C. S. Peirce is a pioneer — or, as he himself puts it, “a backwoodsman”! — in the analysis of of meaning.
It is thus hardly surprising that what Peirce has to say about meaning is both complicated and obscure.
Pierce’s oeuvre is that of a highly individual, subtle, acute — if perhaps not very systematic or disciplined — mind!
Peirce’s oeuvre is punctualized by penetrating and suggestive observations.
Partly because many problems of Oxonian interest — notably, “meaning” — may be traced back to — or at least found in — Pierce, and partly because his oeuvre is — at any rate, at Oxford — somewhat neglected, I propose to consider some of the things that Peirce says about a “sign” as a starting point for an analysis of “meaning.”
I shall first consider Pierce’s view about the “sign” in general, and then go on to consider the three trichotomies he proposes (icon/index/symbol; qualisign/sinsign/dicisign; rheme/dicisign/argument).
Peirce applies “sign” to a broad variety of items — including a few which I would *not*.
This extension in the application of “sign” by Pierce should not necessarily, on principle, be condemned!
Peirce’s broad use of “sign” may help us to draw our conceptual attention to an important *feature* which his variety of items share.
As a *selection* of items which Peirce calls a “sign,” I may list:
— the rolling gait of a sailor.
“The fact that he has a rolling gait means that he is a sailor.”
— a diagram.
—a shout of ‘Hi!’.
— the demonstrative pronoun, ‘that.’
— any significant sentence.
— a weathercock.
— a picture of something.
Many of these items I would *not* ordinarily call a “sign.”
It is important, for an understanding of what Peirce is doing when discussing “sign,” to realize that there is good reason to think that Peirce would have regarded the two expressions below as interchangeable:
“s is a sign.”
“x has a meaning.”
In support of this, I need refer only to two passages:
In the first, Peirce argues that “meaning” is an irreducibly triadic relation:
R(s, o, i)
— the semiotic triad.
But Peirce also claims that the “sign”-relation is irreducibly triadic:
“Every triadic relation involves *meaning*, as *meaning* is obviously a triadic relation”.
M(U, p, A)
Now, in *my* usage, the expression
“x has a meaning.”
is of wider applicability than
“s is a sign.”
Not all of the items which Peirce lists under “sign” may be said to ‘mean’ — e.g. a picture, and possibly a diagram.
So, if he is equalling “x’s having a meaning” with “s’s being a sign,” Peirce is *extending* the use of ‘meaning’.
I propose now to indicate the extent to which Peirce’s departs from *my* use of “sign.”
It is convenient to separat *two* ranges of items:
I. Those of a linguistic — or quasi-linguistic — character; roughly speaking, those items by which an uttere U may use in making a communication.
II. Those items of a wholly *non*-linguistic character.
This is a rough-and-ready division, but it may may do for now.
Let us take, as we should, the non-linguistic range first.
Within this range, what *I* would ordinarily call a “sign” (at any rate a sign ‘of ...,’ or ‘... that p’) would seem to be a so-called ‘natural’ sign.
It it is, at first sight, tempting to assume, roughly, that, whenever the presence (or existence) of “x” is a ground for supposing the presence (or existence) of “y,” “x” is a *sign* of “y.”
But this would be wrong on a number of counts.
People may perhaps come to accept a particular house as being *my* house on the strength of its having a green door — i. e., they would recognise my house by its green door.
But it would be somewhat unnatural to speak of the green door as being a “sign” of my house, or of the *fact* that the house has a green door as being a “sign” that the house is mine.
One principle involved here may be stated by saying that — where “x” and “y” refer to two individuals — I do not speak of “x” as being the “sign” of “y,” unless I am prepared to allow also that this falls under some rule to the effect that things of a type X to which “x” belongs —
x ∈ X
— are generally associated with things of the type Y to which “y” belongs:
y ∈ Y
But I would not say that any house which has a green door is — always or usually — mine.
A different example suggests that some such principle may not be the only one involved.
For though not only do I *not* speak of the presence of a feature by which I distinguish a particular individual bird from any other bird as a “sign” of the presence of that bird, I do *not* speak, either, of the feature by the aid of which I distinguish or recognize a particular kind of bird as being a “sign” (but perhaps a “mark”) of the presence of a bird of that particular kind.
I would, e. g., not speak of a bird’s having a pink beak as being a “sign” that the bird is a Lesser Nitwit.
And here of course I *can* produce a rule.
“Any bird with a pink beak — plus certain unspecified further characteristics — is always — or usually or often — a Lesser Nitwit.”
I tend to differentiate, in my usage, a feature or “mark” by which I recognise something as being of a certain type X (by which we distinguish so-and-so’s) from a “sign.”
In such cases, a “mark” is the appropriate expression, not “sign.”
A mark most naturally ‘distinguishes.’
A sign most naturally ‘indicates.’
But such a differentiation (a mark distinguishes vs a sign indicates) does not always seem to be made by all of my friends!
And, in any case, I would desire some further account for the *basis* of the differentiation between “m” being a mark that distinguishes and “s” being a sign that indicates.
This account, I fear, I cannot supply at the moment.
Maybe some of the following examples may help to elucidate the principle in question.
“x — or U — means that p” — but not “x is evidence that p” — is appropriate here.
I do not, in general, speak of “x” as being a “sign” of “y” when the existence (or occurrence) of “x” is a *constitutive* condition of the occurrence (or existence) of “y.”
E.g. I doubt if I should say that Smith having lost his temper is, on a particular occasion, a “sign” that Smith is irascible — though the fact that he lost his temper may be “evidence” that Smith is irascible.
After all, being irascible *consists* in having a tendency to lose one’s temper.
(Cf. Fogelin, “Meaning and evidence.”)
A slightly somewhat different sort of example may be given using a value term.
I would not want to say that the fact that Smith’s philosophical essay is well-reasoned is a “sign” that it is a good essay.
Rather, it is, again, a “mark” of a good essay to be well-reasoned.
I tend *not* to use “sign” either, at any rate without qualification, of “x,” if the presence of “x” leaves no room for doubt as to the presence of “y.”
In such cases I use “means” or “shows.”
Thus, I would not normally say of a particular envelope that its bearing a post-mark is a “sign” of its having been through the post.
In normal circumstances, the post-mark would be taken as establishing that the envelope has been through the post.
However, if *special* circumstances do create some suspicion to the effect of the post-mark not being genuine, I might be more ready to use “sign”!
In this connection, I may note that
iii. x is a sign that p, but possibly ~p.
is legitimate.
In contrast,
ii. x means (or shows) that p, but possibly ~p.
may not!
I do not normally speak, either, of “x” as being a “sign” of “y” if the existence of “x” is the *cause* (or *a* cause, or the explanation, or part of the explanation) of the existence of “y.”
I would hardly say
“The death of Smith is a sign that his wife will be unhappy.”
And I do not say this even if I am *uncertain* whether the wife will care!
I would hardly say:
“Smith’s catching bulimic plague is a sign that he will soon die.”
On the other hand, there is no ban of speaking of the causal *effect* as the “sign” of the cause.
I withhold “... is evidence” here, too.
I can however say “... means that p” or “... probably means that p.”
I would hardly say that the fact that the first ten people to arrive at the meeting were wearing gowns is a “sign” that that the next person to arrive will be wearing a gown — even if I happen to think that this fact makes it pretty probable that he *will* be wearing a gown!
I do not speak of a “sign,” either, in specimens of what logicians sometimes call an “analogical” argument or inference.
Nor, incidentally, do I speak of the above mentioned fact as being a “sign” that everyone at the meeting would be gowned.
Reflecting on these cases where I would withhold from using “sign,” it occurs to me that it might be worth considering whether there may not be a quite simple *positive* or substantive requirement for a “sign” which would exclude all the listed items from the status of a “sign.”
One shot would be that, for “x” to be a “sign” of “y,” it is necessary — though maybe not sufficient — that “y” should *explain* “x” — wholly or partially.
This requirement, if authentic, would eliminate the cited items from being a “sign.”
The requirement would also explain a further feature of my use of “sign,” e.g. why I might speak of the fact that Smith has a stoop as being a “sign” that Smith is an old man, but not as being a “sign” that Smith’s hair is grey, or that Smith has false teeth; for I would allow
“Smith has a stoop because he is an old man.”
But not:
“Smith has a stoop because his hair is grey and his teeth are false.”
The obvious difficulty about this requirement is that I often do speak of refer to, say, a present event as a *sign* of a future one; and — it may be asked — how can a future event *explain* a present one?
In answer to this, one must say that I certainly do say such things as
“The rope creaked *because* it was about to break.”
“Smith’s voice grew faint because he was about to die.”
Such utterances may raise a problem for the philosophers, but they seem legitimate ways of talking.
Other requirements to be fulfilled by a “sign” have been suggested e.g.
— that the “sign” must be more obvious (or more accessible) than its “significatum.”
— that the sign must be in spatio-temporal proximity to its “significatum.”
I am far from convinced that such requirements are legitimate.
That such requirements might *seem* legitimate may be explained in terms of the plausibility they may have might be explained by pointing that they are usually — though not always — fulfilled in the case of items which fulfil my own suggested requirement for a “sign.”
As for the range of communicative — linguistic, or quasi-linguistic — items, the following seem to be the most obvious cases in which “sign” *is* applicable.
For any non-verbal — or nor wholly verbal — but conventional communication device, e.g.
— the addition sign ‘+’
— the ampersand ‘&.’
“+” and “&” might also be called a “symbol,” though it does not seem obvious if every “symbol” would be called a “sign.”
— a road sign (e.g. a level-crossing sign)
— a shop-sign (e.g. a barber’s pole)
— a conventional sign, such as a map.
— a gesture, whether conventional or not, used as a communication device.
In neither of the three cases do we naturally speak of the item as a “sign of ...” or a “sign that ...”
I may speak of each item as ‘signifying that p.’
An action, normally, or at least usually, though not always, non-conventional, used as a communication device, e.g.
“Smith took Jones’s hand as a sign that all was forgiven.”
“They shot down an aeroplane as a sign that they would stand no nonsense.”
The natural phrase is ‘... as a sign,” and it may be followed by either a “that”-clause, or by “to.”
Any of these items may metaphorically be called a ‘gesture.’
No doubt there are other categories of this class of “sign,” but these perhaps are enough for the moment.
Note particularly that an expression — or a phrase, sentence, and even statement — is *not* a “sign”!
Some utterer U’s uttering an expression (or a sentence) may be a “sign” — e.g. of gullibility or intelligence — but the U’s uttering is not a “sign” of what the expression (or phrase, or sentence) means, nor of what a statement asserts.
Peirce’s triadic analysis of a “sign” — S(s, o, i) — is both fascinating and obscure!
I hope that my attempt at simplifying the welter of his pronouncements does not prove too much of a travesty, but more of a rhapsody!
Pierce’s salient points may be summarized as follows:
To be a “sign” (i. e., for some s to “mean” some object o) is to stand in a triadic relation:
S(s, o, i)
Peirce’s initial move in attempting to show this is by claiming that, for a “sign” s to be a “sign”” is for “s” to be a sign of something — some object “o” — *to somebody* — some interpretant “i.”
The relation in question is not accidentally triadic but ‘genuinely’ so, by which Peirce means that this triad cannot be reduced or analysed into a complexus of dyadic relations.
Contrary to what one might expect, the three terms of the triad that is the sign-relation are not “sign” or “significans” (“s”), object signified, “significatum” (“o”) and a third for organism, but
1 — “sign” — significans
2 — “object,” or significatum, and
3 — what Peirce calls an “interpretant.”
The following expansion by W. B. Gallie in his essay on Peirce seems to fit at least some of what Peirce claims about a “sign.”
“s is a sign”
iff
“s evokes —in some mind or organism — a response — interpretant “i” — appropriate to object “o.””
Again, contrary to what one might expect, the *meaning* of “sign” s is not the object “o” or significatum, for which it stands, but rather its interpretant — or at least rather a certain sort of interpretant.
For s to be a “sign,” its interpretant “i” must be ‘mental’, and so, according to Peirce, a thought, and so, again, a further “sign” — since all thought, on Peirce’s view, consists in signs.
Further, the interpretant which is the meaning of the sign must be a “sign” of the same “object” as is the sign of which it is the “interpretant.”
Peirce: “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 itself to the same Object.”
“The triadic relation is genuine, that is, its three members are bound together by it in a way that does not consist in any complexus of dyadic relations”.
Gallie notes that “any appropriate response to a sign is, in virtue of its very appropriatedness, capable of itself serving as a sign of the object originally signified.”
Gallie:
“In the way in which what a “sign” signifies depends on the occurrence of an appropriate response, such a response is necessary both to show what the “sign” signifies and indeed to show that it signifies anything at all”.
This is being ensued to be the case, given that the “interpretant” i — or response — is to be appropriate to o.
If the interpretant i is appropriate to o, the interpretant i is itself a sign of o.
This, of course, entails that every “sign” generates an *infinite* series of interpretants, all of which have the same object o.
Peirce is perfectly willing to accept this consequence.
A qualification by Peirce mitigates the obvious objection that it would be logically *impossible* for there to be an *infinite* series of *actual* responses or interpretants.
Peirce allows that the interpretant “i” need not be an *actual*, but merely a *potential* response — i.e. one which *would* occur, given certain further, in fact unfulfilled, conditions.
I may now ask what Peirce’s so-called theory of a “sign” is a theory of, in view of the obvious fact that “sign” is *not* used by Peirce in its everyday fashion.
One reply might be that Peirce’s semeiotic should be regarded as an attempt to elucidate or, as I prefer, analyse, the ordinary concept of “meaning.”
On this view, I have to assume that Peirce takes the concept of “sign” — *and* “meaning” — to have a somewhat wider application than it in fact has — e.g. a picture, or a map, is not ordinarily be said, as such, to ‘mean’.
Now, it will undoubtedly be useful, if one is interested in a conceptual analysis of ‘meaning’, to take Peirce’s theory in this light, and I do not think he would complain!
I should also take note of the fact that, in talking about a “sign,” Peirce is talking about a very diverse collection of items, which, nevertheless, I, as does Peirce, feel it fairly natural to group together — even though there may be no obvious ready-made heading for the list!
What Peirce says might help us to understand *why* I would readily list all those items together.
The items, it is claimed, have something in common.
For such items with “meaning” (in the ordinary usage) form only a sub-class of Peirce’s “sign.”
Any condition required for “being a sign,” in Peirce’s usage, constitutes a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for “having a meaning.”
I should not *assume* that there is some one common general substantive character which each of the items of the list possesses.
The items of the list may merely be linked by what Witters calls, metaphorically, a “family resemblance”.
Indeed, if one searches for one single character or feature shared by such items as a picture, a map, a sentence, and a weathercock, it may not be easy to pick on one!
The best I can suggest is that each item, x, is one from which something might be learned about some further item, y.
Whether this delimits the class of Peirce’s “sign,” I am not sure!
I do not propose to spend long over Peirce’s claim that the ‘sign-relation’ — “meaning” —is a triadic (and irreducibly triadic) relation.
If all that is meant is that a “sign” does not have meaning “in vacuo” — i. e., that if there were no addressee to respond to a sign, there would not be a sign with a meaning, perhaps no one would object.
But Peirce clearly means more than this.
Peirce seems to mean, *inter alia*, that for a statement of the general logical form:
“x means y.”
M(x, y)
the response
‘To whom?’
is always appropriate and must have an answer.
If this is Peirce’s view, it is false.
Some counter-examples come to mind:
“The evolving of the earth meant the emergence of life.”
“To whom?” sounds otiose!
“Kant means that ...,”
— choosing some passage which you think has hitherto baffled every one!
It may be misleading, in so far as it suggests that the “meaning” in general, and so, naturally, the meaning of a communication device, is to be thought of in terms of some addressee A, to which the sign may be addressed — encourages a “causal” theory of “meaning,” in that the “meaning” is appropriate to a communication device itself, rather than, as I prefer, in terms of the *utterer* U, or user, of the device, which would encourage an ‘intention’ theory, alla E. C. Ewing in “Meaninglessness.”
As I happen to prefer (indeed favour) an intention-based theory to a “causal” theory alla Stevenson, I regard this fact as unfortunate.
A difficulty in Peirce’s theory relates to his very choice of somewhat crypto-technical labels, such as ‘object’ (rather than “significatum”) and ‘interpretant’.
First a word about the “object” o of a “sign” s.
For Peirce, the object of a sign is *not* what the sign means!
Peirce thinks of the object in the sign-situation triad as that to which the addressee A’s response is to be appropriate.
Peirce adds that the “object” o is
“that with which the “sign” presupposes an acquaintance, in order to convey to some addressee A some further information — “p” — about it.”
The adressee A has to be able to identify, in order to comprehend the sign, the information “p” which is conveyed by the “sign,” and which is information *about* the object.
Here Peirce gives the example of a man, looking at the empty sea, who is told:
“That vessel carries no freight at all!”
Roughly, to comprehend the information “p” so conveyed, the addressee A has to identify *what* vessel is being referred to, even if, as may be, there is no actual vessel present there.
Roughly, then, the object o is that to which the “sign” refers.
Peirce’s main trouble is with the third in the triad: the interpretant” “i.”
“The proper significate outcome/effect of a sign is the interpretant of the sign.”
The interpretant seems to be regarded by Peirce as being both a “response” — in the btoader usage of this expression — the making of which (or the *disposition* to make which) is a manifestation of *understanding* the sign, i. e., taking it as a sign of, or referring to, some object or other — and as a further sign “s2” which develops or “elucidates” “s1” such that
s1 means s2.
Peirce is here *conflating* two different conceptions of “meaning.”
One is that a “sign” “meaning” this or that consists in its *referring* to an object.
The other is that it is the interpretant, or addressee, that constitutes “meaning.”
On both views, a sign, meaning this or that, would consist in its being capable of *being understood*.
On the first view, this ‘being understood’ would consist in the sign’s capacity to produce in some addressee A some response r —or disposition to do certain things —, where “r” is of a kind appropriate to the object o of the sign “s.”
On the second view, the sign being capable of *being understood* would consist in the addressee A giving, or being able to give, some “elucidation” of the sign — now s1 — in terms of s2.
A conflation of these two conceptions of “meaning” yields the view that to “understand” a sign is to *respond* to the sign by giving — or being capable of giving, or acquiring a disposition to give — an elucidation of the sign s1 in terms of s2.
Now such account of “meaning” presents its fare of difficulties!
The first — as in any a ‘causal’ theory — is, I suspect, that it may turn not to be very satisfactory (even if it may be hedged around) when the meaning of a communication device is considered.
I do not think that the verb “mean” in which utterances — or an utterer U — may be said to “mean” can be satisfactorily defined in terms of the response or reaction the utterance arouses or tends to arouse — “intends” to arouse, at most!
Another difficulty is, I suspect, that it would make a sign s1 “meaning” this or that as being roughly equivalent to being elucidated by a further sign s2.
This is open to an obvious objection as a “definition” of ‘meaning.’
It is proposed that an infinite series of elucidations for a linguistic sign s1 can be provided, without its being the case that the sign s1 means anything.
Such would be the case if I invent a ‘nonsense’ language (call it Deutero-Esperanto).
In order to assert that a sign means anything (and to *know* what the sign means), the addressee has not merely to be able to relate the sign s to other signs, but at some stage to relate the use of the sign to some *non-linguistic* situations — to the world, as it were!
As a “definition” or even conceptual analysis of “meaning,” Peirce’s proposal would be objectionably circular.
Peirce would be trying to explain the meaning of a sign s1 in terms of, roughly, the existence of another sign s2 having the same meaning!
The conflation of these two conceptions of “meaning,” apart from any objection to any of the particular conflated items, seems objectionable in that in so far as it concerns the implication that, for a response “r” to be a manifestation of understanding, it must consist in giving (or being able to give) some elucidation or quasi-elucidation s2 of the original sign s1.
