichotomy which is the private (conscious) obverse of the trichotomy I have just described and which is, so to speak,
its public (institutional) reverse. This trichotomy has three types of interpretants, respectively emotional, energetic, and logical. The emotional interpretant is “a feeling
produced by it (the sign)…. Thus the performance of a piece of concerted music … conveys, and is intended to convey, the composer’s musical ideas; but these
usually consist merely in a series of feelings” (5.475). The energetic interpretant “will always involve an effort…. The effort may be a muscular one … but it is much
more usually an exertion upon the inner world, a mental effort” (5.475). But, Peirce specifies, “it never can be the meaning of an intellectual concept, since it is a single
act [while] such a concept is of a general nature” (5.475). May this meaning be the distinctive feature of the logical interpretant? May the latter be this “general effect”?
Peirce wonders. It may well be a “thought, that is to say, a mental sign,” but then “it must have itself a logical interpretant; so that it cannot be the ultimate logical
interpretant of the concept.” In consequence, “the only mental effect that can be produced and that is not a sign but is of a general application is a habitchange;
meaning by habitchange a modification of a person’s tendencies toward action, resulting from previous experiences or from previous exertions of his will or acts, or
from a complexus of both kinds of cause” (5.476).
Are these trichotomies homologous? Or does one of them overlap the other? It is certain, in any case, that the final logical interpretant includes both
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the logical and the final interpretants, since, according to Peirce, the final logical interpretant which concludes a semiosis is not a signrepresentamen but a habit of acting
in a certain way (5.491). As to the others, if they overlap—which they do—it is not surprising, being indecomposable aspects of one formally defined signinterpretant.
All these precautionary considerations are not unnecessary and are not leading us away from the subject. On one hand, they situate rigorously the interpretant in its
relation to the object. On the other hand, they shed light on the nature of the immediate object, whose unity and diversity in spatiotemporal contexts, which are by
definition in continual transaction and reconstruction, they both determine and justify.
From the Immediate Object to the Dynamical Object
The question which may now be legitimately asked is the following: since the play of interpretants in a given society at a given moment can be reduced to a geosocial
habit which is the final logical interpretant of which Peirce says that it is—“that which would finally be decided to be the true interpretation if consideration of the
matter were carried so far that an ultimate opinion were reached” (8.184)—how can we distinguish the dynamical object outside the sign from the immediate object in
the sign?
Admittedly, Peirce was alluding to a scientific truth “fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate” (5.407), and which would transcend the geosocial, and, a
fortiori, the geopolitical. However, he was here displaying a utopian attitude which would be thought very naïve today—when we know how easily ultimate truths can
force themselves upon the community of scientific investigators as well as on the community of nations. But, fortunately, Peirce foresaw “habitchanges’’ that
investigation cannot fail, in the long run, to produce, in order to negotiate the obstacles along the path towards truth, which we are now convinced can never be
ultimate.
Is it investigation as method, i.e., semiosis, or the dynamical object which denies the immediate object its claim to be an ultimate one?
Let us first look back to semiosis. The signrepresentamen (of an object) “determines” a signinterpretant to designate its object (the object of the signrepresentamen).
This designation is rarely pure designation: it spans a long process from the modification of a previously designated object to the production of a new object. But Peirce
does specify, as we have already noted, that the representamen “can only represent the Object and tell about it. It cannot furnish acquaintance with or recognition of
that Object … namely, that with which it presupposes an acquaintance in order to convey some further information concerning it” (2.231). Where does this previous
knowledge come from and what is the object concerned?
By “knowledge,” Peirce means here what William James, following Grote, called “knowledgebyacquaintance” and not “knowledgeabout.” The latter,
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which is indirect, is the knowledge by signrepresentamens in the continuous process of signaction or semiosis. And the object known in the latter case is the
immediate object.
“Knowledgebyacquaintance” thus concerns another kind of object: the dynamical object. How can it be known? Peirce replies: by “collateral experience” (8.514),
which is precisely a “collateral acquaintance’’ (8.144). This experience gives us knowledge of the existence of the dynamical object, but not of its nature in itself, its
substantial nature. In any case, Peirce remarks, “it must be borne in mind” that the “substantive … is not an indispensable part of speech” (8.184), whether it be
grammatical or metaphysical.
If neither knowledgebyacquaintance nor knowledgeabout is knowledge, properly speaking, i.e., direct knowledge of the dynamical object—their object being the
immediate object—can we dispense with the dynamical object? Peirce does not think so, because the immediate object is the object “cognized in the Sign and
therefore an Idea” (8.183). We must therefore, unless we fall back into idealism, admit the existence of an “external” object: the dynamical object, which is “as it is
regardless of any particular aspect of it, the Object in such relations as unlimited and final study would show it to be” (8.183). What is known is thus the relations of an
existing object independent of ourselves in the course of the semioses in which we are, it and ourselves, engaged.
The ultimate object is consequently neither the dynamical object nor the immediate object. It is that unique object cloaked by methodologically necessary mental
distinctions, which dualistic metaphysics consigns to “external” reality. As the distinction between the dynamical object and the immediate object is also methodological,
a distinction of reason, it does not require an external reality. External to what, in any case, if one rejects idealism? There is only one continuous reality in which each of
the two objects plays a particular part according to how it is defined in terms of one or the other of the categories of being, the dynamical object belonging essentially to
secondness, the immediate object to firstness and thirdness. This is confirmed by Peirce in the following passage, in which the corresponding categories are designated
in square brackets.
[T]he Dynamical Object … is the Object that Dynamical Science (or what at this day would be called “Objective Science”) can investigate. Take, for
example, the sentence “the Sun is blue”. Its Objects are “the Sun” and “blueness”. If by “blueness” be meant the Immediate Object, which is the quality of
the sensation, it can only be known by Feeling [firstness]. But if it means that “Real”, existential condition, which causes the emitted light to have short
mean wavelength … the proposition is true. So the “Sun” may mean the occasion [secondness] of sundry sensations [firstness] and so is the Immediate
Object, or it may mean our usual interpretation of such sensations in terms of place, of mass, etc. [thirdness] when it is the Dynamical Object. It is true of
both Immediate Object and Dynamical Object that acquaintance cannot be given by a Picture or a Description, nor by any other sign which has the Sun
for its Object. If a person points to it and says, See there! That is what we call the “Sun”, the Sun is not
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the Object of that sign. It is the Sign of the sun, the word “sun” that his declaration is about; and that word we must become acquainted with by collateral
experience. (8.183)
From the Dynamical Object to the Representamen
To complete the cycle, we must examine the relation between the representamen and the dynamical object. This will be a semiotic cycle, formal and descriptive, for
semiosis never comes back to the same point. It is not a “vicious circle,” as Lady Welby said, but a “virtuous spiral.” When Peirce says that
the Dynamoïd Object determines the Immediate Object
which determines the Sign itself,
which determines the Destinate Interpretant,
which determines the Effective Interpretant,
which determines the Explicit Interpretant, (Hardwick 1977: 84)
he is alluding to the circle. The spiral follows another path.
We are no longer at the beginning of time; we were born into a world which was already constituted, a world, it is true, and fortunately so, which is being continually
reconstructed. Here we do not start from the dynamical object. We start from signs. Not formal signrepresentamens, but signs already constituted with their final
logical interpretants and their objects. Our distinctions shed light on the processes of their constitution and reveal their functions. They do not describe states of things.
But these distinctions are technically necessary. The representamen is really what sets the process in motion. However, it also is constituted by and for a given society at
a given moment. And it appears as if “determined’’ by the dynamical object. In fact, matters are more complex, as we have seen. If one has a weakness for diagrams,
the semiotic triangle
can be represented by a point where R, I, and O merge into one: a representamen determines an interpretant to designate an object of which the representamen is the
complete and finished expression, closed and fixed in a society of robots like
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that described by Aldous Huxley in This Brave New World. It is a geographical map on a world scale: it is the world … and supererogatory. At best, in a closed and
fixed world where humans are not yet robots, programmed computers, we can think “our” world. In this case, there would be two points in relation—a homothetic
relation, of course—a fixed point (OR together): the world, corresponding to each and every point of another point (RI together): thought. It is in this way that we can
understand the dualism of Western philosophy from Plato to Descartes.
If, in an open world, we are not satisfied with the formal triangle which is an analytical and didactic abstraction, it must be developed in spirals, but with stops when the
signinterpretant becomes a habit, fortunately always liable to be broken, as Peirce reminds us. Let us stay put at one of these stops.
Let us suppose that this stop interrupts our progression—the process of a given semiosis—in front of a painting. We would have the following diagram:
Table 4.1. A case of semiosis
The painting (R) calls forth an interpretant (I) which is part of the fields of interpretants on three levels: that of the immediate interpretant (Ii), which is the interpretability
of the painting; that of the final interpretant (If), which is the acquired habit of interpreting a painting according to the rules proper to a given group in a given society,
and even to one member of this society; and that of the dynamical interpretant (Id), which is the interpretation of this painting at this moment in such an art gallery by a
given visitor. The interpretant, always multiple, of course, will refer to an immediate object (Oi) in the mind of the viewer. But the latter will not think for one second that
there is no painting in front of him. He will think spontaneously that the representamen (R) is in his “mind” and it is also there at the same time in front of him, that what
he is looking at is a dynamical object (Od). However, the analysis does not stop here, because the representamen (R)—this painting: image (Oi) and thing (Od)—has
not been created ex nihilo. The subject of the painting, whatever it may be, is with
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and by this painting rooted in a world we can call dynamical, whose constituents correspond very exactly to the levels of interpretants already described, the latter being
“instantiated’’ in the manner in which a painter, with his pictorial and other conventions (codes) and the techniques (norms) at his disposal (left column in table 1), has
revealed them to the eye.
SEMIOSIS AND TIME
According to modern physicists, time is not a function nor an operator nor a factor without the things which it can measure, nor is it a psychological result of a physical
movement. “Time is real” (1905: 5.458). It is a continuous arrowed process.
Peirce’s semiotics is triadic, not only because it is trirelational (Representamen Interpretant Object), but because a semiosis is a temporal process. It unites the

three universes of possibility, existence, and discourse. That is to say that Peirce’s semiotics can be considered either as a formal theory of signs or as a pragmatical
theory of signs.
Formally, of course, time is not taken into account in the definition of a sign, not even the elements which are formally subsumed in a phenomenon or rather a
phaneron.
No proper place can be given to the three constitutive formal elements: the sign is indecomposable and its constitutive elements do not stand phaneroscopically for
something which could be concretely described. The three phaneroscopical categories described respectively as Firstness, the category of quality or possibility,
Secondness, the category of existence, and Thirdness, the category of mediation are possible illustrations rather than descriptions, properly speaking, and the same
thing may be said of the Representamen (First), Object (Second), and Interpretant (Third).
Given the trichotomization of the Representamen (as R1, R2, R3), of the
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Object (as O1, O2, O3), and of the Interpretant (as I1, I2, I3), and the rule of the hierarchization of the categories, there can be only ten classes of signs:
The classes of signs can be either only possible (1) or partially “realized” (2, 9), “existential” (3, 4, 6, 7) or “thought,” without any reference to their “realization’’ (5, 8,
10). The directly or indirectly existential classes are in bold type in the table below.
Possibility Existence Thought
1 (R1, O1, I1)
2 (R2, O1, I1)
3 (R2, O2, I1)
4 (R2, O2, I2)
5 (R3, O1, I1)
6 (R3, O2, I1)
7 (R3, O2, I2)
9 (R3, O3, I2) 8 (R3, O3, I1)
10 (R3, O3, I3)
Table 4.2. The ten classes of signs. See also Table 2.2 on p. 19.
It should be stressed that the nonexistential classes are also real: the class of possibility as well as the classes of thought which state the rules to be applied in the
existential world, even when they are actually enacted. Peirce says:
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(1) Concerning possibility:
Some years ago [1903], […] when in consequence of an invitation to deliver a course of lectures in Harvard University upon Pragmatism, I was led to
revise that doctrine, in which I had already found difficulties, I soon discovered, upon a critical analysis, that it was absolutely necessary to insist upon and
bring to the front, the truth that a mere possibility may be quite real. That admitted, it can no longer be granted that every conditional proposition whose
antecedent does not happen to be realized is true, and the whole reasoning just given breaks down. (4.580)
(2) Concerning thought as law:
The real, then, is that which, sooner or later, information and reasoning would finally result in, and which is therefore independent of the vagaries of me and
you. (1868: 5.311)
This conception of the real is closely connected to the definition of thought as a continuous temporal process, with all that this definition implies, to wit that this process
is selfcorrecting (i.e., includes “absolute chance”) and subject to public or communal testing.
Thus, the very origin of the conception of reality shows that this conception essentially involves the notion of a COMMUNITY, without definite limits, and
capable of a definite increase of knowledge. And so those two series of cognition—the real and the unreal—consist of those which, at a time sufficiently
future, the community will always continue to reaffirm; and of those which, under the same conditions, will ever after be denied. Now, a proposition
whose falsity can never be discovered, and the error of which therefore is absolutely incognizable, contains upon our principle, absolutely no error.
Consequently, that which is thought in these cognitions is the real, as it really is. There is nothing, then, to prevent our knowing outward things as they
really are, and it is most likely that we do thus know them in numberless cases, although we can never be absolutely certain of doing so in any special
case. (ibid.)
Pragmatically, semiosis is then a continuous process from a representamen (R) to an immediate object (Oi) (an actual event, or a sense or meaning) through an
interpretant (I) which is also a sign, as long as the object is not found. When it is found, the interpretant is no longer a sign but a final interpretant, that is to say, a
habit—either a new habit or the reinforcement of a previous habit.
Od (the dynamic object) belongs to the world of existence as such. Oi (the immediate object) belongs to the world of discourse, i.e., of thought as a rule or law which
organizes the world of existence according to its intrinsic possibilities. Both objects change along with time: t, t’, until the ultimate t, when semiosis ends at the end of
“time” either for an individual being or the whole world.
Let us remark that Frege distinguishes two universes: the universe of discourse (ZeichenSinn) and the universe of reference (ZeichenBedeutung) which is in fact the
universe of the objects of discourse (astronomical, grammatical)—and that Wittgenstein confounds them (ZeichenSinn): “The limits of my language
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means the limits of my world.” As there is no interpretant in either theory, there can be no time.
Without time, the relation between a sign as representamen and the dynamic object is a “vicious circle’’; with time, it is a “virtuous spiral” as shown in the graph below:
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The relation ROd is called “sense,” the relation I(R’)Oi is called “meaning.”
The Immediate Interpretant is an abstraction, consisting in a Possibility. The Dynamical Interpretant is a single actual event. The Final Interpretant is that
toward which the actual tends. (Hardwick 1977: 111)
Sense, meaning, and significance are relations. Meaning is the triadic relation proper. Sense (or rather “acceptation” [8.184]) is a first degree degenerate triadic
relation (1.364). Significance is “the effect the sign would produce upon any mind upon which circumstances should permit it to work out its full effect’’ (Hardwick,
110). It is the “interpretative result to which every interpreter is destined to come if the sign is sufficiently considered” (ibid., 111).
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5
Sign
THE CONCEPT AND ITS USE
Peirce’s theory of signs is by description mostly concerned with translation. No sign can be understood without being interpreted. That is why I shall mainly deal here
with Peirce’s terminology and its translation or interpretation. It will not be a question of languages proper, but of conceptual expressions of the signs used by Peirce to
convey his ideas, although we cannot do that without also touching upon the question of the languages used: English, French, Italian, etcetera.
It is a fact that Peirce tried out many neologisms to express his thought right until the end of his life. To give an instance, in a letter of 1911, he wonders whether logon
(the Greek word λόγον) would not be a better word than “sign,” or even “representamen” to convey what he means by “sign.”
Nobody was ever more concerned than he was by what he calls the ethics of terminology.
[…] our first rule […] will certainly be that every technical term of philosophy ought to be used in that sense in which it first became a technical term of
philosophy. (Peirce 1979: C053)
If we want to understand Peirce, we have to be as careful as he was when we translate him.
As I have just said, the problem of translation is not a question of using one word instead of another one; it is to ask the pragmatic question Peirce was the first to raise:
What does this word do? If both words do the same thing, one word is enough; but if one word induces two (or more) trends of actions or rather, in
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the present case, mental actions, the differences ought to be expressed by different words.
I shall start with common mistranslations in presentday theories of signs. Everybody knows that Peirce defines a sign as a triad made of three indecomposable
elements: a representamen, an object, and an interpretant.
For Saussure, a sign is an indissoluble pair or couple composed of a signifier and a signified.
Can we translate Peirce’s definition into Saussure’s? There is at least one point in common in both definitions: a sign is an indecomposable or indissoluble unit. But
which element is which? Is the representamen a signifier? Let us concede this translation. Now which, of the “object” and the “interpretant,’’ is the signified? I should
not dare to answer the question. Some semioticians do, and translate “interpretant” by “signified,” and manage to find something to translate “object” into Saussurean
terminology—“referent”—which makes Saussure’s sign a mariage à trois. My opinion is that the two theories are untranslatable into one another, because their
underlying philosophies and logics are incompatible. Saussure’s are dualistic, Peirce’s dialectic.
Another question may help us to be more cautious. How are we going to translate “sign” into their respective terminologies, since they both use the same word? Let us
be more precise: when does a sign stop being a sign in Saussure’s semiology and in Peirce’s semiotics or rather semeiotic? Saussure’s sign is linguistic; Peirce’s sign
can be linguistic too, but it is not linguistic as such. A sign can be three things: a qualisign, a sinsign, or a legisign—and the linguistic sign is only one type of legisign.
Another difference should be stressed here. Saussure’s definition is formalistic; Peirce’s is formalistic too, if one considers what Peirce calls the “signobject,” but it is
also a process which he calls the “signaction” or semiosis.
The three formalistic elements of a signobject become functions in a signaction. And I agree that it is not always easy to be sure of which sign (signobject or sign
action) Peirce speaks. That is why I prefer to use the word “representamen” for the signobject, and the word “semiosis” for the signaction—and leave “sign” as a
technical term to Saussure’s semiology.
A third argument can be used to show how far both theories are from one another. I already used this argument implicitly when I said that Peirce’s sign can be a
qualisign, a sinsign, or a legisign. Peirce’s theory of signs rests on a phenomenology or, to use Peirce’s term, a phaneroscopy, the categories of which are ordinal. There
are three phaneroscopical categories: 1, 2, and 3, which are not cardinal but ordinal numbers. That is to say that 3 does not mean the single number 3, but a “Third,”
which presupposes a “Second,” which presupposes a “First.” Peirce’s phaneroscopy is hierarchical. A Third is the law which “facts” or Seconds obey, but which no
fact or Second can provide. A fact or Second exists because it was possible or First, but a First or a sheer possible cannot produce a fact or Second.
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We cannot translate and understand Peirce, if we do not have all that in our minds; that and many other things.
Above I was concerned with the problem of whether it is possible to explain one theory in the terminology of another theory. I showed, I think, that this is not the best
way to understand Peirce.
Would it be better to translate Peirce into his own terms? Perhaps. But we have to be very cautious and ask ourselves two questions before using this way for
understanding: (1) When was the text used as a translation; published or written? (2) To whom was it addressed?
1. Let us take a first example to answer the first question—the word to be understood being “representamen” as used by Peirce between 1895 and 1903.
Peirce wrote in 1867 “On a New List of Categories” (see ch. 1) of which I am quoting two passages:
The five conceptions […] obtained [by precision] […], may be termed categories.
Being
Quality (reference to a ground)
Relation (reference to a correlate)
Representation (reference to an interpretant)
Substance
The three intermediate conceptions may be termed accidents. (l.555)
Since no one of the categories can be prescinded from those above it, the list of supposable objects which they afford is,
What is,
Quale (that which refers to a ground)
Relate (that which refers to ground and correlate)
Representamen (that which refers to ground, correlate, and interpretant)
It. (1.557)
Can these passages be quoted to understand the meaning of “representamen” as used from 1895 to 1903, or rather, according to me, until the end of Peirce’s life,
although after 1903, it is as if in disguise, as I shall show later?
It is true that this test is very important (and can be used in more ways than I am ready to discuss here). It is important because it is the foundation stone of the theory of
the hierarchy of categories, which is obtained by “precision.’’ “Precision” is one of the three kinds of distinction which Peirce relies upon in all his writings, together with
“discrimination” or “mental distinction,” and “dissociation” or “physical distinction.” Peirce borrows “precision” (praecisio from praescindere) from John Duns Scotus.
Precision introduces an ordinal order in the categories: a representation (the object of which is the representamen) implies a relation (the object of which is a relate)
which implies itself a quality (the object of which is a quale).
However, this article is confusing when one tries to refer to it to explain what a representamen is in semeiotic. It is a fact—which one can accept easily
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enough—that the three intermediary conceptions will become the fundamental categories of phaneroscopy. It is not so easy to use the definitions of the terms in this
paper and especially of the word “representamen” in another context.
When Peirce wrote “On a New List of Categories,” he was still a Kantian of Aristotelian obedience. When he proposed his phaneroscopical semeiotic, perhaps he
was still a Kantian, but with a new logic, the logic of (triadic) relations.
Is the representamen of 1867 (which is an intermediary Third) the same as the representamen of the semeiotic theory which is a first? From 1895 on, the
representamen is a First and trichotomizable into a representamen which is a possible, a representamen which is an existent, and a representamen which is a law or
rather a rule. If the representamen is a First, can it still be understood in terms of “representation’’ as in the paper of 1867? If the “quality” of 1867 is merely possible,
can it be referred to a ground? We are in another world, a “prePeircean” world, so to speak, a world which is Aristotelicoscholastic and even Thomistic. Peirce
writes in a paper of 1868:
[A]s far as the sensation is a mere feeling of a particular sort, it is determined only by an inexplicable, occult power; and so far, it is not a representation,
but only the material quality of a representation […]. A feeling, therefore, as a feeling, is merely the material quality of a mental sign. (5.291)
Material quality, the ground of which is “pure abstraction” to which one refers, Peirce said, as to “a quality or general attribute” (1.551).
Peirce’s Thomism is, however, revised by Kant. Being and Knowing are continuous, although Being is incognizable and Knowing is a transcendental construct. The
material quality of Being is the species impressa: “species coloris est in aere: per aerem ad pupillam defertur” (Color is in the air: by means of the air it enters the
eye); the mental quality is the species expressa: “ista actione (scilicet visu rei exterioris) visus non videt se videre. Visus enim non videt se, sed colorem” (By
this action [that is to say, by seeing the exterior thing] sight does not see itself seeing. Thus sight does not see itself, but the color).
In the semeiotic theory of the nineties, there will be no ground, except inside the signaction, far away from Being and without any relation to Being. If there is something
which could be taken for the ground it is the qualisign, a pure possible, the possibility of which is known only after becoming an existent in a sinsign and the meaning
of which a legisign alone, within a semeiotic process, will enable us not to know, but to guess.
There will no longer be any substance, but only relations, productive of objects within a system of signs in process. A proposition will no longer consist of a substantive
term and of a predicative term which expresses the quality of the substance. A proposition will consist of a predicate (or verb—Peirce says a rhema) and of an index
which will give an existence (or substance) to a predicate (or quality).
Therefore the answer to the first question is that it is possible to translate
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Peirce into his own terms, provided the context of the writings is also taken into account. As I pointed out in the general introduction of the present book, it is an aspect
of the method I used to write on Peirce. I shall deal now with the other aspect of the method discussed in the general introduction: the chronological reading.
2. I am going to keep the same example, the meaning of the word “sign” or most of the time its equivalent, “representamen,” to try to answer the other question: To
whom were the writings proposed as an argument, addressed? For the difficulty of a historical translation is complicated when the author tries to convince a reader or
an audience by using the very terms to which he himself gives another meaning than that of the people he wants to convince. I am not at all sure that “throwing sops to
Cerberus” is the best way to clarify a theory.
The history of the use by Peirce of the word “representamen” to denote the formal element constitutive of the semeiotic triad, can be divided into four periods:
1. Up to 1873, Peirce uses representamen to mean the object of representation.
2. From 1873 to 1895, he does not use the word “representamen’’ at all—and when he uses the word “sign,” it is in a nontechnical way.
3. From 1895 to 1903, he again makes use of the word “representamen.”
4. From 1904 to 1911, he abandons it again and uses instead “sign” except in four cases, which we will examine briefly.
With the first period (1866–1873), we have dealt sufficiently. Peirce’s writings are very clear. They belong to a dualistic world and a time when everybody agrees that
words must have objects with which to correspond. The only point of contention is the “how” of the correspondence.
When Peirce stops using the word in the second period (1873–1895), it is not because he thinks that the word is unsuitable for one reason or another. It is merely
because he is occupied with other things. He travels extensively and especially in Europe for the Geodesic Survey, for one thing. And, at the same time, as he is no
longer satisfied with Aristotelian logic, he is busy searching for another way of reasoning. The solution struck him on board ship on his way to Europe in 1877, when he
wrote the French original of: “How to Make Our Ideas Clear.” It was the foundation stone of pragmatism:
There is no distinction of meaning so fine as to consist in anything but a possible difference of practice. (5.400)
But a new theory of inference was not enough. It had to be supplemented by a new logic to replace the Aristotelian logic of predicates: it was the logic of relatives (or
relations) which Peirce elaborated in the eighties. A new conception of signs was then possible.
The reintroduction of the word “representamen” in the third period (1895–1903) corresponds to the nowrendered possible, logical, and phaneroscopical
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elaboration of a new semeiotic which distinguishes clearly a signrepresentamen, a formal definition of each element of the triad and of its formal trichotomies, and a
signaction, which is the semeiotic process proper or semiosis, in which an interpretantrepresentamen refers a signrepresentamen to an objectrepresentamen.
The representamen is no longer the object of a representation, nor a psychical phenomenon. It is there in the signaction as representing—in the sense in which a
“deputy,” a “representative,” an “ambassador” represents—a dynamic object.
A sign, or representamen, is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity. (2.228)
Representation is thus restricted to “the operation of a sign or its relation to the object for the interpreter of the representamen” (1.540).
Every sign is a representamen.
By a sign I mean anything which conveys any definite notion of an object in any way, as such conveyers of thought are familiarly known to us. Now I start
with this familiar idea and make the best analysis I can of what is essential to a sign, and I define a representamen as being whatever that analysis applies
to. (1.540)
Whence the formal definition of a representamen:
A Representamen is a subject of a triadic relation to a second, called its object, for a third, called its interpretant, this triadic relation being such that the
Representamen determines its interpretant to stand in the same triadic relation to the same object for some interpretant. (1.541)
Therefore, every representamen is not a sign. If a representamen has no mental interpretant, it is not a sign.
If a sunflower, in turning towards the sun, becomes by that very act fully capable, without further condition, of reproducing a sunflower which turns in
precisely corresponding ways toward the sun, and of doing so with the same reproductive power, the sunflower would become a Representamen of the
sun. (2.274)
‘‘But,” Peirce goes on, as if regretfully, “thought is the chief, if not the only mode, of representation” (2.274); that is to say, the only mode which man has ever
experienced.
The fourth period (1904–1911), which coincides with the vogue of pragmatism, starts with the review Peirce wrote of Lady Welby’s What is Meaning? For the first
time, Peirce has a public. In his letters to Lady Welby, he first sums up his semeiotic theory and then develops it to a point where it is not easy to say whether he is
experimenting with ideas as he used to do in his Logic Notebook or whether he really thinks that Lady Welby is ready to accept his semeiotic. On
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the other hand, he is invited to write articles in various journals to defend his own brand of pragmatism or rather Pragmaticism. Apart from the very technical letters to
Lady Welby, some of which were not sent, Peirce is eager to please her or his readers, so that when he writes to her he uses a terminology which is hers and not his
own, and when he publishes articles he uses a terminology meant rather not to offend the readers of the journals than to expose his technical views on the topic.
Therefore, it is not at all surprising to see Peirce, for instance, adopt Lady Welby’s distinctions between sense, meaning, and significance and equate them with his
trichotomies of interpretants: immediate, dynamic, and final. Although I agree that this trichotomy is very useful when one analyzes a sign, let us say a literary text or a
painting, I am not quite sure that this trichotomy has anything to do with the interpretant of the formal definition of the sign.
And, among the reasons I could give, there is at least one which is difficult to reject: the formal interpretant requires an interpretant to be a sign and so on ad infinitum.
That is what one can read in the definition of a sign in Baldwin’s Dictionary: A sign is
anything which determines something else (its interpretant) to refer to an object to which itself refers (its object) in the same way, the interpretant
becoming in turn a sign, and so on ad infinitum. (2.303)
The word defined is “sign,” but it stands unquestionably for “representamen,” like nearly all the definitions of a sign in this period. Another quotation may be enough. It
belongs to a manuscript of 1910, entitled Meaning.
The sign can only represent the Object and tell about it. It cannot furnish acquaintance with or recognition of that Object; for that is what is meant in this
volume by the Object of a Sign; namely, that with which it presupposes an acquaintance in order to convey some further information concerning it. (2.231)
When Peirce uses the word “representamen” in this period, it is not, as one would think, to explain why he rejects it, but to show how necessary it is from a formal
point of view. I cannot argue my contention at length, but a few hints may suffice.
Peirce discusses the question four times. The first time, in a draft of a letter to Lady Welby written in July 1905, Peirce speaks as if he had stopped using the word
“representamen,” because ‘‘there was no need of this horrid long word” (Hardwick 1977: 193). However, he goes on, “I admit still that it aids the comprehension of
the definition” (ibid.). A sign represents as a legislative representative does, so that “representamen” is the right word for such a sign, except that a “representative” has
a duty towards his constituents and that there is nothing of the sort in the idea of a sign. In other words, “representamen” is not formal enough. Is “sign” more formal?
Peirce wanted it to be so, if we believe his own definition in the same draft:
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A “Sign” is anything, A, which (l) in addition to other characters of its own, (2) stands in a dyadic relation, R, for a purely active correlate, B, (3) and is
also in a triadic relation to B for a purely passive correlate, C, this triadic relation being such as to determine C to be a dyadic relation, S, to B, the relation
S corresponding in a recognised way to the relation R. (ibid.: 192)
It seems to me that the whole draft suggests that, if “representamen” were to be deprived of its private and psychological connotations, it would be the right term for a
sign as a formal entity.
The second time he mentions the word “representamen,” the next year, on January 8, 1906, Peirce says that logically “representamen” is preferable to “sign’’:
Truth is the conformity of a representamen to its object, its` object, ITS object, mind you. (5.554)
Although a representamen cannot be true without “an action of the object upon the sign to render the latter true” (5.554).
“Sign” stands here for a signaction of which a “representamen” is the formal element.
In another letter to Cousin Jo, three years later, on June 26, 1909, Peirce comes back to the problem and defines a sign as the “concrete representamen” of a
representation, such as a diagram in mathematics. By “concrete,” he means of course a replica, and by “representation,” a signaction. His definition of a sign here again
is that of a representamen:
I define a sign as anything—be it an existent thing or actual factual fact, or be it, like what we call a “word,” a mere possible form to which an audible
sound, visible shape, or other sensible object may conform to [sic], or be it a property or habit of behaviour of something either experienced or
imagined,—which is on the one hand so determined (i.e. affected either by causation or through the medium of a mind) by an object other than itself and
on the other hand, in its turn so affects some mind, or is capable of doing so, that this mind is thereby itself mediately determined by the same object. (The
New Elements of Mathematics, 3:233)
The last time Peirce mentions “representamen,” in 1911, it is in a manuscript full of corrections and rewritings. This would deserve a thorough commentary, the
conclusion of which would be that logic is not a psychological science, nor the science of signs, as signactions (which is semeiotic proper), but the science of
representamens or rather of legisigns, which he proposes to call for the present (three years before he died) “by the provisional appellation of ‘logons’” (Ms 675).
In brief, the logic of inference which is the logic of the signs in action or semiosis rests on the formal logic of the triadic relations of the representamen.
If I were permitted to give some advice to the readers of Peirce, I would say:
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if you want to understand Peirce’s theory of signs, never read “sign” when you see the word, but translate it either by “representamen” or by “semiosis.” And leave the
word “sign” to Saussure’s semiology.
To conclude, I shall quote a commentator on Peirce, George A. Benedict, who wrote at some length on the ‘‘representamen”:
[…] semioticians ought to put this term to use because (1) the described role is still without an unambiguous name to denote it, (2) it provides a plausible
solution for the nearly vicious ambiguity that plagues the term “sign,” (3) it would make it harder for those working in the theory of signs to lapse into
forgetfulness about a sign’s triadic nature and (4) Peirce’s contributions to the field qualify him to be honored in this way. (Benedict 1979: 3)
READING AS TRANSLATION
I should like, in conclusion, to return to the problem of translation in general. Obviously, the way in which I have dealt with the “translation” of Peirce’s terminology,
both from the interpretative as well as the linguistic point of view, should be much further elaborated. My suggestions, in brief, are as follows. There are three types of
translation in the classical sense of the transposition of one language into another (the question of interpretation depending in this case on the translator and not on the
reader):
1. Translation of the representamen: in other words, the text of the sourcelanguage is transferred literally into the targetlanguage. This is the procedure adopted by
André Chouraqui for the translation of the Bible into French, and by Charles Mopsik and his collaborators for that of the Talmud in the collection Les Dix
paroles (Editions Verdier). This classical procedure (which was commonly used for Greek and Latin when these languages were still on the syllabus) either
requires to be complemented by a great many notes, or else implies, on the reader’s part, such a perfect knowledge of the sourcelanguage that the translation
might seem to serve no useful purpose.
2. Translation of the objects of discourse: in this case the reader must also be familiar with the culture of the sourcelanguage readers. This method, which was
sometimes used in translations from Greek and Latin, especially in dictionaries, is not very satisfactory. It also requires supplementary information such as
photographs or drawings, with explanatory notes since images do not speak.
3. Translation of the interpretants of the representamens (or shall we say representamina?) of the sourcelanguage: English workmen having a cup of tea during
their break could be rendered in a French text by workmen drinking a glass of wine at a bar counter. Marcel Duhamel’s collection, Série Noire greatly
appreciated by its readers, has specialized in this type of translation which also sometimes resorts to literal renderings of the type noted above, in order to give
the text a certain air of authenticity. A curious example of the influence exerted by this kind of translation should be noted here: French authors writing novels
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in French, which supposedly take place in the United States, and are published in the same collection, tend to adopt the same Americanisms as those used by
the translators.
The ideal would be to combine the three methods. Philosophical writings are fairly easy to deal with in this way. It is with this in mind that I have translated Peirce, trying
not to distort the “text”representamen of the sourcelanguage, nor the conceptobjects expressed by the representamens, nor the representamensinterpretants of the
targetlanguage. But a knowledge of philosophy and its history remains indispensable.
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PART THREE
Comparative Semiotics
[O]ne’s point of reference should not be to the great model of language and signs, but to that of war and battle. The history which bears and determines us has the form
of a war rather than that of a language: relations of power, not relations of meaning. […] [Semiotics] is a way of avoiding [history’s] violent, bloody and lethal character
by reducing it to the calm Platonic form of language and dialogue.
—Foucault (1972: 114)
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6
Semiotics and Logic
A REPLY TO JERZY PELC
As William James put it, in his picturesque manner, if at the last day all creation was shouting hallelujah and there remained one cockroach with an unrequited love, that
would spoil the universal harmony.
—Santayana (1920: 107)
I am one of those logicians and consequently (according to Peirce) semioticians who “believe” in Peirce’s theory of signs. That is why I venture to answer Jerzy Pelc’s
questions to Peircean semioticians,* although I have to confess that my reading of Peirce is biased by my previous travels in the field of philosophy, through Aristotle,
Thomas Aquinas (by way of Jacques Maritain), Kant, and John Dewey.
INTRODUCTION
Is the following quotation from Peirce ‘‘vague” and “incomprehensible,” or, to put it in other words, is it “a kind of poetry” [64]?
The idea of the absolutely first must be entirely separated from all conception of or reference to anything else; for what involves a second is itself a second
to that second. The first must therefore be present and immediate, so as not to be second to a representation. It must be fresh and new, for if old it is
second to its former state. It must be initiative, original, spontaneous and free; otherwise it is second to a determining cause. It is also something vivid and
conscious; so only it avoids being the object of some sensation. It precedes all synthesis and all differentiation; it has no unity and no parts. It cannot be
articulately thought: assert it, and it has already lost its characteristic innocence; for assertion always implies a denial of something else. Stop to think of it,
and it has flown! What the
* Jerzy Pelc, “Several Questions to Experts in Peirce’s Theory of Signs” in Peirce in Italia, eds. M. A. Bonfantini and A. Martone (Napoli: Liguori Editore, 1993),
63–84. References to J. Pelc’s article will be given by page between brackets.
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world was to Adam on the day he opened his eyes to it, before he had drawn any distinctions, or had become conscious of his own existence—that is
first, present, immediate. (1.357)
The first part may seem “incomprehensible” and particularly Peirce’s argument to prove that the idea of absolutely First “must be separated from all conception of or
reference to anything else.” Peirce writes: ‘‘for what involves a second is itself a second to that second.” It is of course incomprehensible if the definitions of First,
Second, and Third are not given:
The first is that whose being is simply in itself, not referring to anything nor lying behind anything. The second is that which is what it is by force of
something to which it is second. The third is that which is what it is owing to things between which it mediates and which it brings into relation to each
other. (1.356)
Otherwise, it is perfectly clear: a First with a reference is no longer a First, but “second to that second,” for what involves a second (any dyadic relation which, by
definition, as such is reciprocal) is second to what (another dyadic relation) determines it to be a second. For example, there is effort on the part of a term if, and only if,
effort involves resistance on the part of another term and reciprocally. Is this way of describing a concept “a kind of poetry”?
Paul Valéry said:
La poésie la plus élevée essaye de balbutier ces choses [intellectuellement inexprimables]. (Valéry 1973, 1:415)
La poésie n’a pas à exposer des idées. […] Elle doit donc former ou communiquer l’état subintellectuel. (Valéry 1974, 2:1091)
As a First cannot be “expressed” symbolically, it has to be “mumbled” poetically or, rather, iconically. That is what Peirce did in the last two sentences (of the first
extract in this chapter): “Stop to think of it, and it has flown! What the world was to Adam on the day he opened his eyes to it, before he had drawn any distinctions, or
had become conscious of his own existence—that is first, present, immediate.”
This iconic “expression” of a First is not just the result of a rhetorical technique, it is the rigorous conclusion of a logically defined phenomenology or rather
phaneroscopy, not in the sense of Husserl or Ingarden, but in the sense of Kant and in reaction to him. Far from being influenced by German philosophy, as Jerzy Pelc
suggests [64], Peirce was always very critical of the German way of thinking. Peirce’s phaneroscopic categories are hierarchical. A Third (category of mediation or
thought or logical implication as law) includes a Second (category of instances or existing occurrences: events or any kind of individual) which includes a First (category
of potentiality or quality in the Aristotelian sense). But not the reverse: A possible First cannot give birth by itself to an existing
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Second, and an existing Second (or any number of Seconds, even an infinity) cannot produce an organizing Third. (This is, by the way, the reason why Peirce
proposed to substitute an abductive logic of invention for the inductive logic of discovery.)
Peirce’s “triadomania” is grounded not in his own peculiar personality, but in the logical and phaneroscopical definition of relation. Any relation proper is triadic.
Every genuine triadic relation involves thought or meaning. Take, for example, the relation of giving. A gives B to C. This does not consist in A’s
throwing B away and its accidentally hitting C […] If that were all, it would not be a genuine relation, but merely one dyadic relation followed by another
[…] Giving is a transfer of the right of property. Now right is a matter of law. And law is a matter of thought and meaning. (1.345)
The hierarchy of Peirce’s categories, the fact that they are “ordinal” and not “cardinal,’’ i.e., that they are First, Second (including First), and Third (including Second
and First) and not just One, Two, and Three is clearly stated in the following quotation:
The other premiss of the argument that genuine triadic relations can never be built of dyadic relations and of qualities is easily shown. In existential graphs,
a spot with one tail—Χ represents a quality, a spot with two tails—R—a dyadic relation. Joining the ends of two tails is also a dyadic relation. But you
can never by such joining make a graph with three tails. You may think that a node connecting three lines of identity Υ is not a triadic idea. But analysis will
show that it is so. I see a man on Monday. On Tuesday I see a man, and I exclaim, “Why, that is the very man I saw on Monday.” We may say, with
sufficient accuracy, that I directly experienced the identity. On Wednesday I see a man and I say, “That is the same man I saw on Tuesday, and
consequently is the same I saw on Monday.” There is a recognition of triadic identity; but it is only brought about as a conclusion from two premisses,
which is itself a triadic relation. If I see two men at once, I cannot by any such direct experience identify both of them with a man I saw before. I can only
identify them if I regard them, not as the very same, but as two different manifestations of the same man. But the idea of manifestation is the idea of a
sign. Now a sign is something, A, which denotes some fact or object, B, to some interpretant thought, C. (1.346)
ONTOLOGICAL AND GNOSEOLOGICAL
CATEGORIES
As a philosopher, I shall dare to go on with the topic, because I agree that the problems of “being and cognition” [65–70] encountered in Peirce’s theory of signs have
to be solved in order to understand it. I would add that I had myself, and sometimes still have, the same problems, when or if inadvertently I try to interpret Peirce
within the context of the classical Aristotelian and Kantian way
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of thinking which was also Peirce’s at one time and very often accidentally so. That is why it is very important to date the quotations in the first case and notice the
context in the second, for instance, when he writes to Lady Welby. I shall thus focus mostly here on the “ontological and gnoseological” questions, because the answers
to the semiotic questions will only be corollaries of my answers to the ontological and gnoseological questions.
The word “gnoseology” was invented by Theodore Flournoy (whom, by the way, Peirce read when he prepared his B.A. at Harvard). Flournoy distinguished
“gnoseology” from ‘‘epistemology”: The latter is the theory of knowledge in general and the former is “the systematic analysis of the concepts used by thought to
interpret the world” (Lalande 1947: 374).
As to “ontology,” it is, according to J. Clauberg (Metaphysica, 1646),
quaedam scientia quae contemplatur ens quatenus ens est, hoc est, in quantum communem quamdam intelligitur habere naturam […] [quae] omnibus et
singulis entibus suo modo inest. (Lalande 1947: 697)
D’Alembert stated more precisely what “communis natura” meant: “Beings, spiritual as well as material, having some properties like existence, possibility and
duration” (D’Alembert 1751: §71).
Is there anything like “ontological and gnoseological categories” in Peirce’s phaneroscopy? Peirce’s theory may be summed up in the following way. In the course of
natural evolution an animal found a special means of adapting itself to its environment. This “means” was called “intelligence.” “Intelligence” is thus a tool which is not
supernatural, but an extension or rather a continuation of nature. Thus nature has become intelligent, but no more nor less “intelligible” than before the appearance of the
human mode of adaptation. As John Dewey put it later in his Experience and Nature:
[E]xperience is of as well as in nature. It is not experience which is experienced, but nature—stones, plants, animals, diseases, health, temperature,
electricity, and so on. Things interacting in certain ways are experience; they are what is experienced. Linked in certain other ways with another natural
object—the human organism—they are how things are experienced as well. Experience thus reaches down into nature; it has depth. It also has breadth
and to an indefinitely elastic extent. It stretches. That stretch constitutes inference. (Dewey 1929: 4a1)
We have here the scholastic distinction between an sit and quid sit. The an sit is Dewey’s “experience” and Peirce’s “collateral experience,” the quid sit is Dewey’s
“how things are experienced” and Peirce’s “semiosis.”
For Peirce, gnoseology and ontology are one and the same thing: the ontological categories are the gnoseological modes of adaptation. Dewey’s way of saying the
same thing is more likely not to resist Pelc’s objections. We cannot discuss Dewey’s position here. It is as “realistic” as Peirce’s, not in a Platonistic and aristocratic
way, but rather in a social and democratic way. Peirce writes:
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My view is that there are three modes of being. I hold we can directly observe them in elements of whatever is at any time before the mind in any way.
They are the being of positive qualitative possibility [Firstness], the being of actual fact [Secondness], and the being of law that will govern facts in the
future [Thirdness]. (1.23)
Peirce’s categories cannot be conceived separately; neither from nature, for they are material and spiritual or, in other words, physical and mental, nor from one
another, for they are logical and not psychological, relational and not grammaticoontological, and, as already stated, ordinal and not cardinal. That is why, as modes of
being, the categories can be “directly observed”; not “known,” properly speaking, but collaterally “experienced.” A collateral experience is always Second, but as a
Second (token), it is a replica of a law (type).
The only problem is that a token—any occurrence or Second—must have been possible—a First—before happening. Thus a Second must presuppose a First. How is
it then that Peirce says that a First is “that which is such as it is, positively and without reference to anything else’’? Because his categories are logically defined as
ordinal: A First is, by definition, without reference whatsoever, a Second by reference to a First, and a Third by reference to a Second and a First.
Does this lead to circularity? No, because the categories are ordinal, that is to say, nonreciprocal. Let us take the relations of A, B, and C in that order: A (1st), B
(2nd), C (3rd). If, through prescission, we take A (1st) without B (2nd) and B (2nd) without C (3rd), we can prescind A (1st) from B (2nd) and C (3rd), and B (2nd)
from C (3rd). But we cannot prescind C (3rd) from B (2nd), nor B (2nd) from A (1st) (see W1: 519). Hence the following table:
C (3rd) B (2nd) A (1st) B (2nd)