But, obviously, I can show to you that I understand a sign by the way I behave — as Peirce himself admits in the case of a soldier’s response to an order.
“The example of the imperative command shows that it need not be of a ‘mental’ mode of being, but that the mode may be ‘muscular’ — where the soldier’s behaviour does not consist in providing any sort of ‘elucidation’ of the sign s1 — the lieutenant’s command — which the soldier is showing to understand!
If Peirce makes a conflation about two conceptions of meaning, one or more of the following factors may have assisted him towards doing so.
One factor may be an alleged ambiguity in the verb “interpret.”
“To interpret” may mean
‘to make sense of’, ‘to understand’
But “to interpret” may also be used for ‘explain the sense of’.
Some haziness surrounds Peirce’s saying that the interpretant (response “r”) must be ‘mental,’ i. e. that it must be a “thought,” as Frege would have it, and so, a further sign s2.
This might be understood as saying that the interpretant response “r” must be a response which counts as ‘thinking’ — roughly, ‘cogitating.’
It may also amount to claiming that the interpretant response “r” must be characteristic of an organism with a soul or mind (i.e. roughly must be a manifestation of intelligence, or of a certain order of intelligence — cf. Holloway, “Language and Intelligence.”
On the second interpretation, the statement that the interpretant must be ‘mental’ is at least plausible.
But of course, on this view, it need not be an individual piece of cogitation.
On the first interpretation, if the original statement is true (and cogitation consists in using signs), the interpretant would have to be a sign (linguistic or quasi-linguistic).
But, on this interpretation, the original statement does not seem to be true.
A failure to distinguish these two uses of “interpret” might result in the acceptance of the statement (“the interpretant must be mental”) taken in the its usage because of its plausibility when taken in its second usage.
There is a shift between a wider use of “sign” (to include ‘natural’ sign) and a narrower use of “sign,” to include only a communicative — linguistic or quasi-linguistic — device.
“Meaning” happens to be cognate with “mind” and “mental” and Peirce was aware of this!
If a response “r” to a sign “s” is appropriate to a certain object “o,” it is plausible to suggest that it would be a “natural” sign of that object “o.”
There might then be a transition to supposing that the response “r” would be a sign in the manner of that object o, and so an ‘elucidation’ of the original sign s1.
I suggest, as regard his general discussion of “meaning,” Pierce might be not too unfairly represented as having moved roughly as follows.
Peirce seems for start to combine two conceptions of meaning, without saying he is doing so.
On both these conceptions of meaning, “s has a meaning” and “s is capable of *being understood*.”
But there are two possible exegeses of “being understood.”
s is understood by A =df
Some effect produces — or is capable, given certain conditions, of being produced — on A, where this effect is in some way appropriate to the object o of the sign.
Some explanation or “elucidation” must be given — or is capable of being given — by A of s.
This explanation (“definiens”) is what, in the case of language anyway, turns out to be called by Peirce the sign’s “logical” interpretant.
Peirce:
“A Sign is a Representamen with a mental Interpretant”.
So s has meaning seems to be in Peirce definitionally equivalent to:
The sign s is capable of producing an effect or response r on an interpreter or addressee A.
The sign is capable of being explained or ‘elucidated.’
If I am right, how then “... has meaning” is being analysed?
It is natural to suppose the effect or response “r,” the “thought”, coupled with the view that all thought is in signs and “mostly of nature of language” might well lead to the claim that this thought is the interpretant of sign.
This deals with the ambiguity of interpretation (= interpreting, result of interpretation. Cf. analysis, definition.
The fact that any “sign” is explainable or elucidable is something that seems plausible and natural to want to hold it true, and a consequence of any analysis of ‘meaning.’
But this is different from what is being analysed by Peirce.
Peirce gets the knives about a regress of interpretants.
A series of interpretants which are signs must be ended or cut by a final “ultimate logical interpretant” which is not a sign — or at least “not a sign in the same way as that of which it is interpretant is sign.”
This final logical interpretant turns out to be a “habit” — and also a “significate effect of sign.”
Pierce feels the difficulty of being imprisoned in language.
We now seem to have Peirce running two lines (provided a special kind of rule to tie language to experience, and, at same time, saying that will not quite do since “it does not tell us of essential nature of effect on interpreter brought about by semiosis of the sign.”
This semiosis is explained as an action or influence involving the well-known triad if sign, object, and interpretant.
Peirce: “the interpretants, or proper significate effects, of signs.”
There are reasons to be dissatisfied with an interpretant merely as a sign with further
interpretants which are signs.
There is an inadequacy in an actual interpretants to give as adequate full definitions rather than merely working elucidations.
There are general signs (i.e. those for intellectual concepts) and these must have, in the end, a general interpretant, i. e., a general meaning.
And, what is a habit, anyway?
In Peirce’s famous triad, a “sign” “s” is defined as something that stands, to some interpretant “i“, for some object “o” — in some respect or capacity.
Peirce, with his eye on this definition of “sign,” proceeds to provide three trichotomies of a “sign.”
A first trichotomy depends on the *status* of the “sign” itself.
A “sign” may be:
1 — a quality.
2 — an existent
3 — a law.
If the sign is a quality, Peirce calls the sign a “quali-sign.”
If the sign is an existent, Peirceccalls it a “sin-sign,” or token.
If the sign is a law, Peirce calls it a “legi-sign,” or type.
Peirce explains fairly clearly how to apply “type” and “token”.
The following comments seem called for on what Peirce says:
In his description of a type, or “legi-sign,” Peirce seems to be both confused, struggling with an inadequate terminology.
Peirce is confused because, having said that a “legi-sign” is a law, he goes on to say that the law is usually established by men and that every conventional sign is a “legi-sign,” but not conversely.
Peirce seems to be confusing here a law as a rule for the *use* of a sign with the “sign” itself.
Peirce’s confusion may be due to the inadequacy of his terminology.
What Peirce is trying to say is that a “type” is an abstraction, or “logical construction,” out of a “token.”
Presumably, to say something about a “type,” in Puerce’s view, would be to say something general about a “token” — and, hence, perhaps, the “law”.
There is obviously something in this, but I am rather doubtful if Peirce has it quite right.
For example, the sentence:
“It is impossible for a ‘type’ to be visible on a paper or heard in any voice.”
suggests that a ‘token’ could, in his curious phrase, be visible on a page.
What Peirce seems to mean by this is that there this is a usage of ‘token’ in which a token is just a “mound of ink” or a part of the page.
Though the meaning of “token” fairly clearly has something to do with such things as mounds of ink, I am doubtful if this straightforward answer will quite do.
The type-token distinction applies to any sign.
Other examples would be the case of a map or a diagram.
Cf. the following question:
“Have you bought the latest Ordinance Survey map of Oxfordshire?”
A reply like:
“No, they have printed some more since I brought mine.”
would be inappropriate.
But a reply like:
“There are twenty ordinance survey maps in the building”.
would not be inappropriate — implying that the U needs not bring his copy.
The type-token distinction is useful in itself.
Does the type-token distinction, however, have any bearing on a search for different uses of “mean”?
The type-token distinction suggests an extremely important fact.
The meaning of an expression “e” is what is meant by an utterer U by uttering a token of “e.”
This correlates with a difference between a tenseless (“timeless”) use of the verb “mean,” as in
“The expression “father” means “male parent.”
But there is a tensed (or “applied”) use of the verb “mean”:
“By “father,” utterer U meant, metaphorically, a Roman Catholic priest.”
I am fairly sure Peirce at least to some extent has in view this distinction between timeless and applied uses of “mean.”
Peirce’s phrase, when discussing a ‘token’ is:
“Such an event being *significant* only as occurring when and where it does”.
Peirce’s phrasing suggests that a single expression on a piece of paper in a drawer might *not* count as a token!
Though the type-token distinction *is* important, I think it would be wrong to assume that it is always a ‘type’ that “means” something tenselessly or timelessly, whereas a ‘token’ means something tensedly or appliedly.
I ordinarily speak of a ‘type’ meaning (in a tensed usage of “mean”) something in a certain *context*.
The “tensed” use of “mean” is not confined to token.
I can say:
“As Peter used the expression, “bank” meant something different each time!”
Or:
“As used by Peter, each “bank” meant something different”.
The category of the “quali-sign” is a highly suspect one.
I do not propose to spend much time on it.
A “quali-sign” is defined as “a quality which is a sign”.
Peirce says:
“A sign cannot actually act as a “sign” until it is embodied.”
“But the embodiment has nothing to do with its ‘character’ as a sign”.
“It is the mere quality of an appearance, and, thus, it is not exactly the same throughout a second”.
“A single event which happens once, and whose identity is limited to that one happening, or a single object or thing which is in some single place at any one instant of time, such event or thing being *significant* only as occurring just when and where it does, such as this or that expression on a single line of a single page of a single copy of a book, I venture to call a token”.
“A “quali-sign” is a quality which is a sign.”
“A sign cannot actually act as a sign until it is embodied.”
“But the embodiment has nothing to do with its character as a sign”.
“The ‘quali-sign,’ on the other hand, has no identity.”
“A ‘quali-sign’ is the mere quality of an appearance and it is not exactly the same throughout a second.”
“Instead of identity, it has great similarity, and cannot differ much without being called quite another ‘quali-sign’.”
A ‘quali-sign’ seems to be identical with what Peirce elsewhere calls a “tone.”
Peirce gives an example of a “tone”:
“A tone is an indefinite significant character — such as the tone *of voice*.”
The sort of thing Peirce seems to be having in mind is a specific voice quality by which I may recognise a person.
But I do not know what this would mean with regard to Peitce’s example that the “embodiment” has nothing to do with its character as a sign.
Another example Peirce gives of a “quali-sign” is “a feeling of red.”
Presumably, “a feeling of red” means a sensation of red, regarded by Peirce as a “sign” of the presence of a red thing — such as a pillar box.
however, it seems difficult to come up with examples of a “quali-sign” which can not be reduced to a ‘legi-sign’ or a ‘sin-sign.’
A possible, if far-fetched, candidate might be “white” as a symbol of purity.
Peirce’s two other trichotomies are said to depend on the relation of “sign” to its “object,” i.e. depending on whether, roughly, a sign has character as sign depends on
1 — the sign being like its object (“icon”) — as in a picture.
or
2 — existentially related to the object (“index”) (e.g. “smoke means fire.”)
or
3 — the sign being specially related to the object and the interpretant: a “symbol,” e.g. a conventional sign.
Peirce’s third trichotomy is
1 — according as interpretant represents it as sign of possibility: “rheme,” e.g. general expression.
2 — as “sign of fact” (“dici-sign,” e.g. an indicative sentence) or
3 — “sign of reason” (an “argument” — self-explanatory).
The examples I have given are from language.
However, this third trichotomy is designed to apply to any sign.
trichotomies
Trichotomy I:
1 qualisign
2 sinsign
2 legisign
Trichotomy II:
1 — icon — or roughly “picturing” sign.
2 — index — or roughly “indicating or pointing” sign.
3 — symbol — or roughly “conventional sign”
Trichotomy III:
1 — rheme — or roughly “word-like” sign.
2 — dicisign — or roughly “telling” sign.
3 — argument — telling that or to) —no explanation needed.
Don’t se
No ambuguity cases?/ for to be “symbol”)
“An indefinite significant character such as a tone of voice can neither be called a Type nor a Token.”
“I propose to call such a Sign a Tone”.
“A Qualisign, e. g., a feeling of ‘red,’ is any quality in so far as it is a sign”.
I will set out these in some detail — beginning with the rheme-dicisign-argument trichotomy.
While my interest is in analysing “mean”, I must inquire any light Peirce hung through on words allied to “mean” or indeed on any philosophical point reasonably germane to the subject.
“A Rheme is a sign which, for its interpretant
Does this mean anything different from ‘interpretation’?],
is a sign of qualitative possibility, i. e., is understood as representing such and such a kind of possible object.”
“A rheme may afford some information; but it is not interpreted as doing so.”
Other things are said by Peirce about a rheme, but I do not think I will assist you if I quoted from him!
Examples of Rhemes
— the (type or token) ‘camel’ (and any general expression)—
— the expression “this” (type or token)
— any Icon (e.g. a picture or map or diagram)
— a spontaneous cry (a very queer one)
— “Hullo!”
There are some obvious deficiencies here!
The use of “qualitative” seems to cut out from being a rheme a relation expression (“about”, “beyond”) or an adverb (“slowly”, “speedily”).
But Peirce would not want the “qualitative possibility” to exclude any descriptive expression.
More importantly, what Peirce says about a Rheme excludes one of his examples (“this”) from being a Rheme.
The expression “this” is neither a ‘quality’ expression nor a ‘descriptive’ expression, as Peirce himself is well aware.
We must then not regard Peirce as insisting on the “qualitative,” however interpreted (e.g. to cover every descriptive expression).
What can we take Peirce to be claiming a Rheme is?
Just any sign (i.e. roughly anything that means something, or that has a meaning), provided it is not a dicisign (i.e. ‘telling’) or an argument; that is, though it does “mean” something, it claims or tells nothing, nor expresses anything?
This I think is part of what Peirce is saying but only in part.
He ignores “possibility” altogether.
Even this is of some interest, for, given my purpose of analysing “mean”), it suggests (what may be obvious but overlooked) that the use of ‘mean,” as applied to a sentence (a ‘complete utterance’) is different from that in which ‘mean’ applies to an utterance part (an ‘incomplete utterance’).
What more may Peirce be saying?
‘A possibility’ is a ‘possibility that p.’
Consider Peirce’s example of “camel” — or “Wolf!”
In what way can ‘camel’ (or ‘wolf’) be a “sign” of a possibility *that* there are camels/wolves (that something is a camel/wolf)?
Not in the way of asserting or informing an addressee A that
a) there are camels/wolves.
Or
b) that it is possible *that* there are camels/wolves.
No assertion, by definition, can be made by a rheme.
Peirce may be trying to say what perhaps was not much more satisfactorily said by those philosophers (e.g. Russell) who, when discussing an expression referring to a universal, we should take as an example not ‘red’ (‘redness’), but
“x is red.”
— i. e., a sentential function.
A few points might be made interpretating this.
An expression like ‘red’, ‘camel’ is subject to type- or category-rules.
To explain these rules is to explain how an expression may fit significantly in a sentential linguistic context.
You can not know the meaning of an expression — except perhaps “gavagai” — without knowing how to obey the type rules.
How important is it that any explanation of the meaning of an expression consists in explaining the “meaning” or the “sense” of a sentence containing it?
That implies that ‘mean’ is applicable to an utterance-part or expression “a posteriori” to a complete sentence.
The “meaning” of an utterance-part is to be analysed in terms of the meaning of the complete utterance.
If so, this is important.
There are those philosophers who find it a mystery, like Stevenson, in one place, how it is that expressions with separate meaning “coalesce” to form a complexus with a meaning of its own (the utterance of a sentence): as if the meaning of the utterance of a sentence is a sort of curious quasichemical compound out of the meanings of the expressions in it.
Thus, Stevenson:
“One of the most difficult problems that a meaning-theory includes is that of explaining how separate expressions, each one with its own meaning, can combine to yield a sentence-meaning.”
“It is feasible perhaps to take each expression as having a “disposition” to affect cognition, just as a full utterance of a sentence does.”
“The problem reduces, then, to one of explaining the interplay of the “dispositions” of the several expressions, when taken conjointly.”
Stevenson refers to the analogy of giving magnets a relation between individual and group tendencies.
This suggest that a Rheme ought to be on interpretation of definition a sign which something which means something (a sign) and though not itself a ‘telling’ or ‘claiming’ sign (dicisign), nevertheless can function as constituent in ‘telling’ or ‘claiming’ sign a dicisign, plus the sense of ‘mean’ applicable to Rheme explainable in terms of that applicable to a dicisign.
But, if this so, a spontaneous cry (as Peirce says ‘sign (indexical) because it directs attention of the utterer U) a very odd example of a Rheme.
It is certainly supposedly not a dicisign in Peirce’s sense — in so far as its direction of attention.
This certainly does not seem to give any applicability of “mean” to it (I doubt if there is any application from possibility of occurring in a ‘telling’ ‘complex’ sign.
The most a rheme can mean is “not a dicisign” — i.e. only the negative part applies.
But this is a queer example altogether:
Does the fact that if I sit on drawing pins and shout, thereupon people look at me?
Does the mere fact that the utterer U’s shout makes them look at the utterer U render the utterer U’s shout a “sign” (of the utterer U!)?
I feel inclined to say: No.
There may of course well be a non-linguistic rheme.
Peirce suggests any icon.
This I am not sure of.
But what about a conventional sign such as a map, a note such as “(♩ in musical notation, a naval flag (signalling), a black dot (meaning a town) in a map?
An elastic use of ‘rheme’ may have to be allowed.
But some of these items are rather like expressions in some respects.
In respect to language, however, sometimes there seems to be yet a different use of rheme.
“A dicisign necessarily involves, as a part of it, a rheme, to describe which fact it is interpreted as indicating”.
A rheme seems to be not an expression but as it were a sentence “frame” (with a gap sign for any expression e.g. a demonstrative — used to refer to an individual).
There is no suggestion that a “dicisign” contains more than one “rheme.”
The rheme then is
— any sign which, though not a dicisign, has a ‘meaning’ explainable in terms of ‘mean’ as applied to a dicisign possible appearance as constituent of a dicisign (and therefore of ‘mean’ as applied to a dicisign) e.g. any expression.
— a sentence “frame” with a gap sign for a ‘referring’ expression.
— any sign which is not a dicisign or an argument.
The right and general way of distinguishing a dicisign from another sign is by the fact that an adicent sign is that which is informative or gives information to some addressee.
But this is clearly only an approximation to Peirce’s doctrine.
For, by this account, only an indicative sentence, among all sentences, would be a dicisign.
Let me first quote a passage from Peirce which supplements the first rough account of the meaning of ‘dicisign’:
“A symbol is, by nature, in the ‘indicative’, or as it should be called the “declarative” mood.”
“Of course, they can go to the expression of any other mood, since we may declare assertion to be doubtful, or a mere interrogation, or an imperative requisite.”
“By a rheme, much the same as, a maturer version of, a dicisign, I mean a sign which is equivalent to a grammatical sentence, whether it be Interrogative, Imperative, or Assertory.”
This no doubt, as Peirce indicates, represents a development of the notion of a Dicisign.
“A dicisign is not an assertion, but is a sign capable of being asserted.”
“But an assertion is a dicisign.”
“The act of an assertion is not a pure act of signification.”
“The act of an assertion is an exhibition of the fact that the utterer U subjects himself to the penalities visited on a liar if the proposition asserted is not true.”
“The Replica or Token of a dicent symbol is a Dicent Sinsign Token of a peculiar kind.”
“This is easily seen to be true when the information the Dicent Symbol conveys is an actual fact.”
“When that information is or gets to be a real law, rather, it is not true in the same fullness.”
Peirce unfortunately goes on to say that a Dicent Sinsign cannot convey any information about a law.
I am really not concerned with Peircean “scholarship,” but with what we can get from him.
I shall thus ignore this, which is due I think to a persistent assumption that general information may only be conveyed by a type — not a token.
This is connected with Peirce’s description of a type as a law.
The important point is the emphasis on the difference between a Type and a Token Dicisign.
We can provide some examples of dicent signals signs:
— an indicative sentence.
— a weather cock (+ natural signs usually) +
— a photograph
— a combination of an icon and an index — e.g. a painting.
I do not propose here to talk about the application of the ‘dicisign’ outside language.
I reserve this for the time, should that time arise, when we include Peirce’s other two trichotomies of a “sign.”
There is something funny about putting a weather cock and a picture in the same basket.
Peirce is, I think, saying that a dicent (or a rheme at least— amended dicent) need not be indicative.
Imperatives, etc., count as well.
But Peirce seems to be saying something more; something expressed by some other philosophers when they sayin that the same *proposition* may be object of all sorts of different psychological attitudes.
ψp
A clear way of saying something like this is found in Hare (“Imperative sentences,” “Mind,” 49).
Peirce:
“The proposition need not to be asserted or
judged.”
“A proposition may be contemplated as a “sign” capable of being asserted or denied.”
Cited by Ogden/Richards.
Hare’s purpose, however, is no doubt different from Peirce’s!
There are a few points which I think Peirce is getting at, with varying degrees of clearness, that are connected with a distinction we may want to draw between
— what a sentence S means (in general; timeless ‘means’; if you like, the meaning of (type) sentence) and
— what an utterer U commit himself to by the use of an utterance of that sentence S — if you like, connect this with, or state it in terms of, token sentences.
In a discussion of these points, the expression ‘sentence’ should be taken to be “non-misleadingly indicative sentence.”
The type of sentence I am talking about is the indicative sentence, and no such consideration as whether it really has e.g. an imperative “force” is relevant —though the point I am making I think applies just as much to the realm of an imperative or optative sentence (!p) as much as it applies to an indicative sentence (⊢p).
In what follows here I am under great general debt to Strawson who first pointed out to me the importance of the kind of distinctions here to be made, and applied it himself in interesting cases (such as a “description” like “the king of France”) and from which I’ve learnt a great deal.
I cannot however suppose assume that Strawson would like my methods!
Things having meaning:
— items with meaning independent on communication. (Possibilities):
— items with ‘natural’ meaning.
All ‘information’ is a sign of ‘dicent.’
— cases where “x means y” and the connection is a purely regulative, inferential, natural concomitance (e.g. “smoke means fire.”)
— likeness between x and y absent (e.g. “smoke means fire.”)
— likeness between x and y present — e.g. a photograph.
— cases where “x means y” and the concomitance is not purely natural, but dependent on a human decision, practice, or convention — e.g. “That tie knot means he is the groom in the wedding.”
b. Items with meaning dependent on communication. Possibilities:
—‘rhemes’(wordsetc.)
incomplete utterances
(e.g. ‘rhematic’)
— descriptive
— logical
— referring/indicating
— complete utterance
— those with conventional meaning.
— linguistic
— non-linguistic — e.g. diagram, map, etc.
— those with non-conventional meaning.
This list is of course not meant to be exhaustive, inevitable, accurate, or even clear, but that’s an Oxford seminar for you!
One point concerns what Peirce is quite clearly I think getting at in the quotation.
Peirce obviously has in mind cases such as following:
— a case in which the utterer says a sentence — “God exists.” — to himself, contemplatively.
— a case where the utterer U says the sentence aloud, ‘assertively,’ in company.
There may be a difference between what the sentence the utterer U uses means and what the utterer commits himself to.
In both cases, the meaning of the sentence is the same.
But while in the first case the utterer U commits himself (perhaps) to nothing at all, in the second case he does!
But a difference between a committal and non-committal of utterer U is not a difference of meaning (ambiguity) in the sentence.
I think this point can quite well be made with. regard to such a pair of cases, but for my simplicity (and indeed extension of Peirce, I shall suppose we are concerned with two different ‘public’ utterances of the same sentence.
Suppose I find the sentence
“On the first day of January of 1938, the whole of the French Riviera was in a state of panic.”
a) in a history book.
b) in a novel.
If I put an “x” in the margin of a history book, I shall no doubt be a nuisance, but if I do so in the margin of the novel, I shall be a fool or an idiot as well.
It is inappropriate to criticise a statement in a novel (of the kind in question) on the grounds of truth or falsity.
Nevertheless, the sentence has one and only one meaning (i. e., it is in no way ambiguous), nor has any private (special, real) meaning been attached to it by either utterer U1 and U2.
But whereas the historian — our U1 — has committed himself, the novelist — our U2 — has not!
This example does however reveal a distinction in the use of ‘mean.’
The sentence s means just one city.
The historian, our U1, wrote/said s and presumably meant what he said.
The novelist, our U2, said/wrote s but did NOT mean it. Cf. spoken cases “An Englishman, a Scotsman, and an Irishman ...”
We have to neglect the fact that there is a difference between
— saying something which means that p.
and
— saying something and meaning it.
This neglect of the notion of assertion (or self-committal) may lead to some queer views about sentences of fiction.
Seeing that ‘true’ and ‘false’ cannot appropriately be applied (though they can be in some sentences in ordinary life), we may want to say that we have here different *levels* or strata of language, a special sort of ambiguity, or we might want to assimilate it to some ‘systematic’ ambiguity.
I have heard something like this been suggested — by Waissman!
Or, if we are very very old-fashioned, most ‘likely’ to say s, and we are not being happy about saying s, we might lean to a fictional world in which a fictional sentence *is* true!
But a novelist talks since quite *unambiguously*; only he does not assert!
A different point Is I think what Peirce is rather dimly groping after, and it concerns the distinction between
— what a sentence s means.
and
— what *an utterer U* means by uttering the sentence.
This is becoming very much my own rhapsody on a mere *theme* by Peirce!
But I think it is pretty important!
This point concerns the distinction between
— what a sentence s means.
and
— what an utterer U of sentence s commits himself to — i. e., what information the sentence s is used by to convey.
They are not the same though they may well coincide!
Only in a limit case would an utterer U not commit himself to anything.
But what an utterer U commits himself to cannot be identified with what the sentence s U utters means!
This may often be represented as a distinction between
— what s means.
—what s meant.
—what utterer U means by s.
An obvious case is where s, as uttered by U, has a special meaning, this difference depending on the utterer U’s use of some descriptive expression in s.
“He was caught in the grip of a vice.”
This may be too obvious to need clarification, but great perplexities may arise from ignoring — as Witters always and Austin often do — this kind of distinction!
My idea of implicature is meant to remedy Peirce’s travesty!
Or cf. Hare’s example in “The language of morals” about the use of “good” by a somewhat “fossilized Indian Army officer” — as he disrespectfully calls him!
This is of course a localized habit of use, not an individual occasion (“particularised”) use.
Peirce is not here talking about this sort of distinction.
I put it in for completeness!
Suppose I find on p. 10 of a book I am reading the sentence
“He was a widower.”
And on p. 40 sentence,
“He had lost his wife”.
I think it would be not incorrect to say that the sentence
“He was a widower.”
as used on p. 10, and the sentence
“He had lost his wife.”
as used on p. 40, have the same meaning (mean the same); or perhaps to make things quite clear, “the sentences as such, have the same meaning”.
Nevertheless, if there is some question as to whether the “he” in each case is the same person, and it turns out to be that a different person is meant, I think we might well say
“The author didn’t here (i.e. in the two places) mean the same by them because he was referring to different people.”
Cf. The prime minister is a great man.
It is clear that, when in conversation, we get at cross purposes because of muddles about the reference of a referring expression, we can start to clear up by saying:
“Oh, but we did not *mean* the same thing!”
I think it is this sort of things that Peirce has in mind.
And I think it is not incorrect to say that, where people use type-sentences which have the same meaning, they may nevertheless mean different things (because of difference of reference); i.e. they commit what they commit themselves to, and the information the sentence used to convey, may differ in different cases of use of 2 (type) sentences, even though the sentences (as such) have the same meaning.
Some type-sentences (unambiguous) may be used to convey different information on different occasions.
But there is another side to the coin equally obvious when pointed out, but perhaps even more overlooked.
Sentences with *different* meanings may be used to convey the *same* information!
E.g.
An utterer U utters
“I have a pain.”
Some other utterer, U2, to convey the same information, utters:
“He has a pain.”
No one would want to deny that, as such, these sentences have different meanings!
You may think this is all trivial and obvious; but often overlooked. cf. Duncan Jones on ‘Fugitive propositions’ in “Analysis.”
But it all has, I think, a number of less obvious applications of considerable interest.
Though this not arising directly from Peirce having got so far, I think I must briefly show why I said
— what one commits oneself to by using s.
and
— the information s used to convey.
is not identical.
Take a very obvious case:
“Smith has left off beating his wife.”
Suppose this is said to me, and suppose I know Smith has *never* stopped beating his wife.
Would I say that U said is false?
It is obviously not true.
I may reply,
“That is not true!”
Some other utterer may avoid giving a direct answer and say e.g.
“The question whether Smith has left off beating his wife does not arise, since he never started.”
Have we then a case, as Strawson suggests, to which the law of excluded middle does not apply?
This depends to *what* the utterer applies the Law of the Excluded Middle.
In this case, I suggest the reason why we don’t apply true or false to statement in question is because can be set out as follows:
The information which utterer U uses s to convey is about the process consisting of Smith’s beating his wife, and is to the effect that this is no longer going on.
But since this process was *presupposed*, that there was such a process was *presupposed* (implied, conversationally implicated, taken for granted).
It was *not* part of the information being conveyed.
Nevertheless, U commits himself to there have been such a process.
The utterer cannot say:
“Smith has left off beating his wife, but he did not start.”
— but U2 can utter:
“Smith has not left beating his wife because he did not start.”
I distinguish then what an utterer U commit to (i.e. that Smith had beaten his wife, but no longer does so) from the information that s is used to convey (i.e. about the said process and so, that it is no longer going on).
If we want to *preserve*, as I do, The Law of The Excluded Middle, it would seem that the obvious thing to do is to say not that it states not that info.
A sentence used to convey some information may be true or false.
What an utterer U commits to must also be true or false.
I suggest we cast a great doubt about the use of ‘proposition.’
A sentence express some proposition — or dictum, to use Hare’s jargon.
A sentence s expresses proposition p iff
— s means that p.
— U commits to p.
— s is uttered by u to give some information to addressee A.
One of Peirce’s three trichotomies of the “sign” into is
1 — icon
2 — index
3 — symbol
Very roughly, we might distinguish any of these three classes as follows:
1 — a sign s is an icon in virtue of its likeness to an object o.
2 — a sign s is an “index” in virtue of a causal (temporal or spatio-temporal) connection with an object
3 — s sign is a “symbol” in virtue of a convention.
Peirce says that this the icon-index-symbol trichotomy is in respect of the relation of the sign s to its object o.
But the icon-index-symbol trichotomy also seems to serve as an elucidation of expressions such as “in some respect or capacity” or “ground of representation.”
There is evidence that this applies not only the verb ‘mean,’ but also to ‘sign of ...,’ ‘sign that ...,’ ‘indicates,’ etc.
It seems appropriate in ordinary usage to some of Peirce’s cases examples of an “index.”
It is important to distinguishing some features constitutive of an “index.”
“An “index” is a “sign,” or representation, which refers to an “object,” o, not so much because of any similarity or analogy with it, nor because it is associated with general characters which that object o happens to possess, as because it is in dynamical (including spatial) connection both with the individual object o, on the one hand, but, on the other hand, with the senses or memory of the addressee for whom it serves as a “sign,” while demonstrative and personal.”
“An “index” may be distinguished from another sign or representation by three characteristic marks:
— an index has no significant resemblance to its object o.
— an index refers to an individual, or a single collections of units or single continua
— an index direct the addressee’s attention to its objects by blind compulsion.
“An “index” is a sign which would, at once, lose the characters which makes it a sign if its object is removed.”
“An index does NOT lose that character if there is no addressee.”
“A piece of mould with a bullet hole in it is an “index” of a shot.”
“Without the shot, there would be no hole.”
“But there *is* a hole, whether anybody has the sense to attribute it to a shot or not.”
“A genuine Index and its Object o must both be existent individuals.”
The salient features of an index seem to be:
(1) An index would lose its charact
Both the index and its object are individuals.
(2) an index would lose character which makes it a sign were there no object, but not were there no interpretant.”
Here we can fairly clearly substitute ‘interpreter,’ or addressee.
(3) An “index” to an object o not so much because of similarity or analogy (hence the contrast with an “icon”) nor by asseveration (? = “just makes me think is so-and-so.”
“I always associate you with that symphony because we heard it together.”
The association is due to a dynamical (causal or spatio-temporal) connetion with an object o.
— An “index” directs the addressee’s attention to an object o, and does so by ‘blind compulsion.’
An index asserts nothing.
In this, an index connects with the imperative mood.
Examples
— That man’s rolling gait is an index of that man is being a sailor.
— The position of that weathercock is an index of the direction of the wind.
— The compass of that sundial (or clock) is an index of the time of day.
Letters vici names. a said to b that c’s etc.
— That yardstick is an index of one yard.
— A demonstrative pronoun and a personal pronoun (like “I”).
— an expression connected with a “quantified variable,” such as “any,” “all,” “no,” “some,” “something,” “a,” “a few;” “nearly all,” “allied’ ‘a few’; ‘nearly all’ etc.
The index and its object are each an individual.
Peirce appears to go against this so far as it concerns the index, when he classifies a demonstrative pronoun like “this” as an “indexical legisign.”
Peirce also classifies a personal pronoun and a demonstrative pronoun as, each, a “sub-index,” describing it as “a sign which is rendered such” principally by an actual connection with its objectsm.”
A subindexe is not an index because a sub index is not an individual.
Peirce seems to use be Using “index” so that nothing but an individual can be an index, but surely a non-individual can be ‘indexical’.
The point is, of course, that one can give some rule general for the use of a word like ‘this’, or ‘I.’
But this rule would, of course, be a rule governing the use of the pronoun in a particular concept, or context, a condition governed by its having a reference in such a context..
Moreover, although I may give a general explanation of some of its use, I should be very chary in general of saying, e.g., that ‘I’ or “this” means such and such.
In general, if asked what ‘this’ means, I should turn the question.
“It is a demonstrative pronoun.”
An index can be used like a legisign (type) in a general statement like:
A black cloud means rain.
As regards the object being an individual, this seems to depend on how we interpret ‘object.’
It seems clear that whenever we use a word like “this.”
Consider for a moment such an index as a particular black cloud.
A black cloud means rain.
Cf.
That cloud mean rain.
“Those spots mean measles.”
Smoke means fire.
That smoke means fire.
That smoke indicates a fire somewhere.
There are signs of mice here.
All these end with substantives.
All can be replaced by a ‘that’-clause.
I cannot think of any examples of a natural sign where this cannot be done.
If ‘object’ being an individual is held to support this can’t be done in some cases, it is wrong to say that the object must be an individual.
I cannot say, after finding a fire:
“That fire is what the smoke indicated.”
What I learn from a black cloud is always no doubt something about some specific individual, or set of individuals.
A similar point seems to apply with regards to some fact (e.g. the fact that ... can be put in, at any rate in singular ‘mean’ etc. statements).
Perhaps then a defining characteristic of this type at any rate of index this statement about its ‘meaning’ etc. ... appropriate sense must be expandable of both as regards subject and predicate into that clauses with some spatio-temporal restriction (to distinguish them from cases like “The fact that...”)
How then This would however seem to abut an object or the same that item that class to abut some individual or set of individuals (more or less indefinitely)
Consider together
— “... refers to object because of dynamical connection with object”
— “... would lose character which makes it sign were there no object but not were there no interpretant.”
— “... directs attention to object by blind compulsion.”
It seems fairly clear that, in connection with some of Peirce’s examples, these descriptions read very oddly indeed (e.g. demonstratives) but in connection with others not so oddly.
Let us consider the more favourable cases (e.g. what would obviously count as a natural sign.
What first is force of “refers to object because of dynamical connection” “would lose character which makes it sign if no object”.
The dynamical connection must obviously be a *causal* connection, which may (but only may) include spatial connection in any very obvious way (e.g. exceptional sounds from weather may be indices (mean/indicate/be signs of/telling about) namely indices of behaviour of wood cuttings).
An index may have spatial but no a *causal* connection (e.g. “landmark” which would I think fit under the head of indices)
Let us consider only a *causal* connection.
Peirce’s remarks about the bullet hole (which means that a bullet has passed through, or was a sign of a bullet having passed throu’) is unfortunate.
For, obviously, there might have been a hole without a bullet.
Someone might have bred it.
I suggest that what Peirce is saying is then that for a sign to be index, it is logically necessary both that its object should exist and that there should be causal connection between sign and object.
The presence of a sign of certain such and such kind is thus causally connected with an object causally necessary for the production of the effect on an interpreter or addressee which constitutes being interpreted.
For the position of weathercock to mean be (or be an index to someone of the direction of wind
a) the wind must, by itself, be in required direction.
b) being so must be causally connected with the position of the weathercock.
The position of the weathercock linked in this way with the direction of wind is causally necessary required (meaning) for the production of the effect by the sign on interpreter or addressee as being interpreted as sign.
What follows of course strenghtens the causal necessity bond about ‘blind compulsion’ adds something to (b); something more than mere not just that weathercock + causal link known to be there.
It looks as if this is all that has to be there, or at least that something else is not required — e.g. contribution from interpreter.
As far as (b) clearly that the direction of the wind should actually be as indicated is not causally required for production of effect on interpreter.
Most that can be required is general causal connection of weathercock with the direction of the wind (and interpreter’s knowledge of these.
The addressee might obviously be mistaken about general causal connection.
The addresssee may think there is one when there is not.
Of course the direction of the wind must be as indicated, if interpretation is to be “correct.”
What is causally required is the position of the weathercock, plus some interpreter’s *belief* in a general causal connection.
Let us analyse Peirce’s “index” in terms of the verb “to mean.”
Peirce may be understood as saying that, in some appropriate use of “mean,” the position of the weathercock means that the position of the wind is north-east.
This entails
a) the direction of the wind is north-east.
b) there is a causal connection that holds between the direction of the wind and the position of the weathercock.
This seems right and useful.
Compare other uses of ‘mean.’
A conversation at bus stop as bus goes:
A: Those three rings of the bell mean that the bus is full!
B: But *is* it full?
This seems all right for ‘means’, but doesn’t seem to hold for the other words in terms of which possible to interpret index — e.g. Peirce’s own word ‘indicate’ and allied words.
I certainly can say
“The position of the weathercock is an indication that the direction of wind is north-east, but actually it is south-east!”
I think (though I am not at all happy) I can say:
“The position ___ indicated that ___, but actually it was not!”
I do not think I can say (though again I am doubtful)
“The position ___ was a sign that ___, but actually it was not!”
But case obviously clear for that
“x means p” (in this use) entails p.
For other words, an analogous “entailment” does not hold or remain uncertain.
What does ‘directs attention by blind compulsion’ and ‘would not lose character if not interpreted’ add?
Does this tell us anything to identify a natural sign?
First, it is not true that all signs which we should count to classify with weathercock (i.e. natural sign) direct by blind compulsion, if this means that that interpreter does not have to think in order to interpret.
A sign may be just “hard to read”!
And a conventional sign (a symbol) which Peirce wants to distinguish in virtue of the *absence* of this ‘blind compulsion’ to say don’t work by blind compulsion may be very easy to read.
Peirce is right in that it is a feature which distinguishes “non-natural” “meaning” from “natural” “meaning”, that a certain sort of special contribution is required for the interpreter.
A difficulty for Peirce’s general triadic view of “meaning” supported by his remarks about character of sign is not lost if there is no interpreter.
In the use of ‘mean’ appropriate to the weathercock, the it doesn’t see that
‘x means that p’
requires to be expanded to any form involving “means to someone”.
It does I think entail something about “meaning to someone”, but only in very timid way.
“x means p” seems to entail
“if x meant to someone that p, he would be correct.”
Or
If anyone interpreted x to mean p, he would be correct.
But this is like
“It is raining”
entails:
If anyone believes it is raining he is right.
— which obviously does not help to explain the meaning of ‘it is raining’.
As for the “icon”’s main features
An icon refers to object o that it denotes merely by virtue of characters of its own which it possesses just the same whether or not object exists.
Anything is an icon of anything, in so far as it is like that thing and it is used as a sign of it.
Icon is a sign which would possess character which renders it significant even though object had no existence.