without without without without
B (2nd) A (1st) B (2nd) C (3rd)
0 0 1 1
Table 6.1. The nonreciprocal order of Peirce’s categories
Is there a “vicious circle” in the following quotation?
Existence […] is a special mode of reality […] Reality in its turn is a special mode of being, the characteristic of which is that things that are real are
whatever they really are, independently of any assertion of them. (6.349)
No, because reality is independent of what we think of it and, as there are three kinds of reality according to the categories to which they belong—Possibility
(Firstness), Existence (Secondness), and Mediation or law (Thirdness)—if
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each of them is independent of what we think of it, there cannot be any vicious circle:
[T]he first, the second, and the third are all three of the nature of thirds, or thought, while in respect to one another they are first, second and third. The
first is thought in its capacity as mere possibility; that is mere mind capable of thinking, or a mere vague idea. The second is thought playing the role of a
Secondness, or event. That is, it is of the general nature of experience or information. The third is thought in its role as governing secondness. It brings
the information into the mind, or determines the idea and gives it body. It is informing thought, or cognition. But take away a psychological or accidental
human element, and in this genuine Thirdness see the operation of a sign. (1.537)
Is there any parallelism between the gnoseological categories or categories of consciousness and the ontological categories? The ontological categories are logical, the
gnoseological categories are psychological, just as the objects of physics, although nonpsychological, are conscious when a physicist theorizes or experiments with
them. Which explains the distinction between phaneron and phenomenon, not because they are two different things, but because there are two different approaches:
one logical (phaneron), the other psychological (phenomenon).
Is it contradictory to assert that the gnoseological categories are Third and the ontological categories First, Second, and Third? On the contrary, as thought
gnoseologically they are conscious and then Third, as ontological they are real, that is to say, according to Peirce’s definition of reality, either a possibility, or a fact, or a
law. A logician as a human being deals, like a physicist, with objects completely different from the consciousness he may have of them. But he cannot think them
without “instances,” or “occurrences,” or, to use the Peircean neologism, replicas of which he is aware and of which he has “in his mind” an image or icon: the being of
positive qualitative possibility [Firstness], the being of actual fact [Secondness], and “the being of law that will govern facts in the future [Thirdness]” (1.23) are only
examples, they are neither synonymous nor equivalent.
PEIRCE’S SEMIOTIC CONCEPTS
Representamen [70–71]
A sign, or representamen, is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity. (2.228)
Peirce distinguishes the ‘‘signrepresentamen” from the “signaction.” The latter is semiosis, the former is the first element of the triad as revealed by logical analysis.
The triad itself can be described formally: Υ. (I must confess that, in spite of his own “ethics of terminology,” Peirce uses the word “sign” with one or
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the other meaning, sometimes in the same sentence—a practice which is of course very confusing. I try to avoid the word “sign” when the meaning of the word is not
clear.) “Stands for” is a perfect definition of the representamen which ‘‘stands for” something which we do not know yet but that semiosis will possibly indicate in the
course of the interpretative process. An ambassador “represents,” stands for his country, exactly like the word “cake,” but, of course, neither does the ambassador
resemble nor is he a copy of his country, nor can the word “cake” be eaten. They are both representamens, but not interpretants. An interpretant is another sign
representamen “in the mind” of “somebody” and depends upon the experience and the context in which an ambassador or a cake was seen or the word “ambassador”
or “cake” was read or heard.
Ground [71–72]
When he was still a Kantian, Peirce thought that there were five categories: Substance, Quality, Relation, Representation, and Being. Quality was then “reference to a
ground” (1.555). When he reduced the categories to three, he used the term only once in 1897 in reference to his first theory of signs of 1867:
The sign stands for something, its object. It stands for that object, not in all respects, but in reference to a sort of idea, which we have sometimes called
the ground of the representamen. (2.228)
In 1867, the ground was what will become later the qualisign which is the representamen as First. It is described in the first quotation (1890: 1.357). Its description
cannot but be poetical, because as an “absolutely First,” it cannot be grounded in anything on which it would rest. In other words, there is no place for a ground of a
ground. The word does not belong to Peirce’s mature semiotic terminology (Deledalle 1984/1985: 101–105).
Object [72–75]
Does the object of a sign determine this sign and its interpretant? There are two ways of understanding Peirce’s theory of signs: formally or semiotically. Formally, “the
Dynamoid Object determines the Immediate Object which determines the Sign itself, which determines the Destinate Interpretant, which determines the Effective
Interpretant, which determines the Explicit Interpretant” (Hardwick 1977: 84). Or, to quote a passage from the Minute Logic of 1902:
A Sign is anything which is related to a Second thing, its Object, in respect to a Quality, in such a way as to bring a Third thing, its Interpretant, into
relation to the same Object, and that in such a way as to bring a Fourth into relation to that Object in the same form, ad infinitum. (2.92)
Both quotations refer to the logical and formal analysis of semiosis, not to a semiosis in actu. The Fourth thing mentioned in the last quotation is not another Peircean
concept, it is the beginning—a representamen—of a new formal
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semiosis which will have no end. Logically and formally there is no room for a dynamical object in this ad infinitum semiosis.
It is only in a temporal and pragmatical semiosis that a dynamical object can appear. What is a dynamical object? The accumulative result of semioses whose
interpretants as social and/or private habits have produced immediate objects in as many singular semioses as the time and the circumstances have allowed:
We must distinguish between the Immediate Object,—i.e. the Object as represented in the sign,—and the Real (no, because perhaps the Object is
altogether fictive, I must choose a different term, therefore), say rather the Dynamical Object, which, from the nature of things, the Sign cannot express,
which it can only indicate and leave the interpreter to find out by collateral experience. For instance, I point my finger to what I mean, but I can’t make
my companion know what I mean, if he can’t see it, or if seeing it, it does not, to his mind, separate itself from the surrounding objects in the field of vision.
(Letter to James, 8.314)
Is it possible to retain the concept of immediate object of a sign in which the object is “that which so determines a sign that the latter determines an idea in a person’s
mind” (8.343)? Yes, provided “determines” be understood as ‘‘gives birth to” and “idea” as the interpretant sign producing the immediate object.
Interpretant [75–81]
The interpretant has two meanings according to whether it is considered in the process of semiosis or as putting an end to the process. In the process, it is a
signrepresentamen; at the end, it is a habit reinforced or modified. In the last case, it is not a sign, but a habit or disposition to react to signrepresentamens in such a
way that an immediate object is produced with or without semiosis. Here and only here does the division of interpretant between immediate, dynamic, and final obtain,
and they are not signs. The final interpretant is a rule, the dynamical interpretant a case, and the immediate interpretant is the spontaneous application of the rule to the
case:
For instance, suppose I awake in the morning before my wife, and that afterwards she wakes up and inquires, “What sort of a day is it?” This is a sign,
whose Object, as expressed, is the weather at that time, but whose Dynamical Object is the impression which I have presumably derived from
peeping between the windowcurtains. Whose Interpretant, as expressed, is the quality of the weather, but whose Dynamical Interpretant, is my
answering her question. But, beyond that, there is a third Interpretant. The Immediate Interpretant is what the Question expresses, all that it
immediately expresses, which I have imperfectly restated above. The Dynamical Interpretant is the actual effect that it has upon me, its interpreter. But
the Significance of it, the Ultimate, or Final, Interpretant is her purpose in asking it, what effect its answer will have as to her plans for the ensuing day.
I reply, let us suppose: “It is a stormy day.” Here is another sign. Its
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Immediate Object is the notion of the present weather so far as this is common to her mind and mine—not the character of it, but the identity of it. The
Dynamical Object is the identity of the actual or Real meteorological conditions at the moment. The Immediate Interpretant is the schema in her
imagination, i.e. the vague Image or what there is in common to the different Images of a stormy day. The Dynamical Interpretant is the disappointment
or whatever actual effect it at once has upon her. The Final Interpretant is the sum of the Lessons of the reply, Moral, Scientific, etc. (Letter to James,
8.314)
Interpreter [72–73]
The interpretant is a sign in an ad infinitum formal semiotic process—a semiosis; it is not an interpreter. In this case, Peirce defines an interpretant as “being that which
the Sign produces in the Quasimind that is the Interpreter by determining the latter to a feeling, to an exertion, or to a Sign, which determination is the
Interpretant” (4.536).
When a process comes to a stop, the interpretant is no longer a sign, but a habit, as we have already said. Whose habit? The habit of an interpreter, of course—an
interpreter who is a conscious being, perfectly aware of what he feels, does, and thinks, but who is not the author or creator of this “what” as such. He is the seat of the
signs which are “welded” (4.551) in himself by himself.
Feeling unable to convey what he meant by ‘‘interpretant” in both senses, Peirce often uses the word “interpreter” as “a sop to Cerberus” (Hardwick 1977: 81), but
prefers to speak of Quasimind, Quasiutterer, or Quasiinterpreter (4.551). Why? This is Peirce’s explanation:
The reader probably wonders what is meant by a “quasimind.” This conception is best reached through the system of Existential Graphs, which affords
the truest representation of logical relations. (Ms 283: 111. Systems of Representation, Logical, 1905/1906)
Was it a kind of “psychophobia” [73] which led Peirce to prefer logic to psychology as a philosophical method? Not at all; it is the logic of relatives which convinces
him to reject the psychological method, used from Aristotle to Kant, without denying the fact that man has feeling, awareness, and reflective conscience.
CONCLUSION
All those semiotic distinctions are neither ontological nor gnoseological; they only apply to semiotics as “a method of inference from signs through signs,” to quote
Philodemus. What is at stake, in fact, is not Peirce’s theory of signs, but his experimental metaphysics, as Professor Pelc confesses at the end of his paper [81–83]:
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I would embrace [Peirce’s] interpretation if permission was granted for ideal objects, timeless by nature, to occur as phases in the process of semiosis,
developing in time, with this process being one of sign interpretation by an interpreter; not by a Quasimind but by a human being who, using a certain
object, property, phenomenon or event—according to a specific rule defined in a given system—resorts to inference to refer to some other object,
property, phenomenon or event, indicates or cognizes them, moving through successive stages of semiosis consisting in mental activities which the great
Peirce deprived of their psychic character—the good Lord only knows why—labelled them interpretants and, inspired by Hegel and moved by his own
peculiar penchant, bundled them together in threes, and arranged the bundles in three rows. [27]
Neither the ideal objects, nor the omnipotent interpreter with his psychic character can be granted. It is not denied that there are ideal objects and human interpreters,
but they are not substantial, just quasiobjects and quasiminds, i.e., events among events, signs among signs. Let us quote Dewey again at some length:
[O]ne can hardly use the term “experience” in philosophical discourse, but a critic rises to inquire “Whose experience?” The question is asked in adverse
criticism. Its implication is that experience by its very nature is owned by some one; and that the ownership is such in kind that everything about experience
is affected by a private and exclusive quality. The implication is as absurd as it would be to infer from the fact that houses are usually owned, are mine and
yours and his, that possessive reference so permeates the properties of being a house that nothing intelligible can be said about the latter. It is obvious,
however, that a house can be owned only when it has existence and properties independent of being owned. The quality of belonging to some one is not
an allabsorbing maw in which independent properties and relations disappear to be digested into egohood. It is additive; it marks the assumption of a
new relationship, in consequence of which the house, the common, ordinary, house, acquires new properties. It is subject to taxes; the owner has the right
to exclude others from entering it; he enjoys certain privileges and immunities with respect to it and is also exposed to certain burdens and liabilities.
(Dewey 1929: 231–232)
Substitute “experience’’ for “house,” and no other word need be changed. Experience when it happens has the same dependence upon objective natural
events, physical and social, as has the occurrence of a house. It has its own objective and definitive traits; these can be described without reference to a
self, precisely as a house is of brick, has eight rooms, etc., irrespective of whom it belongs to. Nevertheless, just as for some purposes and with respect to
some consequences, it is allimportant to note the added qualification of personal ownership of real property, so with “experience.” In first instance and
intent, it is not exact nor relevant to say “I experience” or “I think.” “It” experiences or is experienced, “it” thinks or is thought, is a juster phrase.
Experience, a serial course of affairs with their own characteristic properties and relationships, occurs, happens, and is what it is. Among and within these
occurrences, not outside of them nor underlying them, are those events which are denominated selves.
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In some specifiable respects and for some specifiable consequences, these selves, capable of objective denotation just as are sticks, stones, and stars,
assume the care and administration of certain objects and acts in experience. Just as in the case of the house, this assumption of ownership brings with it
further liabilities and assets, burdens and enjoyments. (Dewey 1929: 232–233)
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7
Semeiotic and Greek Logic
PEIRCE AND PHILODEMUS
Men do not know how what is at variance agrees with itself. It is an attunement of opposite tensions, like that of the bow and the lyre.
—Herakleitos of Ephesos (frag. 45)
Now logic, being for Peirce “only another name for semiotic [σημειοτική], the quasinecessary, or formal doctrine of signs” (2.227), it is difficult to see how one can
distinguish philosophy as metaphysics from semiotic as logic. I would like to try to answer this question, and while doing so, to answer another question: Is Peirce’s
pragmaticism an idealism or an empiricism, a realism or a nominalism?
I shall not begin by quoting Peirce, as, whatever answer be given, there will be no lack of Peirce’s own texts to support it. Peirce himself suggests a way of
circumventing the problem: “If there be a reader who cannot understand my writings, let me tell him that no straining of his mind will help him: his whole difficulty is that
he has no personal experience of the world of problems of which we are talking” (3.419). Now, in order to share, however, one must read the works he read, and in
the case of problems of logic, read the logicians of Antiquity. This is what we shall try to do as briefly as possible.
When one reads Aristotle, the Stoics, the Epicureans, and the Sceptics, one is first of all struck by the fact that they do not separate logic from semiotics. For all of
them, as for Peirce, semiotics is another name for logic. The same applies to the whole school of Scholastics; and also to Locke, who, having divided the sciences in a
quasiphaneroscopic manner into three branches—“Physica, Practica and σημιοτική, or the ‘doctrine of signs,’ the most usual whereof being words”—says of
σημιοτική that “it is aptly enough termed also λογική ‘logic’” (Locke 1690: IV, ch. XXI).
Aristotle explicitly defines the sign (σημε&unk;ον) as ‘‘a demonstrative proposition [ ρ ο δ ε ι κ τ ι κ π ρ ό τ α], either necessary or probable” and the enthymeme, not
σι
as an incomplete syllogism, as is often done, but as “a syllogism which starts from plausible premisses or from signs [ ξ ε κ ό τ ω ν σ η μ].” A plausible
είων
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premise is a proposition which is simply probable, whereas the sign is a demonstrative proposition, as we have just seen. “ ν μ ν ν μ ί α&unk; πρότασι
λεχθ
σημε&unk;ον γίνεται μόνον, ν δ κ α τ έ ρ α π &unk;, συλλογισμό
ρόσληφθ ” (If then only one premiss [π ρ ό τ α σ ι ] is stated, only one sign
[σημε&unk;ον] is obtained. But if the other premiss is used, a syllogism [συλλογισμό ] is obtained) (Aristotle 1831: II, 27, 70a).
For the Stoics, “a sign is an antecedent judgment in a valid hypothetical syllogism, which serves to reveal the consequent” (Sextus Empiricus Vol. 1: II, 104).
There are, of course, important differences between the Aristotelian logic and that of the Stoics, if only because the latter is propositional and the former predicative.
The only rule of Stoic logic is that “syllogism begins with the true and ends with the true” (ibid.: II, 219). ‘‘And they say that of [all syllogisms] only that which begins
with truth and ends in falsehood is invalid, and the rest is valid” (ibid.).
For Aristotle, the demonstrative force resides in the “sense” of the sign according to the place occupied by the middle term in the figures. “Ο&unk;ο ν τ μ ν
δε&unk;ξαι κύωσαν δι τ γάλα χειν &unk; πρώτου σχήματο
κ το · μέσον γ ρ τ γάλα χειν &unk; τφ Α κύειν , τ Β γάλα χειν , γ υ ν έ φ&unk;

Γ” (For instance, the proof that a woman has conceived, because she has milk, belongs to the first figure [έκ το&unk; π ρ τ ο υ σ χ ώ μ α τ]. For to have milk [τ
ο
γάλα χειν ] is the middle term. One can represent has conceived by A, to have milk by B, and woman [γυνή] by Γ) (Aristotle 1831: II, 27, 70a).
Hence the syllogism:
Every woman who has milk (B) has conceived (A)
This woman (Γ) has milk (B),
Thus this woman (Γ) has conceived (A).
In his Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Sextus Empiricus uses the same example to explain the hypothetical syllogism or implication (συνημμένον) of the Stoics:
“‘Antecedent’, they say, is ‘the precedent clause in a hypothetical syllogism which begins in truth and ends in truth’. And it ‘serves to reveal the consequent’, since in
the syllogism ‘If this woman has milk, she has conceived’, the clause ‘If this woman has milk’ seems to be evidential of the clause ‘she has conceived’” (Sextus
Empiricus Vol. 1: II, 106).
When it is a question of dividing the sign, whereas Aristotle is able to distinguish the classes of signs just according to the place occupied by the middle term in the
figures of the syllogism, the Stoics are obliged to have recourse to something outside the implicative reasoning—and they distinguish between the sign which is
suggestive ( π μ ν η σ τ ι κ) (either natural like the smoke, which is the sign of fire [ibid.: II, 100], or conventional [ibid.: II, 193, 200, 202]), and the sign which is
όν
“indicative” ( νδεικτικόν ), like the movements of the body which are the signs of the soul (ibid.: II, 101).
But these differences are negligible compared to what Aristotle and the Stoics
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have in common and which opposes them to the Epicureans and the Sceptics. For them all, logic or semiotics is the study of inference from signs, but while for the
former, the dogmatists, the inference is analytical and the signs are signs of the ideas we have of things, for the latter, the empiricists, inference is inductive and signs are
signs of things.
The empiricists are not more in total agreement than the dogmatists, but it will be more easily understood what they have in common and what opposes them if one
situates their respective conceptions both of the sign and of inference from signs in the controversy between the Stoics and the Epicureans as it appears in one of the
most wellpreserved Greek papyri discovered in Herculanum. It is entitled Περ σημείων καί σημειώσεων (“On signs and inferences from signs”), and was written
by a Greek from Syria, Philodemus, who, having studied Epicureanism in Athens, founded an Epicurean school in Naples (Philodemus [79 AD] 1978).
Of course, Philodemus is only the spokesman of a school, and in order to interpret Epicurean logic, one must take into account the other available sources, in particular
the letters of Epicurus quoted by Diogenes Laertius, and the expositions and discussions by Sextus Empiricus who defends the Sceptic point of view as much against
the Stoics as against the Epicureans.
The particular interest for us of Philodemus’s text is that Peirce was sufficiently interested in it to accept that one of his students, Allan Marquand, should make its
translation the subject of his doctoral dissertation. Peirce studied Philodemus with Marquand, and it may be supposed that he approved of the interpretation which
Marquand gave in the introduction to his translation (“The Logic of the Epicureans” [cf. Fisch 1986: “Peirce’s Arisbe: The Greek Influence on His Later
Philosophy’’ [1971]: 190–192]). Moreover, we know that it was from Philodemus that Peirce borrowed the term “semiosis,” that inference from signs, of which
semiotics is the theory (5.484), “the doctrine of the essential nature and fundamental varieties of possible semiosis” (5.488). “On Signs and Semioses” would be a
perfect Peircean translation of Philodemus’s title. In any case, with or without Marquand, Peirce could have also borrowed the word and the idea of “semiosis” from
Sextus Empiricus (Sextus Empiricus Vol. 2: II, 269).
According to Marquand, for the Epicureans “The function of logic consists in inference from the observed to the unobserved” (Marquand 1883: 4). “The Epicureans,”
Marquand further notes, “looked upon a sign as a phenomenon, from whose characters we might infer the characters of other phenomena under conditions of existence
sufficiently similar. The sign was to them an object of sense” (Marquand 1883: 6).
Following tradition, they distinguished the general (or common: κοινόν) sign from the particular sign (σημείον):
A general sign is described as a phenomenon which can exist whether the thing signified exists or not, or has a particular character or not. A particular sign
is a phenomenon which can exist only on the condition that the thing signified actually
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exists. The relation between sign and thing signified in the former case is resemblance; in the latter, it is invariable sequence or causality. (1883: 6)
One cannot fail to recall Peirce’s description of the icon and the index (2.304) and all the more so as we know that the Epicureans distinguished three sorts of sign,
although Philodemus describes only two.
It is obvious that a Sceptic like Sextus Empiricus could no more admit the Epicurean division of the sign than he could the Stoic division, not that he totally rejected the
particular sign or sign of indication—there is, he says, an “apparent equivalence of the arguments adduced for its reality and for its unreality” (Sextus Empiricus Vol. 1:
II, 103)—but the only thing empirically sure or at least plausible is the “suggestive sign” (τ π ο μ η σ τ ι): “For the suggestive sign is relied on by living experience,
κ ν
since when a man sees smoke fire is signified, and when he beholds a scar he says that there has been a wound” (Sextus Empiricus Vol. 1: II, 102).
Sextus Empiricus, like Philodemus, criticizes the way in which the Stoics pass from the antecedent to the consequent in a conditional proposition, by contraposition or
modus tollens, in other words by showing “that from the negative of the consequent the negative of the antecedent follows’’ (Marquand 1883: 6). On one hand, for the
empiricists, the sign is an object of direct apprehension by the senses and not an object of thought. On the other hand, says Philodemus:
When a person makes an inference from men among us and concludes about men everywhere that they are mortal, from the fact that those whose lives
are known through history and those who have fallen under our observation are all mortal (θ ν η τ ο ), there is no evidence of the contrary, he makes his
inference by analogy; and the statement that men among us, insofar as they are men, are mortal, which is equivalent to the statement that men with this
property are men, is confirmed by this very fact. None of those who pursue philosophy by the method and procedure of contraposition provides such a
confirmation. (Philodemus 1978: 108, §24)
One can only arrive at propositions—far from beginning by them—neither by contraposition nor by syllogism, but by induction. In fact, contraposition rests upon
induction. To refute the method by analogy, Philodemus says:
The arguments that they devise […] they present to us as confirmations of it. Thus when for example […] they oppose the inference “If living creatures
among us are destructible, those in unperceived places are also,” and in making their case they say that some living creatures, though similar in kind, exhibit
differences from one another according to atmosphere and food and all the other things, however many they may be, they are starting from appearances in
our experience and proceed by making like judgments about things elsewhere. […] It is the same with the rest of their arguments, so that they bring with
them the complete reversal of their position. (1978: 121–122, §46)
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Sextus Empiricus agrees with Philodemus in defending the empirical argument against contraposition or any other argument:
Thus […] a certain philosopher [Diogenes the Cynic] when the argument against motion was put to him, without a word, started to walk about; and
people who follow the usual way of life proceed on journeys by land and sea and build ships and houses and beget children without paying attention to the
arguments of motion and becoming. (Sextus Empiricus Vol. 1: II, 244–245)
But on condition that the empirical argument is limited only to things observed. He contests the idea that one may establish the proof ( π ι μ α ρ τ ύ ρ η σ) of what is not
ι
observed, like causality (Sextus Empiricus Vol. 1: I, 185), and rejects induction, whether it be Aristotelian or Epicurean.
For, when they propose to establish the universal from the particulars by means of induction, they will effect this by a review either of all or of some of the
particular instances. But if they review some, the induction will be insecure, since some of the particulars omitted in the induction may contravene the
universal; while if they are to review all, they will be toiling at the impossible, since the particulars are infinite and indefinite. Thus on both grounds, as I
think, the consequence of that induction is invalidated. (Sextus Empiricus Vol. 1: II, 204)
What is the position of the Epicureans on the subject of whether we must examine all the cases of a phenomena or only a certain number of cases? Philodemus replies
by quoting his Athenian master, Zeno of Sidon:
[…] it is not necessary to make the rounds of all appearances accessible to us or merely to encounter chance appearances, but to encounter many
homogeneous and varied ones, so that from our acquaintance with them we may establish the property inseparable from each of the particulars, and from
these pass to all the others. For example, if men are found to differ from one another in all other respects, but in this respect [mortality] they have been
observed to have no difference, why should we not say confidently on the basis of men we have met with and those of whom we have historical
knowledge, that all men are liable to old age and disease? When this is established and there is no evidence to the contrary, we shall say that they are
mistaken who say, “And men were invulnerable.” (Philodemus 1978: 112–113, §35)
Marquand summarizes Zeno’s theory in two rules or canons in which, starting from the idea that Nature is, according to the Epicureans, already divided into classes
and subclasses, inductive inference proceeds from one class to another, not haphazardly, but from one class to that which it most resembles.
Canon I.—If we examine many and various instances of a phenomenon, and find some character common to them all, and no instance appears to the
contrary, this character may be transferred to other unexamined individuals of the same class, and even to other closely related classes.
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Canon II.—If in our experience a given character is found to vary, a corresponding amount of variation may be inferred to exist beyond our experience.
(Marquand 1883: 9)
That Marquand (1883: 1) and Peirce (8.379) should have established a comparison between Philodemus and John Stuart Mill is hardly surprising. There are
differences, obviously, but they do not concern the nature of signs nor the inductive nature of inference. For Mill, names are signs of things and not signs of our
conceptions of things: “When I say: ‘The sun is the cause of day,’ I do not mean that my idea of the sun causes or excites in me the idea of day; but that the physical
object, the sun itself, is the cause from which the outward phenomenon, day, follows as an effect” (Mill 1843: I, ch. 2). Mill’s inductive inference is based on the
principle of the uniformity of nature—a principle which allows of the inference from the particular to the general, which is justified by the wellknown rules or canons of
concordance, difference, residues, and concomitant variations (1843: III).
It is clear to anyone who has read Peirce, however little, that Peirce’s logic is closer to the empirical logic of the Epicureans than to the other logics of Greek antiquity,
including the formal logic of the Stoics, which he was, however, one of the first to revive. Referring to the Epicurean philosophy of logic, Peirce said: ‘‘This philosophy
is my particular pet, or one of my pets” (Ms 1604, quoted by Fisch 1971: 208 n. 14).
Peirce refuses to think, to infer, or to reason from ideas. Let us say, to give a partial answer to one of the questions we asked at the beginning, that Peirce contests all
the logicians—Aristotle and Descartes among them—who base logic on metaphysics, which is, just because it is not based on the “science of logic,” “of all branches of
scientific inquiry the most shaky and insecure” (2.36).
We shall come back to this question when we have seen how the reading of Philodemus can enable one to understand more clearly some of the problems with which
Peirce was faced and the solutions he proposed—particularly in semiotics.
We shall begin with a problem which has not yet been broached, that of the categories and the part they play in the physical world. In A Guess at the Riddle, Peirce
writes: “One bold saltus landed me in a garden of fruitful and beautiful suggestions” (1.364). What was this garden? “The garden of Epicurus,” replies Max Fisch. And
what was this “bold saltus”? That which enabled Peirce to pass from the conception of chance as “that diversity in the universe which laws leave room for,” and not as
“a violation of law” (6.602), to the conception of chance as absolute chance of which the Epicurean clinamen is the model, or at least the emblem. “[…] we establish
through appearances,” says Philodemus, “that nothing conflicts [with this view]. It is not enough to accept the minimal swerves of the atoms on account of chance and
free will; one must also show that no other clear perception conflicts with this view” (1978: 126–127, §54). It is thus, through the garden of Epicurus, that chance—
“that diversity in the universe which laws
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leave room for, instead of a violation of law, or lawlessness” (6.602)—enters the Peircean cosmos, a cosmos whose continuity, the physical paradigm of thirdness, is
no more affected than the Epicurean cosmos, nor brute reaction, the physical paradigm of secondness (6.202). We can call chance the “physical paradigm,” though
only on condition that we make it clear that, as for the Epicureans, it [chance] is synonymous for Peirce with “freedom or spontaneity” (6.201).
Semiotics is for Peirce, as for the Epicureans, the theory of semiosis or inference from signs. What is a sign? Peirce gives it the technical name of “representamen” in
order to show that it is not a mental representation, but an object which does affect the senses, but is not defined by its apprehension by the senses. As such, the
representamen represents the thing, exactly as the sign does for the Epicurean logician. What is true of the sign or representamen in a semiosis will be true of the thing
outside the semiosis, although this does not allow the semiosis to infer about the nature of the thing or the whole of the thing or of the sign. As representamen, the sign is
not an idea, it is not even an object of direct knowledge, it is only a simple ‘‘material quality” (5.290), without which, however, there could be no knowledge through
signs. At the utmost, we can call it direct experience: “Direct experience is neither certain or uncertain […] it just is […] direct experience means simply the
appearance. It involves no error, because it testifies to nothing but its own appearance” (1.145).
I refer the reader to the articles of 1868 in which Peirce denies even the possibility of direct knowledge, be it called “intuition,” “introspection,” or even “perception.” In
the case of perception, which is particularly enlightening for our understanding of the nature of the sign, “percept” must be distinguished from “perceptive judgment.”
The representamen is, as such, a “percept.”
The direct percept, as it first appears, appears as forced upon us brutally. It has no generality; and without generality there can be no psychicality. […]
The percept brutally forces itself upon us; thus it appears under a physical guise. It is quite ungeneral, even antigeneral—in its character as a percept; and
thus it does not appear as psychical. The psychical, then, is not contained in the percept. (1.253)
“The percept,” says Peirce elsewhere, “is a single event happening hic et nunc. It cannot be generalized without losing its essential character” (1.146). Consequently,
“a percept contains only two kinds of elements, those of firstness and those of secondness” (7.630).
With perceptive judgment the representamen enters the semiosis and becomes representation and third. “This is a very important difference,” remarks Peirce, “since the
idea of representation is essentially what may be termed an element of ‘Thirdness’, that is, involves the idea of determining one thing [the representamen] to refer to
another [the object]” (7.630).
Semiosis is inference through signs. A signrepresentamen determines a signinterpretant to refer to its object (2.228). Peirce distinguishes between two
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sorts of object, the object in the semiosis, and the object outside the semiosis (Hardwick 1977: 83–84). The sign or representamen can only represent the object
outside the semiosis; “It cannot furnish acquaintance with or recognition of that Object” (2.231). Of the object outside the semiosis one can thus have only either a
“direct experience,” like that we have of the percept, or a “collateral knowledge,” the result of former semioses, personal or “historical,’’ in the words of the Epicureans
(Philodemus 1978: 24, 35).
Semiosis is an inductive process. We will not here discuss the nature of induction. It is enough to say that Peirce understood it in the sense in which he read Philodemus
with Marquand. “The inference that a previously designated character has nearly the same frequency of occurrence in the whole of a class that it has in a
sample drawn at random out of that class is induction” (6.409). Unless it is specified—which certainly makes a considerable difference—the Epicureans refuse to
introduce any sort of calculation. This does not change the fact that, contrary to the procedure of sceptical empiricism, which is nominalistic, Epicurean inference and
Peircean induction or semiosis are realistic. By “realistic” is meant that for the Epicureans, as for Peirce, however empiristic they may be, “universals” exist, although
they are not separate from things. And even in one sense it could be said that, no more than Peirce, do the Epicureans reject the formal logic of the Stoics as such since
what they reproach the Stoics with is not having seen that contraposition presupposed implication and with not having, properly speaking, reasoned by contraposition.
This is true of the science which is formal in the highest sense of the word, mathematics, which is for Peirce, as for the Epicureans, an “implicative science.” Philodemus
says:
And the fact that the square of four is the only square having its perimeter equal to its area does not hinder us from inferring some things by analogy. The
square numbers themselves, when all have been tested by trial, have shown that this very distinction exists among them, so that the person who makes an
inference from such numbers in our experience to those in the infinite universes, that every square of four has its perimeter equal to its area, will be inferring
well. (Philodemus 1978: 107, §21)
Which Peirce echoes in 1895:
No doubt demonstrations are more important in mathematics, than in most sciences; but, for all that, mathematics advances, just as the physical sciences
do, by observation and generalization. Its observations are, it is true, only observations of the mind’s own constructions, but they often have that startling
quality which indicates that they are observations. (Peirce 1978: II, 102)
Peirce’s pragmaticism is thus really an empiricism and a realism. Is his semiotic theory derived from it, or is it its foundation? We can now give a fairly sure reply to this
question. If it is true, as De Lacy has shown, that Epicurean
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empiricism is not limited to sensory experience, but forms the basis of an empirical metaphysics (De Lacy 1964: 377–401), it is equally true that Peirce’s semiotic
method is the body and soul of his pragmaticist metaphysics. If today metaphysics demands another logic of experience, more complex and formalized than the
Epicurean empirical metaphysics, which required only observation, this by no means implies that its object is different. Peirce says:
Metaphysics consists in the results of the absolute acceptance of logical principles not merely as regulatively valid, but as truths of being. Accordingly, it is
to be assumed that the universe has an explanation, the function of which, like that of every logical explanation, is to unify its observed variety. It follows
that the root of all being is One; and so far as different subjects have a common character they partake of an identical being. This, or something like this, is
the monadic clause of the law. Second, drawing a general induction from all observed facts, we find all realization of existence lies in opposition, such as
attractions, repulsions, visibilities, and centres of potentiality generally. […] This is, or is part of, a dyadic clause of the law. Under the third clause, we
have, as a deduction from the principle that thought is the mirror of being, the law that the end of being and highest reality is the living impersonation of the
idea that evolution generates. (1.487)
If the object is the same, the method which is still semiotic, empirical, and inductive, has more and more recourse to formal logic, so that the metaphysical concepts,
which are the adaptation of it, require the mastery of a “minutely accurate and thoroughgoing system of formal logic” (1.625). Thus the metaphysician of today must be
a semiotician “prepared to grapple with all the difficulties of modern exact logic,” otherwise “he is not the genuine, honest, earnest, resolute, energetic, industrious, and
accomplished doubter that it is his duty to be.” In this case, Peirce concludes, he ‘‘had better put up his shutters and go out of the trade” (1.624).
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8
Semeiotic and Significs
PEIRCE AND LADY WELBYPEIRCE AND LADY WELBY
Never confound, and never divide.
—Lady Welby (Hardwick 1977: 21)
Never block the path of inquiry.
—Peirce
Lady Welby’s correspondence and writings span a period of more than sixty years. She corresponded altogether only nine years with Peirce, from 1903 to 1911. It
was Lady Welby who took the initiative of the correspondence after reading some entries written by Peirce in Baldwin’s Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology
(1902). She had her publisher send her book What is Meaning? to Peirce. She was convinced that she could convert Peirce to the new science she had invented:
Significs, also called Sensifics. Peirce responded with delight for he himself saw the opportunity of converting a responsive reader to his Semeiotic. Neither
surrendered, although Lady Welby never lost hope for her pet science while encouraging Peirce not to despair of his Semeiotic—for the worst reason she could think
of:
Of course I am fully aware that Semeiotic may be considered the scientific and philosophic form of that study which I hope may become generally known
as Significs. Though I don’t think you need despair of the acceptance of your own more abstract, logically abstruse, philosophically profound conception
of Semeiotic. (Hardwick 1977: 91)
Lady Welby is famous for the part she played in promoting ideas, and especially Peirce’s ideas, among the English and Continental intelligentsia by sending copies of
Peirce’s most important letters to people like Bertrand Russell, C. K. Ogden, and Giovanni Vailati. Ogden’s reaction was decisive and it is mostly through him that
Peirce became known, thanks to The Meaning of Meaning, written with I. A. Richards (Ogden and Richards 1923), and through him and
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F. P. Ramsey that Wittgenstein knew of Peirce (Deledalle 1964, 1972, 1981; Hardwick 1977; Schmitz 1985; Thayer 1968; Wittgenstein 1969).
What Wittgenstein owed to Peirce is not easy to say, because he could apparently think for himself, and had read James, and had many talks with Ramsey who had a
great esteem for Peirce’s logic and philosophy (Ramsey 1924, 1931) and used Peirce’s distinction between Type (Legisign) and Token (Replica) to explain
Wittgenstein’s thought in his thorough review of the Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus (Ramsey 1923)—which review Wittgenstein read and discussed with Ramsey.
However, Lady Welby seemed to have won here, for it is the question of meaning which became central in the current discussions instead of the question of sign, which
was the crucial question for Peirce.
One of Lady Welby’s mottoes was “Never confound, and never divide” (Hardwick 1977: 21). If we had to sum up her philosophy, we would say that she inclined
more toward the therapeutic turn of Wittgenstein’s philosophy than the semeiotic turn of Peirce’s. She would have been delighted with Wittgenstein’s idea that the
purpose of philosophy was to cure language of its diseases: “Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language” (Wittgenstein
1953, 1909); “A main cause of philosophical disease—a onesided diet: one nourishes one’s thinking with one kind of example” (Wittgenstein 1953: 593); ‘‘What is
your aim in philosophy? Shew the fly the way out of the fly bottle” (Wittgenstein 1953: 309). But of course the remedy is the same for her as for Peirce and
Wittgenstein, as testified by the motto: “Philosophy does not result in ‘philosophical propositions’, but rather in the clarification of propositions” (Wittgenstein 1961:
4.112). This is a remedy that Peirce was the first to prescribe in How to Make our Ideas Clear, founding at the same time a new school of philosophy: pragmatism.
“Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the
whole of our conception of the object” (5.402). We must not let ourselves be deceived by language. We have to be careful not “to mistake a mere difference in the
grammatical construction of two words for a distinction between the ideas they express” (5.399).
ETHICS OF TERMINOLOGY:
MEANING AND METAPHOR
Peirce’s ethics of terminology was bound to please Lady Welby.
I welcome with gratitude your “profession of faith” on the ethics of terminology—a sadly neglected subject. It will be of the greatest value to me and I
hope I may use it in a second edition of What is Meaning? (Hardwick 1977: 21)
Lady Welby was more explicit on the subject than Peirce. (On the part of Peirce, it was more a matter of literary property or, let us say, word copyright,
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than anything else.) It is probably in her struggle against the misuses of language that her philosophy is closer to Peirce’s than in her theory of Significs with which we
will deal later. She shares, for instance, Peirce’s antidualism all the way, when she denounces the use of “metaphors.”
In her essay of 1893 on Meaning and Metaphor (Welby 1893: 510, 525), Lady Welby describes the way language works through metaphors. She had already
anonymously published the previous year a collection of reflections on the subject presented to the International Congress of Experimental Psychology, entitled The
Use of ‘Inner’ and ‘Outer’ in Psychology: Does the Metaphor Help or Hinder? (Welby 1892). By “metaphor,” Lady Welby means “symbolism,” unlike Peirce for
whom metaphor is a hypoicon, and, more precisely, an icon as third. Theoretically the difference is important, because, according to Peirce, we cannot think without
some kind of iconicity. For Lady Welby, however, although she also agrees that we need some kind of “imagery” to think, metaphors as symbols, far from helping to
think, are a hindrance:
Imagery runs in and out, so to speak, from the symbolic to the real world and back again. As matters stand, we never know where we are because we
know so little where our phrases or our words are; indeed, perhaps they and we are “neither here nor there’’! (Welby 1893: 511)
Between “symbols” and “real existences,” there may be a “third value.” Lady Welby does not give it a name. For a Peircean, it can only be of the nature of an
interpretant. This is suggested by Lady Welby herself: “We need a ‘Critique of Plain Meaning’” (Welby 1893: 513).
The fact is that we have been postulating an absolute Plain Meaning to be thought of, as it were, in capital letters. We have been virtually assuming that
our hearers and readers all share the same mental background and atmosphere. (Welby 1893: 512, italics mine)
Two things are thus neglected: the changes time introduces into our language and the context in which language—the very same language—is used:
To ‘signify’ is the one test of the important. The significant is alone worth notice. We inherit a mode of thinking which we are at last becoming able to
criticise in the light of knowledge gained by observation and experiment. But if we persist in using, without warning hearer or reader, imagery which has no
longer either sense or relevance, or which tends to call up a false mental picture or to perpetuate an else decaying error, we shall to that extent forfeit the
very gifts which science brings us, and must not complain of the obstinate persistence of ideas which needlessly divide us. (Wittgenstein 1953: 525)
On the other hand, we must take account of the context in which words are used. One can pride oneself “on a carefully sharp distinction between ‘image’ and ‘thing’ or
‘object’” (Wittgenstein 1953: 511), as if distinction is selfsufficient.
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It is so easy to confound distinction and separation. “‘And I had gathered, I hope not quite mistakenly,’ Lady Welby writes to Peirce, ‘that you also saw the disastrous
result of digging gulfs to separate when it was really a question of distinction,—as sharp and clear as you like’” (Hardwick 1977: 21). Of course, the context can help
to see where we are, because nothing is more ambiguous than a literal meaning:
One is tempted to say that there is only one term more figurative as well as more ambiguous than “metaphorical,” and that is “literal.” Most certainly much
that is called ‘‘literal” is tinged with the figurative in varying degrees, not always easy to distinguish even with the help of context. (Welby 1893: 512)
The list of verbal distinctions erroneously solidified into real partitions is long and does not apply only to ordinary speech, but even to the most elaborate philosophical
discourse. Lady Welby in her paper of 1893 quotes Jowett at length:
The famous dispute between Nominalists and Realists would never have been heard of, if, instead of transferring the Platonic ideas into a crude Latin
phraseology, the spirit of Plato had been truly understood and appreciated. Upon the term substance at least two celebrated controversies appear to
hinge, which would not have existed, or at least not in their present form, if we had ‘interrogated’ the word substance, as Plato has the notions of Unity
and Being. Those weeds of philosophy have struck their roots deep into the soil, and are always tending to reappear, sometimes in newfangled forms;
while similar words, such as development, evolution, law, and the like, are constantly put in the place of facts, even by writers who profess to base truth
entirely upon facts. (Welby 1893: 522 note)
Any separation of things which we cannot see or exactly define, though it may be necessary, is “a fertile source of errors,” says Jowett: the division of the mind into
faculties, or powers or virtues (Welby 1893: 522 note), the distinctions between “Inner and Outer” (Welby 1893: 525 note) “as metaphorical expressions of the mental
and the physical” (Welby 1911: 22), between mind as “internal” (“inside some nonentity not specified”) and matter (“outside this nonentity”) (Welby 1911: 16).
Lady Welby writes, in an essay entitled “Primal Sense and Significs,” written April 15, 1907, and only recently published:
We talk of the inner and the underlying where there is no question of either: we talk of he and she where there is nothing corresponding to sex: we talk of
beginning and end as complementary and then of “both ends”; but never of both beginnings. We talk of truth when we mean accuracy or fact: we talk of
the literal (“it is written”) when we mean the actual (“it is done”). We talk of natural “law,” reducing its sphere to that of the “lawcourt” with its imposed
decisions, forgetting that a law is a rule deliberately decreed and enforced or “passed” by
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consent and liable to abrogation: we talk of mind or consciousness as the analogue of a bag or box, or of a piece of stuff in various “states”: we talk of the
unknowable when what that is and whether it exists is precisely what we cannot know—the idea presupposes what it denies: we talk of immortality,
ignoring its correlative innatality […]. (Welby 1985: ccxl)
We should in the same way speak of “the spatial as ‘upward’ while using ‘downward’ for the nonspatial” (Welby 1911: 16).
Lady Welby’s tracking of misused metaphors is second nature to her and in her correspondence with Peirce she cannot help pointing them out when they occur in
Peirce’s letters: the use of “brute“ (Hardwick 1977: 63), “proof’’ applied to religion (Hardwick 1977: 63–64), “growth” (Hardwick 1977: 64), “attractive
fancy” (Hardwick 1977: 64–65), “certain” and “certainty” (Hardwick 1977: 90).
She goes even further than Peirce when she deals with the “laws of nature”:
Among the many defeating absurdities of current imagery perhaps that of “laws of nature” is one of the worst. One would really think sometimes that
nature had primordially summoned councils and decreed laws, or even brought in a bill in some National Assembly, discussed it, passed it, clause by
clause, carefully defining its regulations and penalties! And one would think that nature’s lawyers and judges expounded or laid down her laws and
enforced her decrees, imposing the statutory penalties for their infringement. For, of course, we are supposed to “break” nature’s “laws”—though the idea
is […] grotesque […]. (Welby 1911: 24)
Of course, there is a solution to the problem, according to Lady Welby: it is the extensive use of her Significs. Lady Welby’s solution is close to William James’s “pure
experience” prior to the mental distinction of mind and matter:
It might be useful (and there may be more warrant for it than we know) if we were to regard the physical world as a complex acted metaphor of the
mental world, and both as essentially expressive of a common nature. (Welby 1911: 45)
Supposing that we personified Nature in a scientific sense, postulating her as a unified series of impressions, would she now be found speaking of us in a
metaphor as we of her, only with speech reversed? That is, would her every “word” be taken metaphorically from the action or process of consciousness,
reason, reflection, judgment? Thus might we not say that motion, and mass, and the socalled “matter” assumed as behind them, are as full of mind
metaphor as mind is of mattermetaphor; the mindmetaphor arising in the conscious world, and reaching us through intelligence, and intellect, as matter
metaphor arises in the unconscious world, and reaches us through sense? (Welby 1911: 46)
SIGNIFICS AND PRAGMATICISM
Significs is mostly concerned with practice. In What is Meaning?, Lady Welby opposes the Significian mind to the logician mind:
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Significs concerns the practical mind, e.g. in business or political life, more closely and inevitably than it does the speculative mind. For the thinker may go
on through all his life turning over his own and others’ thoughts and working them logically out. But the man of action must translate thought into deed as
fast as ideas come to him; and he may ruin the cause he would serve by missing the significance of things. (Welby 1903: 8)
Significance is linked to action, as meaning is in Peirce’s pragmatism. In “Primal Sense and Significs,” already quoted, Lady Welby compares her work on significs with
pragmatism. Action is the key word, as we have already seen: “The sense of a word is our sense of its special use, of what it signifies,” Lady Welby says in another
essay (“The Social Value of Expression” 1908, in Welby 1985: ccliii). However, Significs goes further than pragmatism, because it is concerned with action as creation.
It is in “the work of the significian’’ that “the Pragmatist will find the prolific germ of his own thought,” without rejecting anything and certainly not intellectualism. Of
course, it is James’s and Schiller’s pragmatism which is meant here. What Lady Welby says of her significs applies to Peirce’s pragmatism or rather pragmaticism
compared to James’s and Schiller’s pragmatism:
[…] Significs can never become a denial of any opposite. It can never be controversial. Nobody will seriously champion insignificance or defend the
senseless and the unmeaning from the significial onslaught! Intellectualism, for significs, has its work no less than pragmatism; though as a fact and in the
sense of a return to a too widely neglected and ignored standpoint, it is prior to Pragmatism and absorbs the controversial element. Absorbs? Yes: if we
add—energises, vitalises, transmutes and transfigures all this […]. For it recognises—and this for the first time—the full significance and the full meaning
and sense of Value itself, in all expression of “energy” in the widest sense of that great word, and in the expressive nucleus which we call articulate speech,
the supreme link between mind and mind. (Welby 1985: ccxlv)
Peirce is less optimistic than Lady Welby. He thinks that “perfect accuracy of thought is unattainable, theoretically unattainable.” Undue striving for it has the
opposite result. “It positively renders thought unclear” (Hardwick 1977: 11, italics mine).
This very summer I rejected over a hundred consecutive pages of my MS, most painfully and slowly made, simply because it was too elaborated. After
all, we want to get our thought expressed in short meter somehow. (Hardwick 1977: 11)
Peirce’s letter is dated December 1, 1903. Four years later, F. C. S. Schiller also questioned “what can practically be done to remedy the defects of language” (Welby
1985: ccxlv). His answer is worth comparing with Peirce’s. Schiller does not think that
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Language is such an imperfect instrument and that we are so dominated by its tricks. On the whole, we think it reflects pretty accurately the mental
condition of its users. If it is confused and fragmentary and perverse, it is because the mind of its users are this. […] If you provided such minds with a
perfect instrument they would at once proceed to ruin it. But […] we don’t think that in actual use language is so imperfect. In their context, words get and
convey meanings which they do not seem to bear per se. (Welby 1985: ccxlviii)
Peirce would agree with that: the solution to the question of meaning is pragmatic. He is not as sanguine as Schiller is, but it is not enough to denounce the misuse of
language and appeal for action. Pragmatism at large is only a banner. What is needed is a set of rules of action to apply to each and every part of the body of language
which is infected. Significs, says Schiller, does “not suggest anything positive or specific to remedy the evil” (Welby 1985: ccxlviii).
SIGNIFICS AND SEMEIOTIC
Lady Welby’s thought can be expressed in a nutshell as the theory of sense, meaning, and significance. She dealt with this trilogy all her life and especially in “Sense,
Meaning and Interpretation” (Mind), What is Meaning?, “Significs” (The Encyclopaedia Britannica), Significs and Language, and in her correspondence with
Peirce.
Perhaps owing to goodwill on the part of both, there is a fundamental misunderstanding between Peirce and Lady Welby. Significs would be better called, as Lady
Welby sometimes does call it, Sensifics, for its subject matter is sense, while Semeiotic is, properly speaking, the theory of the action of signs. Pragmaticism is the link,
if any, between the two “sciences.’’ That is why any attempt to explain the concepts of significs in semeiotic terms and vice versa, is bound to confuse the issues.
What does Lady Welby say? In “Sense, Meaning, and Interpretation,” she starts by distinguishing five terms: Signification, Import, Sense, Significance, and Meaning, as
meaningterms in different lines of thought, classified as follows:
Table 8.1. From Welby 1896: 25
Signification “represents the value of language itself”; Import “marks the intellectual character of the logical process,” it implies “more than bare linguistic
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value”; Sense coupled with “physical science” is to be understood in its three current “senses’’: “sense” as meaning free from “any speculative taint,” as opposed to
“senseless,” “sense” as “the inevitable startingpoint and ultimate test of scientific generalisation,” “sense” as a faculty. “Here we may perhaps note that the word seems
to give the link between the sensory, the sensible, and the significant,” Lady Welby remarks: “there is apparently a real connection between the ‘sense’—say of sight—
in which we react to stimulus, and the ‘sense’ in which we speak or act”; Significance, in fact, “stands on a different footing from the other meaningterms” (Welby
1896: 26–27).
We naturally lay stress on the significance of some fact or event like the French Revolution or the ChinoJapanese [sic] war, when we feel that its
“import,” its “sense”—even its “meaning”—are quite inadequate to express its effect on our minds, while it would not occur to any one to speak of its
“signification.” It has “significance,” it is “significant,” because it indicates, implies, involves, (or may entail) great changes or momentous issues: because it
demands serious attention and, it may be, decisive action: or because it must modify more or less profoundly our mental attitude towards the nations or
races affected by it, and towards the problems called social. (Welby 1896: 27)
What about meaning? It differs from sense, because when we “mean,” we intend to do something. In “meaning” are linked the ideas of intention and end, and,
consequently, sense and significance, and also import which is “the secondary sense of the word Meaning” (Welby 1896: 28). Only “signification” seems excluded.
Lady Welby does not give us the reason, but we can guess that it is for her “a merely linguistic question,” which has only “a logical or psychological value” (Welby
1896: 29).
Sense, meaning, and significance are the only terms retained in What is Meaning? and in “Significs” where they are defined as “terms of expressionvalue.”
1. Sense. Associated “with the organic response to environment, and with the essentially expressive element in an experience.”
2. Meaning. Sense not being purposive, meaning is “reserved for the specific sense which it is intended to convey.”
3. Significance. “As including sense and meaning but transcending them in range, and covering the farreaching consequence, implication, ultimate result or outcome of
some event or experience, the term ‘Significance’ is usefully applied.” (Hardwick 1977: 169)
In What is Meaning? Lady Welby says that this triad is found in many forms of which she quotes “the most striking” from The Vedanta Sara:
The meaning (that may belong to a word) is held threefold, namely, Express, Indicated, and Suggested. The Express meaning is that conveyed to the
understanding
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by the (word’s) Denotation; the (meaning) Indicated is held to be conveyed by the (word’s) Suggestion. Let these be the three powers of a word. (Welby
1903: 46)
This triadic standpoint, respectively “expressive, descriptive, and interpretative,” which appeared already in the previous writings as hierarchical, is defined as such in
Significs and Language, Lady Welby’s last work: “Significance […] is reached through sense and meaning” (Welby 1911: 83).
In spite of the misunderstanding concerning the respective subject matter of significs and semeiotic, the general attitude behind the theories was similar enough to explain
both the attempt by Peirce and Lady Welby to read their own theory in each other’s writings, and the misunderstanding.
Peirce, in his review of What is Meaning?, says that the “authoress” has rendered a great service in bringing home the fundamental question of the ‘‘three kinds of
meaning” and by doing this in pointing out indirectly “three orders of signification,” and “she has wisely abstained from any attempt at formal definitions of these three
modes of significance,” because all this is not new: “Her three kinds of meaning correspond roughly to Hegel’s three stages of thought,” and her “three orders of
signification” were described by Peirce fifteen years before (in 1878: 5.388–410) and summed up as follows in a letter to Lady Welby:
To understand a word or formula may, in the first place, consist in such familiarity with it as will enable one to apply it correctly; or secondly, may consist
in an abstract analysis of the conception or understanding of its intellectual relations to other concepts; or, thirdly, may consist in a knowledge of the
possible phenomenal and practical upshot of the concept. (Hardwick 1977: 159)
“We might point out other interesting applications of her thought,” Peirce concludes, “sufficient to show that she must be upon the right track” (Hardwick 1977: 159).
Lady Welby thanked Peirce for his review and confirmed that she had “made no attempt at formal definition of the ‘triad of signification’” (Hardwick 1977: 6). Her
significs is, so to speak, a “practical extension” of logic proper which is not confined to rational order alone, but gives “its human value to life,—that is (l) its ‘sense’ and
sensepower in every sense from the biological to the logical, (2) its intention, conscious and increasingly definite and rational, which we call ‘Meaning’ and (profess to)
use language to express, (3) its Significance, its bearing upon, its place among, its interpretation of, all other cosmical facts” (Hardwick 1977: 6).
In the second longest theoretical letter (Dec. 1908) that Peirce wrote to Lady Welby, Peirce tells Lady Welby that Significs is only a part of Semeiotic, that part “which
inquires into the relation of signs to their ‘interpretants’” and “assuming this to be your meaning, we should hardly think it possible, in the present state of the subject, to
make much headway in a truly scientific investigation of significs in general without devoting a very large share of one’s work to inquiries into other questions of
semeiotic” (Hardwick 1977: 80).
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In a letter to J. W. Slaughter, dated September 2, 1909, Peirce justifies his enterprise:
[…] I have determined that for Lady Welby’s sake I will write briefly and without argument what I conceive to be the real nature of her aspiration,
beginning with considering what a sign is and what its signification as opposed to its denotation really is, and what is the nature of the process of
performing a logical analysis of it. Possibly I may add some thoughts on the question of how new needful terms of logic had best be framed in the present
condition of the subject. I believe that my process for performing logical analysis will be found very valuable when it is well illustrated and explained.
(Welby 1985: clviii)
In a third long letter in 1909, Peirce comes back to the subject of Lady Welby’s trichotomy and wonders whether he was influenced by it in “settling” his own
trichotomy of interpretants, only to conclude that he does “not believe this did happen.” “But as far as the public goes, we can only point out the agreement, and
confess to having read your book’’ (Hardwick 1977: 109).
How well do the two trichotomies coincide? Peirce’s final interpretant “is exactly the same as” Lady Welby’s “Significance,” “namely the effect the sign would produce
upon any mind upon which circumstances should permit it to work out its full effect” (Hardwick 1977: 110). The immediate interpretant does not differ much from
“sense,” provided, as seems to be the case, that it be “sensal,” “of the nature of an ‘impression’,” i.e., without any “volitional element” (Hardwick 1977: 110). If there is
some discrepancy, it concerns the possible equivalence of the dynamical interpretant and meaning. Lady Welby’s meaning “consists in the effect upon the mind of the
Interpreter that the utterer (whether vocally or by writing) of the sign intends to produce,” while Peirce’s dynamical interpretant only “consists in direct effect actually
produced by a sign upon an interpreter of it,” with or without intention to do so. However, as Peirce says elsewhere, although “I do not think we can properly say that
God utters any sign when He is the Creator of all things […] when (Lady Welby) says, as she does, that this is connected with volition, we at once note that the
volitional element of Interpretation is the Dynamical interpretant” (8.185). The main difference in the two trichotomies is to be found elsewhere, in the way the
trichotomies were produced: Lady Welby’s trichotomy rests on “a prodigious sensitiveness of Perception”; Peirce’s own “reasoning from the definition of a sign,”
derived from the description of the three possible structures of the phaneron: monadic, dyadic, and triadic. “The immediate Interpretant is an abstraction, consisting in a
Possibility. The Dynamical Interpretant is a single actual event. The Final Interpretant is that toward which the actual tends” (Hardwick 1977: 111).
Was Lady Welby convinced that her significs was a section of the larger science of semeiotic? Was Peirce right in reading his trichotomy of interpretants in Lady
Welby’s trichotomy of meaning? Can we equate “interpretant” with “meaning”? I share Peirce’s doubt which, to Lady Welby’s relief, would lead us
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to consider significs and semeiotic as two different although complementary “sciences.”
A last question before leaving the subject of the relation between significs and semeiotic: What did Lady Welby understand of Peirce’s semeiotic through the letters
which Peirce wrote her? Her comments are surprisingly and generally misleading. She indirectly gives the reason why she does not elaborate on Peirce#8217;s theory.
Upon receiving from Peirce the first long theoretical letter on semeiotic, she writes a month later: “I have not yet really begun to frame a comment upon it from my own
embryonic point of view” (Hardwick 1977: 37). In another letter, she confesses to writing on the subject “in pauper (why not pauperate?) form,” “since I claim nothing
but what I could describe as the conscious Primal Sense or reaction to the gist or essential point of things” (Hardwick 1977: 87).
She confuses, for instance, Peirce’s categories with Cook Wilson’s ‘‘oneness, twoness, and threeness” (Hardwick 1977: 36), for the reason that she does not
understand the ordinal nature of Peirce’s categories. Once she ventures in a comment on time to write: “[…] I start from and in and with and as Motion. For me, in the
‘spiritual’ as well the physical world, there is of course no Rest as the ultimate goal or as the antithesis of Motion. The changeless is less than dead, it is the nonexistent.
The secret here again for me lies in the unexplored conception of Order” (Hardwick 1977: 39). Peirce comments in the margin of the letter: “What you call Order I
conceived not to be mere serial arrangement. What you mean is Law looked upon from the point of view of its effects. So understood, it is, as you say, precisely
parallel to the question What is meaning” (Hardwick 1977: 39 n. 3)—which cannot be settled with this notion of Order.
The only category Lady Welby understands very well is Firstness. “In my humble way I claim to be a Muser, though I see that entrance into the world of Musement
needs […] an ungrudging study of the conditions of a healthy exploration” (Hardwick 1977: 65). She is for “the new, the young, the fresh, the possible” (Hardwick
1977: 40). But when she comes to semeiotic, her use of the terms are far from accurate:
I may also claim to be conscious of the unique value of Sign (and Icon) in all its forms, including Indices and Symbols; and of the necessity of the
‘corrolarial’. Of course (as you write) “all thinking is performed in signs” and a concept is intentional,—has meaning. (Hardwick 1977: 65)
Most of the time, Lady Welby’s comments are polite questions or irrelevant remarks:
Your illustration of “Cain killed Abel,” with its wealth of implication, applies here. And the rule you suggest, though it belongs to a complicative world
beyond my limit, is obviously of great interest. (Hardwick 1977: 89)
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Your exposition of the “possible” Sign is profoundly interesting; but I am not equal to the effort of discussing beyond saying that I should prefer tone to
mark for the homely reason that we often have occasion to say “I do not object to his words, but to his tone.” Could the word Suggestant be used for
Possible Sign? (Hardwick 1977: 91)
Meanwhile may I venture to suggest that logic in graphic form as you give it, is as it were an “immuniser,” and enemy and destructive absorbent of rational
toxins, and also that it weds the pictorial and the abstract. (Hardwick 1977: 93)
THE PHILOSOPHY BEHIND SIGNIFICS
AND SEMEIOTIC
Lady Welby is probably right here, as she is very often when she expresses her philosophy of the critique of language, which philosophy does not differ fundamentally
from Peirce’s. We have already insisted on the antidualism of both philosophies, on their pragmatic and contextualistic turns. Like Peirce’s, Lady Welby’s philosophy
is continuous: not only does it leave room for novelty, firstness of the new, but also for “uncertainty,” ‘‘possible deception,” and “the vagaries of natural hazard” which
are presupposed, Peirce would say, by “order and consistency” (Welby 1911: 78). Like Peirce’s, Lady Welby’s philosophy is social:
That we are already essentially social, that our very humanity is that, needs here no proving. We are indeed social first in the animal sense of mutual
dependence and in the power and need of consciously and rationally concerted action. But we are social next and preeminently in virtue of that power of
expression for the development of which I plead. And we are social because only thus can we be truly individual: because we are bound to work for a
future “collective” intelligence and “collective” conscience […]. (Welby 1985: cclxi)
Even the main difference between the two philosophies can be explained away. Unlike Peirce, Lady Welby advocates “intuition” and “psychology.” But for a reason
which has nothing to do with Peirce’s promotion of “inference from and by signs” and “logic.” Lady Welby had asked Schiller: “Why then is it that the world in general
has rejected [the] guidance [of Mother Sense] and preferred that of [masculine] logic, thin, arid, and miserably onesided and inadequate as that has often been? That
is the question which you Pragmatists have to answer” (Welby 1985: ccxlix, italics hers).
Lady Welby’s attitude is certainly that of a feminist: “As to the majority of women, the dominant Man with his imperious intellect has for uncounted ages stamped down
their original gift: all their activities beyond the nursery (and, alas, there also, now) are masculinised: language, originally the woman’s as custodian of the camp, creator
of its industries and first trainer of the next generation, is now wholly ‘male’: the whole social order is laid down, prescribed for the woman on masculine lines
only” (Welby 1985: ccxlix–ccl).
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Thanks to the Pragmatists however, she said, mothersense is bound to become for all “common sense”—which it is:
It is sheer mothersense—instinct of intellectual danger,—which in you, as in Dewey, Peirce and James, calls out the pragmatic reaction! It is the direct
descendant of the keen awareness of the signs of primitive danger to the babes of the pair or the tribe, left in relatively weak hands. But let the pragmatists
beware of exchanging one fallacy or one overworked method for another, perhaps the opposite. (Welby 1985: ccxlix)
CONCLUSION: PHILOSOPHY AND
LANGUAGE—A NEVERENDING BATTLE?
“And your real master of language always manages to find words wherewithal to express himself,” Schiller says in his letter to Lady Welby (Welby 1985: ccxlviii).
And what language says contradicts very often what people think. In the battle for the clarification of language, language managed to cheat Peirce and Lady Welby.
They did their best to help language express a new philosophy in which Platonic ideas would leave the Intelligible World to be active in the Sensible World, but they
were unaware of Plato’s guardians who were on duty at the entrance of the Cave and let them in to do what they thought they could do, but with the wrong password:
Reality. For Peirce, although Reality is not for him a category, it is the Ultimate Aim of the Community of Inquirers looking for Truth, which, when reached, will do
exactly the contrary of its raison d’être: block the path of inquiry. Lady Welby says:
We need not inflate Reality with our empty bladders of usedup thoughts, or shrink her into the wrinkled skin of decay, [but] to say “we know not,” and
for an unnecessary moment to rest content with that, is a crime against the Real around us and within us which calls in the most pleading, as the most
commanding, of all voices. Live in Me; learn and know Me, saith all that is Real […]. (Welby 1985: 93)
The true word, let us realise, is not merely a conventional noise or scrawl or stamp, it is the Logos, it is Reason. It is more than that. It is that which Can
truly say ‘‘I am”: it is the revelation of the way through truth to life. (Welby 1985: 85)
It is of course, for Plato, a great victory. But all this does not seem to be the logical conclusion of the signific or semeiotic argument; it would rather appear to be the
symptom of the last disease of language, doomed to be fatal. Let us call it dementia realitatis and let us hope that Plato’s victory is a Pyrrhic one. Peirce and Lady
Welby deserve it.
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9
Semeiotic and Semiology
PEIRCE AND SAUSSURE
Let us not precide our conclusions beyond what our premisses definitely warrant.
—Peirce (8.244)
PEIRCE OR SAUSSURE
Contemporary research on the sign proceeds from two sources: Charles S. Peirce (1839–1914) who is at the origin of the semiotic trend, and Ferdinand de Saussure
(1857–1913) who is at the origin of the semiological trend. That there are two trends is simply that Peirce’s and Saussure’s a priori conditions for thinking are
different. I am going to explain why I have preferred to follow Peirce rather than Saussure. This will entail some repetition, but some things are better said twice than
once; I shall also appear sometimes to be stating what is perhaps obvious, but is better said than left unsaid.
First some preliminary remarks. The standard Saussurean theory of signs was publicized by the Course of General Linguistics which is a posthumous reconstruction
based on lecture notes taken by students. Although the publication of Peirce’s writings is also partly posthumous, and although we do not know what Peirce would
have retained or rejected, all the texts of the Collected Papers are by Peirce himself.
A pioneer in many fields, Peirce continued all his life to elaborate his theory of signs, even when he seemed to be giving his attention to other subjects. He gave a first
version of it in 1867 and 1868, developed the “pragmatic” aspect of it in 1877 and 1878, provided it with a new logical foundation between 1880 and 1885, and
developed it on this new basis from 1894 to the end of his life. Saussure did not mention the subject before giving his second course of general linguistics in 1908–
1909, even if he did, as it would seem, have the idea before 1901 (according to Adrien Naville). Historically, Peirce’s priority to Saussure is unquestionable.
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Saussure was essentially a linguist, more inclined to study languages than to elaborate theories about language. Thus his linguistics is based on the analyses of languages,
and semiology only comes later as a general theory of linguistic signs. And even this was not his main interest, as he was at the same time (1909–1911) carrying out
research on Saturnian verse, and this took much more of his time than the preparation of his lectures on general linguistics. After his death, nothing or practically nothing
about linguistics and semiology was found in his papers, which, however, contained a hundred and fifty books of notes on Saturnian verse.
The first problem—and it is to this that I shall confine myself here—encountered by the reader of Peirce or Saussure is that of the context in which Peircean semiotics
and Saussurean semiology originated and developed. Of Saussure, Georges Mounin says that he was “a man of his time” (Mounin 1968: 21). Which means that the
Saussurean theory finds its a priori conditions for thinking within the framework of the associationistic psychology which was still very much alive, and Durkheim’s
sociology which came into fashion around the turn of the century. Now, as Mounin remarks, to say, as Saussure said, that ‘‘the linguistic sign unites not a thing and a
name, but a concept and a soundimage” (66) is to base “linguistic facts” on mental facts “considered as wellknown and accepted” and about which the linguist
“knows probably less than he does about language” (Mounin 1968: 21).
Nonetheless, the linguistic fact is for Saussure a “psychological entity” (66). From Durkheim he borrows the idea that “language is a social fact” (6) without realizing
perhaps that it is contradictory to assert that “language is the social side of speech, outside the individual who can never create nor modify it by himself,” and, at the
same time, that “it exists only by virtue of a sort of contract signed by the members of a community” (14). But is this not to dodge the question at the risk of
complicating the system without resolving the contradiction of the impossible union of psychologism and sociologism? For what are these members? Individual or social
beings? Saussure’s answer lies in the famous distinction between language which is social and speech which is individual (13). But how can an individual who can never
create nor modify language be “its master,” the “executive side” of language (13)? Peirce, Saussure’s contemporary, is in advance of his time. He denounces
psychologism—which enables him, as we shall see, to adopt a coherent sociological position. His antipsychologism is constant and can be found in the 1868 articles as
well as in the letters to Lady Welby which he wrote at the end of his life. “To explain the proposition in terms of the ‘judgment’,” he wrote in 1902, “is to explain the
self—intelligible in terms of a psychical act, which is the most obscure of phenomena or facts” (2.309 note). In an article of 1868, he made the following remark which
one of the most daring ideas of Michel Foucault seems to echo: “Just as we say that a body is in motion, and not that motion is in a body, we ought to say that we are in
thought and not that thoughts are in us” (5.289 note). And in 1904, he wrote to Lady Welby: “I abstain from psychology which has nothing to do with
ideoscopy” (Hardwick
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1977: 25). Ideoscopy, which Peirce sometimes calls phenomenology, but most of the time phaneroscopy, is the proper context of his semiotics, the categories of which
are a priori conditions for thinking the world. The “idea” (or “phenomenon” or “phaneron”) concerned, he warns the reader, is not that of the English philosophers who
have given the word “a psychological connotation […] which I am careful to exclude” (1.285). It is ‘‘all that is in any way or any sense present to the mind, regardless
of whether it corresponds to any real thing or not” (1.284). Phaneroscopy, he says further on, “religiously abstains from all speculation as to any relations between
categories and physiological facts, cerebral or other” (1.287). This does not mean that these categories cannot have a psychical origin (1.374), but their origin affects
their logical nature no more than the psychical origin of numbers (i.e., the fact of their being conceived and thought by a “mind”) affects their mathematical nature. Some
logicians base logic on the results of psychology: they “confound psychical truths with psychological truths” (5.485).
It would consequently not be fair to reproach Peirce with maintaining a behavioristic theory, which, even if he did defend it, is not that on which he bases his theory of
signs. However, the question may be asked: was Peirce a behaviorist? Historical behaviorism is posterior to the “behavioristic” texts of Peirce. Watson was not yet
born when Peirce wrote some of them. This fact being established, it is true that the principle of pragmatism plays a part in Peirce’s semiotics, since it was proposed in
order to reply to the question that the Cartesian analysis left unanswered when Descartes made clearness and distinctness the test of the meaning of an idea. What is a
clear idea? Peirce asks; and his reply is: “Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have.
Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object” (5.402). If two ideas have the same effects or consequences or bring about an
identical action, they are, in fact, only one idea; if one idea has different effects or consequences, it is made up of two or more ideas, as the case may be. For Cartesian
intuition, Peirce substitutes scientific experimentation in every sense of the word “experimentation”: that carried out in a laboratory as well as the “mental”
experimentation of mathematical physics, which is also the testing of a hypothesis or idea. To abandon the intuitive method is to refuse the introspective psychology of
states of consciousness in favor of action, and not another psychology, were it behavioristic. What is a sign? Peirce asks; and his reply is: A sign is first and foremost
what it does and what it does is its meaning; in other words, it is a rule of action.
Peirce’s antipsychologism is the indirect reason of his sociologism, which is connected with his semiotics just as his pragmatism is connected with his criticism of
Descartes. It is because the theory of Peirce is not psychological and refuses the subject of discourse that it is social. I shall explain. Peirce constantly defended the
social nature of the sign; not by opposing, like Saussure, language to speech, but by eliminating purely and simply the subject of discourse. It is the “I” which speaks,
but what it says is not and cannot be “subjective”: the “I” is the
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locus of signs and especially that of interpretants, a locus which is not isolated, but is, on the contrary, in a context—and every context is social.
Unlike the theory of Saussure, that of Peirce is plural and committed (in the political sense or not, according to whether the situation is or is not political). This plural and
committed conception of the sign is intrinsic to the very nature of the sign in Peircean semiotics.
The sign is a triadic relation. The Peircean triadicity of the sign has a double origin, mathematical and Kantian. Mathematical:
[…] it is impossible to form a genuine three […] without introducing something of a different nature from the unit and the pair, […] (Thus) the fact that A
presents B with a gift C is a triple relation, and as such cannot possibly be resolved into any combination of dual relations. Indeed, the very idea of a
combination is something which is what it is owing to the parts which it brings into mutual relationship. But we may waive that consideration, and still we
cannot build up the fact that A presents C to B by any aggregation of dual relations between A and B, B and C, and C and A. A may enrich B, B may
receive C, and A may part with C, and yet A need not necessarily give C to B. For that, it would be necessary that these three dual relations should not
only coexist, but be welded into one fact. Thus we see that a triad cannot be analyzed into dyads. (1.363)
Kantian: Peirce’s avowed intention in 1867, when he proposed a new list of categories, was to “reduce the manifold of sensuous impressions to unity” (1.546), which
can be done only by the means of categories. But, for Peirce, the synthesis could not be achieved, as it was for Kant, in intuition, for the reason that Peirce had already
banished intuition and all psychologism, as would appear in the antiCartesian articles of 1868. For Peirce, “the unity to which the understanding reduces impressions is
the unity of a proposition” (1.548). Now, the logic of relations allows us to distinguish in the proposition: a propositional function, a first, in other words, a relation with
no indication of the objects or terms in relation (—loves—); a simple proposition, a second, which indicates that a relation exists between objects or terms which
Peirce calls “indices”: “Ezekiel loveth Huldah’’ or Rij (2.295); and a complex proposition, a third, which puts propositions in relation (conjunctive, disjunctive,
implicative). Whence the three logicophaneroscopic categories: Firstness, the category of quality which has the generality of the possible; Secondness, the category of
existence, of action enacted in its unique singularity here and now; and Thirdness, the category of mediating thought, of instrumental generality. The sign is First when it
refers to itself, Second when it refers here and now to its object, Third when it refers to its object through an interpretant. (And the sign taken in itself, its object and its
interpretant are themselves signs, and each of them entertains, for that reason, the same triadic relation with itself, its object, and its interpretant.) Peirce coined the
word “interpretant” because the sign at this stage in a semiosis plays the role of an interpreter. Thus, “suppose we look up the word homme in a French dictionary;
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we shall find opposite to it the word man, which, so placed, represents homme as representing the same twolegged creature which man itself represents” (1.553).
Peirce adds that it was a requisite, and that consequently a Third was required, only because we receive a diversity of impressions. If we had but one impression, “the
conception of reference to an interpretant” would not be required, as there would not be a manifold to reduce to unity (1.554).
It is a fact that the Saussurean theory is dyadic. All the analyses of Saussure are dichotomic: signifier/signified, language/speech, synchrony/diachrony, etcetera. Does
this imply that Saussure had a “dichotomic temperament,” as Marcel Cohen suggests (Cohen 1958 in Mounin 1968: 38)? In that case, we should have to say that
Peirce’s temperament was trichotomic. It is true, however, as Marcel Cohen points out, that this dichotomism is ‘‘not at all necessary for the study of linguistics” (ibid.).
In fact, it is because Saussurean semiology is associationistic that it is dualistic—like all Western philosophy since Plato, including Cartesianism which was continued by
associationism. Whereas, for Peirce, semiotics is another name for logic: “the quasinecessary, or formal, doctrine of signs” (2.227), for Saussure, semiology is a
chapter of social psychology and consequently of general psychology. Let us say, however, to avoid any misunderstanding, that what is in question here is the place
occupied by the theory of signs among the other “sciences.” When I said that the theory of categories explained the Peircean theory of signs, I was alluding to
something quite different: the system or explicative context of reference. Although for Saussure, it is psychology which is the locus and point of reference of semiology,
one must only distinguish even more carefully between semiology as a psychological science and the psychological philosophy of the associationists which he uses to
express his theory of signs. That this philosophy is implicit does not change the situation, unless it be that Saussure, feeling the need of a means of expression other than
semiological to describe signs, found himself obliged to use linguistics, which is a part of semiology, as the general pattern of semiology.
It must be admitted, in defense of Saussure, that he fully realized that a psychosocial analysis was not enough for semiology. If we emphasize the viewpoint of the
psychologist and the social viewpoint, “the goal is bypassed, and the specific characteristics of semiological systems in general and of language in particular are
completely ignored, for the distinguishing characteristic of the sign […] is that in some way it always eludes the individual and the social will” (17). If we are to discover
the true nature of language, we must learn what it has in common with all the other semiological systems. “It is probable,” says Mounin, “that if Saussure had lived
longer, his theory of signs would have been the point of departure and of the organisation of his entire doctrine” (Mounin 1968: 50). It is then that the question of its
logical foundation would have arisen and could not have been eluded. Would he have renounced dyadic logic? Would he have introduced a third dimension into his
theory of signs, as Barthes did? “In meaning, as it has been conceived since the Stoics,” Barthes wrote, “there are three things: the signifier, the signified and the
referent” (Barthes 1975: 169). We cannot
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answer this question. What we can be sure of is that a triadic theory of signs is pregnant with a plural and committed semiotics which Roland Barthes could not but
approve of and of which Peirce provides a model.
A “same sign” belongs to different categories, types, and classes of signs according to whether it is considered in reference to itself as a first, in reference to its object as
a second, in reference to its interpretant as a third. In reference to itself, it is what it is independently of its object and its interpretant. But, as a first, it will be the
possibility of a sign: a qualisign; as a second, a given sign (a token): a sinsign; as a third, a codified or archetypal sign: a legisign. In reference to its object, it may either
resemble the latter or indicate it or stand for it. In that case, it is respectively icon, index, and/or symbol. In reference to its interpretant, it may be simply conceived or
represented (rhema), said or shown (dicisign), or else interpreted by inference in all senses of the word “infer” (argument). Thus, to borrow one of Peirce’s examples,
“that footprint that Robinson Crusoe found in the sand” (4.531) is in reference to itself a qualisign, the sign of a quality (what it is independently of the fact of being
printed in the sand), a sinsign as being the only mark which is there at that particular spot on Robinson Crusoe’s island. Although it cannot be a legisign proper, for a
legisign is a sign of law and possesses a generality which Man Friday’s footprint does not possess, it belongs to a type which enables Robinson Crusoe to say that it is a
man’s footprint, and not that of any kind of animal he knew. It could be a legisign proper in another context, if, like fingerprints, it could be used to distinguish Man
Friday from the other inhabitants of the island, if there were any. In reference to its object, this footprint is a perfect icon, although reversed like the image of a person
looking at himself in a mirror. But it is at the same time the index of a presence on the island, and not just any presence, but the presence of a human being the shape
of whose foot is the ‘‘symbol” for the interpretant, which infers from the representation of this shape and what it indicates, that there is another man somewhere on the
island. Whence the fact that Peircean semiotics is a semiotics at once of representation, of communication, and of meaning. The sign in itself has its own existence, an
existence of a nonsign, one might say, just as an ambassador, although representing his country, is what he is in reference to himself, with his own history which
distinguishes him from his predecessor and from the role he assumes at the moment when, for instance, he presents his credentials. The words “role” and “at the
moment when” exactly situate the other two levels of the sign—of the same sign. The “role” refers to the meaning which is a rule of interpretation in a system of sign
interpretants. The presentation of credentials is a game which has its own rules and the meaning of the gestures is general. It is valid for every ambassador and for every
presentation of credentials. The words “at the moment when” indicate that the game is being played: the communication constituted by the presentation of credentials is
being enacted.
Communication is thus a concrete individual action, an event of and in history: it defines the sense of every act of the same type in a given system of signs. (Of course,
representation, communication, and meaning may be considered respectively
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as first, second, and third). This system comprises only symbols; they refer also to (representative) signs which may be (existential) indices of objects; of objects in
every sense of the term: possible, existential, or general. The Storming of the Bastille is a symbol in the system of meanings of the history of France. It refers to a certain
idea of liberty, the negation or refusal of the arbitrary. But the documents which have reached us (the Bastille having been destroyed), which imagery or our imagination
represent, are the indices of a state of France described by history and interpreted by the systems of symbols. However, let there be no mistake, the enactment of
action is not limited to a given action, for there is no action which reveals, and, at the same time, constitutes, its meaning. The enactment is at the meeting point, always
social, of the three paths of the sign.
* * *
Have we to choose between Peirce and Saussure? The question should perhaps be put differently. Does one construct a model—a priori conditions for thinking—
from experience? Or does one analyze experience in the light of a model whose principles and axioms owe nothing to chance encounters, but everything to the
coherence of the choice? In other words, how should one choose? Given that a model is autonomous and does not admit of interference from outside, it would be vain
to try to describe (and to judge) the semiotics of Peirce in Saussurean terms and Saussure’s semiology in Peircean terms. The test of their respective validity resides, in
the last analysis, in the coherence of the model on which they are based, and in the fecundity of the analyses they can provide. One cannot choose without committing
oneself.
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I shall sum up the comparison between Peirce’s semiotics and Saussure’s semiology in the following table:
Saussure’s Semiology Peirce’s Semiotics
Based on Based on
philology pragmaticism
linguistics phaneroscopy