Here Peirce makes a Reference to “algebraical icons.”
A great distinguishing property of the icon is that, by direct observation of it, other truths concerning its object can be discovered than those which suffice to determine its construction.
e.g. a map would be example.
You can plot places by being at distance from a given place and the measure e.g. distances between them.
This is of importance to Peirce’s theory of inference.
Every symbol replaceable by icons (? image or picture: verifiability business)
Examples of icon
A Picture
An Architect or an artist drawing for work
Donkey (?) icon of zebras (if I agree by analogy from resemblance of zebras to donkeys, that zebras likely to be obstinate).
A Map
A diagram
A Mental image
A Mathematical or a physical formula
An Icon is distinguished into ‘images’ (simple likeness)
‘diagrams’ (analogy of relations)
metaphor (I think this is meant to cover donkey/
zebra case)
Formulae do not really conform to test without further benefit.
I do not derive a new truth from a formula by inspecting it, but by deriving things from it according to some rule.
Much of what Peirce has to say about the nature of the relevant inferential processes (or diagrams) is of interest.
A Photograph is not an icon because of the “physical forcing” of conformity to original.
“Anything whatever, be it quality, existent individual, or law, is an Icon of anything, in so far as it is like that thing and used as a sign of it”.
As for Peirce’s Symbol, the great emphasis on symbols as of conventional nature.
Symbols must be general in meaning, because general in nature-type.
“Symbols connected with object by virtue of idea of symbol-using mind without which no such connection would exist.”
“Symbol ‘man’ general mode of succession of three sounds or representamens of sounds which becomes sign only in fact that a habit or acquired law will cause replicas of it to be interpreted as meaning a man or men.”
“A Symbol is a sign which would lose the character that renders it a sign if there were no interpretant.”
“Such is any utterance of speech which signifies what it does only by virtue of being understood to have that signification.”
Symbols words + sentences (type)
Sometimes combination of icon and index.
Symbol
— would lose the character which renders it sign if no interpretant
— e.g. speech utterance, which signifies what it does only by virtue of being understood to have that signification.
— general mode (case of word ‘man’ in this case sentence (the use of) a general mode of succession of three sounds — /m/ /a/ /n/ — or representamens of sounds [writing “m-a-n”] which becomes a sign only in the fact that a habit, or acquired law, will cause replicas of it to be interpreted as meaning a man or men.
The obvious contrast here is with icons and indices, most notably indices (no blind compulsion).
Again (cf. index) does render = logically ‘makes’ it sign causally ‘makes’
“The symbol is connected with its object by virtue of the idea of the symbol-using mind, without which no such connection would exist”.
“It is a general mode of succession of three sounds or representamens of sounds, which becomes a sign only in the fact that a habit, or acquired law, will cause replicas of it to be interpreted as meaning a man or men”.
“A symbol is a sign which would lose the character which renders it a sign if there were no interpretant.”
“Such is any utterance of speech which signifies what it does only by virtue of its being understood to have that signification”.
If ‘logically makes,’ Peirce is saying that it is logically impossible for p to be sign (symbol) if no interpretant.
Cf. in case of speech utterance, when it looks as if Peirce is saying that a “speech utterance cannot signify (to someone) without being understood to
signify it.”
But this looks as if it only amounts to saying “a symbol cannot be interpreted without being interpreted”.
True, but of course not peculiar to a symbol.
Is Peirce saying that the peculiarity of a symbol is that, for a token symbol to be interpreted, it is causally necessary that the interpreter should have know what a general proposition to the effect that type symbol means such and such?
But again, this does not seem peculiar to symbols.
Surely, to interpret a particular occurrence of a sentence, it is at least causally (perhaps logically) requisite that the interpreter should know something general about what sentence (or sentence of such and such a kind in such cases) means or probably means.
It’s no good trying to avoid this by saying that to interpret a token of a symbol, the interpreter has to know what type of symbol in general means (in use of ‘mean’ appropriate to ‘symbol’).
This may be true, but obviously of no use for distinguishing a symbol — and with it special use of ‘mean’ attached to symbols.
Let us use “mean” to analyse this use.
Peirce would be saying
“x is symbol (i.e. meanss something)
iff
— an interpretation (= knowing what x means in particular occasions is dependent on knowing what interpreter’s knowing what x means-s in general.
This seems to suggest that distinguishing peculiarity of symbols (i.e. something which means-s) is that the interpretation of occurrence (the token) of x depends on the interpreter’s having some habit.
This is not unlike what Stevenson says about an “elaborate process of conditioning.”
But it seems in fact impossibly crude and probably much cruder than Peirce thought because of his assumption that the interpreter’s conditioning is irrelevant to the functioning of an index.
Peirce might mean something like this:
A sign s is a symbol s
iff
for s on a given occasion to produce whatever reaction it is which constituted the interpretation of s (being taken to mean this or that), it is necessary that the interpreter or addressee A should know or believe that s (type) in general produces a reaction of that kind.
e.g. to take a rocket to mean distress, I must know or believe that that is how it would usually be taken.
Not so in
“Smoke means fire.”
But, although this a fair line for getting at an important distinction in at least two main uses of “mean,” it cannot do as I stated it.
You might have an ultra-timid race which would *never* take smoke to mean fire when assured that others so look it.
This would not mean that smoke has a different sort of ‘meaning’ for them.
More next week.
Enjoy your weekend!
Which are the salient features of Peirce’s three trichotomies of “sign” that excite special comment?
One salient feature is having a demonstrative pronoun such as “this,” along with a weathercock, under the heading, “Index”!
Admittedly, this is different from crypto-techical “first dicent rhematic” and “second ‘dicent” — but still rather queer!
An icon is said be a non-assertive, i. e. a non-dicent rhema.
A symbol excludes a demonstrative, a diagram and any icon.
Yet, an icon and an index (picture + gesture, picture + name) is allowed to constitute a symbol (and presumably also a dicent).
A symbol has to be ‘general’ in meaning.
An icon may be a portrait, an artist’s ‘cartoon’, a map, a diagram — as well as a “logical icon.”
The distinguishing feature of an icon is said to be that “by direct observation of it, other truths concerning its object o can be discovered than those which suffice to determine its construction”
A rhema may be a picture (and an argument of rhematic indices) and an expression, i.e., things whose sign status has nothing to do with occurrence in dicent signs, together with things whose sign status *is* dependant on the occurrence in a dicisign.
It is clear that nearly all the oddities of Peirce’s classification spring from his trying to make a single heading do more than one classificatory job at a time, together with one or two rather perverse assimilations.
Further, one very important (I think the fundamental) classification of the sign (and distinction of uses of ‘meaning’) has been gained by the classification, even if Peirce was unaware of it.
It emerges from time to time in Peirce’s comments on his classification, and that is the distinction between
— a sign which owes its having a meaning to its (roughly) constituting (or capacity to constitute) a communication [or to their function in what constitutes a communication] and
— a sign whose meaning is not a matter of its communicative function — e.g. a ‘natural’ sign.
Although he is aware of this distinction, Peirce does not bring it to the fore, and, consequently, it is never investigated.
Rather, it is mixed up with other distinctions which seem to be posterior to it from the point of view of the explanatory procedure, e.g. the distinctions between a conventional and a non-conventional sign, or between a linguistic and a non-linguistic sign, or between a descriptive and a referring, or indicating, sign.
Take ‘Symbol’ to begin with.
Peirce’s account of the meaning of a symbol [e.g. “conventional signs, or one depending upon habit, inborn or acquired”] seems either an attempt to confine the symbol to conventional signs (with not very satisfactory explanation of conventional signs) or else extend meaning of the symbol to such extent as to consider pretty well any sign [depends on meaning of his ‘or’].
Anyway, Peirce’s emphasis on ‘conventional’ nature of symbols is pretty heavy.
Then it is recognized that e.g. a diagram has highly conventional character; but nevertheless a diagram does not count as a symbol because “we can get more information by direct observation”.
This seems not a bad attempt to distinguish certain conventional or semi-conventional non-linguistic notational devices from linguistic ones (also conventional).
Again, we find it recognized that an icon and index (Peirce’s example is bad, but a personal picture and pointing would do) recognized as symbol.
Here we do seem to have recognition of a distinction between symbol (here roughly device for communication, whether conventional or not) and other signs.
Perhaps this distinction would have been recognized more clearly, if Peirce had not assumed that an icon per se cannot be a dicisign.
Peirce’s motives are good (namely the recognition that, for information to be conveyed, we must must have, in addition to a device for saying revealing what sort of information to be conveyed, also the means for locating or identifying that to which information refers).
But Peirce fails to see that icon and sentence may be in just same position in that respect.
Suppose I have on the wall
— a picture of Smith
— a placard with “Smith is there” written on it.
Suppose then we hear a loud noise outside the door.
I could then convey the information by taking up and showing to the addressee either the placard or the picture (with or without pointing).
The point is that icon and context alone and non-linguistic context alone, as also sentence and non-linguistic context alone, may “make assertion”, as it were.
A similar point can be made in connection with the dicisign.
Peirce rightly in case of a demonstrative, wrongly in case of a natural sign connects indices with “quasi-imperatives”.
But he says a weathercock is a dicisign.
A weathercock is a dicisign not because it “as it were tells us to” but because it “as it were tells us that”; i.e. we learn that from it.
This I think of same value as pointer to why one word ‘mean’ has such variety of different uses in connection with “what we can learn from things.”
But obviously there is a vast difference between why and which a natural and other signs tell us things.
This is marked by Peirce only by whether a dicisign is an index or a symbol.
Peirce is implying the need for a widest case of ‘symbol’, to distinguish communication from non-communication.
A similar point can be made in connection with rheme.
A rheme sometimes “elements in” communication, sometimes any non-informative sign.
A further complication through tying up symbol with ‘descriptive’ sign (or as he much less clearly says, signs with ‘general’ meaning).
This cuts out a demonstrative from a symbols although obviously conventional.
Instead, Peirce makes a highly shaky assimilation between ademonstrative and an indexical sign (which leads him to say very wrong dubious things about a demonstrative, e.g. that there is a ‘real’ connection between a demonstrative and its object.
Pierce fails to realize consistently (though on occasion seems to get across) that although the expression “this” is non-general (if that means non-descriptive), nonetheless ‘this’ has general meaning in the sense that there are general rules (non defining) for use of ‘this.’
Peirce fails to notice that from a natural sign one learns both what to expect and often where to expect it (i.e. indexical sign in a way analogous to combination of demonstrative + descriptive), and has been over imposed by contr very clearly explicit comparison between signs which have function of indicating individual, + signs from which we can learn something about an individual (indexical sign).
The class of the icon is rather a jumble.
It seems to include
—things that remind one of something (pictures on wall: no genuine use of ‘mean’ applicable here),
— a sketch
— a diagrams to aid construction of something (no ‘meaning’ here either)
— the use of pictures (or imitative gestures?) in communication (but here often we want to rule out what Peirce describes as distinguishing feature of icons, namely that by direct inspection we can learn more about object than is necessary for construction of icons; e.g.
if I draw a bird, I impart information about the presence of some bird or other, I shall make drawing as sketchy as is compatible with recognition as bird, just to prevent the addressee from studying picture further to learn details about bird.
I try to avoid making it like a map.
This cannot distinguish it from a map or a diagram, about which Peirce good (apart from logical diagrams).
Here there is a point that I resort to a drawing + to a diagram if language breaks down; but to drawings, if e.g. no intelligible language to hand, or physical impediment to use of language, to images e.g. if language would be impossibly lengthy or difficult to follow.
It doesn’t seem as if mere likeness is ever per se justification of use of ‘meaning’.
E.g. a photograph (indexical) requires causal link; the use of drawing or map requires additional special coincidences to make us use a communication willing to say that we have here case of communication.
I should not really be in a position to assess Peirce’s theory of a “sign” until I have some fairly good idea of the nature of the distinctions that have been or might be drawn within the body of “sign.”
For until I have a fairly clear notion of the similarities and differences among the entities which Peirce calls a ‘sign’, I cannot really judge down whether a single general theory of a “sign” is a possibility, and Incertainly cannot be in any very good position to decide which question (or questions) should be answered by such a theory.
I shall, therefore, at any rate, say only as much about Peirce’s claims about “sign” in general, as it is necessary as a preliminary tonconsidering his three detailed trichotomies of ‘signs.’
I shall try, at this stage at any rate, to evade the many difficulties raised by what Pierce has to say about a sign, or a sign-situation, to use Ogden’s and Richards’s phrase.
“A sign s, or representamen r, is something which stands to some interpretant i for some object o in some respect or capacity.”
“It addresses an interpretant, i. e., it creates in the mind of the interpretant an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more developed sign.”
That sign s2 which the first s1 creates I call the “interpretant” of the first sign.
The sign s1 stands for some object o.
It stands for that object, not in all respects, but in reference to a sort of idea, which call “the ground of the representamen.”
Peirce goes on to give an extremely unclarifying explanation of ‘idea’ here, which I think we can safely ignore.
Some sense can be made of the notion of the ‘ground of a representamen’ if (I hope the right sense) if ‘feature’ or ‘property’ or ‘characteristic’ be substituted for ‘idea’.
Peirce is, I think, simply saying that if x ‘stands for’ (‘is a sign of’ ‘represent’) y, this is always because of some particular feature which x has —e.g. its likeness to y.
The sign-object-interpretant is, Peircecsays, “a genuine triadic relation, that is its three members, or better, terms, are bounded together by it in a way that does not consist in any complexus of more primitive *dyadic* relations”.
A sign is a representamen with a mental interpretant.
In the passage from which these quotations are taken, and I think in many other places in Peirce’s work, an interpretant of a sign is regarded as being ‘mental’ in the sense of being a ‘thought.’
This is complicated by Peirce’s occasional distinctions between different kinds of interpretants.
However, this does not affect the fact that the kind of interpretant with which Peirce normally concerns himself is something which he would normally describe as a ‘thought.’
But it is Peirce’s view that thought itself consists of signs!
“The third principle whose consequences we have to deduce is that, whenever we think, we have present to the consciousness some feeling, image, conception, or other representation, which serves as a “sign.””
The development of this view lands leads him into some of his murkier obscurities.
But, fortunately we need not, for the present purpose, go into them.
Pierce’s view that thought consists of signs clearly lands Peirce with an infinite process.
For if a sign s1 has to have an interpretant s2, and s2 is itself a sign, s2 has itself an interpretant s3, a sign which itself … etc.
This consequence of his theory of signs Peirce himself points out in the passage under consideration, and, in the passage, shows no sign of unwillingness to accept it.
In fact, he regards it as involved in the “familiar idea of a Sign.”
Elsewhere, Peirce finds it necessary to say more — and on somewhat different lines — on this subject.
I may list the salient points so far.
A sign s stands to some interpretant i for some object o in some respect.
This involves a sign s being actually (or possibly) related by a triadic relation to an object onand an interpretant i.
This triadic relation is ‘genuine’.
The interpretant i is itself a sign thought, and so a sign, and therefore an actual or possible sign is a member of a further triad, which generates yet a further triad and so on *ad infinitum*.
Now, the following seem to me to be some of the more pressing questions which arise out of the passages I have just summarized.
What is Peirce’s theory of a “sign” a theory of?
Are we to understand Pierce’s ‘sign’ in its normal every day sense, or is it used in a non-everyday, technical way?
If the latter, to what purpose?
What is the force of Peirce’s contention that the ‘sign-relation’ is genuinely triadic?
Does this claim rule out a further explanation about the nature of the ‘relation’?
If not, what sort of explanation does Peirce favour?
Is the infinite process series of interpretants of a sign tolerable?
Does Peirce tolerate it?
These questions cannot be dealt with without some further discussion of the question of what an interpretant is, and this will, I think, be found to have some bearing on the questions.
What about the ‘object’ of a sign?
Does such a notion involve hypostatization?
About these questions I shall at this stage anyway say as little as possible.
What is a theory of signs a theory of?
We can answer this question, as regards Peirce, straight away by saying that when Peirce says something about a ”sign” in general, what he says can be understood as saying something in general about ‘meaning.’
A weak support for this contention comes from noticing that the words he uses when talking about (and applies to) ‘sign’ in general, e.g. ‘stand for’ ‘represent’ (as in representamen), and elsewhere ‘denote’.
All these expressions (and “sign” itself) are traditional encountered in philosophical discussions of meaning.
Peirce maintains that meaning is not only a genuine triadic relation, but also is involved in any genuine triadic relation.
In support forcthis latter (not very intelligible) contention, Peirce considers some examples of triadic relations and claims that the idea of a ‘sign’ is involved — e.g. in the notion of a, b, c being identical.
It is clear that for Peirce ‘having a meaning’ and ‘being a sign’ are interchangeable expressions.
Let us take, more or less at random, some of the things that Peirce wants to call a ‘signs’:
— the rolling gait (of a sailor)
—a diagram
— a shout of “Hi”
— the word “that”
— any sentence (which is not nonsense)
— a weather-cock.
For most of these items there seem no great difficulty in framing sentences containing the expression “x mean y” which I am fairly sure would be able to replace sentences containing the word “sign” which Peirce would be ready to employ about the things in question:
Arolling gait means that the its owner is a sailor.”
A rolling gait is a sign of a sailor.
2) a “that one is the ripest” b “which one do you mean by ‘that’ (‘that one’)” [Not very natural, but cumbrous rather than contrary to usage]
The weathercock pointing south means that the wind is in that direction”.
The only one about which there seems some difficulty is the diagram (he doesn’t naturally speak of a diagram as ‘meaning’ this or that).
But I think one could (although alternative locutions would usually perhaps be clearer and come more trippingly to the tongue) talk about what parts or features of a diagram or map mean: e.g. if, considering a Mercator’s projection map, I find that the shape marked ‘Greenland’ is approximately the same size as the shape marked ‘Arabia.”
I’ve no idea whether or not this is in fact the case.
I may ask (or answer) the question:
“Does the approximate equality of size of that and that mean that Greenland and Arabia are (really) about the size same size”; or looking at a diagram of some kind of machine and noticing (say) some curious (nb) parallel sort of parallel lines circles, I might ask “what do these mean?” or “do these mean anything?”
What seems to emerge as a suggestion from the isolated examples in clauses, is that it may be natural to use ‘mean’
— when one knows or thinks or suspects that some ‘distortion’ is involved (as in case of ‘Greenland’ etc.)
— when one knows thinks or suspects that features in question have not a merely representative character, but are in some sense conventional (which is what I had in mind in second case (‘circles’).
It is important to remember that a map and a diagram often or always embody a ‘conventional’ feature or element.
One thing I think is quite certain.
When we should never point to an area on the map and say “That means Arabia”; and I am afraid that Peirce would want to give as answer to question “what is map or diagram sign of”, “that of which it is a map or diagram.”
This, if correct, means of course that to explain a ‘sign’ in terms of “meaning” will not wholly fit Peirce’s use of ‘sign’.
But I think the substitution will work fairly well.
In most cases, the answers to the question “what does x mean” would correspond fairly closely with the sort of answers Peirce would give or might be compelled to give to question “what is x sign of?”
Moreover I feel fairly confident that no other word but “mean” would do anything like as well.
It is here important to note that “sign” in any ordinary, un-technical sense cannot be applied to a considerable number of Peirce’s examples of ‘signs’ [e.g. ‘this’, ‘Hi’, a sentence, if we consider merely above-quoted examples].
The same applies to other words verbs which occur in Peirce’s explanation of sign — ‘stand for’, ‘represent [representamen]’.
I recognize that I have made quite a bit out of the question about the relation between “meaning” and “sign” on the one hand and Peirce’s words (“sign” etc) on the other, but I make no apology for doing so.
For, in general, the unannounced and unheralded use of technical or crypto-technical terms leads to nothing but trouble, obscuring proper questions and raising improper ones.