Mill’s empirical psychology logic of relatives
Durkheim’s sociology
Man’s speech is individual Man is social by nature
Man is social by nature
Dualism Continuism
Psychology/Sociology Man’s mind and the world
signified/signifier are not dissociated
speech/language
Nominalism Realism
Concepts are reducible to Concepts are general and real
“acoustic images”
Spectator epistemology: Actor epistemology:
World = “acoustic images” Pragmatism & Contextualism:

“acoustic images” = Idea An idea is what it does.
Table 9.1. Peirce and Saussure—a comparison
SAUSSURE AND PEIRCE
Although the contexts of Saussurean semiology and Peircean semiotics are radically different, it is possible and even relatively easy to find in the semiology of Saussure
some of the fundamental concepts of Peirce’s semiotics—which does not mean that they may be assimilated. On the contrary, their respective a priori conditions for
thinking rule out any assimilation. This being so, my intention is not to “confound” them, as Lady Welby would have said, after opposing them, but to use generally
understood Saussurean concepts in order to pave the way for a better understanding, or even acceptance, of Peircean concepts. If we take the Peircean system for my
point of reference, it is because its triadic nature allows the introduction into signanalysis of nuances about which Saussure was sometimes well aware, but which the
dyadic nature of his system did not enable him to express.
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Principles of the Theory of Signs
In the first place, one can read in Saussure two principles of Peircean semiotics: First principle. No thought without signs: “Without the help of signs we would be
unable to make a clearcut, consistent distinction between two ideas’’ (111–112). Second principle. The principle of pragmatism which underlies the Saussurean idea
of difference. A sign exists in its own right only because it does not coincide with another one: “In language, there are only differences” (120). But “although both the
signified and the signifier are purely differential and negative when considered separately, their combination is a positive fact” which generates a system of values which
constitutes the effective link between the phonic and psychological elements contained in each sign. “In language, as in any semiological system, whatever distinguishes
one sign from the other constitutes it. Difference makes character just as it makes value and unit” (121). This is proved by diachronical facts. “When two words are
confused through phonetic alteration […] the ideas that they express will also tend to become confused if only they have something in common. A word may have
different forms. Any nascent difference will tend to become significant” (121).
Peirce says exactly the same thing, even if he says it differently: “There is no distinction in meaning so fine as to consist in anything but a possible difference in
practice” (5.400). How to avoid “the deceits of language” of the kind which consists in mistaking “a mere difference in the grammatical construction of two words for a
distinction between the ideas they express” (5.399), Peirce wonders. His answer is that there is no better rule than the following: “Do things fulfil the same function
practically? Then let them be signified by the same word. Do they not? Then let them be distinguished” (8.33). This is what Peirce calls the principle or maxim of
pragmatism.
The Analysis of Sign
The Peircean Analysis
As we noted above, Peirce analyzes signs semiotically in three steps at three different levels of relation: (l) In reference to the representamen: the sign is analyzed as
such in reference to itself; (2) in reference to its object; (3) in reference to the signinterpretant, in other words in reference to the sign or field of signs with which the
reader or listener associates the representamen in such a way that the latter refers to an object. The third step, or level 3, semiotically presupposes 2 and 1; the second
step, or level 2, presupposes 1. This gives the following wellknown table in which the Peircean analysis of signs enables us to distinguish nine types of subsigns:
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1 2 3
Representamen (R1) Qualisign Sinsign Legisign
Object (O2) Icon Index Symbol
Interpretant (I3) Rhema Decisign Argument
Table 9.2. The nine subtypes of a sign
The Sign
LINEARITY OF THE SIGN AND SEMIOSIS
For Saussure, “the linguistic sign […] unites a concept and a soundimage” (98), a signified and a signifier (99). It is a “twosided psychological entity” (66). For
Peirce, it is a semiosis, a relation which is real, in the sense of existentially active, of the sign. ‘‘By semiosis, I mean […] an action, or influence which is or involves a
cooperation of three subjects, such as a sign (representamen), its object, and its interpretant, this trirelative influence not being in any way resolvable into actions
between pairs” (5.584). There is, in both cases, continuity of the sign, but the similarity stops there, for linearity is temporal and is valid only for “auditory signifiers” of
the linguistic sign, and not for “visual signifiers (nautical signs, etc.)” (70); semiosis, although also temporal, is by definition logical and encompasses the whole semiotic
process ad infinitum (2.303). It must, however, be remarked that Saussure admits that “the linguistic entity exists only through the associating of the signifier with the
signified. Whenever only one element is retained, the entity vanishes” (102). That appears to be the case here.
THE ARBITRARINESS OF THE SIGN AND THE
CONVENTIONALITY OF THE INTERPRETANT
The arbitrary sign is unmotivated. It is, in this sense, that we can also understand the interpretant. The interpretant does not interpret freely; it is a translator which says
in one language exactly the same thing which is said in another. According to Saussure, the arbitrary sign “should not imply that the choice of the signifier is left entirely
to the speaker (we shall see […] that the individual does not have the power to change a sign in any way once it has become established in the linguistic
community)” (69). “The community is necessary if values that owe their existence solely to usage [pragmatic and not practical, given that the community engenders and
imposes its rules] and general acceptance [of the community of users (Saussure) or investigators (Peirce)] are to be set up; by himself the individual is incapable of fixing
a single value” (113).
THE SYSTEM OF SIGNS, REPERTORY, AREA, AND FIELD OF SIGNS
“To consider a term as simply the union of a certain sound with a certain concept is grossly misleading. To define it in this way would isolate the term from the system; it
would mean assuming that one can start from the terms and construct the system by adding them together, when, on the contrary, it is from the
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interdependent whole that one must start and through analysis obtain its elements” (113). Peirce, for his part, distinguishes three types of systems of signs according to
whether the signs are considered in themselves (repertory), in reference to their objects (area), or in reference to their interpretants (field). It will be noticed that, for
Peirce, the repertory of representamens, the area of objects, and the field of interpretants are not semiotically separable.
VALUE AND INTERPRETANT
Saussure distinguishes between value and signification. The definition he gives of value in its relation to signification makes it a good equivalent of interpretant.
Signification is the counterpart of the soundimage (115).
The value of a word is not limited to the possibility of “exchanging” it for an idea or another word. It comes from the fact that it belongs to a system, or more exactly
here to a field of interpretants.
Its value is […] not fixed so long as one simply states that it can be ‘exchanged’ for a given concept, i.e. that it has this or that signification: one must also
compare it with similar values […] Its content is really fixed only by the concurrence of everything that exists outside it. (115)
Thus mutton and sheep have the same meaning, but not the same value, the reason being that English has in its repertory two words for the same animal: sheep and
mutton, while French has only one. In English, it is the repertory of signs which will determine the signification, whereas in French it is the field of interpretants.
Saussure neglects the area of objects, as we shall see.
Repertory Area Field

of representamens of objects of interpretants
Sheep live any other meaning
Mutton meat food
Table 9.3. Value and interpretant
In the same way, there are two signs or representamens in the German and English repertories (meten and vermeten; to rent and to let) which correspond to only one
signrepresentamen in the French repertory: louer, the signification being supplied by the field of interpretants or, if one prefers, the context (cf. 116). Similar remarks
can be made about grammatical entities: the value of a French plural does not correspond to that of a Sanskrit plural which covers the dual and the plural (116).
The signifiersignified relationship “symbolizes signification,” but “is only a value determined by its relations with other similar values and […] without it signification
would not exist” (117). So there is no signification without an interpretant.
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The Three Trichotomies of the Sign
THE TRICHOTOMY OF THE REPRESENTAMEN
Signifier, Qualisign, and Sinsign For Saussure, as we have seen, “the linguistic sign unites […] a concept and a soundimage” (98), a signified and a signifier (66). Now
the soundimage ‘‘is not the material sound, a purely physical thing, but the psychological imprint of the sound, the impression it makes on our senses” (66). The sound
image could thus be a (psychical) qualisign of which the material sound would be the sinsign. We shall see that, in the case of this particular sign, the linguistic sign, a
given soundimage (which is in any case a sinsign) is the replica of a legisign.
Arbitrary Sign and Legisign Saussure defines the arbitrary sign when he asks if modes of expression like mime are not the affair of semiology:
Every means of expression used in society is based, in principle, on collective behavior (in French habitude), or what amounts to the same thing,—on
convention. Polite formulas, for instance, though often imbued with a certain natural expressiveness […] are nonetheless fixed by rule; it is this rule and not
the intrinsic value of the gestures that obliges one to use them. (67–68)
The global sign (signifiersignified) is thus a legisign, “a law which is a sign” (2.246).
Replica “The signs that make up language are not abstractions, but real objects” (102).
Linguistic signs, though basically psychical, are not abstractions; associations which bear the stamp of collective approval—and which, added together,
constitute language—are realities that have their seat in the brain. Besides, linguistic signs are tangible. (14)
Signs are not abstractions. What Saussure means is that the signifier is nothing without the signified and vice versa, as we have already noted. Peirce also insists on the
fact that the representamen, the object, and the interpretant by themselves are not signs. It is their conjunction which constitutes the sign.
But what is concrete and tangible is not the linguistic sign, but its replica. Saussure, like Peirce, makes a distinction between the legisign and the replica:
It is impossible for sound alone, a material element, to belong to language […] All our conventional values have the characteristic of not being confused
with the tangible element which supports them. For instance, it is not the metal in a piece of money that fixes its value. (118)
The linguistic signifier is incorporeal (118), i.e., in Peircean terms a “legisign.” For instance, says Saussure, “in French, general use of a dorsal r does not prevent many
speakers from using a tonguetip trill; language is not in the least disturbed by it; language requires only that the sound be different and not […] that it have an invariable
quality” (119). An identical state of affairs is observable
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in writing; the letter t, for example, may be written in different ways so long as it is not liable to be confused with l or d. “The means by which the sign is produced is
completely unimportant […] Whether I make the letters in white or black, raised or engraved, with pen or chisel—all this is of no importance, with respect to their
signification” (120).
THE TRICHOTOMY OF THE OBJECT
Saussurean semiology, which is dyadic, maintains that the linguistic sign unites, not “a thing and a name,” but “a concept and a “soundimage’’ (66), the concept playing
the role of an interpretant. However, Saussure does encounter Peirce’s index and symbol.
Difference and Index “The value of letters is purely negative and differential. The same person can write t in different ways:
The only requirement is that the sign for t not be confused in his script with the signs used for l, d, etc.” (119).
We have already agreed on that in another context, and Peirce would not object. But the way of writing can be an index in another field of interpretants; here, for
instance, in graphology. The reasons why Saussure is not interested in the different ways of writing t are, first, that a sign does not unite a word and a thing, and,
second, that what Saussure is describing is the linguistic sign.
Symbol and Nature If Saussure had used the word “symbol,” symbol would have been only another term for legisign, and for the same reasons. But as he used the
words as they are used in everyday language, Saussure could not use the word “symbol” to designate the linguistic sign because “one characteristic of the symbol is that
it is never wholly arbitrary; it is not empty, for there is the rudiment of a natural bond between the signifier and the signified” (68). “The symbol of justice, a pair of
scales, could not be replaced by just another symbol, such as a chariot.” It is because they have lost their “natural bond” that onomatopoeia and interjections are no
longer symbols, but linguistic signs (124).
THE TRICHOTOMY OF THE INTERPRETANT
Saussure seems to limit the interpretant to the concept of the signified and thus to the rhema. However, the opposition between syntagmatic and associative relations
(122–127) could have been a way of distinguishing proposition (dicisign) from concept and argument.
The syntagmatic relation is in praesentia. It is based on two or more terms that occur in an effective series. Against this, the associative relation unites
terms in absentia in a potential mnemonic series. (123)
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But Saussure thought otherwise because although “the sentence is the ideal type of syntagm […] it belongs to speaking not to language” (124). Does the sentence
belong to language or to speech?
A rather widely held theory makes sentences the concrete units of language: we speak only in sentences and subsequently single out the words. But to
what extent does the sentence belong to language? If it belongs to speaking, the sentence cannot pass for the linguistic unit. If we picture to ourselves in
their totality the sentences that could be uttered, their most striking characteristic is that in no way do they resemble each other […] In sentences […]
diversity is dominant, and when we look for the link that bridges their diversity, again we find, without having looked for it, the word with its grammatical
characteristics and thus fall back into the same difficulties as before. (106)
The discussion can be summed up in the following table in which the Saussurean terms which might be equivalent to the Peircean semiotic terms are given instead of the
latter. The empty spaces indicate either that Saussurean analysis does not enable us to make the corresponding distinctions, or that Saussure did not think this
necessary.
1 2 3
R Soundimage Material element Signifier
(Support)
O

“Substance”
I Signified
“Value”
Table 9.4. Peircean classification of Saussurean concepts
R1—Peirce’s qualisign: The soundimage is “not the material sound, a purely physical thing, but the psychological imprint of the sound, the impression it makes on our
senses’’ (66). “The soundimage is par excellence the natural representation of the word as a fact of potential language outside any actual use of it in speaking” (66 n.
1).
R2—Peirce’s sinsign: “All our conventional values have the characteristic of not being confused with the tangible element which supports them” (118).
R3—Peirce’s legisign: The linguistic signifier is incorporeal (118). It is “unmotivated,” i.e., “arbitrary in that it actually has no natural connexion with the signified” (69),
“collective habit,” “convention,” “fixed by rule” (66).
01—Peirce’s icon: Nothing corresponds to Peirce’s icon in Saussure.
02—Peirce’s index: The support can play the part of an index, but, in that case, Saussure does not consider it as a sign, because it is not linguistic.
03—Peirce’s symbol: The “symbol” is “natural” for Saussure.
I1—Peirce’s rhema: A word which is the link that bridges the diversity of sentences (106).
I2—Peirce’s dicisign (such as a sentence): The sentence cannot pass for the linguistic sign: it does not belong to language (106).
I3—Peirce’s argument: Nothing corresponds to Peirce’s argument in Saussure.
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10
Semeiotic and Semiotics
PEIRCE AND MORRIS
Peirce’s account of signs is embedded in the metaphysics of his categories […] and in the metaphysics of his view of mind. These are not secure bases for a scientific
semiotics. But Peirce himself, in his rejection of the older Cartesian mentalism […] has at least indicated a possible direction of advance towards a more adequate
account of sign phenomena.
—Morris (1971: 340)
The present treatment [by Morris] follows Peirce’s emphasis upon behavior rather than his more mentalistic formulations.
—Morris (1971: 339)
Did Morris read Peirce? The question I am asking is not meant to be a criticism of Morris. It only implies that I take Peirce as my point of departure and will judge
Morris with reference to his fidelity to Peirce, if he read Peirce.
Morris’s tripartition: syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics, is undeniably Peircean. The separations between these three classes are not. Pragmatics is continuistic.
PEIRCE’S PRAGMATICS
According to Peirce, the three relations of any sign to its possible object are respectively iconic, indexical, and symbolic. We shall first examine that which is apparently
the easiest to understand: the index, of which the index finger of the hand is the type:
The index asserts nothing; it only says “There!” It takes hold of our eyes, as it were, and forcibly directs them to a particular object, and there it stops.
Demonstrative and relative pronouns are nearly pure indices, because they denote
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things without describing them; so are the letters on a geometrical diagram, and the subscript numbers which in algebra distinguish one value from another
without saying what those values are. (3.361)
Indices need symbols to say something, although symbols which are generals, are in themselves empty:
Without [symbols] there would be no generality in the statements, for they are the only general signs; and generality is essential to reasoning. […] But
[symbols] alone do not state what is the subject of discourse; and this can, in fact, not be described in general terms; it can only be indicated. The actual
world cannot be distinguished from a world of imagination by any description. Whence the need of pronouns and indices, and the more complicated the
subject the greater need of them. (3.363)
Although logicians are content with these two relations to the object, Peirce goes further in his analysis, showing that by themselves these two relations are insufficient
for reasoning. In order to reason, we need a third type of relation, which appears in the form of logical diagrams and sensorial images (mostly visual). These diagrams
and images Peirce calls icons:
With these two kinds of signs alone (symbols and indices) any proposition can be expressed; but it cannot be reasoned upon, for reasoning consists in the
observation that where certain relations subsist certain others are found, and it accordingly requires the exhibition of the relations reasoned within an icon.
(3.363)
MORRIS’S PRAGMATICS
Morris’s paradigm of knowledge and experience is, according to him, reductionist: the only knowable and experienceable objects are spatiotemporal. Morris states
his position explicitly: the semiotics developed in Signs, Language and Behavior (Morris 1971: 75–398) does not take Peirce as its point of departure. It is based on
the quite behavioristic theories of George H. Mead (1863–1931). (I have not found one single reference to Peirce in the complete works of Mead.) Later, says Morris,
he studied more seriously “Peirce, Ogden and Richards, Russell and Carnap, and still later, Tolman and Hull” (Morris 1971:445). Tolman and Hull are behaviorists;
Russell and Carnap can be classified as logical empiricists with an atomistic tendency. Peirce, Ogden, and Richards remain.
Morris was convinced that he was faithful to Peirce. When Dewey accused him of misrepresenting Peirce’s thought, in particular by substituting the interpreter for the
interpretant, Morris obstinately insisted that he was faithful to Peirce—quoting, notably, 5.470–493, in which Peirce discusses the logical interpretant. In actual fact,
Morris’s reading of Peirce is behavioristic.
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MORRIS’S SEMIOTICS
Semiosis
[Semiosis] is a fiveterm relation: v, w, x, y, z, in which v sets up in w the disposition to react in a certain kind of x, to a certain kind of object y (not then
acting as a stimulus) under certain conditions z:
v = signs
w = interpreters
x = interpretants (not necessarily with a “subjective” connotation)
y = meanings
z = contexts (401–402)
Morris recognizes that this formulation is behavioristic and valid for all organisms—the case of the human organism is particular only by the fact of its capacity for
awareness of its semiotic behavior (401–402).
Sign
The two definitions of the sign given by Morris in Signs, Language and Behavior are behavioristic:
1. “If something, A, controls behavior towards a goal in a way similar to (but not necessarily identical with) the way something else, B, would control behavior with
respect to that goal in a situation in which it were observed, then A is a sign’’ (84).
2. “If anything, A, is a preparatorystimulus which in the absence of stimulusobjects initiating responsesequences of a certain behaviorfamily causes a disposition
in some organism to respond under certain conditions by responsesequences of this behaviorfamily, then A is a sign” (87).
Presence or absence of “dynamical” objects? The paradigm of knowledge is, for Morris as for Mead, “presentationistic.” Knowledge can only be direct, knowledge by
signs is a substitute: “If we present a distant planet, its matter is presented as we would actually sense it if we could place our hands upon it” (Mead: 20).
Signification
Preliminary Remarks: “Signification” and “Meaning”
“Signification” by Morris is not used in the ordinary sense of the term. English has the privilege of possessing at least two terms: “signification” and “meaning.” What we
could say in French to explain what signification means is that it is not synonymous with sens. The question of “sense” has nothing to do with semiotics, neither in
Morris nor in Peirce. Signification is, for Morris, the significatum, i.e., “The conditions such that whatever meets these conditions is a denotatum of a given sign” (366).
This is not expressible in Peircean terms, for what is “signified”
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by the sign is the interpretant which refers the sign or representamen to an object.
Signification
In discussing the problem of signification, Morris apparently adopts a triadic point of view which could be Peircean, but is in fact inspired by Mead and his analysis of
an act. According to Mead, the analysis enables one to distinguish four levels of the act: that of the impulse, that of perception, that of manipulation, and that of
consummation.
Morris summarizes Mead as follows:
[…] if an impulse (as a disposition to a certain kind of action) is given, the resulting action has three phases: the perceptual, the manipulatory, and the
consummatory. The organism must perceive the relevant features of the environment in which it is to act; it must behave toward these objects in a way
relevant to the satisfaction of its impulse; and if all goes well, it then attains the phase of activity which is the consummation of the act. (403–404)
In consequence, Morris goes on, if signs are treated behaviorally (which is apparently what he intends to do), their significations are related to these three aspects of
action and so exhibit tridimensionality. A sign is:
1. designative insofar as it signifies observable properties of the environment or of the actor;
2. appraisive insofar as it signifies the consummatory properties of some object or situation;
3. prescriptive insofar as it signifies how the object or situation is to be reacted to so as to satisfy the governing impulse.
It will be noticed that all this is a matter only of the actionobject relation. Morris points out that “Mead also speaks of the distance properties of the object, its
manipulatory properties, and its consummatory properties” (404). As regards the “formal signs” (logical, grammatical, or structural signs: “or,” parentheses, adverbial
endings such as “ly,” which Morris had called “formators’’), they constitute the fourth dimension of signification: the “formative signification,” the other dimensions
being the designative, appraisive, and prescriptive significations. Morris wonders how to integrate this fourth dimension in a tridimensional semiotics: by making “formal
signs” a particular class of lexical signs, like metalinguistic signs, for instance? The question would not have to be asked if his semiotics was really threedimensional, in
other words, if there were a place for the legisign (410–411).
Interpretant
The interpretant is not a sign for Morris. It is a disposition to react in a certain way because of a sign. There are three sorts of interpretants, as there are three
dimensions of signification: (1) To the designative dimension corresponds a disposition
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to react to the object designated as if it had certain observable properties; (2) To the appraisive dimension corresponds a disposition to act toward a designated object
as if it had properties enabling to satisfy or not satisfy the impulse; (3) To the prescriptive dimension corresponds a disposition to act in a certain way with regard to
the designated object. This tridimensionality of the interpretant has nothing triadic about it either. It is difficult to see how these three sorts of interpretants could be
made to correspond with the immediate, dynamic, and final interpretants, even if one called them affective, energetic, and logical, which is not the case with Morris. (It
should be remembered that the trilogy of the three interpretants: affective, energetic, and logical is not hierarchized. In other words it is not an ordered series.) In fact,
Morris expressly rejects triadicity. “Peirce,” he says, “always connects processes of mediation, signprocesses, and mental processes. This means that he would not
accept any behavioral psychology which attempted to reduce behavior to twoterm relations between stimuli and responses” (337). Some behaviorists, he remarks
further on, have tried to introduce a third factor, “a ‘reinforcing’ state of affairs in which a need of the animal is reduced or satisfied” (338).
Even if the process is triadic in this case, this addition cannot satisfy either Peirce or the behaviorist. The behaviorist cannot accept the idea that the conditioned stimulus
is a sign—and still less so, in that there are other processes of mediation than conditioning, for instance, the eye or the retinal image. Hence, says Morris, it is preferable
to restrict signprocesses “to those in which the factor of mediation is an interpretant’’ (338).
Peirce would certainly not be content with “reinforcement” as the third term of semiosis, nor with Morris’s interpretant. For Morris, the interpretant cannot be a sign:
1. because if it were, one would constantly encounter the empirical question of whether signs always generate new signs;
2. because if it were, a circularity would be introduced in the (theoretical) definition of the sign;
3. because by emphasizing behavior rather than thought, one “avoids the extension of signprocesses to inorganic nature” and this “does not require that all behavior
involves sign phenomena” (339).
Morris’s semiotics is thus in reality a distortion of that of Peirce. The final logical interpretant is admittedly a habit for Peirce, but it is not a disposition of the
interpreter. Morris defines “disposition” as “[t]he state of an organism at a given time such that under certain additional conditions a given response takes
place” (361)—the interpreter being “an organism for which something is a sign” and the interpretant “the disposition in an interpreter to respond, because of a sign,
by responsesequences of some behaviorfamily” (363).
For Peirce, habit is a rule of action: it is logical (it is not without reason that he calls it “logical interpretant”). Habit is third and because it is third it presupposes an
existing second: “the sheriff’s arm,” as he says, without which the law could not be. Dewey insists on this point in his critique of Morris, which concerns
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“linguistic signs.” Linguistic signs, says Dewey, which constitute thought and belong to thirdness, do not refer, by themselves, to things. This reference to things is the
affair of “indexical signs” which pertain to secondness. Dewey quotes Peirce as follows:
We are constantly bumping up against hard fact. […] There can be no resistance without effort; there can be no effort without resistance. They are only
two ways of describing the same experience. It is a double consciousness. […] as the consciousness itself is twosided, so it also has two varieties;
namely, action, where our modification of other things is more prominent than their reaction on us, and perception, where their effect on us is
overwhelmingly greater than our effect on them. And this notion of being such as other things make us, is such a prominent part of our life that we conceive
other things also to exist by virtue of their reactions against each other. The idea of other, of not, becomes a very pivot of thought. To this element we give
the name of Secondness. (1.324)
Consequently, the interpretant is a sign, and as such, triadic: third (final or logical), second (dynamic or energetic), first (immediate or affective). As such, the sign does
not require a faculty of thought. Thinking is a system of signs (thirdness) which action (secondness) binds to things, not, however, in themselves, but experienced
qualitatively in the unity of a global situation (firstness).
Morris takes as reference a Peirce divested of his mentalism. By doing so, he divests him of his semiotics. What Morris did not see is that Peirce’s theory, although
biological and social, is not psychological, but logical and, if the term be allowed, ‘‘cosmic,” as Dewey rightly remarks: “The organism is an integrated part of the world
in which habits form and operate” (Dewey 1946: 94).
I shall conclude with a text by Peirce which I have already quoted in another context (ch. 3) and that Dewey quotes in his paper of 1946, in which the notion of
interpreter as an individual separated from society and the cosmos is authoritatively rejected:
When we come to study the great principle of continuity and see how all is fluid and every point partakes the being of every other, it will appear that
individualism and falsity are one and the same. Meantime, we know that man is not whole as long as he is single, that he is essentially a possible member of
society. Especially, one man’s experience is nothing if it stands alone. […] It is not “my” experience, but “our” experience that has to be thought of, and
this “us” has indefinite possibilities. (5.402 n. 2, in Dewey 1946: 94)
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11
Semeiotic and Linguistics
PEIRCE AND JAKOBSON
[Charles Sanders Peirce] est l’un des plus grands précurseurs de l’analyse structurale en linguistique. Peirce n’a pas seulement établi la nécessité de la sémiotique, il en
a aussi esquissé les grandes lignes. Le jour où on se décidera à étudier soigneusement les idées de Peirce sur la théorie des signes, des signes linguistiques en particulier,
on se rendra compte du précieux secours qu’elles apportent aux recherches sur les relations entre le langage et les autres systèmes de signes.
—Jakobson (1963: 27–28)
Philosophers are still divided concerning the importance of Peirce’s philosophy. Nevertheless, if Peirce is accepted today everywhere, and especially in France, it is
thanks to the linguists who followed Jakobson’s misreading of Peirce. The crossreading I propose here is not intended as a criticism of Jakobson, but as a kind of
clarification of Peirce. The fact that I worked on the French text of Jakobson does not affect the argument.*
We shall deal respectively with Jakobson’s reading of Peirce and with a possible Peircean reading of Jakobson.
JAKOBSON’S READING OF PEIRCE
In the fifties, Roman Jakobson discovered Peirce and wrote that Peirce was one of the greatest forerunners of structural analysis in linguistics. He said that Peirce had
not only proved the necessity of semiotics, but stated the outlines of its theory. And he predicted that, when Peirce’s ideas on the theory of signs, and of linguistic signs
in particular, were thoroughly studied, the researches on the relations between language and the other systems of signs would be far easier.
* The Jakobsonian material I used is: Roman Jakobson, Essais de linguistique générale (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1963); Roman Jakobson, “A la recherche de
l’essence du langage” in Problèmes du langage (Paris: Gallimard, 1966); “Roman Jakobson,” L’Arc, special issue n° 60 (1975). The translations from the French
otherwise mentioned are mine.
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From his reading of Peirce, Jakobson concluded (1) that the sign is divided into icons, indices, and symbols, and (2) that this division is “relative” in the ordinary sense
of the word. In every sign there is a ratio of icon (resemblance), index (contiguity), and symbol (conventional rule)—‘‘merely a difference in relative hierarchy within
individual signs, since in each case one of these factors predominates over the others” (Jakobson 1966: 26–27).
Unfortunately, the definition of the sign and the conception of the “hierarchy” are wrong: there are three trichotomies and not one (i.e., nine relational aspects of a sign
and not three), and the hierarchy is not relative, but ordered.
The Conception of the Sign
The fact that Jakobson says that the “totality of signs” is divided into “icons, indices and symbols” (Jakobson 1966: 26) is a genuine misreading. According to Peirce,
the division between “icons, indices and symbols” refers only to the sign in relation with its immediate object. It is true, however, that Peirce is not always very clear and
that the following way of speaking is misleading:
Thus we may show the relation between the different kinds of signs by a brace, thus:
The misreading is aggravated when Jakobson introduces Peirce’s icons, indices, and symbols between Saussure’s signifier and signified.
It is not the absolute presence or absence of resemblance or contiguity between the signifier and the signified, nor the fact that the usual connection
between these constituents would be of the order of the purely factual or the purely institutional, which is at the basis of the division of the totality of signs
into icons, indices and symbols, but only the predominance of one of these factors over the others. (Jakobson 1966: 26)
Jakobson is here trying to explain Peirce in Saussurean terms, for example, the use of “signifier” and “signified,” without mentioning the “interpretant.” Is the signifier
Peirce’s representamen? Although Jakobson is right concerning the fact that the icon is related to similarity together with the emotional aspect of sign and that the index
is related to contiguity together with the action or pragmatic aspect of sign, he does not mention the third relation with the object: the symbol, which is related in the
same way to continuity together with the inferential aspect of sign.
We will later encounter the same problem with Umberto Eco’s reading of Peirce:
I am thus asserting that the relationship between signifiant and signifié (or between signvehicle and significatum, or between sign and meaning) is
autonomous
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in itself and does not require the presence of the referred object as an element of its definition. (Eco 1979: 179)
Although it is a fact that, for Peirce, the “referred object” does not enter in the definition of the sign, the reference to Saussure and Morris is confusing for all concerned.
Jakobson’s “Relative Hierarchy” versus
Peirce’s Ordinal Hierarchy of the Classes of Signs
Why should we speak in a given case of an icon rather than of an index or a symbol? asks Jakobson. It is simply because of “the predominance of one of these factors
over the others” (Jakobson 1965: 26), “the most perfect of signs’’ being, according to Peirce, those signs “in which the iconic, indicative, and symbolic characters are
blended as equally as possible” (4.448).
Two remarks must be made here: On one hand, Jakobson is not speaking from a semiotic point of view, but from a literary or poetical point of view, and using
Peircean terms in a loose way. It is understandable, for instance, that in a given sentence the iconic aspect may appear to “predominate” or actually does predominate
from the point of view of the literary analysis of a poem. But in a semiotic analysis of the Peircean type, it cannot be said that the icon “predominates” over the two
other aspects of the sign. On the other hand, “equally” in Peirce’s quotation does not mean what Jakobson thinks it means. It means: “in equal proportions” if and only
if the hierarchical order of each of the three aspects of the sign is respected, as Peirce shows immediately afterwards in the same paragraph: “Of this sort of signs the
line of identity is an interesting example” (4.448).
“As a conventional sign, it is a symbol; and the symbolic character, when present in a sign, is of its nature predominant over the others” (4.448). The symbol (because
of its triadic nature) is hierarchically “predominant” over the index (which is dyadic) and over the icon (which is monadic).
Let us consider the graph of identity between two portions, such as
—is identical with—
[A]s a symbol, [the graph] is of the nature of a law, and is therefore general, while here there must be an identification of individuals. This identification is
effected not by the pure symbol, but by its replica which is a thing. The termination of one portion and the beginning of the next portion denote the same
individual by virtue of a factual connexion, and that the closest possible; for both are points, and they are one and the same point. In this respect,
therefore, the line of identity is of the nature of an index. To be sure, this does not affect the ordinary parts of a line of identity, but so soon as it is even
conceived, [it is conceived] as composed of two portions, and it is only the factual junction of the replicas of these portions that makes them refer to the
same individual. The line of identity is, moreover, in the highest degree iconic. For it appears as nothing but a continuum of dots, and the fact of the identity
of a thing, seen under
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two aspects, consists merely in the continuity of being in passing from one apparition to another. Thus uniting, as the line of identity does, the natures of
symbol, index, and icon, it is fitted for playing an extraordinary part in this system of representation. (4.448)
In other words, hierarchically speaking, an icon by itself cannot act, and consequently be an index, for an index by itself implies an icon, but in itself it has no meaning
whatever; it is what it is by sheer chance. That is why a mental sign must be triadic: a symbol, which necessarily includes an index and an icon. One can think of an
index, but, if the index is genuine, it cannot be, in any way conceivable, symbolic. The same thing may be said of the icon of a genuine First. It is a sheer possible
relation of a possibility.
It is extremely difficult to maintain the delicate balance between the dualistic meanings of the semiological concepts of Saussure and the pragmatic and triadic meanings
of the new protocols of Peirce: the protocol of hierarchy and the protocol of degeneracy.
And also the delicate balance between the protocols themselves. The fact that the combination of the two protocols has been made only shows that it would have been
better not to do it, although the following passage might seem to imply Peirce’s approval of the process:
A genuine symbol is a symbol that has a general meaning. There are two kinds of degenerate symbols, the Singular Symbol whose Object is an existent
individual, and which signifies only such characters as that individual may realize; and the Abstract Symbol, whose only object is a Character. (2.293)
Of course, the existent individual is not, properly speaking, an index, nor the character an icon.
Let us remember that the protocol of degeneracy is mathematical and the protocol of the hierarchy of categories is phenomenological or phaneroscopical.
1 2 3
Firstness Genuine
Representamen Qualisign/Tone
Secondness Degenerate Genuine

first degree
Object Icon Index
Thirdness Degenerate Degenerate Genuine

(first degree) (second degree)
Interpretant Rhema Dicisign Argument
Table 11.1. Protocol of degeneracy
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The Protocol of the hierarchy of the three categories has nothing to do with the Protocol of degeneracy. It rests on the value of a “phaneron,” whether triadic, dyadic,
or monadic.
It is only when one tries to combine the two sets of concepts of the two protocols—which are, properly speaking, uncombinable—that ideas of the following kind can
be entertained, such as “the degenerate sign is a deterioration of the triadic relation”; “hypoicons are the degenerate forms of icon”; “symbol has two degrees of
degeneracy: icon (first degree), index (second degree).” None of these propositions is true.
1. A degenerate sign is not a deterioration of the triadic relation. It is a subdivision of a general relation, such as the definition of a triangle as a figure with three
sides, which is a “genuine’’ triangle, and the isosceles triangle which is a “degenerate” case of the triangle as defined. The proper definition of “degeneracy” is
“the condition of a lower stage or type of being obtained by more specification.”
2. It is impossible to say that “icon and index are degenerate aspects of the symbol,” because the idea of “degenerate” is opposed to the idea of “genuine,” and the
only genuine categories are First, Second, and Third.
In this context, as we have three genuine categories: Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness, which are respectively constituted by one, two, and three “indecomposable”
elements, Firstness has no degenerate case: Firstness is pure feeling (feeling before it is felt: life provides innumerable cases which you and I have experienced but which
cannot be expressed); Secondness with its two elements is genuine as an Index which is Second of a Second, but degenerate as First, as an icon; Thirdness with its
three elements is genuine as Third (Third of a Third), for instance the “structures” corresponding to the ideas of implication, law, generality, continuity, but degenerate in
the second degree as a case of a structure in action, such as a given “process,” hic et nunc, and also degenerate in the second degree as “Tertiality” or “Mentality,”
such as “the way something [a process, in the present case] is thought or represented” (1.534).
Here we should explain why one can think that there are “degenerate” cases of icon, although there are not. Peirce speaks of “hypoicons,” which are respectively as a
First an image, as a Second a diagram, and as a Third a metaphor. But this division is not what Peirce calls a “prescission,” because it is not “ordered.” Hypoicons are
divided in the same manner as “discrimination” and “dissociation,” although the idea of the categories stays the same: the idea of First is related to “feeling” (here
image), the idea of Second to “action” (here diagram: diagram as drawn, not just thought), the idea of Third as “metaphor,” i.e., as “mediation.” What is important in
Peirce is that a metaphor is not of the nature of an abstract idea, but is really linked with its object as a First, and only thought of as Third as a hypoicon.
It is only out of context and metaphorically that one could say with Peirce that
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A genuine symbol is a symbol that has a general meaning. There are two kinds of degenerate symbols, the Singular Symbol whose Object is an existent
individual, and which signifies only such characters as that individual may realize; and the Abstract Symbol, whose only object is a Character. (2.293)
A PEIRCEAN READING OF JAKOBSON
As everybody knows, Jakobson’s diagram of communication is the following:
Context
Sender Message Receiver
Contact
Code
(Jakobson 1963: 214)
Jakobson’s diagram can be translated into a Peircean graph without altering Jakobson’s theses on linguistics and poetics. The Message is related by the Sender to an
Object with which the Message has some contact. The Message reaches a Receiver who is in a context which may be different from that of the Sender. Accordingly,
the code of the Sender and the Receiver being different, the Receiver may give the signrepresentamen of the Sender a different immediate Object or meaning from that
of the Sender, as shown in the following Peircean graph:
in which the dynamic object (Od) is the reverse of the object (O) and the immediate object (Oi), the obverse of the object (O); the interpreter is the meeting
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point of all the interpretants, either signrepresentamens or habits in a signprocess or semiosis. The Receiver or interpreter is the τ ο π ο of a Peircean semiosis

(Representamen Interpretant Object), in a situation or context which is both psychophysiological (Contact), social (Code), and singular (Context of a subject
interpreting).
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12
Semeiotic and Communication:
Peirce and McLuhan
MEDIA BETWEEN BALNIBARBI AND PLATO’S CAVE
Objects are unobservable, only relationships among objects are observable.
—McLuhan (in Stearn 1968: 301)
The sign can only represent the Object and tell about it. It cannot furnish acquaintance with or recognition of that Object.
—Peirce (2.231)
In Swift’s journey to Balnibarbi, communication is by “things,” not by “signs,” because “signs’’ are “things.” In Plato’s Cave, behind the wall, statues are carried by
people whom we do not see nor know. Are they slaves and, in consequence, not human beings? We do not know. What we do know is that we only see images of the
statues. Which are the media? The statues or the images? Can we safely say: Images are the media? If we do, what is the nature of a statue? As the answer is outside
the Cave, we have to turn away and get out. To find what? Mathematics and, further on, Ideas? What part can they play in helping us to answer the question of the
nature of the media? That is the problem we shall try to solve with the help of the doorkeeper of the Cave: Charles S. Peirce.
I shall examine firstly the media in general, secondly Marshall McLuhan’s media, thirdly I shall try to locate McLuhan’s “Global Village.” Where can we find it? In
Balnibarbi or in Plato’s Cave?
THE MEDIA
The literature on the media is nowadays considerable. Does it answer the semiotic question of the nature of the media? It is the question we want to examine. A small
section of the literature—however great it is—is purely technological
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and does not give us any direct clue to the question raised. Another section of it—probably the biggest and the only one which attracts the attention of the public—
deals with the general problem of the influence (good or bad) of the media. Although more sociological than philosophical, the writings in this section cannot avoid
touching the semiotic nature of the media, but most of the time they do it in a very simple and naïve way.
Negatively, the question of the influence of the media has driven most of the commentators in the sixties to the conclusion that, like the tongue of Esop, the media are
neither good nor bad. One of them, a French scholar, Francis Balle, gives us the reason why it is so and raises at the same time the very semiotic question which we, as
semioticians, are raising:
Socalled masscommunication is still interpreted in mechanistic terms, as a simple and direct relation between transmitters and receivers of messages,
according to the behavioristic schema stimulusresponse or, if one prefers, according to the univocal relation causeeffect. As if, in the present state of
knowledge, it were possible to give so summarily a definite explanation concerning the relations instituted by the media. (Balle 1983: 290–291)
MARSHALL MCLUHAN
That the media are most of the time dealt with in mechanistic terms is exemplified by the writings of their Godfather: Marshall McLuhan. Although McLuhan’s
propositions are very rarely convincingly supported, McLuhan was convincing enough to make of the media a new major scientific subject matter. Everybody knows
the main books of McLuhan: The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man (1951), The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (1962),
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964), The Medium is the Massage: an Inventory of Effects (1967), and War and Peace in the Global Village
(1968). The main propositions of McLuhan are listed below.
The Media Are the Extensions of Man
McLuhan’s theory is, properly speaking, a “technological determinism.” Media are the technological extensions of man, i.e., everything which can extend man’s (or
woman’s) information, action, and power, be it a suit, a car, a newspaper, a radio, or a TV program.
In The Gutenberg Galaxy, McLuhan tells the story of Western civilization in terms of the invention of printing. It is, according to him, the movable types which have
made nationalism possible, because the mass production of linear types imposes uniformity and continuity, while handwritten messages encourage distinction or division
and individualism. Because each Christian could afford to have his own printed copy, the Bible could be read in isolation and “individual revelation” became possible,
and therefore Protestantism. Even music was affected by the invention of printing: while Gregorian music required repetition,
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the printed types rendered possible the linear development and so the symphony.
In short, typography was not only a technological invention, it was a product of technology. It was in itself a natural wealth, just like cotton, wood, or radio; and like
any product, it shaped not only the intersensorial relations of the individuals, but also the collective models of interdependence.
In Understanding Media, McLuhan passes from the Gutenberg revolution to the electronic revolution with the new technologies of communication: radio, television,
telephone, computers, which are similarly reshaping the civilization of the twentyfirst century. Even reading is affected. We do not read any longer as before: “People
don’t actually read newspapers. They get into them every morning like a hot bath” (McLuhan 1964).
The Medium Is the Message
McLuhan’s thesis is ‘‘societies have been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication.” Hence the
famous slogan “The Medium is the message” which is the title of the first chapter of Understanding Media. “The Medium is the message” means three things:
1. Each medium creates its own public, a public which is more interested in the medium as such than in the medium as a vehicle of information. Television has a
public of what we might call “voyeurs,” who look at it for the pleasure of looking, just as there were and—fortunately—still are readers who read for the
pleasure of reading and people who talk for the pleasure of talking. New technologies have done no more than afford new instrumentalities: instead of reading for
oneself, one can listen to a book read by somebody else on cassettes or compact discs, and instead of talking on the street corner, one can talk on the phone.
2. The message of the medium includes everything that the medium has made possible: “The message of the movie medium is that of transition from linear
connections to configuration” (McLuhan 1964: 20).
3. The medium itself determines its own content. But all media do not possess the same power of communication. One medium is more suited than another to
express an experience. Thus football matches come over better on television than on the radio.
The Media as “Sensory Ratios” or Qualities
While the previous revolution—the Gutenberg revolution—was essentially a social revolution, the new electronic revolution is a human revolution, both “universal” or
rather “global” and “individual” or rather “private.” The “sensory ratios” have changed. We are passing from the instrumentalities of communication to the qualities of
what is communicated, although McLuhan still thinks that the content is far less important than the medium of communication. The traditional media appealed essentially
to the separate senses: books and paintings to sight,
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music to hearing. The new media call simultaneously upon all the senses including that of touch which “consists of a meeting of the senses.”
Each medium seems to possess a hidden mechanism of appreciation. McLuhan divides these mechanisms into two classes which he uses to distinguish between people
as well as things, or, more technically, between mediareceivers and mediasenders. These two classes are “hot” media and “cool” media. They are described in the
second chapter of Understanding Media, “Media Hot and Cold.” A “hot’’ medium has a “high definition,” which means that it has a highly individualized character as
well as a rich content. A “cool” medium is poor in quality and quantity. This distinction is reminiscent of John Stuart Mill’s empiristic distinction between “connotation”
and “denotation,” except that the rule of inverse proportionality does not apply. Let us note something that will be referred to again later, that this distinction has no
sense if one does not take into account both sender and receiver. Because a “cool” medium has a “poor” sender, it requires a “rich” receiver. For instance, “a cartoon
is low in information, simply because very little information is provided” (McLuhan 1964: 31) and accordingly more outside participation is required. On the contrary,
“any ‘hot’ medium allows less participating than a cool one, as a lecture makes for less participation than a seminar, and a book for less than a dialogue” (McLuhan
1964: 32). Print and radio, photography and paintings are, according to McLuhan, “hot” media. But television is a “cool” medium.
The participation in a “cool” medium, although necessary, is variable, because the receivers may be either “cool” or “hot.” Take two “cool” media: a cartoon and a TV
serial. The first one requires a “hot” reader, while the second one is at its best with a “cool” viewer.
In short, Marshall McLuhan was the prophet of a new age, that of the Global Village. If the new technologies have not kept the promises that McLuhan made in their
names, it is not the fault of the new technologies of communication in themselves, but of the erroneous conception that people, and not least McLuhan, have of their
capacities.
WHERE CAN WE LOCATE THE TERRITORY
OF THE “GLOBAL VILLAGE”?
IN BALNIBARBI OR IN PLATO’S CAVE?
Balnibarbi would not be a bad place, if we follow Jonathan Swift’s description (Swift 1939: 229–231), without forgetting that, in the mind of Swift, it was a critical
parody of philosophy at its worst. Here we have a territory from which Gutenberg was banished, for the scientists had “a scheme for entirely abolishing all words
whatsoever.” It is the very project of McLuhan, only refined to avoid the difficulty of the Balnibarbi system. In the latter, “an expedient was […] offered, that since
words are only names for things, it would be more convenient for all men to carry about them such things as were necessary to express the particular business they are
to discourse on” (Swift 1939: 229). To avoid the burden of carrying things, McLuhan has proposed to use the new technologies to do the job:
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the new media reach the things and bring them as images to any debating community. With the new media, in the “Global Village” which they have created, everything is
at hand instantaneously.
Another great advantage proposed by this invention, adds Swift—an advantage which is even greater in McLuhan’s system—is “that it would serve as an universal
language to be understood in all civilised nations whose goods and utensils are generally of the same kind, or nearly resembling, so that their uses might easily be
comprehended” (Swift 1939: 231).
Of course, the new system is more mechanistic and no less nominalistic, because things have been replaced by their images, more so because nobody knows if an
image is the image of the thing people mean.
Are we better off with Plato’s Cave? Plato describes it in The Republic, as follows:
Picture men in an underground cavedwelling, with a long entrance reaching up towards the light along the whole width of the cave; in this they lie from
their childhood, their legs and necks in chains, so that they stay where they are and look only in front of them, as the chain prevents their turning their
heads round. Some way off, and higher up, a fire is burning behind them, and between the fire and the prisoners is a road on higher ground. Imagine a wall
built along this road, like the screen which showmen have in front of the audience, over which they show the puppets.
Then picture also men carrying along this wall all kinds of articles which overtop it, statues of men and other creatures in stone and wood and other
materials; naturally some of the carriers are speaking, others are silent. (Plato 1942: 207–210)
Of course, what they do see is only the shadows “of themselves or of each other’’ and of the “things carried along the wall,” thrown by the fire on the wall of the cave
opposite to them, but “they would suppose what they [see] to be the real things” and that the voices they hear, which are mere echoes from the opposite wall, do come
from “the shadows passing before them.” And “the only truth that such men would conceive would be the shadows of those manufactured articles” and of themselves
and their coprisoners.
In short, Plato’s Cave, although far less comfortable than Balnibarbi’s debating societies, has a place not only for things, but also for “sense data,” with a way of feeling
the latter (sensation: α σ θ η σ) and believing the former (belief: π
ι ί σ τ ι or opinion which is a habit of thinking in a certain way: δόξα). The three elements being