In this particular instance, there are good reasons for discussing and emphasizing the need to restate Peirce’s remarks in terms of “meaning”.
Peirce’s “sign”, when it occurs in contexts in which there is some reference to an utterer U, does so most naturally most clearly in contexts where something is a sign to someone or ‘for’ so.
That is to say in context, where the utterer U or the addressee A are concerned, is roughly speaking in position of an addressee.
I do not of course say it cannot be used otherwise.
Moreover, If we do think of an utterer U and an addressee A as concerned thus, I may tend to neglect the fact that some at least of entities Peirce calls a “sign’ can be used as well as ‘encountered’, and that this may be very important.
It is clear that Peirce himself usually, though not always, does tend to think of an utterer U and an addressee A, and this no doubt has some connection with philosophers who do this tend to hold a “causal theory of meaning,” or at any rate philosophers who hold a “causal theory of meaning” tend (in the first instance at least) to treat a person as an utterer U or an addressee A.
It is important in view of this question about Peirce’s own position vis-a-vis a “causal theory” of “meaning.”
Some of the expressions Peirce uses (‘stand for’, ‘represent’) seem to me reflect, orchelp, or give rise to, an inclination to think of the “meaning,” e.g. of an expression, as always an object (if not a thing, something at least which is a particular, or something at any rate which is, for philosophical purposes, not too unlike a thing).
“This picture represents the death of Napoleon (or Napoleon in his youth)”
“This match represents the bowler Lindwall.”
“The letter “H” stands for ‘Henry’ ”
‘stand for’ ‘represent’ are much less common than ‘mean.’
The philosopher’s use of unfamiliar subjects (grammatical), which “Represent’, and “stand for” also seem to be connected with notion of ‘substitution,
And although this may be helpful, if it is generalized (as the use of verbs in questions perhaps induces us unconsciously to do) it may reflect, help, or give rise to the suggestion that, for every expression, there is something for which it is a substitute.
Cf. Russell’s use of ‘stand for’ in discussion of universals in his “Problems of Philosophy.”
Having I hope justified my intention of treating Peirce as attempting to give some sort of analysis of “meaning,” I want now to ask what it is.
I should say in advance that I do not think it possible to find any very detailed analysis of meaning in Peirce.
Peirce is too volatile and inconsistent for that.
But we may hope to find a motive for an analysis (or analyses), which could be useful as introduction to working out of at least some of these by others.
First, can we re-state Peirce’s claim that ‘sign-relation’ is triadic in terms of “mean”?
I take it that this would have to claim, roughly, that wherever we get a sentence statement, e.g. beginning
“x means ....”
or
“x meant ....”
this would always be capable of expansion into, or analysis in terms of a statement such as
x means (meant) ..... to ...... (person or persons)”.
Now, as regards these, there are one or two things he clearly does not mean.
Peirce very obviously does not mean that any statement about x “meaning” something entails that
“x has meant or will mean”
something is actually understood (interpreted) by any particular person at any particular time.
E.g.
It might be true that a recherché or difficult sentence might mean something, without in fact ever having been interpreted by anybody or even uttered (here must be some meaning for sentences which have or never will be uttered).
There is the possibility, too, of meaning to, being understood, being interpreted is the essential, not relative interpretation.
Since being interpreted by, or understood by, (actually ‘meaning to’) seems to involve the presence of an interpretant which is itself a ‘sign’, either the interpretant sign needs not itself be understood and has a further possible interpretant, it works as if either there is an endless series of constantly present interpretants, or else I at some stage come to an interpretant ‘sign’ which although perhaps capable of being understood, is not in fact understood (God?).
But I do not think Peirce, if asked, would say that either of these alternatives is the case.
“It is not necessary that an interpretant should actually exist”.
“An interpretant “in futuro” will suffice”.
I think the regress of natural interpretants should be avoided by his saying that e.g. I can understanding it might well be true that I understood a remark made to me, even if no interpretant ‘sign’ came before my mind, provided that I could provide an interpretant, i.e., provided I would have done do so if some further unspecified condition is fulfilled.
I am not sure that Peirce always thinks in this way about the original interpretant in the series.
But this has to do with what I have to say about interpretants.
Which is this “habit” that Peirce talks about, as constituting the ultimate “logical” interpretant for every “sign”?
Peirce can be pretty obscure here.
*Some* things are clear, though.
In some sense or other, Peirce’s reference to the causal effect of a “sign” (or of the “semiosis” of a “sign,” whatever being a causal effect of that is) may be no more than Peirce’s way of emphasising the genuinely triadic relation of the sign-situation, or as I prefer, “meaning.”
Although not identical with them, this “habit” is obviously fairly closely connected with an observation, or an experiment.
Peirce:
“It is not necessary that the sign’s interpretant i should actually *exist*.”
“An interpretant *in futuro* may suffice”.
“It is rather important to emphasise that, by ‘interpretant,’ I mean ‘possible interpretant’.
For Peirce, this is not a mere habit, but a controlled — i. e. deliberatively formed — habit.
This habit may be the conclusion of an ‘ideal experimentation,’ i.e. where one imagines oneself in certain circumstances, and doing certain things.
The habit in question is described as a “habit of action” in a given way.
Whenever we desire a given kind of result, a readiness to act, given certain motives and conditions, is said to be a belief.
This habit may be a conjecture which is an ‘ideal experimentation,’ and the expression of’a ‘belief,’ or equivalent to a habit of the kind in question.
“The most perfect account of a concept that an expression can convey consists in the description of the habit that that concept is calculated to produce.”
“But how otherwise can a habit be described than by a description of the kind of action to which it gives rise, with a specification of the motive and the conditions?”
There seem to be various scenarios.
One is the habit of giving or uttering experiment or observable result when stimulated by the occurrence of the sign.
Another scenario is a habit of making a confirmation, i, e., testing or confirming the proposition expressed by the sign.
A habit may involve a *belief* in the proposition expressed by the sign.
The habit seems to tie in best with talk of belief.
This doxastic interpretation of the habit seems however to commit Peirce to holding that a sentence must be believed if fully understood.
But this is perhaps avoidable if the belief need not be an actual one, but only would be brought about by the sign in a certain case.
Descriptive meaning is roughly a tendency to arouse belief.
This might link with the operation-sensible result rule, since a tendency to perform an operation if one desires the result would be one of the
tendencies of which the habit (now construed as a belief) would consist.
Peirce:
“In every case, after some preliminaries, the activity takes the form of an experimentation in the inner world.”
“The conclusion, if it comes to a definite conclusion, is that, under given conditions, the interpreter will form the habit of acting in a given way, whenever he may desire a given kind of result”.
Peirce:
“Meantime, do not forget that every conjecture is equivalent to, or is expressive of, such a habit that having a certain desire one might accomplish it, if one performs a certain act”.
Peirce:
“Consequently, the most perfect account of a concept that an expression can convey consists in a description of the habit which that concept is calculated to produce.”
“But how otherwise can a habit be described than by a description of the kind of action to which it gives rise, with the specification of the conditions and of the motive?”
Peirce would be holding a “causal theory” of a Stevensonian type, mixed up with a meaning-explainability theory.
There is some confusion as to whether explainability is requisite of meaning, and whether it will do as definition.
It would no longer follow from definition.
So you might skip over to it from another theory.
Then there is the issue of an ambiguity of interpretation.
Peirce’s unexpectedly says, about the definition of a “sign,” that the meaning is not the object o, but the interpretant i.
No doubt Peirce sees reasons for this.
A habit is one of giving operation-result type rule when stimulated by a sign (in one’s own thought or otherwise).
A habit is one of going about confirming sentence — the meaning of sentence is the habit of going about confirming it.
It is important which counts as an “interpretation.”
It would just be an expression of a belief that finally will give meaning of e.g. this island.
This is not a belief that seems very reasonable for one to have.
If it just means that one would if necessary confirm it, this does not seem to tie “sign” with “belief.”
Peirce’s “object” is usually roughly, I think, what Mill would call “denotation,” as opposed to “connotation.”
The interpretant i is connected with the “connotation,” but still here the interpretant is said to be a representation “representamen of same object as sign” (= has same denotation?) if we suppose interpretant not always synonymous/definition with sign (seems undoubtedly an account of anything we can do) then why bring it in at all.
Is Peirce a “metaphysical” object?
The object of a sign has to be there anyway, by definition.
But this might be got over by Peirce’s pretty unintelligible distinction between two kinds of object.
“The ‘meaning’ of a sentence is thus the habit of going about confirming it, and this is described by a conditional formula”.
An interpretant can be what Peirce calls an “emotional” one.
Some examples:
— A feeling, i. e., a sensation.
Music, for example, conveys — and is intended to convey — the composer’s ideas, usually feelings.
Then there’s a feeling of recognition, i. e., a feeling we come to interpret as evidence we comprehend the sign.
The immediate interpretant is the “total unanalysed effect” the sign is calculated to produce.
“I have been accustomed to identify this with effect the sign first produces on a mind without any reflection on it.
An interpretant can also be “energetic,” when it “functions through mediation of an emotional interpretant.”
Such further effect involves an effort” (“ground arms”).
An energetic interpretant may be a muscular effort, but it is more usually a merely “mental” effort.
The emotional and the energetic interpretants are not the meaning of a sign, because they are individual.
An interpretant may be “logical,” the ‘meaning’ of sign, in its primary acceptation of a sign into another system of signs.
“The meaning of a sign is the sign it has to be explained into.”
This is confined to “intellectual concepts.”
“The performance of a piece of concerted music is a sign.”
It conveys, and is intended to convey, the composer’s musical ideas; but these usually consist merely in a series of feelings”.
“This emotional interpretant may amount to much more than that a feeling of recognition.”
“In some cases, this is the only proper significate effect that a sign produces”.
“The immediate interpretant is the total unanalysed effect that a sign is calculated to produce”.
— Peirce, Letter to Welby, cited by Ogden’s & Richards’s “MM.”
“If it produces any further proper significate effect, a sign does so through the mediation of the emotional interpretant, and such further effect always involves an effort.”
“I call it the energetic interpretant.”
“The effort may be a muscular one, as it is in the case of the command to ground arms.”
“But it is much more usually an exertion upon the inner world, a ‘mental’ effort”.
“‘meaning,’ which is, in its primary acceptation, the elucidation of a sign into another system of signs.”
“The meaning of a sign is the sign it has to be elucidated into.”
There are various theories to account for this.
One theory focuses on the causal effect — what the sign effects, or tends to effect.
This causal effect may be construed behaviouristic, but not necessarily so.
Then, there is utterer U’s intention, e.g. the intention of the user of a sign — e.g. the explanation provided by Ewing.
There is also the ability to give a rule, e.g., as in Peirce’s account of the ‘logical’ interpretant.
Peirce speaks in a language of time but he really does not have to.
The relation to metaphysics only applies against behaviouristic alternatives.
There seems to be restriction to expressions like “... represents ...,” “... stand for ...”
These obviously require intention (only in theory do, but can’t see any evidence that this obvious to Peirce.
Question is for Buchler that only “... represent ...” as treating something for certain purposes as it may involve an utterer’s intention, but not obviously the user’s intention.
The logical interpretant is what the sign refers to.
This, again, doesn’t help.
Peirce objects to Lady Welby that an “intention” will not do because a natural sign has no utterer.
[maybe means sign special department intentional theory]
The idea of interpretants as significate effect [rep. in Buchler 276 seq. “Pragmatism in Retrospect.”
Why does Peirce get worried about the logical interpretant as the meaning of a sign?
A series of thoughts as interpretants must be ended by some *ultimate* logical interpretant which (sign) is *not* a sign, at any rate in the same way as the non-ultimate interpretants are) but is a habit.
Are we imprisoned in language?
But why bring in habit?
Why not a different kind of rule?
This fact is the rule.
There is the circularity difficulty: no sign that he is [illeg.] symbol [illeg.] it.
But not aware.
Peirce:
“Now, a natural sign or a symptom has no utterer”. (Peirce to Welby, mm 288) “Pragmatism in Retrospect: A Last Formulation”, b 269–289; on p. 275
The interpretant is said to be “the proper significate outcome or effect” of the sign.
Peirce’s notion of an ultimate logical interpretant is highly obscure.
It is not purely habit but controlled (dependent on deliberate formation).
It is of the same nature, although not a thought.
Consider engendered (“the conclusion of”) mental experimentation “imagining yourself acting in certain ways.
Consider trial rules of form (given experiment observation their sensible result).
A rule like this is not enough because it doesn’t tell us of the essential nature of effect of the on the interpretation of semiosis of sign” — semiosis explain as action or influence involving sign/object/interpretant.
Nevertheless, habit is in some way connected with some type of rule.
Habit is described as “habit of action” given certain conditions and motives; and readiness to act given certain conditions and motives is earlier said to be just belief (same earlier passage conjecture seems to be expressive of or equivalent to a habit of kind in question)
It looks then that it is possible that habit might be a quasi-belief or conjecture in what the sign (not interpretant) asserts (habit of ‘imagining’ oneself acting as if …).C. S. Peirce is a pioneer — or, as he himself puts it, “a backwoodsman”! — in the analysis of of meaning.
It is thus hardly surprising that what Peirce has to say about meaning is both complicated and obscure.
Pierce’s oeuvre is that of a highly individual, subtle, acute — if perhaps not very systematic or disciplined — mind!
Peirce’s oeuvre is punctualized by penetrating and suggestive observations.
Partly because many problems of Oxonian interest — notably, “meaning” — may be traced back to — or at least found in — Pierce, and partly because his oeuvre is — at any rate, at Oxford — somewhat neglected, I propose to consider some of the things that Peirce says about a “sign” as a starting point for an analysis of “meaning.”
I shall first consider Pierce’s view about the “sign” in general, and then go on to consider the three trichotomies he proposes (icon/index/symbol; qualisign/sinsign/dicisign; rheme/dicisign/argument).
Peirce applies “sign” to a broad variety of items — including a few which I would *not*.
This extension in the application of “sign” by Pierce should not necessarily, on principle, be condemned!
Peirce’s broad use of “sign” may help us to draw our conceptual attention to an important *feature* which his variety of items share.
As a *selection* of items which Peirce calls a “sign,” I may list:
— the rolling gait of a sailor.
“The fact that he has a rolling gait means that he is a sailor.”
— a diagram.
—a shout of ‘Hi!’.
— the demonstrative pronoun, ‘that.’
— any significant sentence.
— a weathercock.
— a picture of something.
Many of these items I would *not* ordinarily call a “sign.”
It is important, for an understanding of what Peirce is doing when discussing “sign,” to realize that there is good reason to think that Peirce would have regarded the two expressions below as interchangeable:
“s is a sign.”
“x has a meaning.”
In support of this, I need refer only to two passages:
In the first, Peirce argues that “meaning” is an irreducibly triadic relation:
R(s, o, i)
— the semiotic triad.
But Peirce also claims that the “sign”-relation is irreducibly triadic:
“Every triadic relation involves *meaning*, as *meaning* is obviously a triadic relation”.
M(U, p, A)
Now, in *my* usage, the expression
“x has a meaning.”
is of wider applicability than
“s is a sign.”
Not all of the items which Peirce lists under “sign” may be said to ‘mean’ — e.g. a picture, and possibly a diagram.
So, if he is equalling “x’s having a meaning” with “s’s being a sign,” Peirce is *extending* the use of ‘meaning’.
I propose now to indicate the extent to which Peirce’s departs from *my* use of “sign.”
It is convenient to separat *two* ranges of items:
I. Those of a linguistic — or quasi-linguistic — character; roughly speaking, those items by which an uttere U may use in making a communication.
II. Those items of a wholly *non*-linguistic character.
This is a rough-and-ready division, but it may may do for now.
Let us take, as we should, the non-linguistic range first.
Within this range, what *I* would ordinarily call a “sign” (at any rate a sign ‘of ...,’ or ‘... that p’) would seem to be a so-called ‘natural’ sign.
It it is, at first sight, tempting to assume, roughly, that, whenever the presence (or existence) of “x” is a ground for supposing the presence (or existence) of “y,” “x” is a *sign* of “y.”
But this would be wrong on a number of counts.
People may perhaps come to accept a particular house as being *my* house on the strength of its having a green door — i. e., they would recognise my house by its green door.
But it would be somewhat unnatural to speak of the green door as being a “sign” of my house, or of the *fact* that the house has a green door as being a “sign” that the house is mine.
One principle involved here may be stated by saying that — where “x” and “y” refer to two individuals — I do not speak of “x” as being the “sign” of “y,” unless I am prepared to allow also that this falls under some rule to the effect that things of a type X to which “x” belongs —
x ∈ X
— are generally associated with things of the type Y to which “y” belongs:
y ∈ Y
But I would not say that any house which has a green door is — always or usually — mine.
A different example suggests that some such principle may not be the only one involved.
For though not only do I *not* speak of the presence of a feature by which I distinguish a particular individual bird from any other bird as a “sign” of the presence of that bird, I do *not* speak, either, of the feature by the aid of which I distinguish or recognize a particular kind of bird as being a “sign” (but perhaps a “mark”) of the presence of a bird of that particular kind.
I would, e. g., not speak of a bird’s having a pink beak as being a “sign” that the bird is a Lesser Nitwit.
And here of course I *can* produce a rule.
“Any bird with a pink beak — plus certain unspecified further characteristics — is always — or usually or often — a Lesser Nitwit.”
I tend to differentiate, in my usage, a feature or “mark” by which I recognise something as being of a certain type X (by which we distinguish so-and-so’s) from a “sign.”
In such cases, a “mark” is the appropriate expression, not “sign.”
A mark most naturally ‘distinguishes.’
A sign most naturally ‘indicates.’
But such a differentiation (a mark distinguishes vs a sign indicates) does not always seem to be made by all of my friends!
And, in any case, I would desire some further account for the *basis* of the differentiation between “m” being a mark that distinguishes and “s” being a sign that indicates.
This account, I fear, I cannot supply at the moment.
Maybe some of the following examples may help to elucidate the principle in question.
“x — or U — means that p” — but not “x is evidence that p” — is appropriate here.
I do not, in general, speak of “x” as being a “sign” of “y” when the existence (or occurrence) of “x” is a *constitutive* condition of the occurrence (or existence) of “y.”
E.g. I doubt if I should say that Smith having lost his temper is, on a particular occasion, a “sign” that Smith is irascible — though the fact that he lost his temper may be “evidence” that Smith is irascible.
After all, being irascible *consists* in having a tendency to lose one’s temper.
(Cf. Fogelin, “Meaning and evidence.”)
A slightly somewhat different sort of example may be given using a value term.
I would not want to say that the fact that Smith’s philosophical essay is well-reasoned is a “sign” that it is a good essay.
Rather, it is, again, a “mark” of a good essay to be well-reasoned.
I tend *not* to use “sign” either, at any rate without qualification, of “x,” if the presence of “x” leaves no room for doubt as to the presence of “y.”
In such cases I use “means” or “shows.”
Thus, I would not normally say of a particular envelope that its bearing a post-mark is a “sign” of its having been through the post.
In normal circumstances, the post-mark would be taken as establishing that the envelope has been through the post.
However, if *special* circumstances do create some suspicion to the effect of the post-mark not being genuine, I might be more ready to use “sign”!
In this connection, I may note that
iii. x is a sign that p, but possibly ~p.
is legitimate.
In contrast,
ii. x means (or shows) that p, but possibly ~p.
may not!
I do not normally speak, either, of “x” as being a “sign” of “y” if the existence of “x” is the *cause* (or *a* cause, or the explanation, or part of the explanation) of the existence of “y.”
I would hardly say
“The death of Smith is a sign that his wife will be unhappy.”
And I do not say this even if I am *uncertain* whether the wife will care!
I would hardly say:
“Smith’s catching bulimic plague is a sign that he will soon die.”
On the other hand, there is no ban of speaking of the causal *effect* as the “sign” of the cause.
I withhold “... is evidence” here, too.