respectively in Peirce’s semeiotic: Firstness (sense data), Secondness (things as object or subject matter of belief), and Thirdness (belief). McLuhan would agree,
except that he is concerned neither with the “content” nor with any kind of epistemological problems.
Plato does not stop there:
Let us suppose one of them released, and forced suddenly to stand up and turn his head, and walk and look towards the light. […] I fancy that he would
need
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time before he could see things in the world above. At first he would most easily see shadows, then the reflections in water of men and everything else,
and, finally, the things themselves. (Plato 1942: 208)
Plato is not satisfied with the things of the Cave and the media thanks to which they are known. He wants his prisoner to experience the world outside the Cave, not
through sense data and belief or habit, but through discursive knowledge ( π ι σ τ ή μ) and contemplation or Pure Thought (νο&unk;
η ). Discursive knowledge whose
object is mathematics is a necessary step towards the apprehension of the supreme Object: Pure Ideas.
Of course, McLuhan has nothing to do with the World Above. The ascent toward the World Above was too arduous for him and mathematics was of no help. He was
content with metaphorical definitions such as “The spoken word: Flower of evil,” “The written word: An eye for an ear,” “The printed word: Architect of nationalism,”
‘‘Photograph: The brothelwithoutwalls.” Peirce, on the contrary, had the courage to get out of the Cave and painfully, step by step, to master mathematics and see
the Sun.
However, Peirce was braver than Plato, and was courageous enough to go back to the Cave and liberate his fellowprisoners, not by helping them to escape, but by
introducing into the Cave the freedom of reasoning and of analyzing Being into the categories of the Cave: Possibility (Firstness) of Being “herenowmine” (Jean Wahl)
(Secondness), according to Conditional, i.e., contextuality of the Cave, laws (of inference) (Thirdness). Plato seems to describe Peirce’s venture in the following
passage of The Republic:
[…] suppose that he had again to take part with the prisoners there in the old contest of distinguishing between the shadows, while his sight was confused
and before his eyes had got steady (and it might take them quite a considerable time to get used to the darkness), would not men laugh at him, and say
that having gone up above he had come back with his sight ruined, so that it was not worthwhile even to try to go up? And do you not think that they
would kill him who tried to release them and bear them up, if they could lay hands on him, and slay him? (Plato 1942: 209–210)
They tried and did not succeed. That is why we are here speaking of the “Semiotics of media.” Semiotics is the story of Plato back in the Cave. Would he have been
on speaking terms with McLuhan? Maybe. But he would have needed a “translator,” as McLuhan puts it in another metaphor: “Media as translators.” And, of course,
the translator would have been Charles S. Peirce.
But the dialogue would not have been easy because McLuhan, although considered “a scholarly nuisance and agitated protagonist” (Stearn 1968: 23), was actually
quite mild and modest. To any objection, he would answer:
I am an investigator. I make probes. I have no point of view. […] The explorer is totally inconsistent. He never knows at what moment he will make some
startling
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discovery. And consistency is a meaningless term to apply to an explorer. If he wanted to be consistent, he would stay home. (Stearn 1968: 23)
Peirce, on the contrary, as a logician explorer, although also “a scholarly nuisance and agitated protagonist,” is consistent. Would he have conceded that McLuhan’s
theories on the media are worth being semiotically examined? We are not sure, but, when we are back in the Cave, a few things can be said:
1. McLuhan’s method is pragmatic. McLuhan can be considered an American pragmatist, be it only of the James tribe, since McLuhan is concerned with media as
man’s tools in a given context. His method is experimental and like James’s more physiological, in the sense of Claude Bernard, than philosophical, in the sense of
Charles S. Peirce.
On the contrary, experience implies, according to the same physiologists, the idea of a variation or of a disturbance intentionally introduced by the
investigator in the conditions of the natural phenomena. […] For that purpose, an organ of the living body is suppressed by section or ablation and,
according to the disturbance produced in the entire organism or in a special function one can know the use of the suppressed organ. (Bernard 1965: 62–
63)
McLuhan states his profession de foi in an interview in the following way:
Literally, Understanding Media is a kit of tools for analysis and perception. It is to begin an operation of discovery. It is not the completed work of
discovery. It is intended for practical use. […] A structural approach to a medium means studying its total operation, the milieu that it creates—the
environment that the telephone or radio or movies or the motor car created. One would learn very little about the motor car by looking at it simply as a
vehicle that carried people hither and thither. Without understanding the city changes, suburban creations, service changes—the environment it created—
one would learn very little about the motor car. The car then has never really been studied structurally, as a form. (Stearn 1968: 316)
2. The medium as representamen. In the last quotation, two words have to be underlined: “perception” and ‘‘structural.” Peirce would have agreed with McLuhan.
Semiotically, the percept is what Peirce calls a “representamen.” The representamen has, categorically organized, three ways of being:
1° the act of representing a (mediate) object of the mind; 2° the representation, or, to speak more properly, representamen, itself as an (immediate or
vicarious) object exhibited to the mind; 3° the act by which the mind is conscious immediately of the representative object, and, through it, mediately of the
remote object represented. (Hamilton 1863: 877)
This was not written by Peirce, but by William Hamilton from whom Peirce borrowed the idea of “representamen,” together with the distinction between “immediate
object” and “dynamic object” (the mediately conscious remote object
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of Hamilton). The “representamen” became in Peirce’s theory of signs: Qualisign as First, Sinsign as Second, and Legisign as Third. The “legisign” is McLuhan’s
“structure.”
According to McLuhan—in Peircean terms—media are vehicles of sinsigns. Although media may have a short range like the sense of touch and a long range like vision,
especially when it is “extended” by television, the sinsign has the same logical nature or rather definition: it is a dyadic image which can only stand for an immediate
object.
An image is a sinsign which refers to an immediate object. It is an indecomposable dyad:
Table 12.1. Image as a dyad
In other words, it has neither legisign nor interpretant. It is a mere happening which obeys no rule whatsoever and cannot be interpreted as such. There is no difference
between the typographical world of Gutenberg and the world of the new media.
3. The medium as content. The representamens as sinsigns (or percepts, if one prefers) can only be interpreted, according to Peirce, within another semiosis, which by
definition, must be triadic. It is a sine qua non condition of the possibility for media to carry any meaning or structure.
Most of the time, McLuhan speaks as if the medium was the content. He does not make any difference between the legisign (or “structure,’’ which is the “type” of the
linguists) and the sinsign (or “individual instances” or “occurrences,” which is the “token” of the linguists).
Without denying the part played sociologically and psychologically by the media, the media cannot logically in any way be legisigns: ideas, thoughts, “designs or
patterns” (McLuhan 1964: 16), or whatever, as McLuhan thinks they can:
The electric light is pure information. It is a medium without a message, as it were, unless it is used to spell out some verbal ad or name. This fact,
characteristic of all media, means that the “content” of any medium is always another medium. The content of writing is speech, just as the written word is
the content of print, and print is the content of the telegraph. If it is asked “What is the content of speech?,” it is necessary to say, “It is an actual process
of thought, which is in itself nonverbal.” An abstract painting represents direct manifestation
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of creative thought processes as they might appear in computer designs. (McLuhan 1964: 15–16)
McLuhan is committing here the same typical mistake of the whole Western philosophical tradition: to think in terms of quantity as if by adding media to media,
extending the range of media or accelerating the pace of media, one could change the “pattern” conveyed by the media. Peirce himself worked on this line for a long
time and tried hard to help induction to do the job by refining the theory of probabilities, until he gave up induction for abduction—quantity for quality. The choice
between the two is not ad libitum. It is the duty of the semiotics of the media, to use abduction as a tool or method, instead of induction, for, as René Thom reminded
us, “the theory of probabilities is fundamentally an imposture” (Thom 1995: 14).
4. The media as interpretants, hot and cool. McLuhan seems to avoid part of the consequences of determinism with the concepts of ‘‘hot” and “cool” which are
obviously qualitative; more so than Peirce would admit, because they give the interpretant a psychological dimension and that Peirce is not ready to accept. According
to Peirce, the interpretant is logical. It cannot be expressed in terms of “feeling”; on the contrary, it must be expressed in terms of “rules.” The “interpretant” is formally
a “sign.” Just as the representamen is the sign of the sender, the interpretant is the sign of the receiver.
However, Peirce himself resorted to the concept of “interpretant” in another sense. When a semiosis is concluded, it either creates a new habit or reinforces or modifies
an old one. In this case, Peirce says that the interpretant is no longer a sign, but a “logical final interpretant,” which is another name for “habit,” not as routine, but as
incorporated and spontaneous rule.
Peirce would have agreed that this kind of interpretant could be “hot” or “cool,” provided those qualities were logically defined. In McLuhan’s theory, they depend on
the “whimsy” of the author. Which McLuhan recognized in an interview:
Perhaps I should have set up polarities on media rigid and frigid. It’s very difficult to have a structure of any sort without polarities, without tension. For
example, the triangle is the most economic way of securing an upright object. Without polarities […] there is no progression, no structure. […] I must
know how media are structured to discover what they are doing to me and my environment. Media, hot and cool are not classifications. They are
structural forms. (Stearn 1968: 332)
Contrary to Peirce, McLuhan is not concerned with “systems,” but with “systems development”: “‘Systems development’ is a structural analysis of pressures and
strains, the exact opposite of everything that has been meant by ‘systems’ in the past few centuries. […] It is concerned with the inner dynamics of the form” (Stearn
1968: 333). Is this not a good Peircean definition of the semiotics of the media?
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5. Media: The role of the individual versus the power of society. The last question I should like to ask concerns the misinterpretation of the interpretant for the
interpreter which the distinction between “hot” and “cool” is bound to convey.
In fact, McLuhan and Peirce are very close to one another here: they both propose a “community”: a “community of inquirers” in the case of Peirce, a ‘‘community of
users” in the case of McLuhan, to which McLuhan gives the name of “Global Village.” If there is a difference, it is a difference, not of range, but of place in the semiotic
process. Both of them recognize the part played by the individual in semiosis in spite of the predominance of the environment or milieu.
I shall conclude the present chapter by saying that, in spite of many technological discrepancies, Peirce has proposed the best theory of signs which can fit McLuhan’s
theory of the media, not only because they are both pragmatic, but because they both reconcile continuity and discontinuity: social uniformity and individual creativity.
To the objection that no genius could have a place in the new electronic age, McLuhan answers that, because the media are the extensions of man, they are ipso facto
the extensions of man’s will, although man “never intends the cultural consequences of any extension of himself” (Stearn 1968: 315).
To the objection that the mass media uniformity of the Global Village created by the new technologies kills man’s creativity, McLuhan answers that “there is more
diversity, less conformity under a single roof in any family than there is with the thousands of families in the same city. The more you create village conditions, the more
discontinuity and division and diversity” (Stearn 1968: 314), and, consequently, creativity.
Continuity and discontinuity are not incompatible for Peirce. They are two of Peirce’s cosmological categories: synechism, the category of continuity, and tychism, the
category of “happening” which is by definition “individual.” But no happening can take place out of context: no creativity without continuity (Peirce 1931: 5.402 n. 2).
The future of the semiotics of media is still “open.”
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13
Semeiotic and Epistemology
PEIRCE, FREGE, AND WITTGENSTEIN
All testing, all confirmation and disconfirmation of a hypothesis takes place already within a system. And this system is not a more or less arbitrary and doubtful point of
departure for all our arguments: no, it belongs to the essence of what we call an argument. The system is not so much the point of departure, as the element in which
arguments have their life.
—Wittgenstein (1969: §105)
By “epistemology,” we mean the critique of the principles of the logic of scientific research, be it the logic of science or formal logic. As we know, semiotics is another
name for logic, according to Peirce, a comprehensive, inferential logic, which is both experimental and formal.
This may seem original, but it is not. For the Greeks (see ch. 7), logic was already a theory of inference from signs, and it still is today, as well for Wittgenstein as for
Frege. The difference between the latter two and Peirce is that for Peirce logic is not only a theory of inference from signs, but an inference from signs through signs.
The theories of Frege and Wittgenstein are dyadic and dualistic; that of Peirce is triadic and dialectic.
I shall try to describe the basic axioms of Peircean epistemology, compare its concepts with those of Frege and Wittgenstein, and draw its methodological implications
in the context of the philosophy of science today.
FREGE, WITTGENSTEIN, PEIRCE
Frege, Wittgenstein, and Peirce are logicians and semioticians.
1. From the historical point of view, Frege can undoubtedly claim priority to Peirce. The first version of Frege’s propositional calculus dates back to 1879. Peirce’s first
systematic expositions of “the algebra of logic” were written in 1880 and 1885. Peirce’s work on the tables of truth (1902) is prior to Wittgenstein’s (1922).
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On Peirce’s side, three independent inventions must be noted: that of the quantifiers, that of the Shefferfunction (1880), named after its reinventor (1921), which
stipulates that all the Boolian operations can be reduced to the negation of the alternative disjunction “neither—, nor—”; and that of trivalent logic (1909), ten years
before Lukasievicz (Deledalle 1990: 59).
2. The pragmatistic tone of Wittgenstein’s work, from the Tractatus logicophilosophicus onward, is surprising. The question may be asked: did Wittgenstein know
Peirce’s work? In fact he did, but this does not mean that he read all that Peirce wrote; far from it. He came across two of the main ideas of Peirce. One was through
Frank P. Ramsey, cotranslator with Charles K. Ogden, of the Tractatus, the same Ogden who, with I. A. Richards, was to give a certain publicity to Peirce’s
semiotics in The Meaning of Meaning (1923). This theory is epistemological, properly speaking, and we shall come back to it later on. The other, which also seems to
have reached Wittgenstein through Ramsey, is pragmatic: a critique of Cartesian doubt and a definition of meaning by action. Peirce’s theory can be read in “The
Fixation of Belief’’ (1877) and “How to Make Our Ideas Clear” (1878). The definition of meaning by action can be read everywhere in Wittgenstein’s writings after
1933–1934, from the Blue and Brown Books to the Investigations, and the question of doubt is studied in great detail in On Certainty, which was the last book
Wittgenstein was to write (see ch. 8).
THE AXIOMS OF PEIRCE’S EPISTEMOLOGY
The basic theses of Peircean epistemology can be stated in the three following propositions:
1. A sign or representamen is a First which cannot furnish acquaintance with nor recognition of its object;
2. A law (a Third) without an occurrence (a Second) is empty; an occurrence without a law is blind;
3. A proposition is the individuation of a “general” (a Third) by an index (a Second).
a. The first Peircean thesis is fundamental: it maintains that the sign or representamen is not the copy of its object. The sign represents its object as an
ambassador represents his country in a foreign country. If we develop the metaphor, it is obvious that this ambassador has been appointed by someone having
the power to do so. The object thus “determines” the sign, in a sense of the word, but without leaving its mark on it. The nature of the signrepresentamen
appears clearly in Peirce’s definition of “percept.” Can the “percept” be identified with the “signrepresentamen”? One could very well do so, without being
taxed with psychologism, which is Peirce’s bête noire, because the “percept” is not a psychical phenomenon. It is “physical,” providing one does not oppose
this term to “psychical,” but understands it as meaning that it is there in the world:
It has no generality; and without generality there can be no psychicality. […] The percept brutally forces itself upon us; thus it appears under a physical
guise.
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It is quite ungeneral, even antigeneral—in its character as percept; and thus it does not appear as psychical. The psychical, then, is not contained in the
percept. (1.253)
Consequently, the presence of a percept in consciousness does not make it a cognition.
Direct experience is neither certain nor uncertain, because it affirms nothing—it just is. There are delusions, hallucinations, dreams. But there is no mistake
that such things do appear, and direct experience means simply the appearance. It involves no error, because it testifies to nothing but its own appearance.
For the same reason, it affords no certainty. It is not exact, because it leaves much vague; though it is not inexact either; that is, it has no false
inexactitude. (1.145)
Only perceptual judgment is cognition, because it confers on knowledge the generality or thirdness (5.150) which enables us to give an object, or, as Frege says, a
sense (Sinn) to the representamen.
Comparing Peirce’s and Frege’s theories helps to clarify both. According to Frege, a sign (Zeichen) “stands for” (bedeutet) its objects in exactly the same way as the
sign represents its object for Peirce. Moreover, it has for Frege as for Peirce, two objects: a dynamical or referential object (Bedeutung) and an immediate object or
sense (Sinn). The referential object (the number or the evening star) is not what the sign represents (the immediate object or sense). And lastly the problem of the mode
of existence of both arises and seems to be solved in the same way by both Frege and Peirce. There is indeed something outside the sign, but it is in and by the sign
(semiosis or discourse) that it is said: the number figures in arithmetical propositions exactly as the evening star does in propositions of astronomy.
b. The second Peircean thesis expressed in semiotic terms is very clear. A legisign—a Third—a grammatical rule, for instance, is empty if no occurrence (or single
replica) of this rule exists. It is the distinction between “type” and ‘‘token” adopted by all the linguists. In a page of English an average of twenty replicas or tokens of
the definite article are to be found, but the definite article as a legisign or type can never figure there: it is the law which governs this determinative function in English
and, as a law, because it is general, it cannot be written. Occurrences which obey no law have, of course, no sense.
This Peircean distinction is very useful for the understanding of Wittgenstein’s propositional sign. According to Wittgenstein in the Tractatus logicophilosophicus, the
propositional sign is a sentence (Satz) which as fact (Tatsache), expresses a sense (Sinn) and constitutes the picture (Bild) of an “atomic” situation or state of things
(Sachverhalt); and which, as perceived (perceptible sign) is the projection of the picture of a possible situation or state of things (Sachlage).
We owe to Ramsey the clarification of Wittgenstein’s thought in terms of Peirce’s distinction between legisign (or type) and replica (or token). I quote from Ramsey’s
review of the Tractatus which appeared in Mind in 1923:
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A propositional sign is a sentence; but this statement must be qualified, for by “sentence” may be meant something of the same nature as the words of
which it is composed. But a propositional sign differs essentially from a word because it is not an object or class of objects, but a fact, “that fact that its
elements, the words, are combined in it in a definite way” (3.14). Thus “propositional sign” has typetoken ambiguity; the tokens (like those of any sign)
are grouped into types by physical similarity (and by conventions associating certain noises with certain shapes) just as are the instances of a word. But a
proposition is a type whose instances consist of all propositional sign tokens which have in common, not a certain appearance, but a certain sense.
(Ramsey 1923: 468–469)
Wittgenstein’s aphorism: “Philosophy does not result in philosophical propositions, but rather in the clarification of propositions’’ (4.112) is often quoted. The question
of what a clear proposition may be, is rarely asked. But Wittgenstein’s distinction between the propositional sign as fact and the propositional sign as perceptible sign
should incite us to ask it. Is a clear proposition a perceptible sentence? Ramsey gave us the answer by again resorting to Peirce’s distinction between legisign (type) and
replica (token). The following quotation sums up his conclusions:
I think that a written sentence is “clear” in so far as it has visible properties correlated with or “showing” the internal properties of its sense. According to
Mr. Wittgenstein the latter always show themselves in internal properties of the proposition; but owing to the typetoken ambiguity of “proposition” it is
not immediately clear what this means. Properties of a proposition must, I think, mean all the properties of its tokens; but, the internal properties of a
proposition are those properties of the tokens which are, so to speak, internal not to the tokens but to the type; that is, those which one of the tokens must
have if it is to be a token of that type, not those which it is unthinkable that it should not have anyhow. (Ramsey 1923: 476)
c. The third Peircean thesis concerns the nature of the proposition. We shall not here go back to the analysis of the proposition into subject, copula, and predicate. I
shall confine myself to a logicosemiotic description, the main interest of which is another possible comparison between Peirce and Frege.
Peirce trichotomizes the signinterpretant into rhema (a First), dicisign (a Second), and argument (a Third). We shall examine the nature of the rhema and the dicisign.
Rhema, Predicative Function, and Proposition
The rhema is not the Aristotelian “term.” It is not the subject of a proposition. The rhema is a predicate in the modern sense of the word, i.e., a verb: “is red” is the
predicate of a possible proposition: “This rose is red.” The dicisign is a dyadic relation of which the proposition is only a particular kind, one might say a species, of
which the dicisign is the genus. Thus a portrait with the name of the person written below it is a dicisign in the same way as the proposition. A
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dicisign (and hence a proposition) is composed of a rhema and an index in the Peircean semiotic sense: an effective or rather dynamical relation that a sign
representamen has with its object.
Frege distinguishes between three sorts of signs: the singular term, the function, and the sentence (Satz). Frege’s functions correspond in Peirce’s logic of relatives to
the monadic relation (predicate) and the dyadic relation (dual expression). Nothing corresponds in Frege to the triadic relation, not even the functional expression.
Frege is a dualist.
The correspondence between the rhema and the propositional function is the most interesting. For Peirce, the rhema is a propositional function. It is a predicate and it
is, in Frege’s terminology, “unsaturated.” The proposition is “saturated” by a singular term for Frege, i.e., an index for Peirce. It is important to point out that Frege uses
andenten (to indicate) in the same indexical sense as Peirce (which means that one cannot translate bedeuten by “indicate” as Russell does). Peirce goes further than
Frege in his analysis of the proposition. In “This is red,” there is not an attribution of a “redness’’ which would already be there to “this,” but the production of a “red
object” by the index of saturation “this.” Any “subject” (this rose, these tomatoes) is an index of saturation or “principle of individuation,” in Peirce’s terminology
(5.107) (see Deledalle 1986: 35–40).
It is the entire traditional conception of the proposition which is at stake, as Ramsey had also realized:
In “Socrates is wise,” Socrates is the subject, wisdom the predicate. But suppose we turn the proposition round and say: “Wisdom is a characteristic of
Socrates,” then wisdom formerly the predicate is now the subject. […] They are not, of course, the same sentence, but they have the same meaning. […]
Which sentence […] has nothing to do with the logical nature of Socrates and wisdom, but is a matter entirely for grammarians. […] (T)he above
argument throws doubt upon the whole basis of the distinction between particular and universal. […] (N)early all philosophers, including Mr. Russell, have
been misled by language […] (in) mistaking for a fundamental characteristic of reality, what is merely a characteristic of language. (Ramsey 1925: 404–
405)
THE TRUTH OF THE SIGN AS OBJECT
Does Frege entirely share this Peircean conception which we have expressed in Fregean terms? We cannot say so, for the reason already given, that Frege’s logic is
dualistic. This is obvious from the stands taken by the two logicians concerning the object of a proposition. According to Frege, the predicate has as referent
(Bedeutung) the concept (Begriff) which is, like the relation, an “objective” function, the value of which must be true if it has a sense; and the sentence or proposition,
whatever it may be, has as object its truthvalue. According to Peirce, a rhema can be neither true nor false; hence, truth or falsity cannot be its object—the object is
what is produced by truth (which, in the long run, will be reality).
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However, one can read in a draft which Peirce wrote in 1900 or 1901 when he was preparing his articles on logic for Baldwin’s Dictionary,
[I]n a narrower sense, logic is the science of the reference of symbols to their objects. For logic in this narrower sense, all symbols which have precisely
the same possible objects, are identical,—a limitation which must not be overlooked. Hence, according to Boole, and those who follow him, every symbol
has one or two values, according as it does or does not, represent the object intended. All true assertions are equivalent, and all false assertions are
equivalent. (Ms 1174 A)
PEIRCE’S EPISTEMOLOGY OF INVENTION
From the three theses or axioms which we have just examined, and which have taken us back to the origins of contemporary logic, numerous consequences result. We
shall refer only to those which coincide with some of the epistemological positions defended today. But it will really be a matter of encounters, not influences, and in
most cases, if not in all, of coincidence of consequences, rather than of agreement on principles.
Abduction, Induction, Deduction
The first consequence is the questioning of the nature of scientific research. If the signrepresentamen is a First, and if its object is a construction of the signinterpretant,
science can discover nothing; it can only invent. Induction cannot be a method of discovering preexisting laws by observation of occurrences of singular cases. The
principle of the hierarchy of categories would be enough to make us abandon the idea: one cannot pass from secondness to thirdness—in other words, from
occurrences, cases, or instances, however numerous they may be—to the law which governs them. Induction is a priori an invalid method. Besides, things never
happened like that. Hence, the introduction of another method: abduction, which is not substituted for induction, but introduces a supplementary stage into the
experimental process of invention.
Peirce, who first proposed this concept, describes abduction as “a method of forming a general prediction without any positive assurance that it will succeed in the
special case or generally, its justification being that it is the only possible hope of regulating our future conduct rationally, and that induction from past experience gives
us strong encouragement to hope that it will be successful in the future” (2.270).
Abduction is opposed to induction. Induction infers from similar phenomena, abduction infers something different from what is observed and “frequently something
which it would be impossible for us to observe directly” (2.640). But nevertheless, as we have said, abduction is not substituted for induction. The great mistake of the
logic of science has been not to distinguish their ‘‘essentially different characters” (7.218). This was, of course (and it is clearly the explanation),
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in conformity with the dualistic conception of the world: matter on one side, spirit on the other side. The traditional conception of the relation between induction and
deduction being phaneroscopically untenable (from the singular, no general or universal whatever can be inferred), the production of the general or universal must be
explained in another way. Abduction is the answer to the question. Abduction is thus a stage in the process of research which now has three stages: abduction, which
“furnishes all our ideas concerning real things, beyond what are given in perception, but is mere conjecture, without probative force” (8.209); deduction, which “is
certain but relates only to ideal objects” (8.209, see 6.474) (whether it be necessary [8.209] or probable [2.785]); lastly, induction, which “gives us the only approach
to certainty concerning the real that we can have” (8.209).
In brief, abduction suggests hypotheses or general ideas that deduction develops, and that induction, in a sense entirely different from the classical sense, verifies or
rather tests.
Karl Popper would have said “falsifies’’ instead of “tests,” but the term used by Popper, although infelicitous, in my opinion, does not affect the process, and, of all
contemporary epistemologists, he is certainly the closest to Peirce, without having undergone his influence. His Logic of Scientific Discovery (1959) is a logic of the
invention of hypotheses which has many points in common with Peirce’s logic of inference, the difference being unfortunately that Popper’s schema remains dualistic: on
one hand, the a priori acceptability of the hypothesis with its a priori tests; on the other hand, the a posteriori acceptability with its empirical tests.
EPISTEMOLOGY:
CONTINUITY OR DISCONTINUITY?
Another contemporary epistemologist, Nelson Goodman, defends a theory which is close to Peirce’s. Goodman’s approach, like Peirce’s, is prospective. Although
Goodman does not use the term “abduction,” the problem of the “projectibility” of hypotheses is given a similar solution (in his book Fact, Fiction, and Forecast
[1954]) to that proposed by Peirce, and leads to a theory of the “entrenchment” of hypotheses comparable to Bachelard’s “rupture épistémologique” and Kuhn’s
“paradigms” (see Deledalle 1983: 307–313).
Comparison does not imply influence here either, and still less “reason.” Science is certainly prospective for Peirce. It depends on time (and space), without the shadow
of a doubt. But must it be inferred from this that science is discontinuous? Confronted by Kuhn, and more especially by Feyerabend, Peirce would have certainly
maintained with Popper that scientific theories are not “incommensurable” and that there are no absolute truths. The idea of discontinuity, whatever its name—“rupture”
or “paradigm”—is incompatible with the idea of experimental research. Research is the continuous invention by the community of investigators, of the ultimate
adequation of reality and truth:
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The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the
real. (5.407)
Truth is that concordance of an abstract statement with the ideal limit towards which endless investigation would tend to bring scientific belief, which
concordance the abstract statement may possess by virtue of the confession of its inaccuracy and onesidedness, and this confession is an essential
ingredient of truth. (5.565)
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PART FOUR
Comparative Metaphysics
[T]he only successful mode [of metaphysical research] yet lighted upon is that of adopting our logic as our metaphysics.
—Peirce (7.580)
Metaphysics […] ought to be expounded side by side with the history of society, of government, and of war; for in its relations with these we trace the significance of
events for the human mind.
—Peirce (8.9)
Peirce’s semeiotic is based on a scientific or “laboratory” metaphysics which is better understood when it is compared to Western classical or rather “seminary”
metaphysics, such as Scholasticism. The unity and originality of Peirce’s philosophy of signs appear in all the domains of metaphysics: in his pragmaticist theory of a
selfcontrolled constructive knowledge (ch. 14), in his ontological theory of transcendentals without Being (ch. 15), in his synechistic cosmology where chance
combines chaos and order within continuity (ch. 16), and in his conception of the reality of a Triune God (ch. 17).
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14
Gnoseology:
Perceiving and Knowing
PEIRCE, WITTGENSTEIN, AND GESTALTTHEORIE
The problem of perception is less the problem of knowing what we perceive than that of knowing whether the way in which we describe perception does not
predetermine our reply. Wittgenstein said: “Tell me how you think and I shall tell you what you think.” What must first be examined is the how, not the what.
What do we perceive? A Form or an individual object? Very quickly nearly everybody agrees: the eye sees the individual object, the mind perceives the form. How?
Most of the theories which were widespread in the West from antiquity up to the end of the nineteenth century were derived from the Aristotelian Thomistic theory,
including all the empiricist doctrines from Locke to Watson. Not until the advent of Dewey’s instrumentalist psychology and the Gestalttheorie was the question at last
asked anew in a fresh perspective.
For over two thousand years, the Aristotelian conception was continually being refined, distorted and imposed, from Thomas Aquinas to John Poinsot alias John of St.
Thomas in the seventeenth century and Jacques Maritain in the twentieth.
In Les Degrès du savoir, Jacques Maritain put forward an admirable defense of the Thomistic theory. His position can be summed up in a simplified (and somewhat
simplistic) way by making an analogy with the functioning of the camera. On one side we have the body (the camera or cinecamera) and on the other what is
photographed or filmed. The film is first exposed. This stage corresponds exactly to that at which the senses receive impressions of the thing as object. The intellect is
not affected. The film is then developed. This is the stage at which the impress form of the external sense is transformed into the express form of the imagination. The
active intellect then extracts the essence of the object
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now imagined, and projects it, so to speak, on to the screen of the passive intellect which is the mind. The operation can be expressed in the following schema:
Body Soul (animus)
Essence Forma Forma Active Passive
impressa expressa intellect intellect
(external (imagination)
sense)
Filmed Film Film Projector Screen on
sequence not yet developed projecting which the
developed concept
appears: the
audience sees
the essence
(i.e., what was
filmed)
Table 14.1. Thomistic theory of knowledge
Cartesianism was to consecrate the separation of the two worlds, and to give birth to idealism by locating knowledge in the mind alone. Later, English empiricism,
although derived from Cartesianism, emphasized the sensorial data. Still later, American behaviorism insisted on the reaction or response of organism to physiological
stimuli of the outside world (SR).
It must be pointed out that in France the textbooks of philosophy which were the most widely used from the beginning of the twentieth century (Armand Cuvillier) or
from the end of the Second World War (Denis Huisman and André Vergez) up to the 1970s continued to use this schema.
In a famous article of 1896, “The Arc Reflex Concept in Psychology,” John Dewey criticized the various forms of the classical conceptions of knowledge down to the
Arc reflex notion:
1. Sensation is not first; what is first is the act: the act of seeing, for instance, and not the sensation of light.
2. The stimulus does not appear ex nihilo; it appears in a context. A “same’’ sound is different depending on whether one is reading, hunting, watching a deserted
place at night, or carrying out some chemical experiment. Thus, not only is the sound not a pure stimulus, it is the act of hearing and it happens in an act, for
instance the act of reading, in a “wholeact.”
There is thus neither sensation or perception proper nor arc reflex, but an organic circuit in which the motor response determines the stimulus in exactly the same way as
the sensory response determines movement (Dewey 1972: 96–109).
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* * *
Dewey was not alone. Gestalttheorie also went counter to the traditional conception. In La psychologie de la forme, Paul Guillaume wrote:
In classical treatises it was first the materials, the data of sensibility that were studied, then in the following chapters more and more complex “syntheses” of
these: perceptions, memories, judgements, etc. But if one rejects the idea that the materials can exist prior to any organisation, one will immediately find
oneself confronted by structures. Certain forms of organisation belong in a primitive way to perception; they are not constructions whose origin has to be
traced. The socalled higher functions have not the privilege of organisation. (Guillaume 1937: 48)
Like Dewey, W. Köhler, one of the most wellknown representatives of Gestalt psychology, is antibehaviorist. To the mechanistic model SR (which Bloomfield
transposed into linguistics), Köhler, like Dewey, opposes “a dynamic model of human behaviour which emphasises the active role of organisation in perception.”
Dewey’s “action in context” has its analogue in Köhler’s ‘‘segregated whole,” and “as Köhler often puts it, an ‘organized whole,’ forms the basis of Köhler’s anti
behaviourist psychology” (Monk 1990: 509). But he goes still further, as we have seen with Guillaume: Form is “a concrete, individual and characteristic entity, existing
as something detached and having a shape or form as one of its attributes” (Köhler 1930: 148).
* * *
We have now reached a turning point and must make a stop. If the “Gestalt” is not a property of things, how can this “concrete, individual and characteristic entity” be
explained? A first reply—or attempt at one—was given by Wittgenstein.
Let us take Jastrow’s duckrabbit picture (Jastrow 1971: Fig. 19):
Figure 14.1. Jastrow’s duckrabbit
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It may be taken for a rabbit’s head or a duck’s head. And I have to make a distinction between the “continuous seeing” of an aspect and its “dawning.” It may be that I
have been shown this picture and have seen only a rabbit.
I am shown a picturerabbit and asked what it is; I say “It’s a rabbit.” Not “Now it’s a rabbit.” I am reporting my perception.—I am shown the duck
rabbit and asked what it is; I may say “It’s a duckrabbit.’’ But I may also react to the question quite differently.—The answer that it is a duckrabbit is
again the report of a perception; the answer “Now it’s a rabbit” is not. Had I replied “It’s a rabbit,” the ambiguity would have escaped me, and I should
have been reporting my perception. (Wittgenstein 1953: 194c–195c)
The question of the recognition of one object (the rabbit), or of one rather than the other (rabbit rather than duck) is used by the Gestaltists to maintain the objectivity of
form. Paul Guillaume writes:
Against any theory which (attributes all the organisation of perception to the influence of memory) one can set an argument of principle. Memory can bring
to new experience only what existed in old experience. A first inorganic perception, a pure sum of “sensations” could not serve to organise a second. How
could an object emerge for the first time from the chaos of sensations? The existence of primitive structures must be admitted. (Guillaume 1937: 71)
This argument of principle rests on another principle which is, however, rejected by Guillaume; namely, that the “primitive structures” are “given.” Are they?
Wittgenstein does not think so, for two reasons:
1. Between the passage from the perception of the rabbit to the recognition of the duck, or vice versa the “aspect” is “dispositional.” In Lectures on Philosophical
Psychology, Wittgenstein develops his argument as follows:
Suppose I show it [the figure of the duckrabbit] to a child. It says “it’s a duck” and then suddenly “Oh, it’s a rabbit.” So it recognises it as a rabbit.—
This is an experience of recognition. So if you see me in the street and say “Ah, Wittgenstein.” But you haven’t an experience of recognition all the time.—
The experience only comes at the moment of change from duck to rabbit and back. In between, the aspect is as it were dispositional. (Wittgenstein 1976:
104)
2. There are two uses of the word “see”:
Two uses of the word “see.”
The one: “What do you see there?”—“I see this” (and then a description, a drawing, a copy). The other: “I see a likeness between these two faces”—let
the man I tell this to be seeing the faces as clearly as I do myself.
The importance of this is the categorical difference between the two ‘objects’ of sight. (Wittgenstein 1953: 193e)
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How, if we take account of this distinction, can we maintain at the same time that the “Gestalt” is in things and in the mind? But that is what Köhler does: for him the
“organisation” of an object belongs to that object as much as do its colors and shape. Shape must be distinguished from form or Gestalt:
If you put the “organization” of a visual impression on a level with colours and shapes, you are proceeding from the idea of the visual impression as an
inner object. Of course this makes this object into a chimera; a queerly shifting construction. (Wittgenstein 1953: 196e)
Indeed, according to Köhler, we are not always confronted by the same “visual reality.” For instance, Figure 14.2 represents two unknown objects crossed by a
horizontal line:
Figure 14.2. The hidden 4
Köhler writes:
When I tell the reader that the number 4 is before him in the field, he will undoubtedly find it; but if he is not influenced by theoretical prejudices, he will
confess that the form of the 4 did not exist as a visual reality at first and that, if it began to exist later on, that meant a transformation of visual reality.
(Köhler 1930: 153)
To which Wittgenstein objects:
Now Köhler said: ‘‘you see two visual realities.” As opposed to what? To interpreting, presumably. How does he do this? [i.e., how is this established?]
It won’t do to ask people. Köhler never says it will; but he says “If you’re not blinded by theory you’ll admit there are two visual realities.” But of course,
he can’t mean only that those who don’t hold a certain theory will say “There are two visual realities.” He must intend to say that whether or not you’re (1)
blinded by theory, or (2) whether or not you do say one thing or the other, you must, to be right, say “there are two visual realities.” (Wittgenstein 1976:
329–330)
In the case of ambiguous representations (duckrabbit, the hidden 4), there is indeed a problem. But if one cannot find a reply which does not contradict the theory, it is
perhaps the theory which should be reconsidered. This is in conformity with Wittgenstein’s method: to show that the problem should not be raised. Should it?
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PERCEPT AND PERCEPTUAL JUDGMENT
Peirce distinguishes between percept and perceptual judgment:
The percept brutally forces itself upon us; thus it appears under a physical guise. It is quite ungeneral, even antigeneral—in its character as percept; and
thus it does not appear as psychical. (1.253)
It cannot be otherwise, because “without generality there can be no psychicality” (1.253). The percept has no element of “Thirdness,” but only elements of
“Secondness’’ and “Firstness” (7.630). Only perceptual judgment professes to represent something and accordingly involves “Thirdness.” On the other hand, the mere
presence of a percept in a conscience cannot be an act of knowledge. Perceiving—i.e., having a percept—is not knowing: “Direct experience is neither certain nor
uncertain, because it affirms nothing—it just is” (1.145). Only the perceptual judgment can be an act of knowledge. Only perceiving—i.e., “determining one thing to
refer to another” (7.630)—is knowing, because it gives an object to a percept.
PERCEPT AND PHANERON
The “phaneron” is the “aseptic” (if one may use the term) expression of the “phenomenon”:
[The phaneron is] the collective total of all that is in any way or in any sense present to the mind, quite regardless of whether it corresponds to any real
thing or not. (1.284)
As Arthur Büchler wrote in a letter to the author, the “phaneron” is “whatever is the case” (whatever can be dealt with), whereas the “phenomenon” is what appears. In
other words, the “phaneron” is logical, the “phenomenon” psychological.
The phaneron is triadic. This triad which Peirce represents as:
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is indecomposable. Each of its elements is a form of the hierarchically organized phaneron. It is not a description of psychological facts.
PEIRCE AND WITTGENSTEIN
Is the percept “dispositional”? For Wittgenstein, there is a contradiction in being and not being. His system does not possess the category of “Firstness.”
The distinction between seeing a “visual reality” and seeing a likeness is interesting. But Wittgenstein does not make use of it; whereas we do find in his system the
fecund distinction between percept and perceptual judgment.
PEIRCE AND SCHOLASTICISM
It is to Scholasticism that Peirce comes closest. We can establish a parallel between the priman and the impress form, the secondan and the express form, the tertian
and the conceptmodification of the subject (expressed by the) concept.
The difference resides in the splitting up, supposed by the Scholastics but unnecessary, of this (indecomposable) triad into a dyad of the world (a dyad reduced to the
secondan: impress and express form—no priman) and a monad of the mind.
Knowledge is a copy or thought, i.e., conceptual form of a real form incarnated in things.
KNOWLEDGE ACCORDING TO PEIRCE
Peirce does not presuppose any splitting up of the world and the mind. For him, there is only one continuous universe. By “continuous” is not meant a continuity of
two worlds, but indistinction, or, one might say, a universe which is indecomposable like the triad. For the sake of clarity one may distinguish elements, but this will be
no more than a pedagogical device.
For Peirce, there is collateral knowledge (or experience) and knowledge by signs in the sense of semiosis (inference by signs from signs) which presupposes collateral
knowledge (namely the relation of a sign and an object in a given context for a given individual).
This distinction has been made at different moments in the history of philosophy, and can be found in Plato as well as in Spinoza. It is commonly made use of in English,
‘‘knowledge by acquaintance” being distinguished from “knowledge about” (Grote, James, Russell, Dewey).
The following passage is Peirce’s iconic expression:
Suppose I chance to overhear one man at a club say to another “Ralph Pepperill has bought that mare Pee Dee Kew.” Never having heard before either
of Ralph Pepperill or of Pee Dee Kew, it means to me only that some man has bought some famous trotter; and since I knew already that some men do
make such purchases, it does not interest me. But the next day I hear somebody inquire
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where he can find a copy of Steven’s edition of Plato; to which reply is made that Ralph Pepperill says he has a copy. Now although I never was
knowingly acquainted with any purchaser of crack trotting horses, yet I should not have supposed that such a person would be aware of possessing an old
edition of Plato whose chief value is due to the circumstance that modern citations from the Dialogues usually refer to it. After this I begin to pay attention
to what I hear of Ralph Pepperill; until, at length, that which the name means to me probably represents pretty fairly what it would mean to an
acquaintance of the man. This imparts not merely an interest, but also a meaning to every little scrap of new information about him;—to scraps that would
have conveyed no information whatsoever, had they first introduced his name to my ears. Yet the name itself will remain a designation devoid of essential
signification, and so much of the accidental kind as it may at any time have acquired will not have been derived, in however slight measure from the utterer
of any sentence which it may furnish with informatory interest,—at least, not from him in his capacity as utterer of that sentence. (Peirce, 1907 Ms 318:
23–25)
Once the place of collateral experience has been clearly marked out, one can proceed more easily to the analysis of semiosis, knowledge by signs from signs.
Thus we have the solution not only to the problem raised by the division of the universe into two distinct worlds of which one is the temporal copy of the other, eternal,
one, but also to the problem raised by Wittgenstein: that of the existence of “two visual realities” which are concomitant and different: semiosis is prospective, not
retrospective invention; it takes place in time, and cannot be reduced to a simple process of producing each and every day a copy of eternal forms.
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15
Ontology: Transcendentals of
or without Being
PEIRCE VERSUS ARISTOTLE AND THOMAS AQUINAS
The Transcendental is defined as what can be found in all kinds of Being. The list of Transcendentals, always three in number, varies from one period to another. For
Thomas Aquinas, the three Transcendentals of Being are the One, the True, and the Good. The Beautiful, which for the Modernists, is a Transcendental proprio sensu
in place of the One, is for Thomas Aquinas a Transcendental derived from the Good. Peirce also adopted the True, the Good, and the Beautiful, except that he does
not call them Transcendentals, but ultimate categories, respectively, of logic, of ethics, and of aesthetics.
DISTINCTIONS
Aristotle is the initiator of the division of Being into Transcendentals. But for him there is only one Transcendental: the One, which is identical with Being. The True is, in
a sense, only a subjective, let us say human aspect of the apprehension of Being, but its cause is Truth in the highest sense of the word (Aristotle 1966: α 1, 993b 26–
31). The Good is at the root of action, but, although Aristotle says nothing of its relation to Being, it is difficult to conceive that the Prime Mover is not Being as Being
(Aristotle 1966: λ 6).
According to Thomas Aquinas, the Transcendentals are distinctions of reason. These distinctions differ from real distinctions in that they are proposed by our
intelligence, whereas real distinctions do not depend on what we think about them.
Thomas Aquinas divides distinctions of reason into distinctions of reasoned reason and distinctions of reasoning reason.
1. The distinction of reasoned reason has a foundation in reality, and is subdivided
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into (1a) the major or perfect distinction of reasoned reason which can contain the other only potentially: kind and species, and (1b) the minor or imperfect
distinction of reasoned reason which can contain the other only virtually in act: Being and two of its Transcendentals: the True and the Good.
2. The distinction of reasoning reason is a pure artifice of thought. This is the case of the Transcendental One which is identical with Being.
Here the Transcendentals are not obtained by deductive reasoning, as with the idealists, but by the integration of the most general aspects of the given in the sense of
the existential real. For Thomas Aquinas they are based on the principle of the universal analogical intelligibility of Being.
As, according to Duns Scotus, all being is univocal and not analogical, the Thomistic distinctions are insufficient for him. He replaces them by the following ones:
1. The real distinction between two absolute beings capable of existing separately. These beings, simple or compound, are absolute individuals depending
exclusively on the divine Will and fully intelligible owing to formal distinctions.
2. The distinction of reason between two ways of expressing a same essence like the identity of unity.
3. The formal a parte rei distinction between two essences, formally distinct, but incapable of existing separately, such as animality and rationality.
According to Ockham, Scotist univocality leads to the infinite multiplication of real distinctions. In order to limit them, Ockham proposes his principle known as
“Ockham’s razor”: Non sunt multiplicanda entia sine necessitate. Necessity not being a criterion of universal intelligibility as it was for Thomas Aquinas, he resorts
to the principle of separability, which Peirce will adopt, in order to determine the real, in the sense of existential, character of a distinction; all the other distinctions,
including the formal a parte rei distinctions, being distinctions of reason for Ockham if not for Peirce.
Francis Suarez tried to reconcile the Thomistic and Scotistic oppositions by admitting modal distinctions which are in fact a parte rei, but not as with Duns Scot simply
conceptual, but “objectively” necessary. Suarez was a Jesuit, Thomas Aquinas a Dominican, and Duns Scot a Franciscan.
Finally, Descartes, who studied at the Jesuit college of La Flèche in France, kept the three distinctions made by Suarez:
1. Real distinctions valid for substances. A substance is a reality of which we have a clear and distinct idea: two substances, the objects of two clear and distinct
ideas, are really distinct. The “I” of ‘‘I think therefore I am” is a substance.
2. Distinction of reason valid for the attributes of the substance from which they are inseparable. One cannot have a clear and distinct idea of being without the idea
of essence which is its attribute. The attribute of “I” is “thought”: cogito ergo sum.
3. Modal distinction. The modes are qualities which are not necessary to the idea that we have of a substance, such as feeling, wanting, willing, which are the modes
of the thinking ego, the “moi pensant.”
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Charles S. Peirce introduces three types of distinction which can be compared with the preceding ones:
Dissociation is a real distinction in Ockham’s sense.
Discrimination is a distinction of reason.
Prescission is a formal a parte rei distinction in a more Ockhamistic than Scotistic sense. In effect, for Ockham this distinction is one of reason; whereas Peirce
maintains like Duns Scotus that it is a distinction of reason, but founded in re. It is thus formal a parte rei, on the condition that one insists upon its role of unifying both
the real distinctions and those of reason: no Third (category of reason) without a Second (category of existence in re) nor First, (a category peculiar to Peirce, but
which can be compared to the modal distinction of Suarez and Descartes). However, only Peirce introduces between these distinctions a hierarchy both a parte
rationis and a parte rei.
THE TRANSCENDENTALS
The One
The idea of the One goes back to Parmenides: Being is, and it is One. It is associated with the theory of Pythagoras, for whom the numerical unity is constitutive of the
idea of Being as One. Thomas Aquinas adopts a diametrically opposed position which argues against the PlatonicoPythagorean position taken by Avicenna.
These opinions rest on the supposition that there is identity between the One which is convertible with Being and which is the principle of number, and
there is no other Multiple than number which is a species of quantity. Which is clearly false. It is a fact that division is the cause of the Multiple, and unity
the cause of indivision. Thus the One and the Multiple must be judged according to the “reason” of the division. (Aquinas 1259/1263: q. 9, a. 7)
Peirce is in entire agreement with this: The One is not of the kind of the discrete quantity. The One is for Peirce, as for Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, an attribute of
Being, the only difference being that according to him, there are three ontological attributes or, more precisely, three ordinal categories of Being: the First, the Second,
and the Third, of which the Transcendentals are the normative expressions: aesthetics, ethics, and logic.
The True
If the One is for Thomas Aquinas a distinction of reasoning reason, which it is not for Peirce, the True implies for both a distinction of reasoned reason because it is
based on something real: intelligence. The True is that towards which knowledge tends. For Thomas Aquinas this something real is appetite (appetitum, ρ ε ξ ) ι
which, in a reasonable being, is intellectual: the desire to know. Aquinas distinguishes the logical True from the ontological True. Thus, logically, artifacts
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are said to be true with relation to our intelligence: a true house is one which attains resemblance to the idea which is in the architect’s mind, and a true speech is true
insofar as it is the sign of a true thought (Aquinas 1267/1273: 1, q. 16, art. 1); and in the same way, ontologically, natural things are said to be true insofar as they attain
resemblance to ideas which are in the mind of God: a true stone is one in which the proper nature of stone is realized, in conformity with the anterior conception of the
divine intelligence (ibid.). Whereas Augustine tends to objectify truth in God, Aquinas thinks that truth is first in the intelligence, and in things only by derivation. Is this
not also what Peirce suggests when he situates the immediate object in the sign and the dynamical object out of the sign?
The Good
The Good, which is, according to Aristotle, quod omnia appetunt—that toward which all tends—is based on appetite, which in the reasonable being is the will to
seek for Good as apprehended by the intelligence. It is thus also a distinction of reasoned reason. It will be noted that the True and the Good have the same foundation
outside Being: the nature of that other which man is. The Good (bonum, τ γ α τ) is that which satisfies the desire of which the apprehension is the Beautiful
όν
(pulchrum, τ καλόν ). Thus Peirce does not separate, for this very reason, the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. Whereas it is only a derived Transcendental for
Aquinas, the Beautiful is, for Peirce, the foundation of the Good and the True.
The Beautiful
Peirce is, however, in agreement with Aquinas: the beautiful cannot please without reason:
So, then, we appeal to the esthete to tell us what it is that is admirable without any reason for being admirable beyond its inherent character. […] If he
replies that it consists in a certain quality of feeling, a certain bliss, I for one decline altogether to accept the answer as sufficient. […] I cannot without
strenuous proof admit that any particular quality of feeling is admirable without a reason. (1903: 1.612)
THE HIERARCHY OF THE TRANSCENDENTALS
The Beautiful is thus inseparable from the Good and the True. After writing in his Private Thoughts that “the soul is that which can move. […] But what puts the soul
in this active state? Beauty” (W1: 6, 12 August 1856)—which would make it appear that the Beautiful is the ultimate Transcendental—Peirce wrote his very first article:
‘‘The Sense of Beauty Never Furthered the Performance of a Single Act of Duty” (W1: 10, Ms 12, 26 March 1857), which confirms this impression.
Charles Peirce was then eighteen. After quoting Ruskin: “Schiller, in his Esthetic
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Letters, observes that the sense of beauty never furthered the performance of a single act of duty,” Peirce comments: “If he [Ruskin] had read the letter which follows
the one to which he refers he would have found the words: Beauty is in the highest degree fruitful with respect to knowledge and morality.”
[A] false beauty […] sometimes misleads experience. We must seek then a pure idea of beauty, by which we can test experience.* Such an idea of
beauty, if it exists is to be inferred from what our nature renders possible, and beauty will discover itself to be a necessary condition of humanity. It will be
necessary, then, in the first place, to develop the purely a priori idea of humanity.
Man consists of Person and Condition—analysis can go no further. Now, from these elements of humanity arise two impulses: from Person the impulse
which produces form […] from Condition, the sensuous impulse, which insists upon absolute reality, and would convert all pure ideas into manifold
realities, and make all dispositions apparent. The first impulse gives laws, the second creates cases. […] Since [these impulses] do not conflict in the same
objects they can easily coexist, and in perfect harmony, whence arises a third impulse, the result of the perfect balance of the other two, which […] may
be regarded as the impulse which creates beauty. […] Now it will be observed that beauty gives the mind no particular direction or tendency—hence it
can have no result either for the intellect or the will, and can help us to perform no single duty. On the other hand, it places the mind in a state of “infinite
determinableness” so that it can turn in any direction and is in perfect freedom, hence beauty is in the highest respect fruitful with respect to knowledge and
morality. (W1: 10–12)
Peirce’s first intellectual act in 1857 was thus to maintain explicitly that Beauty—a pure possible which places the mind in a state of “infinite determinableness”—is the
first Transcendental which can produce neither a true proposition, nor a good act, but on which are based Truth and Goodness. The Procrustean bed of the trichotomy
was ready for use (cf. 1910: 1.568–172).
It is the same doctrine which will be found in Minute Logic (1902) and A Syllabus of Certain Topics of Logic (1903) in which Peirce deals with the normative
sciences: logic, ethics, and esthetics. In the latter text he writes:
Esthetics is the science of ideals, or of that which is objectively admirable without any ulterior reason. […] Ethics, or the science of right and wrong, must
appeal to Esthetics for aid in determining the summum bonum. It is the theory of selfcontrolled, or deliberate conduct. Logic is the theory of self
controlled, or deliberate, thought; and as such, must appeal to ethics for its principles. (1.191)
For Peirce, logic is based on ethics which is based on esthetics. If the object of logic is Truth, that of ethics Goodness, and that of esthetics Beauty, the scienti fic
hierarchy of the categories is as follows:
* It should be noted here that Peirce does not appeal to experience to test an idea, as in 1877, when he will introduce the pragmatic method. He is writing in 1857.
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1. Beauty
2. Goodness
3. Truth
This confirms that the categorial distribution of the Transcendentals: Beauty First, Goodness Second, Truth Third, is correct or, shall we say, justified? Ultimate Truth is
indeed Third, Goodness Second (with reference to agapism), and Beauty is therefore First. But questions arise: Truth as testable is Second, Beauty as the Harmony of
proportions Third, and Goodness as a source may well be First. What hierarchy of categories should be chosen?
Furthermore, what is the place of the One? It must be remembered that the Thomist order of the Transcendentals is: the One, Truth, Goodness, and Beauty which is a
Transcendental derived from Goodness. Herbert Schneider held that the Summum Bonum, being above ultimate Beauty, Goodness, and Truth, is a categorical
imperative which he calls Fourthness (Schneider 1952: 209–214). It is true that Peirce says expressly in 1.191 that it is esthetics, whose object is Beauty, which
determines the summum bonum. Is it necessary to refer to Kant as Schneider does? Could the summum bonum not be rather the One of Aristotle and Aquinas? One
part of the problem would thus be solved, but the question of the categorial classification of the Transcendentals would remain. For, according to Aquinas, if it is
admitted that the summum bonum is the One, the scientific hierarchy is the same as that of Peirce, but in inverse order, as appears in the following table:
Summum Bonum
Being as One
Aquinas 1 2 3
Truth Goodness Beauty
Peirce 3 2 1
Summum Bonum
Table 15.1. Hierarchy of the Transcendentals
THE TRANSCENDENTALS AND THE TRINITY
The question of the Transcendentals has always been linked, at least in Christianity, consciously or not, with the question of the Trinity. The most explicit instance is that
of the Catalan philosopher Ramón Llull.
The four causes being the Creator, matter, form, and the final cause, it is clear that the Creator occupies a privileged place:
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Intellectually we understand that your wisdom knew, before man existed, what he would do with matter, form and the final cause. (Llull 1991:
“Contemplació,’’ L’art bref, 265)
This reduction from four causes to three is obviously linked to the mystery of the Trinity:
Lord, your virtues, which we call essential virtues, and that the intellect (in catalan: enteniment, in latin: intellectus) understands as a unique substance,
mean that there are in your substance three persons, which is signified by three forms. (Llull 1991: 179, 2)
Lord, the first of these three meanings is itself triple: infinity, life, eternity mean that you are in three persons; the second meaning is also triple: power,
wisdom, love mean that in you there are three persons; the third meaning is also itself triple: your simplicity, your glory, your perfection mean that three
persons are in you. (Llull 1991: 179, 2)
Lord, as memory means one thing, understanding means another thing, and will, still another one, understanding, infinity, power, simplicity mean Paternity
in your glorious substance; life, wisdom, glory mean Filiation; eternity, love, perfection mean Procession. (Llull 1991: 246, 23)
[That is why] when the intellect understands what infinity, life, eternity signify of your Trinity, memory remembers, and will loves, your infinity, your life and
your eternity. (Llull 1991: 317, 19)
As Augustine said in the De Trinitate, God, who is, for us, the sovereign Good (Deus est nobis summum bonum) is Three: Loving, Loved, and Love: Tria sunt:
amans, et quod amatur, et amor.
It was also in a theological context that Peirce was to explain for the first time his triadic theory of the sign, as will be shown later. In this context, he elaborates the
triadic nature of any sign, namely: the object second, the interpretant third, and the ground, later replaced by the representamen, first. Like Being, which in order to be
can be only One, the Unity of God recognized by the Christian can be only the triadic Unity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
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16
Cosmology: Chaos and Chance
within Order and Continuity
PEIRCE BETWEEN PLATO AND DARWIN
The question of the relation between chaos and order can be dealt with from many viewpoints, theoretical and practical. From Greek cosmogony to the scientific
thought of today, it is the same question which is raised when Western man wants to picture the world he lives in. Our way of thinking has changed since the Greeks
and one can hardly compare Greek philosophy and American philosophy, let alone Plato’s cosmogony and Peirce’s cosmology. However, even if their answers are
different, Plato’s and Peirce’s question is the same and represented in almost identical fashion.
GREEK GODS AND COSMOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES
According to Greek mythology, as expressed by Plato in the Symposium (Le banquet in French), the first three gods were Chaos, Gaea, and Eros. Chaos (Χ ά ο )
was born first without any father or mother. Gaea (Γα&unk;α)—the Goddess Earth—sprang from Chaos, and then Eros ( ρ ο), whose creative capacity, by uniting
and dividing, shapes every being and thing. Thus, the essential mythological Triad represents and illustrates respectively the three cosmological principles: Chaos the
principle of potentiality, Gaea the “unshakeable and eternal foundation of all things” (Plato), and Eros the category of Love as mediator.
Peirce’s triadic cosmology rests on the same categories: First the category of potentiality, illustrated by chaos; Second the category of actuality, illustrated by the
cosmos as it is; Third the category of regularity or “order,” illustrated by “love” as agape, not Eros. We will come back to that point later.
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EPISTEMOLOGY AND MYTHOLOGY
Right from the beginning, the Greek philosophers do not sever image from thought. They do not advance any special epistemology, idealist or empiricist. They simply
borrow from the Greek mythology the necessary images to express their philosophy. It is the very conception that Charles S. Peirce proposed when idealism and
empiricism failed to explain the relations between the concepts and their representations.
The only way of directly communicating an idea [concept] is by means of an icon [representation]; and every indirect method of communicating an idea
must depend for its establishment upon the use of an icon. Hence, every assertion must contain an icon or set of icons, or else must contain signs whose
meaning is only explicable by icons. The idea which the set of icons (or the equivalent of a set of icons) contained in an assertion signifies may be termed
the predicate of the assertion. (1902: 2.278)
The resort to diagrams gives substance or rather existence to all kinds of abstractions and especially mathematical abstractions. It is a pedagogical device, as old as the
Greeks, that Peirce will justify in his chef d’oeuvre, the theory of Existential Graphs:
The term (Existential) Graph will be taken in the sense of a Type; and the act of embodying it in a GraphInstance will be termed scribing the Graph
(not the Instance), whether the Instance be written, drawn, or incised. (Charles S. Peirce 1906: 4.537)
HOW DO WE PASS FROM CHAOS TO ORDER?
THE GREEK CONNECTION
Plato’s cosmology rests on a static and rather dualistic ontology:
What is that which always is and has no becoming [the Ideas as Patterns or Forms]; and what is that which is always becoming and never is [the things
which are the copies of Ideas? […] That which is apprehended by intelligence and reason is always in the same state; but that which is conceived by
opinion with the help of sensation and without reason, is always in a process of becoming and perishing and never really is.
According to Plato in Timaeus, Chaos and Order are linked by the sensible and the intelligible. But the sensible and the intelligible are not the only ontological “forms”;
there is a third ‘‘form” (ε&unk;δ ο ), the chôra (χώρα) without which the intelligible—the Idea—could not be copied in a sensible image—icon. As the Chôra is the
spatial gap, the τ ο π ο , the “hole” through which the sensible
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can be reached by the intelligible, there is another “hole” through which the eternal character of the Ideas can be instantiated in copies. This “hole” is called Exaphnès
( ξ α ί φ ν ): “Instantaneous” (Mattéi 1996: 191–216. See Wahl 1951: 167–172).
η
Order
Chaos
(Ε&unk;δ ο )
(Χ ά ο )
[or Λ ό γ ο ]
Chôra
Sensible Intelligible
(Χώρα)
Exaphnès
Instant ( ξ α ί φ ν )η Eternity
[Time]
Table 16.1. Plato’s Cosmology
COSMOLOGY IN PEIRCE’S CONTEXT:
PURITANISM, EVOLUTIONISM, AND
PHANEROSCOPY
Puritanism and Evolutionism
When Columbus discovered America, he did not do only that, but provided a new opportunity to look at Western civilization from the point of view of puritanism, on
one hand, and from the point of view of evolutionism, on the other hand. Which explains, firstly, that love as agape was substituted by Peirce to love as Eros; and,
secondly, that the static world of the Greeks was replaced by Darwin’s evolutionary cosmology. Of course there were other conceptions of evolution. Peirce himself
was more inclined to a Lamarckian conception than a Darwinian conception, in spite of the fact that in the end he surrendered to Darwin’s solution.
According to Peirce, there are “three modes of evolution”: evolution by fortuitous variation (tychastic evolution in Peirce’s terminology), evolution by mechanical
necessity (anancastic evolution), and evolution by creative love (agapastic evolution), which is summed up in Table 16.2.
I shall limit my comments to Peirce’s denial of the evolution by ‘‘necessity,” especially Weismann’s, and to the “third method” “enwrapped in the theory of Lamarck.”
Weismann
Weismann, unlike Peirce, opposed evolution by chance and favored “a mechanical necessity to which the facts that come under their observation do not point.”
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Possible modes of Names of the modes Names of the principles

evolution (and related doctrines)
Darwin’s solution Tychasm Tychism
“fortuitous variation” (discontinuity: “absolute chance [as]
(6.302) τύχη = hazard) severally operative in the
[Tychasticism] cosmos” (6.302)
Weismann’s solution Anancasm Anancism
“mechanical (repetitive continuity: “mechanical necessity
necessity” ν ά γ κ η= necessity)
[as] severally operative in
(6.36 sq., 34, 143, 302) ‘‘Tychasm and anancasm the cosmos” (6.302)
are degenerate forms of
agapasm” (6.303)
[Anancasticism]
Peirce’s solution Agapasm Agapism
“creative love” (6.302) (creative continuity: “the law of love [as]
γ ά π η= love)
severally operative in the
(6.302) cosmos” (6.302)
[Agapasticism] Agapism: degenerate
form of synechism
Table 16.2. Peirce’s Evolutionary Cosmology Discriminative Classification
He held “that all forms are simple mechanical resultants of the heredity from two parents” (6.298).
Lamarck
Lamarckian evolution is this “evolution by the force of habit,” according to which “all that distinguishes the highest organic forms from the most rudimentary has been
brought about by little hypertrophies or atrophies which have affected individuals early in their lives, and have been transmitted to their offspring” (6.299). It is true that
Peirce was inclined to explain the Cosmos in terms of Lamarck, although he confessed that the sentence “evolution by the force of habit” “slipped off my pen” (6.300).
Of course, it is nonsense. Habit is mere inertia, a resting on one’s oars, not a propulsion. Now it is energetic projaculation (lucky there is such a word, or
this untried hand might have been put to inventing one) by which in the typical instances of Lamarckian evolution the new elements of form are first
created. Habit, however, forces them to take practical shapes, compatible with the structures
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they affect, and, in the form of heredity and otherwise, gradually replaces the spontaneous energy that sustains them. Thus, habit plays a double part; it
serves to establish the new features, and also to bring them into harmony with the general morphology and function of the animals and plants to which they
belong. (6.300)
But this account of Lamarckian evolution coincides exactly with Peirce’s description of the action of love, although it is only its first step: “The first step in the
Lamarckian evolution of mind is the putting of sundry thoughts into situations in which they are free to play” (6.303).
Phaneroscopy
Peirce’s cosmology rests on his phaneroscopy which we have already discussed on several occasions. “Chance is First, Law is Second, the tendency to take habits is
Third. Mind is First, Matter is Second, Evolution is Third” (6.32). Hence the three steps: One variety of tychasm, two varieties of anancasm, and three varieties of
agapasm.
Here again, as in ontology, cosmology can be referred to theology:
Men who seek to reconcile the Darwinian idea with Christianity will remark that tychastic evolution, like the agapastic, depends upon a reproductive
creation, the forms preserved being those that use the spontaneity conferred upon them in such wise as to be drawn into harmony with their original, quite
after the Christian scheme. (6.304)
THE PEIRCEAN CONNECTION
Peirce’s cosmology not only raises the same question as Plato’s, but sometimes with the same concepts, if not always with the same words. The result is, however, a
totally new dynamic philosophy which one cannot help thinking is the philosophy which Plato would have proposed, had he lived in Peirce’s context. Such is at least
Peirce’s opinion:
In short, if we are going to regard the universe as a result of evolution at all, we must think that not merely the existing universe, that locus in the cosmos to
which our reactions are limited, but the whole Platonic world, which in itself is equally real, is evolutionary in its origin, too.
Thus, according to Peirce, the cosmos lies, as in Plato, between Chaos and Order. “In the original chaos, where there was no regularity, there was no existence” (ca.
1897: 1.175). ‘‘The original chaos, therefore, where there was no regularity, was in effect a state of mere indeterminacy, in which nothing existed or really
happened” (A Guess at the Riddle, ca. 1890). Order does not exist either. But without it, as Aristotle said, “We cannot know anything except it be a uniformity.” To
which Peirce adds the following comment: “I am simply suggesting
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first that an event altogether out of order and presenting no regularity could not come to our knowledge at all, and second, that only in respect to its being orderly can
we know it” (Grand Logic, 1893).
The three principles of cosmology are:
1. Tychism, the principle of chance (τύχη). “Tychism must give birth to an evolutionary cosmology” (6.102). “Tychism is only a part and corollary of the general
principle of ‘synechism’” (Peirce’s letter to W. James, Perry II: 223).
2. Agapism, the principle of love ( ν ά γ π) which is “the great evolutionary agency of the universe” (6.287). (Agapism is a degenerate form of synechism.)
η
3. Synechism, the principle of continuity (συνέχεια). Synechism is a “regulative principle of logic’’ (6.173) “which insists upon the idea of continuity” (6.169).
Continuity is the absence of ultimate parts in that which is divisible (6.173). “Once you have embraced the principle of continuity no kind of explanation of things
will satisfy you except that they grew” (1.175).
Most of the misunderstandings concerning Peirce’s cosmology arise from taking the cosmological trichotomies—chance, love, and continuity—as the three hierarchical
terms of a triad. Properly speaking, they belong to Secondness. They nevertheless are indispensable if we want to understand our own Western conception of the
world as elaborated by the Greek philosophy (concept) and mythology (representation). That is why Order means generality, rather than physical regularity.
Cosmologically, “physical regularities” are continuous processes; what Plato called the Chôra. On the other hand, chance is linked to Chaos by the “instantaneous,” the
Exaphnès:
[I]n the beginning—infinitely remote there was a chaos of unpersonalized feeling, which being without connection or regularity would properly be without
existence. This feeling, sporting here and there in pure arbitrariness, would have started the germ of a generalizing tendency. Its other sportings would be
evanescent, but this would have a growing virtue. Thus, the tendency to habit would be started; and from this, with the other principles of evolution, all the
regularities of the universe would be evolved. At any time, however, an element of pure chance survives and will remain until the world becomes an
absolutely perfect, rational, and symmetrical system, in which mind is at last crystallized in the infinitely distant future. (1891: 6.33)
Let us conclude with a vivid description by Peirce of the cosmos as continuous and instantaneous.
Peirce starts by saying that there is no Time without existing change:
Time with its continuity logically involves some other kind of continuity than its own. Time, as the universal form of change, cannot exist unless there is
something to undergo change and to undergo a change continuous in time there must be a continuity of changeable qualities. Of the continuity of intrinsic
qualities of feeling we can now form but a feeble conception. (6.132)
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1 2 3
Chance (τύχη)
[Instantaneous]

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Chaos Love ( γ ά π)η Order

[Feeling] is “the great evolutionary agency of the universe” (6.287).

[Processes]

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Continuity (συνέχεια)

is “the absence of ultimate parts in that which is divisible” (6.173).
“Once you have embraced the principle of continuity no kind of
[Generality]
explanation of things will satisfy you except that they
grew” (1.175).

[Space]
Table 16.3. Peirce’s Principles of Cosmology
Consider a gob of protoplasm, say an amoeba or a slimemould. It does not differ in any radical way from the contents of a nervecell, though its functions
may be less specialized. There is no doubt that this slimemould, or this amoeba, or at any rate some similar mass of protoplasm, feels. That is to say, it
feels when it is in its excited condition. But note how it behaves. When the whole is quiescent and rigid, a place upon it is irritated. Just at this point, an
active motion is set up, and this gradually spreads to other parts. In this action, no unity nor relation to a nucleus, or other unitary organ can be discerned.
It is a mere amorphous continuum of protoplasm, with feeling passing from one part to another. Nor is there anything like a wavemotion. The activity
does not advance to new parts just as fast as it leaves old parts. Rather, in the beginning, it dies out at a slower rate than that at which it spreads. And
while the process is going on, by exciting the mass at another point, a second quite independent state of excitation will be set up. In some places, neither
excitation will exist, in others each separately, in still other places, both effects will be added together. Whatever there is in the whole phenomenon to
make us think there is feeling in such a mass of protoplasm—feeling, but plainly no personality—goes logically to show that that feeling has a subjective,
or substantial, spatial extension, as the excited state has. (6.133)
Then Peirce passes to the role of Space in the evolutionary process:
Since space is continuous, it follows that there must be an immediate community of feeling between parts of mind infinitesimally near together. Without this,
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I believe it would have been impossible for minds external to one another ever to become coördinated, and equally impossible for any coördination to be
established in the action of the nervematter of one brain. (6.134)
But with this he ventures to conclude that “everybody can see that the statement of St. John is the formula of an evolutionary philosophy, which teaches that growth
comes only from love’’ (6.289)—that Love which unites Space and Time, Continuity and Chance.
Is this description “scientific” or “metaphorical” like Greek mythology? Peirce’s answer is clear: “In the very nature of things, the line of demarcation between the three
modes of evolution is not perfectly sharp. That does not prevent its being quite real; perhaps it is rather a mark of its reality” (6.306). But the two main questions are
not there. The first one is “whether three radically different evolutionary elements have been operative,” and the second question is “what are the most striking
characteristics of whatever elements have been operative” (6.306)?
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17
Theology: The Reality of God
PEIRCE’S TRIUNE GOD AND THE CHURCH’S TRINITY
Peirce was born a Unitarian. Unitarians believe that only God the Father is God; Jesus, the Son of God, and the Holy Spirit are the first among the creatures. One of
Peirce’s fellow students at Harvard, Charles Fay, had a sister, Harriet Melusina, who not only had become an Episcopalian, and consequently a Trinitarian, but was a
kind of American suffragette, a feminist who had advanced a conception of the Trinity in which the Holy Spirit represented the Woman in the triune Divinity:
A Divine Eternal Trinity of Father, Mother and Only Son—the “Mother” being veiled throughout the Scriptures under the terms “The Spirit,” “Wisdom,”
“The Holy Ghost,” “The Comforter’’ and “The Woman clothed with the sun and crowned with the stars and with the moon under her feet.” (Max Fisch in
W1, Introduction: xxxi)
Charles S. Peirce married Melusina in the Episcopalian Church and adopted Melusina’s triune conception of God:
Here, therefore, we have a divine trinity of the object, interpretant, and ground. […] In many respects, this trinity agrees with the Christian trinity; indeed I
am not aware that there are many points of disagreement. The interpretant is evidently the Divine Logos or word; and if our former guess that a Reference
to an interpretant is Paternity be right, this would be also the Son of God. The ground, being that partaking of which is requisite to any communication
with the Symbol, corresponds in its function to the Holy Spirit. (W1: 503)
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Peirce gave later in 1907, although he had been separated from Melusina for more than thirty years, an even more feminist conception: “A Sign mediates between its
Object and its Meaning. […] Object the father, sign the mother of meaning.” “That is,” Max Fisch comments, ‘‘he might have added, of their son, the
interpretant” (w1: xxxii).
DOES GOD EXIST?
The question was dealt with by Peirce in a convincing paper published in the Hibbert Journal in 1908, under the title “A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God.”
Peirce’s positive answer has a very important consequence. It shows that answering the question is possible on the sole condition that God is Triune.
Peirce’s way to God is not argumentative, nor historical; it is sheer wandering of the mind in the Universe of Firstness through “musement.” “Musement” is “Pure Play.”
“Pure Play has no rules, except this very law of liberty. It bloweth where it listeth. It has no purpose, unless recreation” (6.458). It takes many forms: “aesthetic
contemplation,” “castlebuilding,” or that form “of considering some wonder in one of the [three] Universes, or some connection between two of the three, with
speculation concerning its cause,” which is, properly speaking, the “musement” which “will in time flower into the N.A. [Neglected Argument]” (6.458).
Peirce was not only born a Unitarian, he was born an empiricist. Historically, Peirce was first, from 1851 to 1867, an outandout empiricist and thus a nominalist: only
Seconds—concrete individual existents—were real. Reality and existence were then synonymous. In 1857, he wrote: “Reality [refers] to the existence of the object
itself” (W1: 18).
From 1867 onward, more precisely during the winter of 1867–1868, in an unpublished item in which he criticized positivism, Peirce distinguished between existence
and reality. What is real is “that which is independently of our belief and which could be properly inferred by the most thorough discussion of the sum of all impressions
of sense whatever” (W2: 127).
It will be remarked that this kind of reality, although general, is not properly a Third in the sense in which Peirce will use the term in 1908. Then, a Third will not be a
generalization of Seconds, that is of singular cases, but of operative rules, a priori empty, of the type “if p, then q.”
It was not until about 1890 that Peirce conceded that Firsts are also real. In 1891, he wrote: “In the beginning […] there was a chaos of impersonalized feeling, which
being without connection or regularity would properly be without existence.” However, “this feeling, sporting here and there in pure arbitrariness, would have started
the germ of a generalizing tendency” (6.33). How to interpret the reality of the Firsts is not easy. If we say that they are in potentia, how can they be entirely without
existence? If they are not in potentia, they must be general without ground, contrary to Thirdness, which is a rule expressing the logical
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relation between “arguments,” such as p and q. Thus there must be another kind of “general.” This generality is something ‘‘vague” and undetermined, which can only
be “realized” by sheer chance. One of the best commentators who was also editor, with Paul Weiss, of the Collected Papers of Peirce, Charles Hartshorne, insisted
on this point in a chapter of his Logic of Perfection: “Ten Ontological or Modal Proofs for God’s Existence.” Since perfection is not a state, Hartshorne argues, an
actus purus, but a destiny, perfection is perfectibility:
The absolute infinity of the divine potentiality might also be called its coincidence with possibility as such. (Perhaps “coextensiveness” with possibility
would be more accurate.) To be possible is to be a possible object of divine knowing. But it immediately follows that one thing is not possible—the non
existence of the divine knower. For no subject can have knowledge of the fact of its own nonexistence, certainly not perfect, infallible knowledge. Thus
either the nonexistence of the perfect knower is impossible, or there is one possibility whose actualization the perfect knower could not know. But the
second case contradicts the definition of perfection through the coincidence of “possible” and “possible for God.” (Hartshorne 1962: 38)
As, on the other hand, according to modal logic, to say that “p is possible” is to say that “necessarily p is possible,” and to say that “it is possible that p is necessary,” is
to say that “necessarily p is necessary,” the ontological argument is valid and God is real, in the Peircean sense; that is to say: God as Triune—the father, the Son, and
the Holy Spirit—“exists.” Hartshorne’s complete logical argumentation is worth quoting:
To squeeze this modal complexity into the mere dichotomy, “existent versus nonexistent,” is to fail to discuss what Anselm was talking about. He
repeatedly expressed the principle that “contingentlyexisting perfect thing” is contradictory in the same way as “nonexisting perfect thing.” However,
since what is not exemplified in truth is certainly not necessarily exemplified (~p ~Np), and since what is not necessary could not be necessary (~Np
N~Np), to exclude contingency (this exclusion being the main point of the Argument) is to exclude factual nonexistence as well as merely factual
existence, leaving, as the only status which the idea of perfection can have (supposing it not meaningless or contradictory), that of necessary
exemplification in reality; and it then, by the principle Np p, “the necessarily true is true,” becomes contradictory to deny that perfection is exemplified.
(Here, and throughout, we use the arrow sign for strict, not material, implication.) (Hartshorne 1962: 50)
THE REALITY OF GOD
The “reality” which Peirce has in mind when he speaks of the reality of God is the reality of Firstness. But it is not enough to oppose “reality” as First and “existence” as
Second, because there are not two but three Universes of Experience which are not separate universes, but fundamental modalities of Being: Firstness
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or the mode of Being as “felt” which is more than a simple “feeling”: it tends to get united with other “feelings’’ in time and space, in other words to “exist” hic et nunc;
“existing” hic et nunc is the mode of Being of Secondness; the interactions of “feelings” give birth in the long run to a third mode of Being: Thirdness which includes
habits and laws.
The first Universe is that of Possibility; “the second Universe is that of the Brute Actuality of things and facts”; the third Universe is that of the Sign, “not the mere body
of the Sign, but “the Sign’s soul, which has its Being in its power of serving as intermediary between its Object and a Mind” (6.455).
Which “reality” is the reality of God? It is the “reality” of Firstness which can be reached through the action of the Mind which Peirce calls “musement.” The play of
Musement is neither the play of deduction (Thirdness) nor the play of induction (Secondness), but the play of retroduction or rather abduction. It is only “musement,”
the play of Firstness, which can reveal the reality of God; not the existence of God, because “existence” can be shown only through “induction”; nor the reality of God
as Holy Spirit, which can be proved only through deduction.
Consequently, Peirce’s answer to the question of the existence or rather reality of God implies that God is triune: God the Father has the reality of Firstness: He is, but
does not exist, while God the Son, although also real as First, did exist as Second in the “Person” of Jesus. As to the reality of God as Third or Organizer of the World,
it is personified in the Holy Spirit.
To conclude this first part, I should like to insist on the originality of Peirce’s argument. It is the first argument ever founded on the category of possibility whose
argumentative scientific expression is neither induction on which all the proofs of the “existence” of God rest, nor a priori deduction, very often used by
metaphysicians since Saint Anselm, which for sure leads to God’s “reality,” a “reality” which implies “existence”—a terminological contradiction denounced by Peirce
and Duns Scotus—but retroduction or abduction, the only argument which can “show” the “reality” of God without imposing on Him the “haecceity” of existence. This
conception is not incompatible with God’s incarnation as Second in the historical existence of Jesus Christ, nor with the reality of God as First through the mediation as
Third of the Holy Spirit.
PEIRCE’S TRIAD AND THE MYSTERY
OF THE TRINITY
Peirce was not interested in the Mystery of the Trinity of God proper. The reason why I wanted to deal with this problem is that, on one hand, when I read Peirce, I
was surprised that he had experienced and dealt with the same problem of the Unicity of God and His triune nature as the Christian Church, and, on the other hand,
that Peirce’s position was closer to the Eastern interpretation of the decisions of the Councils than the Western one.
The word “Trinity” was proposed initially by Theophilus of Antioch about
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180 AD, as a synonym for the word “Triad,” in the course of a theological dispute. It was also in a theological context that Peirce exposed his triadic theory for the first
time, in 1866, at the end of the eleventh Lowell Lecture. Here is the main passage already quoted above:
Here, therefore, we have a divine trinity of the object, interpretant and ground. […] In many respects, this trinity agrees with the Christian trinity; indeed I
am not aware that there are any points of disagreement. The interpretant is evidently the Divine Logos or word; and if our former guess that a Reference
to an interpretant is Paternity be right, this would be also the Son of God. The ground being that partaking of which is requisite to any communication
with the Symbol, corresponds in its function to the Holy Spirit. (W1: 502–503)
Paradoxically enough, Peirce’s conception of God as a hierarchical Triunity is better understood when it is read in the context of the history of the quarrels around the
mystery of the Trinity whose reasons are not the mystery itself, but (1) the interference of the political power, (2) the different—Eastern or Western—mental
representations of the concepts, with (3) their political implications, the two latter partially due to (4) the language used—Greek or Latin.
Political Interference
The first Council which met in 325 at Nicea (Iznik in Turkey), was summoned by the Emperor Constantine, who presided. In accordance with the Emperor’s wishes,
the Council pronounced the condemnation of Arianism. Arius, a priest of Alexandria (ca. 280–ca. 336) had taught that the divine persons cannot be equal nor
assimilated: the Father, uncreated and unengendered cannot communicate with the world; the Son engendered for all eternity is the ordinator of the world in lieu of the
λ ό γ ο or divine power. The Son is subordinate and inferior to the Father. The Council decided that the Son was consubstantial (
μ ο ο ύ σ ι ) with the Father (
ο μο
meaning “same” and ο σ ί α“substance”): “Jesus Christ is the Son of God, engendered and not created, consubstantial with the Father.’’

Soon disagreements appeared concerning the synonymity of “consubtantialis” and μ ο ο υ σ ι , as we shall see. As the Emperor Constantius II (317–361) was against
ο
the “consubstantiality” of the Son with the Father, the Councils of Rimini (West) and Seleucia (East) condemned the Western interpretation, because such was the
order of the emperor.
When Constantius II died in 361, the new Emperor Julian the Apostate, who was to write the treatise Adversus Christianos, reestablished the freedom of speech and
discussion in matters of religion which had been prohibited by Constantius II.
After Julian’s death, the Council of Constantinople summoned in 381 by Theodosius I (ca. 346–395), the last emperor of the Eastern and Western Empire
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(374–395), put a temporary stop to the discussion by confirming the doctrine proclaimed by the Council of Nicea.
Definitions and Representations
Definitions of dogmas without representations raise only problems of formal coherence, but no difficulties of adhesion if they are coherent. To believe in a dogma is
another problem, because to believe is to believe in the representation one makes of it. It must be remembered that, on dualistic principles, Euclidean geometry does
not require, any more than does the Trinity, a figured representation, but that nonEuclidean geometries have their point of departure in a criticism of the representation
of Euclidean geometry. All philosophers, however, from Plato (who made use of myths) to Peirce (who used diagrams and existential graphs), have “illustrated” their
discourse.
The problem arises when the same definition leads to different representations. Which is what happened when Constantine tried to unify Christian doctrine. If
Christianity had no difficulty in agreeing on the formal definition of the Trinity, the Eastern and Western Churches were in disagreement about the representations they
made of it. By “formal definition,” I mean in plain English, ‘‘the Unity of God in three Persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.” By “representation” I mean the
“image” in every sense of the word: the “mental” image and the “corporeal” image. The mental image refers to the “values” given to the terms, implicit or explicit, of the
definition: in this case, the way in which the unity (of God) is divided into three. The corporeal image was to be at the center of the quarrel about images which broke
out at the beginning of the eighth century. In both cases, it appears clearly that, although it is true that one cannot think without images, thought unites, while images
divide.
The quarrel concerning the filiation of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son—the quarrel of the filioque—between Rome and Constantinople, has its root in the
doctrine of the μ ο ο ύ σ ι οcharacter of the Son which did not satisfy the Eastern Church. If it is true that, for Philo (Alexandria, 13 BC–54 AD),
μ ο ο ύ σ ι οreally

means what the Council intended it to mean, the word was associated in the κοινή with the idea of metal. The word μ ο ο ύ σ ι οwas used only to mean that, for

instance, two pieces of gold jewelry were of the same kind of material or substance. The word had thus a material and concrete implication which could not be fitting in
speaking of God. The Western representatives had not the same “interpretants” and consequently were ready to accept the “word” and the doctrine.
Eusebius of Caesarea (today in Israël) (265–340) reformulated the doctrine without using the word μ ο ο ύ σ ι : “The Father is the beginning of the Son who takes his
ο
divinity from Him. There is thus only one God without beginning and unengendered. As to the Son, He is the image of the only true God, He alone who is God by
Himself.” But this was only coming back to the subordinationism of Arius, for whom in fact Eusebius had some sympathy. Besides, it did not eliminate
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completely the μ ο ο ύ σ ι οcharacter which reappeared in the idea of “image” inseparable from the idea of “resemblance.”

The Eastern Churches found still other ways of avoiding the word ομοουσιο . The first was to reject any resemblance between the Father and the Son; this was what
Aetius and his disciple Eunone proposed. The second one was to accept a certain resemblance while affirming the inequality of the divine persons or, in other words, to
use the Greek term, by maintaining the thesis of the anomeism of the persons ( ν ό μ ο ι οmeaning “unlike”).