I can however say “... means that p” or “... probably means that p.”
I would hardly say that the fact that the first ten people to arrive at the meeting were wearing gowns is a “sign” that that the next person to arrive will be wearing a gown — even if I happen to think that this fact makes it pretty probable that he *will* be wearing a gown!
I do not speak of a “sign,” either, in specimens of what logicians sometimes call an “analogical” argument or inference.
Nor, incidentally, do I speak of the above mentioned fact as being a “sign” that everyone at the meeting would be gowned.
Reflecting on these cases where I would withhold from using “sign,” it occurs to me that it might be worth considering whether there may not be a quite simple *positive* or substantive requirement for a “sign” which would exclude all the listed items from the status of a “sign.”
One shot would be that, for “x” to be a “sign” of “y,” it is necessary — though maybe not sufficient — that “y” should *explain* “x” — wholly or partially.
This requirement, if authentic, would eliminate the cited items from being a “sign.”
The requirement would also explain a further feature of my use of “sign,” e.g. why I might speak of the fact that Smith has a stoop as being a “sign” that Smith is an old man, but not as being a “sign” that Smith’s hair is grey, or that Smith has false teeth; for I would allow
“Smith has a stoop because he is an old man.”
But not:
“Smith has a stoop because his hair is grey and his teeth are false.”
The obvious difficulty about this requirement is that I often do speak of refer to, say, a present event as a *sign* of a future one; and — it may be asked — how can a future event *explain* a present one?
In answer to this, one must say that I certainly do say such things as
“The rope creaked *because* it was about to break.”
“Smith’s voice grew faint because he was about to die.”
Such utterances may raise a problem for the philosophers, but they seem legitimate ways of talking.
Other requirements to be fulfilled by a “sign” have been suggested e.g.
— that the “sign” must be more obvious (or more accessible) than its “significatum.”
— that the sign must be in spatio-temporal proximity to its “significatum.”
I am far from convinced that such requirements are legitimate.
That such requirements might *seem* legitimate may be explained in terms of the plausibility they may have might be explained by pointing that they are usually — though not always — fulfilled in the case of items which fulfil my own suggested requirement for a “sign.”
As for the range of communicative — linguistic, or quasi-linguistic — items, the following seem to be the most obvious cases in which “sign” *is* applicable.
For any non-verbal — or nor wholly verbal — but conventional communication device, e.g.
— the addition sign ‘+’
— the ampersand ‘&.’
“+” and “&” might also be called a “symbol,” though it does not seem obvious if every “symbol” would be called a “sign.”
— a road sign (e.g. a level-crossing sign)
— a shop-sign (e.g. a barber’s pole)
— a conventional sign, such as a map.
— a gesture, whether conventional or not, used as a communication device.
In neither of the three cases do we naturally speak of the item as a “sign of ...” or a “sign that ...”
I may speak of each item as ‘signifying that p.’
An action, normally, or at least usually, though not always, non-conventional, used as a communication device, e.g.
“Smith took Jones’s hand as a sign that all was forgiven.”
“They shot down an aeroplane as a sign that they would stand no nonsense.”
The natural phrase is ‘... as a sign,” and it may be followed by either a “that”-clause, or by “to.”
Any of these items may metaphorically be called a ‘gesture.’
No doubt there are other categories of this class of “sign,” but these perhaps are enough for the moment.
Note particularly that an expression — or a phrase, sentence, and even statement — is *not* a “sign”!
Some utterer U’s uttering an expression (or a sentence) may be a “sign” — e.g. of gullibility or intelligence — but the U’s uttering is not a “sign” of what the expression (or phrase, or sentence) means, nor of what a statement asserts.
Peirce’s triadic analysis of a “sign” — S(s, o, i) — is both fascinating and obscure!
I hope that my attempt at simplifying the welter of his pronouncements does not prove too much of a travesty, but more of a rhapsody!
Pierce’s salient points may be summarized as follows:
To be a “sign” (i. e., for some s to “mean” some object o) is to stand in a triadic relation:
S(s, o, i)
Peirce’s initial move in attempting to show this is by claiming that, for a “sign” s to be a “sign”” is for “s” to be a sign of something — some object “o” — *to somebody* — some interpretant “i.”
The relation in question is not accidentally triadic but ‘genuinely’ so, by which Peirce means that this triad cannot be reduced or analysed into a complexus of dyadic relations.
Contrary to what one might expect, the three terms of the triad that is the sign-relation are not “sign” or “significans” (“s”), object signified, “significatum” (“o”) and a third for organism, but
1 — “sign” — significans
2 — “object,” or significatum, and
3 — what Peirce calls an “interpretant.”
The following expansion by W. B. Gallie in his essay on Peirce seems to fit at least some of what Peirce claims about a “sign.”
“s is a sign”
iff
“s evokes —in some mind or organism — a response — interpretant “i” — appropriate to object “o.””
Again, contrary to what one might expect, the *meaning* of “sign” s is not the object “o” or significatum, for which it stands, but rather its interpretant — or at least rather a certain sort of interpretant.
For s to be a “sign,” its interpretant “i” must be ‘mental’, and so, according to Peirce, a thought, and so, again, a further “sign” — since all thought, on Peirce’s view, consists in signs.
Further, the interpretant which is the meaning of the sign must be a “sign” of the same “object” as is the sign of which it is the “interpretant.”
Peirce: “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 itself to the same Object.”
“The triadic relation is genuine, that is, its three members are bound together by it in a way that does not consist in any complexus of dyadic relations”.
Gallie notes that “any appropriate response to a sign is, in virtue of its very appropriatedness, capable of itself serving as a sign of the object originally signified.”
Gallie:
“In the way in which what a “sign” signifies depends on the occurrence of an appropriate response, such a response is necessary both to show what the “sign” signifies and indeed to show that it signifies anything at all”.
This is being ensued to be the case, given that the “interpretant” i — or response — is to be appropriate to o.
If the interpretant i is appropriate to o, the interpretant i is itself a sign of o.
This, of course, entails that every “sign” generates an *infinite* series of interpretants, all of which have the same object o.
Peirce is perfectly willing to accept this consequence.
A qualification by Peirce mitigates the obvious objection that it would be logically *impossible* for there to be an *infinite* series of *actual* responses or interpretants.
Peirce allows that the interpretant “i” need not be an *actual*, but merely a *potential* response — i.e. one which *would* occur, given certain further, in fact unfulfilled, conditions.
I may now ask what Peirce’s so-called theory of a “sign” is a theory of, in view of the obvious fact that “sign” is *not* used by Peirce in its everyday fashion.
One reply might be that Peirce’s semeiotic should be regarded as an attempt to elucidate or, as I prefer, analyse, the ordinary concept of “meaning.”
On this view, I have to assume that Peirce takes the concept of “sign” — *and* “meaning” — to have a somewhat wider application than it in fact has — e.g. a picture, or a map, is not ordinarily be said, as such, to ‘mean’.
Now, it will undoubtedly be useful, if one is interested in a conceptual analysis of ‘meaning’, to take Peirce’s theory in this light, and I do not think he would complain!
I should also take note of the fact that, in talking about a “sign,” Peirce is talking about a very diverse collection of items, which, nevertheless, I, as does Peirce, feel it fairly natural to group together — even though there may be no obvious ready-made heading for the list!
What Peirce says might help us to understand *why* I would readily list all those items together.
The items, it is claimed, have something in common.
For such items with “meaning” (in the ordinary usage) form only a sub-class of Peirce’s “sign.”
Any condition required for “being a sign,” in Peirce’s usage, constitutes a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for “having a meaning.”
I should not *assume* that there is some one common general substantive character which each of the items of the list possesses.
The items of the list may merely be linked by what Witters calls, metaphorically, a “family resemblance”.
Indeed, if one searches for one single character or feature shared by such items as a picture, a map, a sentence, and a weathercock, it may not be easy to pick on one!
The best I can suggest is that each item, x, is one from which something might be learned about some further item, y.
Whether this delimits the class of Peirce’s “sign,” I am not sure!
I do not propose to spend long over Peirce’s claim that the ‘sign-relation’ — “meaning” —is a triadic (and irreducibly triadic) relation.
If all that is meant is that a “sign” does not have meaning “in vacuo” — i. e., that if there were no addressee to respond to a sign, there would not be a sign with a meaning, perhaps no one would object.
But Peirce clearly means more than this.
Peirce seems to mean, *inter alia*, that for a statement of the general logical form:
“x means y.”
M(x, y)
the response
‘To whom?’
is always appropriate and must have an answer.
If this is Peirce’s view, it is false.
Some counter-examples come to mind:
“The evolving of the earth meant the emergence of life.”
“To whom?” sounds otiose!
“Kant means that ...,”
— choosing some passage which you think has hitherto baffled every one!
It may be misleading, in so far as it suggests that the “meaning” in general, and so, naturally, the meaning of a communication device, is to be thought of in terms of some addressee A, to which the sign may be addressed — encourages a “causal” theory of “meaning,” in that the “meaning” is appropriate to a communication device itself, rather than, as I prefer, in terms of the *utterer* U, or user, of the device, which would encourage an ‘intention’ theory, alla E. C. Ewing in “Meaninglessness.”
As I happen to prefer (indeed favour) an intention-based theory to a “causal” theory alla Stevenson, I regard this fact as unfortunate.
A difficulty in Peirce’s theory relates to his very choice of somewhat crypto-technical labels, such as ‘object’ (rather than “significatum”) and ‘interpretant’.
First a word about the “object” o of a “sign” s.
For Peirce, the object of a sign is *not* what the sign means!
Peirce thinks of the object in the sign-situation triad as that to which the addressee A’s response is to be appropriate.
Peirce adds that the “object” o is
“that with which the “sign” presupposes an acquaintance, in order to convey to some addressee A some further information — “p” — about it.”
The adressee A has to be able to identify, in order to comprehend the sign, the information “p” which is conveyed by the “sign,” and which is information *about* the object.
Here Peirce gives the example of a man, looking at the empty sea, who is told:
“That vessel carries no freight at all!”
Roughly, to comprehend the information “p” so conveyed, the addressee A has to identify *what* vessel is being referred to, even if, as may be, there is no actual vessel present there.
Roughly, then, the object o is that to which the “sign” refers.
Peirce’s main trouble is with the third in the triad: the interpretant” “i.”
“The proper significate outcome/effect of a sign is the interpretant of the sign.”
The interpretant seems to be regarded by Peirce as being both a “response” — in the btoader usage of this expression — the making of which (or the *disposition* to make which) is a manifestation of *understanding* the sign, i. e., taking it as a sign of, or referring to, some object or other — and as a further sign “s2” which develops or “elucidates” “s1” such that
s1 means s2.
Peirce is here *conflating* two different conceptions of “meaning.”
One is that a “sign” “meaning” this or that consists in its *referring* to an object.
The other is that it is the interpretant, or addressee, that constitutes “meaning.”
On both views, a sign, meaning this or that, would consist in its being capable of *being understood*.
On the first view, this ‘being understood’ would consist in the sign’s capacity to produce in some addressee A some response r —or disposition to do certain things —, where “r” is of a kind appropriate to the object o of the sign “s.”
On the second view, the sign being capable of *being understood* would consist in the addressee A giving, or being able to give, some “elucidation” of the sign — now s1 — in terms of s2.
A conflation of these two conceptions of “meaning” yields the view that to “understand” a sign is to *respond* to the sign by giving — or being capable of giving, or acquiring a disposition to give — an elucidation of the sign s1 in terms of s2.
Now such account of “meaning” presents its fare of difficulties!
The first — as in any a ‘causal’ theory — is, I suspect, that it may turn not to be very satisfactory (even if it may be hedged around) when the meaning of a communication device is considered.
I do not think that the verb “mean” in which utterances — or an utterer U — may be said to “mean” can be satisfactorily defined in terms of the response or reaction the utterance arouses or tends to arouse — “intends” to arouse, at most!
Another difficulty is, I suspect, that it would make a sign s1 “meaning” this or that as being roughly equivalent to being elucidated by a further sign s2.
This is open to an obvious objection as a “definition” of ‘meaning.’
It is proposed that an infinite series of elucidations for a linguistic sign s1 can be provided, without its being the case that the sign s1 means anything.
Such would be the case if I invent a ‘nonsense’ language (call it Deutero-Esperanto).
In order to assert that a sign means anything (and to *know* what the sign means), the addressee has not merely to be able to relate the sign s to other signs, but at some stage to relate the use of the sign to some *non-linguistic* situations — to the world, as it were!
As a “definition” or even conceptual analysis of “meaning,” Peirce’s proposal would be objectionably circular.
Peirce would be trying to explain the meaning of a sign s1 in terms of, roughly, the existence of another sign s2 having the same meaning!
The conflation of these two conceptions of “meaning,” apart from any objection to any of the particular conflated items, seems objectionable in that in so far as it concerns the implication that, for a response “r” to be a manifestation of understanding, it must consist in giving (or being able to give) some elucidation or quasi-elucidation s2 of the original sign s1.
But, obviously, I can show to you that I understand a sign by the way I behave — as Peirce himself admits in the case of a soldier’s response to an order.
“The example of the imperative command shows that it need not be of a ‘mental’ mode of being, but that the mode may be ‘muscular’ — where the soldier’s behaviour does not consist in providing any sort of ‘elucidation’ of the sign s1 — the lieutenant’s command — which the soldier is showing to understand!
If Peirce makes a conflation about two conceptions of meaning, one or more of the following factors may have assisted him towards doing so.
One factor may be an alleged ambiguity in the verb “interpret.”
“To interpret” may mean
‘to make sense of’, ‘to understand’
But “to interpret” may also be used for ‘explain the sense of’.
Some haziness surrounds Peirce’s saying that the interpretant (response “r”) must be ‘mental,’ i. e. that it must be a “thought,” as Frege would have it, and so, a further sign s2.
This might be understood as saying that the interpretant response “r” must be a response which counts as ‘thinking’ — roughly, ‘cogitating.’
It may also amount to claiming that the interpretant response “r” must be characteristic of an organism with a soul or mind (i.e. roughly must be a manifestation of intelligence, or of a certain order of intelligence — cf. Holloway, “Language and Intelligence.”
On the second interpretation, the statement that the interpretant must be ‘mental’ is at least plausible.
But of course, on this view, it need not be an individual piece of cogitation.
On the first interpretation, if the original statement is true (and cogitation consists in using signs), the interpretant would have to be a sign (linguistic or quasi-linguistic).
But, on this interpretation, the original statement does not seem to be true.
A failure to distinguish these two uses of “interpret” might result in the acceptance of the statement (“the interpretant must be mental”) taken in the its usage because of its plausibility when taken in its second usage.
There is a shift between a wider use of “sign” (to include ‘natural’ sign) and a narrower use of “sign,” to include only a communicative — linguistic or quasi-linguistic — device.
“Meaning” happens to be cognate with “mind” and “mental” and Peirce was aware of this!
If a response “r” to a sign “s” is appropriate to a certain object “o,” it is plausible to suggest that it would be a “natural” sign of that object “o.”
There might then be a transition to supposing that the response “r” would be a sign in the manner of that object o, and so an ‘elucidation’ of the original sign s1.
I suggest, as regard his general discussion of “meaning,” Pierce might be not too unfairly represented as having moved roughly as follows.
Peirce seems for start to combine two conceptions of meaning, without saying he is doing so.
On both these conceptions of meaning, “s has a meaning” and “s is capable of *being understood*.”
But there are two possible exegeses of “being understood.”
s is understood by A =df
Some effect produces — or is capable, given certain conditions, of being produced — on A, where this effect is in some way appropriate to the object o of the sign.
Some explanation or “elucidation” must be given — or is capable of being given — by A of s.
This explanation (“definiens”) is what, in the case of language anyway, turns out to be called by Peirce the sign’s “logical” interpretant.
Peirce:
“A Sign is a Representamen with a mental Interpretant”.
So s has meaning seems to be in Peirce definitionally equivalent to:
The sign s is capable of producing an effect or response r on an interpreter or addressee A.
The sign is capable of being explained or ‘elucidated.’
If I am right, how then “... has meaning” is being analysed?
It is natural to suppose the effect or response “r,” the “thought”, coupled with the view that all thought is in signs and “mostly of nature of language” might well lead to the claim that this thought is the interpretant of sign.
This deals with the ambiguity of interpretation (= interpreting, result of interpretation. Cf. analysis, definition.
The fact that any “sign” is explainable or elucidable is something that seems plausible and natural to want to hold it true, and a consequence of any analysis of ‘meaning.’
But this is different from what is being analysed by Peirce.
Peirce gets the knives about a regress of interpretants.
A series of interpretants which are signs must be ended or cut by a final “ultimate logical interpretant” which is not a sign — or at least “not a sign in the same way as that of which it is interpretant is sign.”
This final logical interpretant turns out to be a “habit” — and also a “significate effect of sign.”
Pierce feels the difficulty of being imprisoned in language.
We now seem to have Peirce running two lines (provided a special kind of rule to tie language to experience, and, at same time, saying that will not quite do since “it does not tell us of essential nature of effect on interpreter brought about by semiosis of the sign.”
This semiosis is explained as an action or influence involving the well-known triad if sign, object, and interpretant.
Peirce: “the interpretants, or proper significate effects, of signs.”
There are reasons to be dissatisfied with an interpretant merely as a sign with further
interpretants which are signs.
There is an inadequacy in an actual interpretants to give as adequate full definitions rather than merely working elucidations.
There are general signs (i.e. those for intellectual concepts) and these must have, in the end, a general interpretant, i. e., a general meaning.
And, what is a habit, anyway?
In Peirce’s famous triad, a “sign” “s” is defined as something that stands, to some interpretant “i“, for some object “o” — in some respect or capacity.
Peirce, with his eye on this definition of “sign,” proceeds to provide three trichotomies of a “sign.”
A first trichotomy depends on the *status* of the “sign” itself.
A “sign” may be:
1 — a quality.
2 — an existent
3 — a law.
If the sign is a quality, Peirce calls the sign a “quali-sign.”
If the sign is an existent, Peirceccalls it a “sin-sign,” or token.
If the sign is a law, Peirce calls it a “legi-sign,” or type.
Peirce explains fairly clearly how to apply “type” and “token”.
The following comments seem called for on what Peirce says:
In his description of a type, or “legi-sign,” Peirce seems to be both confused, struggling with an inadequate terminology.
Peirce is confused because, having said that a “legi-sign” is a law, he goes on to say that the law is usually established by men and that every conventional sign is a “legi-sign,” but not conversely.
Peirce seems to be confusing here a law as a rule for the *use* of a sign with the “sign” itself.
Peirce’s confusion may be due to the inadequacy of his terminology.
What Peirce is trying to say is that a “type” is an abstraction, or “logical construction,” out of a “token.”
Presumably, to say something about a “type,” in Puerce’s view, would be to say something general about a “token” — and, hence, perhaps, the “law”.
There is obviously something in this, but I am rather doubtful if Peirce has it quite right.
For example, the sentence:
“It is impossible for a ‘type’ to be visible on a paper or heard in any voice.”
suggests that a ‘token’ could, in his curious phrase, be visible on a page.
What Peirce seems to mean by this is that there this is a usage of ‘token’ in which a token is just a “mound of ink” or a part of the page.
Though the meaning of “token” fairly clearly has something to do with such things as mounds of ink, I am doubtful if this straightforward answer will quite do.
The type-token distinction applies to any sign.
Other examples would be the case of a map or a diagram.
Cf. the following question:
“Have you bought the latest Ordinance Survey map of Oxfordshire?”
A reply like:
“No, they have printed some more since I brought mine.”
would be inappropriate.
But a reply like:
“There are twenty ordinance survey maps in the building”.
would not be inappropriate — implying that the U needs not bring his copy.
The type-token distinction is useful in itself.
Does the type-token distinction, however, have any bearing on a search for different uses of “mean”?
The type-token distinction suggests an extremely important fact.
The meaning of an expression “e” is what is meant by an utterer U by uttering a token of “e.”
This correlates with a difference between a tenseless (“timeless”) use of the verb “mean,” as in
“The expression “father” means “male parent.”
But there is a tensed (or “applied”) use of the verb “mean”:
“By “father,” utterer U meant, metaphorically, a Roman Catholic priest.”
I am fairly sure Peirce at least to some extent has in view this distinction between timeless and applied uses of “mean.”
Peirce’s phrase, when discussing a ‘token’ is:
“Such an event being *significant* only as occurring when and where it does”.
Peirce’s phrasing suggests that a single expression on a piece of paper in a drawer might *not* count as a token!
Though the type-token distinction *is* important, I think it would be wrong to assume that it is always a ‘type’ that “means” something tenselessly or timelessly, whereas a ‘token’ means something tensedly or appliedly.
I ordinarily speak of a ‘type’ meaning (in a tensed usage of “mean”) something in a certain *context*.
The “tensed” use of “mean” is not confined to token.
I can say:
“As Peter used the expression, “bank” meant something different each time!”
Or:
“As used by Peter, each “bank” meant something different”.
The category of the “quali-sign” is a highly suspect one.
I do not propose to spend much time on it.
A “quali-sign” is defined as “a quality which is a sign”.
Peirce says:
“A sign cannot actually act as a “sign” until it is embodied.”
“But the embodiment has nothing to do with its ‘character’ as a sign”.
“It is the mere quality of an appearance, and, thus, it is not exactly the same throughout a second”.
“A single event which happens once, and whose identity is limited to that one happening, or a single object or thing which is in some single place at any one instant of time, such event or thing being *significant* only as occurring just when and where it does, such as this or that expression on a single line of a single page of a single copy of a book, I venture to call a token”.
“A “quali-sign” is a quality which is a sign.”
“A sign cannot actually act as a sign until it is embodied.”
“But the embodiment has nothing to do with its character as a sign”.
“The ‘quali-sign,’ on the other hand, has no identity.”
“A ‘quali-sign’ is the mere quality of an appearance and it is not exactly the same throughout a second.”
“Instead of identity, it has great similarity, and cannot differ much without being called quite another ‘quali-sign’.”
A ‘quali-sign’ seems to be identical with what Peirce elsewhere calls a “tone.”
Peirce gives an example of a “tone”:
“A tone is an indefinite significant character — such as the tone *of voice*.”
The sort of thing Peirce seems to be having in mind is a specific voice quality by which I may recognise a person.
But I do not know what this would mean with regard to Peitce’s example that the “embodiment” has nothing to do with its character as a sign.
Another example Peirce gives of a “quali-sign” is “a feeling of red.”
Presumably, “a feeling of red” means a sensation of red, regarded by Peirce as a “sign” of the presence of a red thing — such as a pillar box.
however, it seems difficult to come up with examples of a “quali-sign” which can not be reduced to a ‘legi-sign’ or a ‘sin-sign.’
A possible, if far-fetched, candidate might be “white” as a symbol of purity.
Peirce’s two other trichotomies are said to depend on the relation of “sign” to its “object,” i.e. depending on whether, roughly, a sign has character as sign depends on
1 — the sign being like its object (“icon”) — as in a picture.
or
2 — existentially related to the object (“index”) (e.g. “smoke means fire.”)
or
3 — the sign being specially related to the object and the interpretant: a “symbol,” e.g. a conventional sign.
Peirce’s third trichotomy is
1 — according as interpretant represents it as sign of possibility: “rheme,” e.g. general expression.
2 — as “sign of fact” (“dici-sign,” e.g. an indicative sentence) or
3 — “sign of reason” (an “argument” — self-explanatory).
The examples I have given are from language.
However, this third trichotomy is designed to apply to any sign.
trichotomies
Trichotomy I:
1 qualisign
2 sinsign
2 legisign
Trichotomy II:
1 — icon — or roughly “picturing” sign.
2 — index — or roughly “indicating or pointing” sign.
3 — symbol — or roughly “conventional sign”
Trichotomy III:
1 — rheme — or roughly “word-like” sign.
2 — dicisign — or roughly “telling” sign.
3 — argument — telling that or to) —no explanation needed.
Don’t se
No ambuguity cases?/ for to be “symbol”)
“An indefinite significant character such as a tone of voice can neither be called a Type nor a Token.”
“I propose to call such a Sign a Tone”.
“A Qualisign, e. g., a feeling of ‘red,’ is any quality in so far as it is a sign”.
I will set out these in some detail — beginning with the rheme-dicisign-argument trichotomy.
While my interest is in analysing “mean”, I must inquire any light Peirce hung through on words allied to “mean” or indeed on any philosophical point reasonably germane to the subject.
“A Rheme is a sign which, for its interpretant
Does this mean anything different from ‘interpretation’?],
is a sign of qualitative possibility, i. e., is understood as representing such and such a kind of possible object.”
“A rheme may afford some information; but it is not interpreted as doing so.”
Other things are said by Peirce about a rheme, but I do not think I will assist you if I quoted from him!
Examples of Rhemes
— the (type or token) ‘camel’ (and any general expression)—
— the expression “this” (type or token)
— any Icon (e.g. a picture or map or diagram)
— a spontaneous cry (a very queer one)
— “Hullo!”
There are some obvious deficiencies here!
The use of “qualitative” seems to cut out from being a rheme a relation expression (“about”, “beyond”) or an adverb (“slowly”, “speedily”).
But Peirce would not want the “qualitative possibility” to exclude any descriptive expression.
More importantly, what Peirce says about a Rheme excludes one of his examples (“this”) from being a Rheme.
The expression “this” is neither a ‘quality’ expression nor a ‘descriptive’ expression, as Peirce himself is well aware.
We must then not regard Peirce as insisting on the “qualitative,” however interpreted (e.g. to cover every descriptive expression).
What can we take Peirce to be claiming a Rheme is?
Just any sign (i.e. roughly anything that means something, or that has a meaning), provided it is not a dicisign (i.e. ‘telling’) or an argument; that is, though it does “mean” something, it claims or tells nothing, nor expresses anything?
This I think is part of what Peirce is saying but only in part.
He ignores “possibility” altogether.
Even this is of some interest, for, given my purpose of analysing “mean”), it suggests (what may be obvious but overlooked) that the use of ‘mean,” as applied to a sentence (a ‘complete utterance’) is different from that in which ‘mean’ applies to an utterance part (an ‘incomplete utterance’).
What more may Peirce be saying?
‘A possibility’ is a ‘possibility that p.’
Consider Peirce’s example of “camel” — or “Wolf!”
In what way can ‘camel’ (or ‘wolf’) be a “sign” of a possibility *that* there are camels/wolves (that something is a camel/wolf)?
Not in the way of asserting or informing an addressee A that
a) there are camels/wolves.
Or
b) that it is possible *that* there are camels/wolves.
No assertion, by definition, can be made by a rheme.
Peirce may be trying to say what perhaps was not much more satisfactorily said by those philosophers (e.g. Russell) who, when discussing an expression referring to a universal, we should take as an example not ‘red’ (‘redness’), but
“x is red.”
— i. e., a sentential function.
A few points might be made interpretating this.
An expression like ‘red’, ‘camel’ is subject to type- or category-rules.
To explain these rules is to explain how an expression may fit significantly in a sentential linguistic context.
You can not know the meaning of an expression — except perhaps “gavagai” — without knowing how to obey the type rules.
How important is it that any explanation of the meaning of an expression consists in explaining the “meaning” or the “sense” of a sentence containing it?
That implies that ‘mean’ is applicable to an utterance-part or expression “a posteriori” to a complete sentence.
The “meaning” of an utterance-part is to be analysed in terms of the meaning of the complete utterance.
If so, this is important.
There are those philosophers who find it a mystery, like Stevenson, in one place, how it is that expressions with separate meaning “coalesce” to form a complexus with a meaning of its own (the utterance of a sentence): as if the meaning of the utterance of a sentence is a sort of curious quasichemical compound out of the meanings of the expressions in it.
Thus, Stevenson:
“One of the most difficult problems that a meaning-theory includes is that of explaining how separate expressions, each one with its own meaning, can combine to yield a sentence-meaning.”
“It is feasible perhaps to take each expression as having a “disposition” to affect cognition, just as a full utterance of a sentence does.”
“The problem reduces, then, to one of explaining the interplay of the “dispositions” of the several expressions, when taken conjointly.”
Stevenson refers to the analogy of giving magnets a relation between individual and group tendencies.
This suggest that a Rheme ought to be on interpretation of definition a sign which something which means something (a sign) and though not itself a ‘telling’ or ‘claiming’ sign (dicisign), nevertheless can function as constituent in ‘telling’ or ‘claiming’ sign a dicisign, plus the sense of ‘mean’ applicable to Rheme explainable in terms of that applicable to a dicisign.
But, if this so, a spontaneous cry (as Peirce says ‘sign (indexical) because it directs attention of the utterer U) a very odd example of a Rheme.
It is certainly supposedly not a dicisign in Peirce’s sense — in so far as its direction of attention.
This certainly does not seem to give any applicability of “mean” to it (I doubt if there is any application from possibility of occurring in a ‘telling’ ‘complex’ sign.
The most a rheme can mean is “not a dicisign” — i.e. only the negative part applies.
But this is a queer example altogether:
Does the fact that if I sit on drawing pins and shout, thereupon people look at me?
Does the mere fact that the utterer U’s shout makes them look at the utterer U render the utterer U’s shout a “sign” (of the utterer U!)?
I feel inclined to say: No.
There may of course well be a non-linguistic rheme.
Peirce suggests any icon.
This I am not sure of.
But what about a conventional sign such as a map, a note such as “(♩ in musical notation, a naval flag (signalling), a black dot (meaning a town) in a map?
An elastic use of ‘rheme’ may have to be allowed.
But some of these items are rather like expressions in some respects.
In respect to language, however, sometimes there seems to be yet a different use of rheme.
“A dicisign necessarily involves, as a part of it, a rheme, to describe which fact it is interpreted as indicating”.
A rheme seems to be not an expression but as it were a sentence “frame” (with a gap sign for any expression e.g. a demonstrative — used to refer to an individual).
There is no suggestion that a “dicisign” contains more than one “rheme.”
The rheme then is
— any sign which, though not a dicisign, has a ‘meaning’ explainable in terms of ‘mean’ as applied to a dicisign possible appearance as constituent of a dicisign (and therefore of ‘mean’ as applied to a dicisign) e.g. any expression.
— a sentence “frame” with a gap sign for a ‘referring’ expression.
— any sign which is not a dicisign or an argument.
The right and general way of distinguishing a dicisign from another sign is by the fact that an adicent sign is that which is informative or gives information to some addressee.
But this is clearly only an approximation to Peirce’s doctrine.
For, by this account, only an indicative sentence, among all sentences, would be a dicisign.
Let me first quote a passage from Peirce which supplements the first rough account of the meaning of ‘dicisign’:
“A symbol is, by nature, in the ‘indicative’, or as it should be called the “declarative” mood.”
“Of course, they can go to the expression of any other mood, since we may declare assertion to be doubtful, or a mere interrogation, or an imperative requisite.”
“By a rheme, much the same as, a maturer version of, a dicisign, I mean a sign which is equivalent to a grammatical sentence, whether it be Interrogative, Imperative, or Assertory.”
This no doubt, as Peirce indicates, represents a development of the notion of a Dicisign.
“A dicisign is not an assertion, but is a sign capable of being asserted.”
“But an assertion is a dicisign.”
“The act of an assertion is not a pure act of signification.”
“The act of an assertion is an exhibition of the fact that the utterer U subjects himself to the penalities visited on a liar if the proposition asserted is not true.”
“The Replica or Token of a dicent symbol is a Dicent Sinsign Token of a peculiar kind.”
“This is easily seen to be true when the information the Dicent Symbol conveys is an actual fact.”
“When that information is or gets to be a real law, rather, it is not true in the same fullness.”
Peirce unfortunately goes on to say that a Dicent Sinsign cannot convey any information about a law.
I am really not concerned with Peircean “scholarship,” but with what we can get from him.
I shall thus ignore this, which is due I think to a persistent assumption that general information may only be conveyed by a type — not a token.
This is connected with Peirce’s description of a type as a law.
The important point is the emphasis on the difference between a Type and a Token Dicisign.
We can provide some examples of dicent signals signs:
— an indicative sentence.
— a weather cock (+ natural signs usually) +
— a photograph
— a combination of an icon and an index — e.g. a painting.
I do not propose here to talk about the application of the ‘dicisign’ outside language.
I reserve this for the time, should that time arise, when we include Peirce’s other two trichotomies of a “sign.”
There is something funny about putting a weather cock and a picture in the same basket.
Peirce is, I think, saying that a dicent (or a rheme at least— amended dicent) need not be indicative.
Imperatives, etc., count as well.
But Peirce seems to be saying something more; something expressed by some other philosophers when they sayin that the same *proposition* may be object of all sorts of different psychological attitudes.
ψp
A clear way of saying something like this is found in Hare (“Imperative sentences,” “Mind,” 49).
Peirce:
“The proposition need not to be asserted or
judged.”
“A proposition may be contemplated as a “sign” capable of being asserted or denied.”
Cited by Ogden/Richards.
Hare’s purpose, however, is no doubt different from Peirce’s!
There are a few points which I think Peirce is getting at, with varying degrees of clearness, that are connected with a distinction we may want to draw between
— what a sentence S means (in general; timeless ‘means’; if you like, the meaning of (type) sentence) and
— what an utterer U commit himself to by the use of an utterance of that sentence S — if you like, connect this with, or state it in terms of, token sentences.
In a discussion of these points, the expression ‘sentence’ should be taken to be “non-misleadingly indicative sentence.”
The type of sentence I am talking about is the indicative sentence, and no such consideration as whether it really has e.g. an imperative “force” is relevant —though the point I am making I think applies just as much to the realm of an imperative or optative sentence (!p) as much as it applies to an indicative sentence (⊢p).
In what follows here I am under great general debt to Strawson who first pointed out to me the importance of the kind of distinctions here to be made, and applied it himself in interesting cases (such as a “description” like “the king of France”) and from which I’ve learnt a great deal.
I cannot however suppose assume that Strawson would like my methods!
Things having meaning:
— items with meaning independent on communication. (Possibilities):
— items with ‘natural’ meaning.
All ‘information’ is a sign of ‘dicent.’
— cases where “x means y” and the connection is a purely regulative, inferential, natural concomitance (e.g. “smoke means fire.”)
— likeness between x and y absent (e.g. “smoke means fire.”)
— likeness between x and y present — e.g. a photograph.
— cases where “x means y” and the concomitance is not purely natural, but dependent on a human decision, practice, or convention — e.g. “That tie knot means he is the groom in the wedding.”
b. Items with meaning dependent on communication. Possibilities:
—‘rhemes’(wordsetc.)
incomplete utterances
(e.g. ‘rhematic’)
— descriptive
— logical
— referring/indicating
— complete utterance
— those with conventional meaning.
— linguistic
— non-linguistic — e.g. diagram, map, etc.
— those with non-conventional meaning.
This list is of course not meant to be exhaustive, inevitable, accurate, or even clear, but that’s an Oxford seminar for you!
One point concerns what Peirce is quite clearly I think getting at in the quotation.
Peirce obviously has in mind cases such as following:
— a case in which the utterer says a sentence — “God exists.” — to himself, contemplatively.
— a case where the utterer U says the sentence aloud, ‘assertively,’ in company.
There may be a difference between what the sentence the utterer U uses means and what the utterer commits himself to.
In both cases, the meaning of the sentence is the same.
But while in the first case the utterer U commits himself (perhaps) to nothing at all, in the second case he does!
But a difference between a committal and non-committal of utterer U is not a difference of meaning (ambiguity) in the sentence.
I think this point can quite well be made with. regard to such a pair of cases, but for my simplicity (and indeed extension of Peirce, I shall suppose we are concerned with two different ‘public’ utterances of the same sentence.
Suppose I find the sentence
“On the first day of January of 1938, the whole of the French Riviera was in a state of panic.”
a) in a history book.
b) in a novel.
If I put an “x” in the margin of a history book, I shall no doubt be a nuisance, but if I do so in the margin of the novel, I shall be a fool or an idiot as well.
It is inappropriate to criticise a statement in a novel (of the kind in question) on the grounds of truth or falsity.
Nevertheless, the sentence has one and only one meaning (i. e., it is in no way ambiguous), nor has any private (special, real) meaning been attached to it by either utterer U1 and U2.
But whereas the historian — our U1 — has committed himself, the novelist — our U2 — has not!
This example does however reveal a distinction in the use of ‘mean.’
The sentence s means just one city.
The historian, our U1, wrote/said s and presumably meant what he said.
The novelist, our U2, said/wrote s but did NOT mean it. Cf. spoken cases “An Englishman, a Scotsman, and an Irishman ...”
We have to neglect the fact that there is a difference between
— saying something which means that p.
and
— saying something and meaning it.
This neglect of the notion of assertion (or self-committal) may lead to some queer views about sentences of fiction.
Seeing that ‘true’ and ‘false’ cannot appropriately be applied (though they can be in some sentences in ordinary life), we may want to say that we have here different *levels* or strata of language, a special sort of ambiguity, or we might want to assimilate it to some ‘systematic’ ambiguity.
I have heard something like this been suggested — by Waissman!
Or, if we are very very old-fashioned, most ‘likely’ to say s, and we are not being happy about saying s, we might lean to a fictional world in which a fictional sentence *is* true!
But a novelist talks since quite *unambiguously*; only he does not assert!
A different point Is I think what Peirce is rather dimly groping after, and it concerns the distinction between
— what a sentence s means.
and
— what *an utterer U* means by uttering the sentence.
This is becoming very much my own rhapsody on a mere *theme* by Peirce!
But I think it is pretty important!
This point concerns the distinction between
— what a sentence s means.
and
— what an utterer U of sentence s commits himself to — i. e., what information the sentence s is used by to convey.
They are not the same though they may well coincide!
Only in a limit case would an utterer U not commit himself to anything.
But what an utterer U commits himself to cannot be identified with what the sentence s U utters means!
This may often be represented as a distinction between
— what s means.
—what s meant.
—what utterer U means by s.
An obvious case is where s, as uttered by U, has a special meaning, this difference depending on the utterer U’s use of some descriptive expression in s.
“He was caught in the grip of a vice.”
This may be too obvious to need clarification, but great perplexities may arise from ignoring — as Witters always and Austin often do — this kind of distinction!
My idea of implicature is meant to remedy Peirce’s travesty!
Or cf. Hare’s example in “The language of morals” about the use of “good” by a somewhat “fossilized Indian Army officer” — as he disrespectfully calls him!
This is of course a localized habit of use, not an individual occasion (“particularised”) use.
Peirce is not here talking about this sort of distinction.
I put it in for completeness!
Suppose I find on p. 10 of a book I am reading the sentence
“He was a widower.”
And on p. 40 sentence,
“He had lost his wife”.
I think it would be not incorrect to say that the sentence
“He was a widower.”
as used on p. 10, and the sentence
“He had lost his wife.”
as used on p. 40, have the same meaning (mean the same); or perhaps to make things quite clear, “the sentences as such, have the same meaning”.
Nevertheless, if there is some question as to whether the “he” in each case is the same person, and it turns out to be that a different person is meant, I think we might well say
“The author didn’t here (i.e. in the two places) mean the same by them because he was referring to different people.”
Cf. The prime minister is a great man.
It is clear that, when in conversation, we get at cross purposes because of muddles about the reference of a referring expression, we can start to clear up by saying:
“Oh, but we did not *mean* the same thing!”
I think it is this sort of things that Peirce has in mind.