After Julian’s death, at Antioch, Aetius and Eunone renewed the philosophical reflection on the Trinity. As it was the essence of God to be unengendered, only the
Father was God and thus the Son was fundamentally dissimilar ( ν ό μ ο ι ) from the Father. Whence a hierarchized conception of the Trinity which was very well
ο
exposed by Eunone: The essence of God unengendered ( γεννησία ), which is by definition incommunicable, cannot have been communicated by the Father to the
Son. What the Father does communicate is his creative power—his ν έ ρ γ ε ι—which makes the Son the intermediary between God and the world of existence. The
α
Holy Spirit comes last and has no divine character.
The decisions of the Councils of Rimini and Seleucia were strikingly ‘‘hierarchical”: “Unicity and Solitude of the Father, Subordination of the Son to the Father, and of
the Holy Spirit (minister and servant) to the Son.” The Son was declared to be “similar” ( μ ο ι ο) to the Father without further precision. If the resemblance were
neither substantial nor essential, it could only be external.
After long discussions between East and West, the Council of Constantinople restated in 381 the doctrine proclaimed by the Council of Nicea. The Holy Spirit
regained his questioned divinity. The only Son of God is “true God of true God, engendered, but not created, and of the same substance of the Father,” the Holy Spirit
“emanates from the Father [but not from the Son] and is worshipped and glorified together with the Father and the Son.” This rejection of the filioque is the
consequence of the constant reluctance of the Eastern Church to accept the μ ο ο ύ σ ι οcharacter of the Father and the Son. In this connection, Peirce would have

sided with the Eastern Church. God the Father by Himself certainly is Ens Necessarium and creator of all, but He cannot as Such act in time, because He is out of
time; He “probably has no consciousness” (6.489), no mind, properly speaking, and no purpose, except “in a vague sense” potentially (see 6.505–509). Thus the
filioque, the existential necessity of the Son.
Seventy years later, in 451, The Emperor Marcianus summoned the Council of Chalcedon (Kadiköy in Turkey). Marcianus (396–457), the second Emperor of the
Eastern Empire, had succeeded Theodosius II (the eldest son of Theodosius I and the author of the Theodosian Code) whose sister Pulcheria he had married. The
Council of Chalcedon reopened the question of the relation of the Father and the Son and elaborated the doctrine in order to combat two other errors: that of
Nestorius who maintained that there were two persons in Christ: a
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divine person and a human person (an error which had already been condemned by the Council of Ephesus in 431), and that of Eutyches who maintained that there
was only one nature in Christ and that was the divine nature. Against Nestorius, the Council proclaimed that there was only one Person ( π ό σ τ α σ) in Christ and
ι
against Eutyches that this unique person has two natures: one divine and one human: Jesus Christ is the Son of God and of Mary.
It may be noted in passing that Tarek Aziz, the present Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq, is a Nestorian, and that Islam maintains that there is only one nature in Jesus
Christ, the human nature. Something more important and intriguing is the agreement of 1994 between Pope John Paul II and Patriarch Mar Dinkha IV, Head of the
Eastern Assyrian Church which is Nestorian; an agreement by which they conjointly declared that “Christ was not a man in the ordinary sense of the word, chosen by
God as ‘His body’ and as somebody to inspire, as it had been the case with the Just and the Prophets, but the very Verb of God, engendered by the Father before all
the centuries, without beginning according to His divinity, and born recently from a mother without father, according to His humanity.”
This agreement does not solve the mystery of the Trinity. The mystery of the Trinity, which is at the core of the misunderstanding between East and West, is still
unresolved. In sum:
1. For Easterners, the mystery is that of one Being (Ο σ ί) in three hypostases (
α π ό σ τ α σ ε), a formula smacking of Arianism for Westerners;
ι
2. For Westerners, the mystery is that of one Substance (Substantia) in three persons (personae), a formula redolent of Sabellianism for Easterners. Sabellius of
Cyrenaica (beginning of the third century) maintained that the distinctions between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost do not affect the unity of God, because they
denote only modes or aspects of God.
Political Implications
The dispute is not yet at an end—and, as before, the theology of the Trinity is the spiritual arm of worldly power. When in the eighth century resistance in Spain against
AraboBerber occupiers began to be organized under the influence of the acculturated Visigoths, who had been in power there since the great invasions until 711, it
was in the name of orthodoxy (to which the Visigoth kings adhered only in 589, having until then been partisans of the Arianist heresy) that the “resistants” through their
spokesman the monk Beatus of Liebana (the author of the famous Commentary on the Apocalypse) fought against the “collaborators” personified by the Bishop
Elipand who preached “adoptianism,” a variety of Arianism which also denied the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son. This could only be acceptable to the
Moslem occupier, since it is the same doctrine as that revealed in the Koran: Jesus is a prophet like Moses and Mohammed. Here again the Trinity helped to mobilize
the Christians against their enemies. It made possible the Reconquest of Spain and … the conquest of America
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(of which Christendom celebrated the 500th anniversary in 1992)—America where the Unitarians persecuted in England found refuge in 1620….
From Greek to Latin
The misunderstanding between East and West concerning the mystery of the Trinity was not only semantic, but syntactic, and probably more a question of culture
expressed in two different languages than a question of theology. The translation from Greek to Latin was the syntactic source of all the confusions which I would
explain by the difference between Greek and Latin cultures: Greek culture is philosophical and all of esprit de finesse, and Latin culture juridical and of esprit de
géométrie, to use Pascal’s distinction. For instance, π ό σ τ α σ ιis a good translation of the idea of “substance’’ although the latter has a passive connotation in Latin

and an active connotation in Greek. But Latin speakers translated π ό σ τ α σ ι(hypostasis) as persona (person) and translated as substantia the Greek term ουσια

which is something which changes. But persona denotes an actor’s mask and by derivation (1) role, (2) individuality, (3) person (in grammar). It is in the second
derived sense that persona translates π ό σ τ α σ. ι
The equalitarian Trinitarism of the West has no origin but the geometrical juridicism of the Latin language.
And this applies not only to the mystery of the Trinity, but to Western philosophy in general, when Greek philosophy is read in the Latin translations originated by
Cicero and reproduced by all the Western philosophers. Descartes is as good an example as any as was shown by the American philosopher John Herman Randall Jr.:
It is significant that when Descartes asked, “What is Substance?” he was asking for what persists unchanged throughout change, what it is in change that
does not itself change. And in Locke and in Kant, in fact, throughout modern philosophy, “substance” has been taken as the unchanging, the permanent in
change, whether Locke’s “I know not what,” or Kant’s “permanent in relation to phenomena.” But for Aristotle, who since he gave the technical meaning
to the term ousia rendered into Latin as substantia, ought to know, ousia or substantia is defined precisely as that which undergoes change in change,
what is at the end of any process different from what it was at the outset. And in the most important and fundamental kind of change of all, genesis kai
phthora, “generation” and “corruption,” a new ousia or substance is present at the end that was not there at all in the beginning, or a substance has
disappeared completely. Thus it is clear, Aristotle’s pattern of motion and change is a pattern of novelty that emerges in process. (Randall Jr., 1960: 112–
113)
* * *
Linguistics can also explain strange theological conceptions, such as the “feminist” personification of the Holy Spirit in the Virgin Mary, which Melusina shared.
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One can read in the Gospel of the Hebrews (Écrits apocryphes chrétiens, 1997: 460–461) that the Holy Spirit is the “Mother of Jesus” (Saint Jerome), and that “the
Savior said: my Mother, the Holy Spirit, took me by one hair and transported me onto the Great Mount Tabor” (Origen).
Of course, this feministic reading has nothing to do with feminism, per se. It was a current iconic association with the feminine gender of the Semitic word designing
“Spirit” in this Gnostic environment: Mary was fully woman and virgin, but only apparently mother of God.
WHY HAS THE MYSTERY OF THE TRINITY
NOT YET BEEN SOLVED BY THE CHURCH?
It will have been noticed that the Councils were more concerned with the relation of the Father and the Son than with the question of the Trinity. The Holy Spirit is
hardly mentioned except accessorily. Moreover, in order to refute Arius, the Councils had recourse to a dualistic philosophy: the Aristotelian philosophy of substance.
As already pointed out, to understand the mystery of the Trinity, the mystery must be situated in the politicocultural context of the time, which is that of the opposition
between East and West. The Councils of Nicea and Constantinople, which imposed the doctrine which is still in force today in the Roman Church, were summoned,
respectively, by the first and the last emperors of the Eastern and Western Empire.
However, between these two Councils, and also outside them and after them, two philosophies are opposed: the Aristotelian philosophy and the NeoPlatonist
philosophy; the West favoring the former and the East preferring the latter.
It was in an Aristotelian spirit that the Councils of Nicea and Constantinople defined the Trinity: God in three persons equally divine.
All the Eastern interpretations of the decisions of these Councils are NeoPlatonist. I shall note two points of doctrine which are never defended for themselves, but
which are everpresent and that we noticed in Peirce’s conception of God as Triune.
1. The conception of a demiurge, the creator of the world, which in the definition of the Trinity becomes that of a solitary Father having no communication with the
world, and that of a Son, engendered but not created, creator of the world.
2. The Platonist conception of the procession of being. Plotinus (Lycopolis, now Assiout in Egypt, 205–270) was a commentator of Plato and especially of the
Parmenides. NeoPlatonism was derived from his commentaries in the famous Enneades.
Schematically, Being, which is inaccessible, has its expression in a process (π ρ ό ο δ ο , translated by the word ‘‘procession”), a downward procession in three
hypostases:
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First hypostasis: the One absolute,
Second hypostasis: the One multiple = intuitive intelligence,
Third hypostasis: the One and the multiple = the soul or discursive reason.
It is in this way that the Eastern Church understands the Trinity: One God in three hypostases. Proceeding from God the Father, the Son loses the fullness of being
possessed by the Father, but he can communicate with the world—which the Father cannot do. Proceeding from the Father and the Son, the Holy Ghost, without quite
losing his divine being (although Eunone maintains the contrary) plunges the divine being into the multiplicity of the empirical world whose foundation is the pure multiple
or pure matter.
PEIRCE’S SOLUTION
The position that Peirce was to develop is closer to that of Plotinus than that taken by the Councils of Nicea and Constantinople: The Son proceeds from the Father out
of time, but precedes Him in time. He is a “hypostasis” in the Greek sense adopted by the Eastern Church, not a “substance” in the Latin sense of the Western Church,
while possessing both a divine nature and a human nature. The “procession” moves downward: what it gains in multiplicity, it loses in unity: the Father is First, the Son is
Second, the Holy Spirit is Third.
In a letter to his brother Herbert, written before the publication of the Neglected Argument, Peirce had recognized that the Church’s conception of God was close to
his own, without entering into details:
[V]arious great theologians explain that one cannot attribute reason to God, nor perception (which always involves an element of surprise and of learning
what one did not know), and, in short, that “mind’’ is necessarily […] unlike ours, [and] that it is only negatively […] that we can attach any meaning to
the Name. (6.502)
If they had been pragmatists, Peirce concludes, the Neglected Argument would have enabled them not “to think any thought of God’s,” of course, but to “catch a
fragment of His Thought, as it were” (6.502), and to answer the question “whether there is such a being”:
Let a man drink in such thoughts as come to him in contemplating the physicopsychical universe without any special purpose of his own; especially the
universe of mind which coincides with the universe of matter. The idea of there being a God over it all of course will be often suggested; and the more he
considers it, the more he will be enwrapt with love of this idea. He will ask himself whether or not there really is a God. If he allows instinct to speak, and
searches his own heart, he will at length find that he cannot help believing it. (6.501)
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Conclusion: Peirce
A LATERAL VIEW
There are as many Peirces as philosophers who read him. Of course, this does not contradict Peirce’s semeiotic. On the contrary, it confirms it. However, one would
like to be sure of the correctness of one’s interpretation. That is why I thought of studying Peirce’s Contributions to “The Nation” as if they were the only writings by
Peirce in our possession. But I realized immediately that it could not work because I knew Peirce too well—I mean I knew my knowledge of Peirce too well. So I
decided to make a list of Peirce’s main philosophical doctrines and see how he deals with them in The Nation. I shall describe the result of my inquiry in three parts.
The first one will be concerned with Peirce’s phaneroscopy, semeiotic, epistemology, and metaphysics. The second one will be incidental and stress some remarks
made by Peirce which throw light on some points of doctrine we meet in his other writings. The third one will be devoted to pragmatism or rather pragmaticism which is
The Nation’s philosophy, with or without italics.
How to express one’s philosophy is Peirce’s main concern: one should use a terminology not likely to be misinterpreted by the reader. In the first review that Peirce
wrote in The Nation, March 18, 1869, he says:
New terms can be constructed in accordance with the principles of it [the terminology of a system] which may be understood by anyone who is
acquainted with these principles. (A024*)
* References are to the edition of the three volumes of Contributions to “The Nation,” ed. Kenneth Laine Ketner and James Edward Cook, Lubbock, Texas Tech
Press, 1975, 1978, and 1979.
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This rule suffers exceptions only ‘‘in cases in which it [our terminology] fails us” (A024) to express new principles.
As philosophical or psychological terminologies do not differ from the terminologies of other sciences,
the only possible basis for a universally accepted scientific terminology lies in a strict adherence to the rule that the word proposed as the scientific
designation of a concept into science, shall be adopted unless there are very solid objections to it. (B166)
This was written on August 25, 1898. The next year (on February 2, 1899), Peirce insists:
The only way to keep scientific terminology free from confusion is to recognize the right of him who introduces a given conception into science to confer
upon it its scientific designation and symbol, which should never be rejected nor changed except for really substantial reasons, such as the previous use in
another signification of the word chosen. (B184)
And again on October 24, 1901, concerning philosophical terminology, Peirce writes:
Our first rule, subject, perhaps, to a few general but welldefined classes of exceptions (the fewer the better), will certainly be that every technical term of
philosophy ought to be used in that sense in which it first became a technical term of philosophy. (C053)
Which new terminology has Peirce in mind? One would think that it is his own, or that he is not economical. However, the only terminology he mentions in every case
when he treats the subject is Scholastic terminology. It was the case in the first review he wrote and it is the case in the last review where he deals with the same topic
on July 7, 1901. It is not only Scholastic terminology which is here advocated, it is the Thomistic terminology, and not just any kind of Thomism, but “Leonine
Thomism.” The book reviewed (William Turner’s History of Philosophy), Peirce writes, produces upon us “the impression that Leonine Thomism” is “a decidedly
favorable standpoint from which to survey the course of philosophy” (C173).
And, Peirce adds, “there is a reason why it should be so: the adherent of any modern school is a nominalist” (C173).
What about Peirce’s Ethics of terminology and his own terminology? I read the Contributions and found hardly any mention of Peirce’s neologisms in the new fields he
introduced in philosophy: phaneroscopy, semeiotic, and in the new doctrines he advanced in epistemology and metaphysics.
The Index constitutes a fourth volume which was published in 1987. The first letter refers to the volume, the following figures to the page in the volume. For instance,
A024 reads vol. 1, page 24.
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“Phaneroscopy” is never mentioned, nor “phaneron.” Even the word “phenomenology” does not appear. Of course, Peirce speaks of Hegel and the “three stages of
thought,” but it is in relation with Lady Welby’s three kinds of meaning. The categories Firstness, Secondness, Thirdness are never mentioned nor is the distinction
between ‘‘genuine” and “degenerate.” The last term appears once applied to a monkey: a “degenerate monkey” (C017). But the theory is there, not the
phenomenology of Hegel, at least as interpreted by his followers: Harris, Wallace, Hibben, Everett, and others, who misinterpreted it. According to them, Hegel’s
system “is antievolutionary, antiprogressive, because it represents thought as attaining perfect fulfilment of any rational life except progress towards further
fulfilment” (C124).
“The ‘Logik’,” Peirce goes on, “is supposed to mirror the history of mind” (C124). This is enough to explain why Peirce’s phaneroscopy has nothing to do with
Hegel’s phenomenology. To quote Peirce:
[…] It is evident enough that all Hegel’s categories properly belong to his third grand division, the Begriff. What, for example, could be more monstrous
than to call such a conception as that of Being a primitive one; or, indeed, what more absurd than to say that the immediate is abstract? (C124)
Peirce concludes that “a powerful and original study of what the true Hegelian doctrine of Wesen should be, according to our present lights, might breathe some real life
into a modified Hegelianism, if anything could have that effect” (C125).
And something can have that effect: to be faithful to traditional scholastics and especially to Scotism according to which there are three modes of being:
[M]atter, or the positively possible; form, or that whose being in its general governing of what in any way is; and hecceities, or positive elements of
individual existence. (C174)
“Unfortunately,” Peirce remarks, “no considerable Scotistic school is now extant. Only a pragmatist, here and there, has a sort of affinity to Scotus” (C174).
Let us note that the order in which the categories are given is the order in which they appear in a semiosis: First, Third, and Second; and also that the terminology used
is not Peirce’s, but the traditional and misleading Aristotelian terminology: matter First, form Third, to which is added Scotus’s hecceity Second. Of course, one can
object that the Aristotelian terminology is not at all misleading, because “matter” stands for “a general mode of being, a positive, substantial possibility, or potentiality,
over and above actual existence, or exsistence” (C173–174). But “that there are three stages in the comprehension of phenomena is now generally admitted,” Peirce
says, “whether this be a mere logical division, or represent a subjective tendency to divide by three, or whether it is an objective law as Comte seems to think it
is” (C170). And also Aristotle and Peirce himself.
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“Semeiotic” is never dealt with. Its existence is alluded to quite by accident when Peirce speaks of the foundations of logic. He writes:
One appeals chiefly to mathematics, another to metaphysics, a third to the general notion of a sign, a fourth and a fifth to this and that branch of
psychology, a sixth to linguistics, a seventh to the history of science; and still the list is incomplete. (C279)
As for Peirce, semeiotic is another name for logic. It is not at all certain that, by “the general theory of a sign,” he meant his own semeiotic. It is a fact that in the
Contributions there is not a word on the triadic division of the sign into representamen, object and interpretant. There is nothing on the nine subdivisions into qualisign,
sinsign, legisign,…
The word “sign” appears here and there, but not significantly except once in a review of Baldwin’s Thought and Things in 1907:
[…] the author frequently speaks of the “meaning” of an “object.’’ It appears to us that meaning belongs exclusively to signs; and a sign, as the medium
between two minds or between an object and an idea, and being so regarded, however obscurely, must involve a triplet. (C290)
It is the only expression of the fact that Peirce’s theory of signs is triadic. That the relation between a sign (representamen), an idea (interpretant), and an object is a
semiosis is precisely expressed, without the term being used, in a review of Windelband’s History of Philosophy in 1894 à propos the translation of the Π ε ρ
Σημε ων κα Σημειώσεων of Philodemus into “On Signs and Designations.”
He who reads the text finds to his amazement that the title cannot, agreeably to the contents, be understood to mean “On Signs [i.e., words and the like]
and designations,” but, on the contrary, must be rendered “On Signs [i.e., facts symptomatic of other facts] and their significance [i.e., their inferential
value]”; and further that the substance of the treatise bears not the remotest affinity with the “supposition” of nouns, but is a discussion of the philosophy
and value of inductive reasoning! (B074)
Σημε ω σ ιor semiosis is thus the Greek or Anglicized term for an inference or inductive reasoning.

Other remarks are also interesting in relation to semeiotic, provided the reader has some knowledge of the doctrine. In 1893, in a review of Spencer’s Principles of
Ethics (Parts V and VI), one can read an intriguing paragraph on likenesses or icons:
[Spencer] represents every operation of the mind as a recognition of a likeness or the recognition of an unlikeness. […] it implies that all relations can be
analyzed into likenesses and unlikenesses, the falsity of which has been recognized
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by every analyst who has seriously examined the question. Spencer says that sequence is unlikeness in order. Undoubtedly, a sequence is an unlikeness,
but that is no sign that it is nothing but unlikeness, or nothing but a compound of likenesses and unlikenesses. It clearly cannot be so, for when A is like or
unlike B, B has that same relation to A; while when A is followed by B, B is ipso facto not followed by A. Spencer is therefore tiresome, with his old
world psychology of likeness and unlikeness; it is particularly unfavorable to clear conceptions of evolution, which demand a recognition of the distinction
between temporal relations and the mere acervations of the crudest form of generalization. (A192–193)
This logical conception of “likeness” is expressed in another review of 1902 wherein the author of a book on classification is congratulated for thinking that “Likeness,
as the ground of the putting together of things in classification is, in brief terms, interchangeability” (C061).
“Epistemology’’ is in the background of many reviews, because Peirce was given mostly scientific books to review. However, the word “abduction” never appears.
“Induction” is the key word. But, for Peirce, “induction” is this “inferential reasoning” by which expression he translated semeiosis in terms of a triadic process which
includes the relation between a First and a Third (abduction), the relation between this Third and other Thirds in a system of Thirds (deduction), and the relation
between a deduced Third and a Second (induction).
All that appears very clearly applied to mathematics in a review of Spinoza’s Ethics.
[…] the real procedure of mathematical thought is not merely syllogistic […]. Mathematical thought advances chiefly by generalization; and the generalized
conclusions are made rigorously logical by the device of correspondingly generalizing the premises. […] Let the predicates be relational, and generalization
means organization, or the building up of an ideal system. Mathematical reasoning consists in thinking how things already remarked may be conceived as
making part of a hitherto unremarked system, especially by means of the introduction of the hypothesis of continuity where no continuity has hitherto been
thought of. (B085)
So that, Peirce writes a few months later in another review,
Mathematics advances, just as the physical sciences do, by observation and generalization. Its observations are, it is true, only observations of the mind’s
own constructions, but they often have that startling quality which indicates that they are observations. (C102)
The three stages of an inferential or inductive process are there: abduction as generalization, deduction as organization, induction as observation or experimentation of a
deduced proposition.
“Scientific metaphysics” is everywhere in the Contributions. But while “tychism”
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is mentioned, there is not a single allusion to “agapism” or “synechism,” although, as we have just seen, for Peirce, continuity is a major hypothesis of explanation.
Tychism is mentioned twice, in 1899 and 1906. In 1899, it is, so to speak, the classical tychism:
There remain two opinions less deterministic than the common one. One of these, which has been called Tychism, is that there are minute departures in
nature from any general formula which can be assigned, so that there is a certain element of absolute chance. This is the position maintained by C. S.
Peirce a few years ago in the Monist. (B208)
In 1906, Peirce proposes a tychism less classical. He writes:
The deepest revolution of scientific conception [is that which reduces] matter from the rank of primordial substance to that of a special state of electricity.
After that, we shall be prepared for anything, even for experimental demonstration of the Tychist’s doctrine that electricity is a psychical phenomenon.
(C255)
II
It is astonishing, in a way, to see Peirce defend the doctrine that electricity is a psychical phenomenon, when one knows his constant antipsychologism. However, the
Contributions give a clue to this apparent contradiction and to several other questions.
As to psychology, Peirce has always distinguished between the “psychic” or “psychical” and “psychology.’’ One is a fact, the other a theory. Peirce’s antipsychologism
is explicitly justified in his review of James’s Principles of Psychology (1891) and Wundt’s Principles of Physiological Psychology (1905).
The appeal to “facts” is “the principle of the uncritical acceptance of data to which Prof. James clings.” It is a departure from accepted methods of sciences in general
(A106). The method of any science takes for model the science of dynamics and it is in this sense that the word “dynamic” must be understood in the writings of Peirce,
not just “fact” but the testing of phenomena in the light of a hypothesis. And it is because the “psychic” cannot be tested in this way that “logic, ethics, and philosophy
[cannot] be securely based on that special science”: psychology (C232). How can we “diagnose the malady of psychology”? Easily enough: “There is nothing which for
the psychical wing of science fulfils that function which the science of dynamics fulfils on the physical side” (C230).
This function is that of a semeiotic inference:
Every attempt to explain any phenomenon physically consists in first proposing some hypothesis [abduction] as to the existence of designated dynamical
conditions from which, according to the principle of dynamics, phenomena such as
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have been observed would take place [deduction], and then going on to put the hypothesis to the test of making it the basis of predictions concerning
untried experiments [induction]. (C230)
III
Nowhere does Peirce describe more clearly why he rejects psychology, what “dynamic” means, what his epistemology is—and what the principle of pragmatism
consists of.
Pragmatism is The Nation’s philosophy. I do not mean the philosophy of the editors, but the philosophy of Peirce—pragmatism or rather pragmaticism—which was to
become the philosophy of the nation: America.
It is not the place here to show that a philosopher of American nationality is an American philosopher if and only if he is a pragmatist, or should I say a pragmaticist or
rather a speculative pragmatist.
To conclude my comparative essays between Peirce’s pragmaticist thought and the thought of the main Europeans who dealt with the same topics, I shall sum up
Peirce’s pragmatism and his reactions to the works of the great philosophers of the Golden Age of American philosophy: James, Royce, Dewey, Mead, Santayana.
Peirce was certainly a genius, but, so to speak, by accident, but fortunately he was accidentprone. What I mean is that he had not that kind of intelligence which
characterizes the American Mind, an intelligence open to other people. When one reads his comments on James, Dewey, Santayana, and even Royce—he never
mentioned Mead, and it was reciprocal: Mead never referred to Peirce—one is astonished to see that he was unable to foresee or even to see the epochmaking
contributions of James’s Principles of Psychology and of Dewey’s Studies in Logical Theory.
Santayana is a halfhearted American, as everybody knows. Although he is in a way a pragmatist or, if one prefers, a halfhearted pragmatist, Peirce does not see that.
For him, “Professor Santayana’s volumes [the first two volumes of The Life of Reason] are anything but commonplace. They are all that Boston has of most
précieux” (C222). ‘‘They are extremely handy and agreeable to the eyes,” Peirce goes on.
James is rewarded, as “a tribute of respect” (A104), with a lot of negative comments: His terminology is “unsuitable” (A104); his originality is “destructive”; he has a
“general incomprehensibility of things” (A105); he is a materialist; he inclines towards “Cartesian dualism”; he suspects evolution; he is antiintellectualist, anti
associationist, antispiritualist (A105). His originality is positive in only one case: his positivism, although he does not use it properly.
Dewey had two books reviewed by Peirce: The Psychology of Number and Studies in Logical Theory. The comment on the first book is negative: Measuring does
not teach us “to improve our general conceptions” (B114). But it allows Peirce to give his own opinion which is worth quoting:
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It is useful to distinguish the different purposes of numbers, because a distinct system of numbers, each with its distinct modification of logic, is used for
each purpose. For counting, we must use cardinal numbers; for the assignment of places in cycles, we use limited series (the names of the days of the
week is such a system of numbers); for dating, in series running indefinitely both ways (like the years BC and AD), we require negative as well as positive
integers; for measurement, we need rational fractions; for reasonings about continua, where first the idea of a limit comes in, we need surds; for
comparing functions, we need imag inaries; for fourdimensional continuous numerotations, quaternions. (B115)
On the Studies which are the platform of instrumentalism, a branch of pragmatism very close to his own, closer in any case than James’s or Royce’s, Peirce has only
one thing to say: The members of the Chicago school “are manifestly in radical opposition to the exact logicians, and are not making any studies which anybody in his
senses can expect, directly or indirectly, in any considerable degree, to influence twentiethcentury science” (C185).
Although Peirce does not think that all the positions of Royce in The World and the Individual are “perfectly demonstrated” (C082), he is sympathetic with Royce’s
kind of pragmaticism. He accepts Royce’s distinction between “internal meaning” and “external meaning,” which he traces back to John of Salisbury’s distinction
between signification which is intrinsic and denotation which is extrinsic. This distinction does not differ much from Peirce’s distinction between ‘‘immediate object” and
“dynamic object,” if we follow Peirce.
Another writer, a quarter of a century ago, proposed this maxim: “Consider what effects that might conceivably have practical bearings we conceive the
object of our conception to have. Then our conception of those effects is the whole of our conception of the object.” Carrying this pragmatistic spirit a
trifle further, Professor Royce holds that the internal meaning of an idea is a Purpose, instead of regarding it, with his predecessor [Peirce] as a germinal
purpose. (C082)
Who are then, apart from himself, the true pragmatists? Peirce’s answer takes us back to Europe: The Founding Fathers of the doctrine are Spinoza and Berkeley, with
the help of Scotus and Kant.
Spinoza, who “thoroughly recognized as a fundamental truth that the substance of what one believes does not consist in any mere sensuous representation, but in how
one would be disposed to behave” (C178).
Berkeley is the father of all modern philosophy. “It is he, more than any other single philosopher, who should be regarded as the author of that method of modern
pragmatism—i.e., the definition, or interpretation, of conceptions by their issues” (C036). But there were two weaknesses in Berkeley. One of these is that existence is
a form to be conceived. Thanks to Scotus, and Kant in that matter, existence is now “a compulsive force to be experienced” (C037). The other
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weakness of Berkeley, “shared by Kant in a lesser degree,” is “his Ockhamism, or refusal to acknowledge any being in futuro, or any mode of being whatever except
that of individual existence” (C037).
A last remark. When he had the opportunity of publishing a paper, Peirce used to write about everything he thought important to convey without much consideration for
the topic of the paper. Why did he not do the same thing in his contributions to The Nation? Whatever the answer, it is a fact that, in spite of his ethics of terminology,
he did not impose on The Nation’s readers his own doctrines, or at least his terminology in the fields in which he knew he was a pioneer, and in which he is now
universally recognized to be one: phaneroscopy, logic, semeiotic, epistemology, and scientific metaphysics. On the contrary, his main theories are more insinuated than
exposed; except pragmatism, which is properly The Nation’s philosophy, but not just any kind of pragmatism—not James’s, nor Dewey’s, not even Royce’s—but his
own brand of pragmaticism, the kind of speculative pragmatism which in retrospect, or from outside or laterally, appears to be the philosophy of the American nation.
It was the destiny of America to unite what was divided in Europe and give birth to a new philosophy: pragmatism, thanks to Peirce, without whom philosophy would
not be what it is, not only in America, but the world over.
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INDEX
Aetius, 176
Albaquerque Vieira, J., xii
Aquinas, T., 67, 147–148, 155–161
Aristotle, vii, 1, 3, 5, 6, 12, 67, 78–79, 83, 155–161, 183
Arius, 174
Augustine, 161
Avicenna, 157
Aziz, Tarek, 177
Bachelard, G., 143
Bacon, Lord F., 27
Bacon, R., 27
Bain, A., 7
Balat, M., xii
Baldwin, J., 38, 87, 142, 184
Balle, F., 128
Barthes, R., 104–105
Beatus of Liebana, 177
Benedict, G. A., 62
Berkeley, G., 188
Bernard, C., 133
Bernard, J., xii
Bloomfield, L., 149
Bonfantini, M., 67
Boole, G., 8, 142
Brakel, J. van, xii
Burks, A., xii
Carnap, R., 115
Chouraqui, A., 62
Cicero, 148
Clauberg, J., 70
Cohen, J., viii
Cohen, M., 104
Columbus, 164
Comte, A., 183
Constantine (Emperor), 174
Constantius II, 174
Cook, J. E., 181n
Cook Wilson, J., 97
Cuvillier, A., 148
D’ Alembert, Jean Le Rond, 70
Darwin, C., 162–169
Deledalle, G., x, xii, 25, 73, 88, 138, 141, 143
De Lacy, E., 85–86
De Morgan, A., 8
Descartes, R., ix, 1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 48, 83, 102, 156–157
Dewey, J., viii, 7, 20, 33, 67, 70, 76–77, 99, 115, 118–119, 148–149, 153, 187
Diogenes the Cynic, 82
Diogenes Laertius, 80
Duhamel, M., 62
Durkheim, E., 101, 107
Eco, U., x, 121–122
Einstein, 14
Elipand (Bishop), 177
Epicurus, 137–144
Eunone, 176
Eusebius, 175
Eutyches, 177
Evans, J. D., xi
Everett, W. G., 183
Fay, C., 170
Fay, H. M., 31, 170
Feyerabend, P., 143
Fisch, M., 83, 170, 171
Flournoy, T., 70
Foucault, M., 65
Frege, G., 51, 137–142
Goodman, N., 143
Grote, J., 45, 153
Guillaume, P., 149–150
Gutenberg, J., 129
Hamilton, W., 37, 133–134
Harris, W. T., 183
Helbo, A., xi
Herakleitos of Ephesos, 78
Hartshorne, C., 172
Heerden, M. van, xii
Hegel, 95, 183
HessLüttich, xii
Hibben, J. G., 183
Huisman, D., 148
Hull, C. H., 115
Husserl, E., 68
Huxley, A., 48
Page 198
Ingarden, R., 68
Jakobson, R., vii, xii, 120–126
James, W., 20, 45, 74, 75, 91, 92, 99,153, 186, 187, 188
Jastrow, J., 149
Jesus, 32, 173, 177
John Paul II, 177
John of Salisbury, 188
Jowett, B., 90
Julian the Apostate, 174
Kant, I., vii, 1, 5, 6, 7, 9, 14, 15, 17, 57, 67, 75, 103, 188
Kepler, J., 27
Ketner, K. L., 181n
Köhler, W., 149–151
Kuhn, T., 143
LaddFranklin, C., 23
Lalande, A., 25, 70
Lamarck, J.B., 164–166
Lenin, V. I., x
Leo XIII, 27
LévyStrauss, C., vii
Llull, R., 160–161
Locke, J., 147
Lukasievicz, J., 138
Mar Dinkha IV, 177
McLuhan, M., 127–136
Marcianus, 176
Maritain, J., 67, 147
Marquand, A., 80–83, 85
Martone, P., 67
Mattéi, J.F., 164
Marx, K., x
Mead, G. H., 115, 116, 117, 187
Miéville, D., xii
Mill, J. S., ix, 130
Mitchell, O. H., 10
Mohammed, 177
Mopsik, C., 62
Morris, C. S., x, xi, 114–119, 122
Moses, 177
Mounin, G., 101, 104
Napoleon, 40–41
Naville, A., 100
Nestorius, 177
Nöth, W., xii
Numa Pompilius, 27
Ockham, W. of, 11, 156–157, 189
Ogden, C. K., 87, 115, 138
Origen, 179
Parmenides, 157
Pascal, B., 178
Peirce, Juliette, 25
Pelc, J., xi, 67–77
Perry, R. B., 15
Petrilli, S., x
Philo, 175
Philodemus, 18, 75, 78–86, 184
Pius Nonus, 27
Plato, xii, 14, 48, 90, 99, 104, 127, 131–132, 162–169
Plotinus, 175
Poinsot, J., 147
Popper, K., 143
Pulcheria, 176
Pythagoras, 157
Ramsey, F. P., 88, 138, 139–140, 141
Randall, J. H., 178
Richards, I. A., 87, 115, 138
Robert, A., 25
RossiLandi, F., x
Royce, J., 187, 188
Ruskin, J., 158–160
Russell, B., 11, 87, 115, 141, 153
Saint Anselm, 172, 173
Saint Jerome, 179
Saint John, 169
Santaella, L., xii
Santayana, G., x, 187
Saussure, F. de, xi, 55, 62, 100–113, 121–122, 123
Schiller, F. C. S., 92–93, 98
SchliebenLange, B., xii
Schmitz, W., xi, 88
Schneider, H., 160
Schopenhauer, A., x
Scotus, Duns, 11, 56, 156–157, 173, 183, 188
Sebeok, T., x
Seguin, L., 23–32
Sextus Empiricus, 79–82
Shakespeare, W., 41
Sheffer, H. M., 138
Slaughter, J. W., 96
Socrates, 141
Spencer, H., 184–185
Spinoza, B., 185, 188
Stearn, G. E., 132, 133, 135, 136
Suarez, F., 156–157
Swift, J., 127, 130–131
Tejera, V., x
Thayer, H. S., 88
Theodosius I, 174
Theodosius II, 176
Theophilus of Antioch, 173
Thom, R., 135
Tolman, E. C., 115
Turner, W., 182
UmikerSebeok, J., x
Page 199
Vailati, G., 87
Valéry, P., 68
Vergez, A., 148
Wahl, J., 21–22, 132, 164
Wallace, W., 183
Wallmannsberger, J., xii
Watson, J. B., 147
Weismann, A., 164–165
Weiss, P., 172
Welby, Lady V., vii, viii, xi, 35, 41, 47, 59–60, 87–99, 101, 107, 183
Whately, R., 35
Windelband, W., 184
Withalm, G., xii
Wittgenstein, L., 14, 51, 88, 89, 137–140, 147–154
Wundt, W., 186
Zeno, 82
Page 200
GÉRARD DELEDALLE (born 1921) holds a Doctorate in Philosophy from the Sorbonne. Research Scholar, Columbia University, New York, and Attaché at the
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, he was also successively Professor of Philosophy and Head of the Philosophy Department of the universities of
Tunis (1963–1972), Perpignan (1974–1990), and Libreville (1977–1981). He was appointed Director of the Institut FrancoJaponais in Tokyo from 1972 to 1974.
He has been Visiting Professor in Japan (Waseda University), China (Beijing and Wuhan), the United States (Bloomington), and Canada (UQAM). Deledalle has
written extensively on American philosophy, Charles S. Peirce, John Dewey, pragmatism, and semiotics. In 1990 he received the Herbert W. Schneider Award “for
distinguished contributions to the understanding and development of American philosophy.”

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Peirce’s semiotics is triadic, not only because it is trirelational (Representamen Interpretant Object), but because a semiosis is a temporal process. It unites the

Possibility Existence Thought

C (3rd) B (2nd) A (1st) B (2nd)

Repertory Area Field

Secondness Degenerate Genuine

Object Icon Index

Thirdness Degenerate Degenerate Genuine

Interpretant Rhema Dicisign Argument

Truth Goodness Beauty

Possible modes of Names of the modes Names of the principles

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Charles S

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Cover

Peirce’s semiotics is triadic, not only because it is tri­relational (Representamen Interpretant Object), but because a semiosis is a temporal process. It unites the

Possibility Existence Thought

C (3rd) B (2nd) A (1st) B (2nd)

Repertory Area Field

Secondness Degenerate Genuine

Object Icon Index

Thirdness Degenerate Degenerate Genuine

Interpretant Rhema Dicisign Argument

Truth Goodness Beauty

Possible modes of Names of the modes Names of the principles

You might also like

Peirce’s semiotics is triadic, not only because it is trirelational (Representamen Interpretant Object), but because a semiosis is a temporal process. It unites the