And I think it is not incorrect to say that, where people use type-sentences which have the same meaning, they may nevertheless mean different things (because of difference of reference); i.e. they commit what they commit themselves to, and the information the sentence used to convey, may differ in different cases of use of 2 (type) sentences, even though the sentences (as such) have the same meaning.
Some type-sentences (unambiguous) may be used to convey different information on different occasions.
But there is another side to the coin equally obvious when pointed out, but perhaps even more overlooked.
Sentences with *different* meanings may be used to convey the *same* information!
E.g.
An utterer U utters
“I have a pain.”
Some other utterer, U2, to convey the same information, utters:
“He has a pain.”
No one would want to deny that, as such, these sentences have different meanings!
You may think this is all trivial and obvious; but often overlooked. cf. Duncan Jones on ‘Fugitive propositions’ in “Analysis.”
But it all has, I think, a number of less obvious applications of considerable interest.
Though this not arising directly from Peirce having got so far, I think I must briefly show why I said
— what one commits oneself to by using s.
and
— the information s used to convey.
is not identical.
Take a very obvious case:
“Smith has left off beating his wife.”
Suppose this is said to me, and suppose I know Smith has *never* stopped beating his wife.
Would I say that U said is false?
It is obviously not true.
I may reply,
“That is not true!”
Some other utterer may avoid giving a direct answer and say e.g.
“The question whether Smith has left off beating his wife does not arise, since he never started.”
Have we then a case, as Strawson suggests, to which the law of excluded middle does not apply?
This depends to *what* the utterer applies the Law of the Excluded Middle.
In this case, I suggest the reason why we don’t apply true or false to statement in question is because can be set out as follows:
The information which utterer U uses s to convey is about the process consisting of Smith’s beating his wife, and is to the effect that this is no longer going on.
But since this process was *presupposed*, that there was such a process was *presupposed* (implied, conversationally implicated, taken for granted).
It was *not* part of the information being conveyed.
Nevertheless, U commits himself to there have been such a process.
The utterer cannot say:
“Smith has left off beating his wife, but he did not start.”
— but U2 can utter:
“Smith has not left beating his wife because he did not start.”
I distinguish then what an utterer U commit to (i.e. that Smith had beaten his wife, but no longer does so) from the information that s is used to convey (i.e. about the said process and so, that it is no longer going on).
If we want to *preserve*, as I do, The Law of The Excluded Middle, it would seem that the obvious thing to do is to say not that it states not that info.
A sentence used to convey some information may be true or false.
What an utterer U commits to must also be true or false.
I suggest we cast a great doubt about the use of ‘proposition.’
A sentence express some proposition — or dictum, to use Hare’s jargon.
A sentence s expresses proposition p iff
— s means that p.
— U commits to p.
— s is uttered by u to give some information to addressee A.
One of Peirce’s three trichotomies of the “sign” into is
1 — icon
2 — index
3 — symbol
Very roughly, we might distinguish any of these three classes as follows:
1 — a sign s is an icon in virtue of its likeness to an object o.
2 — a sign s is an “index” in virtue of a causal (temporal or spatio-temporal) connection with an object
3 — s sign is a “symbol” in virtue of a convention.
Peirce says that this the icon-index-symbol trichotomy is in respect of the relation of the sign s to its object o.
But the icon-index-symbol trichotomy also seems to serve as an elucidation of expressions such as “in some respect or capacity” or “ground of representation.”
There is evidence that this applies not only the verb ‘mean,’ but also to ‘sign of ...,’ ‘sign that ...,’ ‘indicates,’ etc.
It seems appropriate in ordinary usage to some of Peirce’s cases examples of an “index.”
It is important to distinguishing some features constitutive of an “index.”
“An “index” is a “sign,” or representation, which refers to an “object,” o, not so much because of any similarity or analogy with it, nor because it is associated with general characters which that object o happens to possess, as because it is in dynamical (including spatial) connection both with the individual object o, on the one hand, but, on the other hand, with the senses or memory of the addressee for whom it serves as a “sign,” while demonstrative and personal.”
“An “index” may be distinguished from another sign or representation by three characteristic marks:
— an index has no significant resemblance to its object o.
— an index refers to an individual, or a single collections of units or single continua
— an index direct the addressee’s attention to its objects by blind compulsion.
“An “index” is a sign which would, at once, lose the characters which makes it a sign if its object is removed.”
“An index does NOT lose that character if there is no addressee.”
“A piece of mould with a bullet hole in it is an “index” of a shot.”
“Without the shot, there would be no hole.”
“But there *is* a hole, whether anybody has the sense to attribute it to a shot or not.”
“A genuine Index and its Object o must both be existent individuals.”
The salient features of an index seem to be:
(1) An index would lose its charact
Both the index and its object are individuals.
(2) an index would lose character which makes it a sign were there no object, but not were there no interpretant.”
Here we can fairly clearly substitute ‘interpreter,’ or addressee.
(3) An “index” to an object o not so much because of similarity or analogy (hence the contrast with an “icon”) nor by asseveration (? = “just makes me think is so-and-so.”
“I always associate you with that symphony because we heard it together.”
The association is due to a dynamical (causal or spatio-temporal) connetion with an object o.
— An “index” directs the addressee’s attention to an object o, and does so by ‘blind compulsion.’
An index asserts nothing.
In this, an index connects with the imperative mood.
Examples
— That man’s rolling gait is an index of that man is being a sailor.
— The position of that weathercock is an index of the direction of the wind.
— The compass of that sundial (or clock) is an index of the time of day.
Letters vici names. a said to b that c’s etc.
— That yardstick is an index of one yard.
— A demonstrative pronoun and a personal pronoun (like “I”).
— an expression connected with a “quantified variable,” such as “any,” “all,” “no,” “some,” “something,” “a,” “a few;” “nearly all,” “allied’ ‘a few’; ‘nearly all’ etc.
The index and its object are each an individual.
Peirce appears to go against this so far as it concerns the index, when he classifies a demonstrative pronoun like “this” as an “indexical legisign.”
Peirce also classifies a personal pronoun and a demonstrative pronoun as, each, a “sub-index,” describing it as “a sign which is rendered such” principally by an actual connection with its objectsm.”
A subindexe is not an index because a sub index is not an individual.
Peirce seems to use be Using “index” so that nothing but an individual can be an index, but surely a non-individual can be ‘indexical’.
The point is, of course, that one can give some rule general for the use of a word like ‘this’, or ‘I.’
But this rule would, of course, be a rule governing the use of the pronoun in a particular concept, or context, a condition governed by its having a reference in such a context..
Moreover, although I may give a general explanation of some of its use, I should be very chary in general of saying, e.g., that ‘I’ or “this” means such and such.
In general, if asked what ‘this’ means, I should turn the question.
“It is a demonstrative pronoun.”
An index can be used like a legisign (type) in a general statement like:
A black cloud means rain.
As regards the object being an individual, this seems to depend on how we interpret ‘object.’
It seems clear that whenever we use a word like “this.”
Consider for a moment such an index as a particular black cloud.
A black cloud means rain.
Cf.
That cloud mean rain.
“Those spots mean measles.”
Smoke means fire.
That smoke means fire.
That smoke indicates a fire somewhere.
There are signs of mice here.
All these end with substantives.
All can be replaced by a ‘that’-clause.
I cannot think of any examples of a natural sign where this cannot be done.
If ‘object’ being an individual is held to support this can’t be done in some cases, it is wrong to say that the object must be an individual.
I cannot say, after finding a fire:
“That fire is what the smoke indicated.”
What I learn from a black cloud is always no doubt something about some specific individual, or set of individuals.
A similar point seems to apply with regards to some fact (e.g. the fact that ... can be put in, at any rate in singular ‘mean’ etc. statements).
Perhaps then a defining characteristic of this type at any rate of index this statement about its ‘meaning’ etc. ... appropriate sense must be expandable of both as regards subject and predicate into that clauses with some spatio-temporal restriction (to distinguish them from cases like “The fact that...”)
How then This would however seem to abut an object or the same that item that class to abut some individual or set of individuals (more or less indefinitely)
Consider together
— “... refers to object because of dynamical connection with object”
— “... would lose character which makes it sign were there no object but not were there no interpretant.”
— “... directs attention to object by blind compulsion.”
It seems fairly clear that, in connection with some of Peirce’s examples, these descriptions read very oddly indeed (e.g. demonstratives) but in connection with others not so oddly.
Let us consider the more favourable cases (e.g. what would obviously count as a natural sign.
What first is force of “refers to object because of dynamical connection” “would lose character which makes it sign if no object”.
The dynamical connection must obviously be a *causal* connection, which may (but only may) include spatial connection in any very obvious way (e.g. exceptional sounds from weather may be indices (mean/indicate/be signs of/telling about) namely indices of behaviour of wood cuttings).
An index may have spatial but no a *causal* connection (e.g. “landmark” which would I think fit under the head of indices)
Let us consider only a *causal* connection.
Peirce’s remarks about the bullet hole (which means that a bullet has passed through, or was a sign of a bullet having passed throu’) is unfortunate.
For, obviously, there might have been a hole without a bullet.
Someone might have bred it.
I suggest that what Peirce is saying is then that for a sign to be index, it is logically necessary both that its object should exist and that there should be causal connection between sign and object.
The presence of a sign of certain such and such kind is thus causally connected with an object causally necessary for the production of the effect on an interpreter or addressee which constitutes being interpreted.
For the position of weathercock to mean be (or be an index to someone of the direction of wind
a) the wind must, by itself, be in required direction.
b) being so must be causally connected with the position of the weathercock.
The position of the weathercock linked in this way with the direction of wind is causally necessary required (meaning) for the production of the effect by the sign on interpreter or addressee as being interpreted as sign.
What follows of course strenghtens the causal necessity bond about ‘blind compulsion’ adds something to (b); something more than mere not just that weathercock + causal link known to be there.
It looks as if this is all that has to be there, or at least that something else is not required — e.g. contribution from interpreter.
As far as (b) clearly that the direction of the wind should actually be as indicated is not causally required for production of effect on interpreter.
Most that can be required is general causal connection of weathercock with the direction of the wind (and interpreter’s knowledge of these.
The addressee might obviously be mistaken about general causal connection.
The addresssee may think there is one when there is not.
Of course the direction of the wind must be as indicated, if interpretation is to be “correct.”
What is causally required is the position of the weathercock, plus some interpreter’s *belief* in a general causal connection.
Let us analyse Peirce’s “index” in terms of the verb “to mean.”
Peirce may be understood as saying that, in some appropriate use of “mean,” the position of the weathercock means that the position of the wind is north-east.
This entails
a) the direction of the wind is north-east.
b) there is a causal connection that holds between the direction of the wind and the position of the weathercock.
This seems right and useful.
Compare other uses of ‘mean.’
A conversation at bus stop as bus goes:
A: Those three rings of the bell mean that the bus is full!
B: But *is* it full?
This seems all right for ‘means’, but doesn’t seem to hold for the other words in terms of which possible to interpret index — e.g. Peirce’s own word ‘indicate’ and allied words.
I certainly can say
“The position of the weathercock is an indication that the direction of wind is north-east, but actually it is south-east!”
I think (though I am not at all happy) I can say:
“The position ___ indicated that ___, but actually it was not!”
I do not think I can say (though again I am doubtful)
“The position ___ was a sign that ___, but actually it was not!”
But case obviously clear for that
“x means p” (in this use) entails p.
For other words, an analogous “entailment” does not hold or remain uncertain.
What does ‘directs attention by blind compulsion’ and ‘would not lose character if not interpreted’ add?
Does this tell us anything to identify a natural sign?
First, it is not true that all signs which we should count to classify with weathercock (i.e. natural sign) direct by blind compulsion, if this means that that interpreter does not have to think in order to interpret.
A sign may be just “hard to read”!
And a conventional sign (a symbol) which Peirce wants to distinguish in virtue of the *absence* of this ‘blind compulsion’ to say don’t work by blind compulsion may be very easy to read.
Peirce is right in that it is a feature which distinguishes “non-natural” “meaning” from “natural” “meaning”, that a certain sort of special contribution is required for the interpreter.
A difficulty for Peirce’s general triadic view of “meaning” supported by his remarks about character of sign is not lost if there is no interpreter.
In the use of ‘mean’ appropriate to the weathercock, the it doesn’t see that
‘x means that p’
requires to be expanded to any form involving “means to someone”.
It does I think entail something about “meaning to someone”, but only in very timid way.
“x means p” seems to entail
“if x meant to someone that p, he would be correct.”
Or
If anyone interpreted x to mean p, he would be correct.
But this is like
“It is raining”
entails:
If anyone believes it is raining he is right.
— which obviously does not help to explain the meaning of ‘it is raining’.
As for the “icon”’s main features
An icon refers to object o that it denotes merely by virtue of characters of its own which it possesses just the same whether or not object exists.
Anything is an icon of anything, in so far as it is like that thing and it is used as a sign of it.
Icon is a sign which would possess character which renders it significant even though object had no existence.
Here Peirce makes a Reference to “algebraical icons.”
A great distinguishing property of the icon is that, by direct observation of it, other truths concerning its object can be discovered than those which suffice to determine its construction.
e.g. a map would be example.
You can plot places by being at distance from a given place and the measure e.g. distances between them.
This is of importance to Peirce’s theory of inference.
Every symbol replaceable by icons (? image or picture: verifiability business)
Examples of icon
A Picture
An Architect or an artist drawing for work
Donkey (?) icon of zebras (if I agree by analogy from resemblance of zebras to donkeys, that zebras likely to be obstinate).
A Map
A diagram
A Mental image
A Mathematical or a physical formula
An Icon is distinguished into ‘images’ (simple likeness)
‘diagrams’ (analogy of relations)
metaphor (I think this is meant to cover donkey/
zebra case)
Formulae do not really conform to test without further benefit.
I do not derive a new truth from a formula by inspecting it, but by deriving things from it according to some rule.
Much of what Peirce has to say about the nature of the relevant inferential processes (or diagrams) is of interest.
A Photograph is not an icon because of the “physical forcing” of conformity to original.
“Anything whatever, be it quality, existent individual, or law, is an Icon of anything, in so far as it is like that thing and used as a sign of it”.
As for Peirce’s Symbol, the great emphasis on symbols as of conventional nature.
Symbols must be general in meaning, because general in nature-type.
“Symbols connected with object by virtue of idea of symbol-using mind without which no such connection would exist.”
“Symbol ‘man’ general mode of succession of three sounds or representamens of sounds which becomes sign only in fact that a habit or acquired law will cause replicas of it to be interpreted as meaning a man or men.”
“A Symbol is a sign which would lose the character that renders it a sign if there were no interpretant.”
“Such is any utterance of speech which signifies what it does only by virtue of being understood to have that signification.”
Symbols words + sentences (type)
Sometimes combination of icon and index.
Symbol
— would lose the character which renders it sign if no interpretant
— e.g. speech utterance, which signifies what it does only by virtue of being understood to have that signification.
— general mode (case of word ‘man’ in this case sentence (the use of) a general mode of succession of three sounds — /m/ /a/ /n/ — or representamens of sounds [writing “m-a-n”] which becomes a sign only in the fact that a habit, or acquired law, will cause replicas of it to be interpreted as meaning a man or men.
The obvious contrast here is with icons and indices, most notably indices (no blind compulsion).
Again (cf. index) does render = logically ‘makes’ it sign causally ‘makes’
“The symbol is connected with its object by virtue of the idea of the symbol-using mind, without which no such connection would exist”.
“It is a general mode of succession of three sounds or representamens of sounds, which becomes a sign only in the fact that a habit, or acquired law, will cause replicas of it to be interpreted as meaning a man or men”.
“A symbol is a sign which would lose the character which renders it a sign if there were no interpretant.”
“Such is any utterance of speech which signifies what it does only by virtue of its being understood to have that signification”.
If ‘logically makes,’ Peirce is saying that it is logically impossible for p to be sign (symbol) if no interpretant.
Cf. in case of speech utterance, when it looks as if Peirce is saying that a “speech utterance cannot signify (to someone) without being understood to
signify it.”
But this looks as if it only amounts to saying “a symbol cannot be interpreted without being interpreted”.
True, but of course not peculiar to a symbol.
Is Peirce saying that the peculiarity of a symbol is that, for a token symbol to be interpreted, it is causally necessary that the interpreter should have know what a general proposition to the effect that type symbol means such and such?
But again, this does not seem peculiar to symbols.
Surely, to interpret a particular occurrence of a sentence, it is at least causally (perhaps logically) requisite that the interpreter should know something general about what sentence (or sentence of such and such a kind in such cases) means or probably means.
It’s no good trying to avoid this by saying that to interpret a token of a symbol, the interpreter has to know what type of symbol in general means (in use of ‘mean’ appropriate to ‘symbol’).
This may be true, but obviously of no use for distinguishing a symbol — and with it special use of ‘mean’ attached to symbols.
Let us use “mean” to analyse this use.
Peirce would be saying
“x is symbol (i.e. meanss something)
iff
— an interpretation (= knowing what x means in particular occasions is dependent on knowing what interpreter’s knowing what x means-s in general.
This seems to suggest that distinguishing peculiarity of symbols (i.e. something which means-s) is that the interpretation of occurrence (the token) of x depends on the interpreter’s having some habit.
This is not unlike what Stevenson says about an “elaborate process of conditioning.”
But it seems in fact impossibly crude and probably much cruder than Peirce thought because of his assumption that the interpreter’s conditioning is irrelevant to the functioning of an index.
Peirce might mean something like this:
A sign s is a symbol s
iff
for s on a given occasion to produce whatever reaction it is which constituted the interpretation of s (being taken to mean this or that), it is necessary that the interpreter or addressee A should know or believe that s (type) in general produces a reaction of that kind.
e.g. to take a rocket to mean distress, I must know or believe that that is how it would usually be taken.
Not so in
“Smoke means fire.”
But, although this a fair line for getting at an important distinction in at least two main uses of “mean,” it cannot do as I stated it.
You might have an ultra-timid race which would *never* take smoke to mean fire when assured that others so look it.
This would not mean that smoke has a different sort of ‘meaning’ for them.
More next week.
Enjoy your weekend!
Which are the salient features of Peirce’s three trichotomies of “sign” that excite special comment?
One salient feature is having a demonstrative pronoun such as “this,” along with a weathercock, under the heading, “Index”!
Admittedly, this is different from crypto-techical “first dicent rhematic” and “second ‘dicent” — but still rather queer!
An icon is said be a non-assertive, i. e. a non-dicent rhema.
A symbol excludes a demonstrative, a diagram and any icon.
Yet, an icon and an index (picture + gesture, picture + name) is allowed to constitute a symbol (and presumably also a dicent).
A symbol has to be ‘general’ in meaning.
An icon may be a portrait, an artist’s ‘cartoon’, a map, a diagram — as well as a “logical icon.”
The distinguishing feature of an icon is said to be that “by direct observation of it, other truths concerning its object o can be discovered than those which suffice to determine its construction”
A rhema may be a picture (and an argument of rhematic indices) and an expression, i.e., things whose sign status has nothing to do with occurrence in dicent signs, together with things whose sign status *is* dependant on the occurrence in a dicisign.
It is clear that nearly all the oddities of Peirce’s classification spring from his trying to make a single heading do more than one classificatory job at a time, together with one or two rather perverse assimilations.
Further, one very important (I think the fundamental) classification of the sign (and distinction of uses of ‘meaning’) has been gained by the classification, even if Peirce was unaware of it.
It emerges from time to time in Peirce’s comments on his classification, and that is the distinction between
— a sign which owes its having a meaning to its (roughly) constituting (or capacity to constitute) a communication [or to their function in what constitutes a communication] and
— a sign whose meaning is not a matter of its communicative function — e.g. a ‘natural’ sign.
Although he is aware of this distinction, Peirce does not bring it to the fore, and, consequently, it is never investigated.
Rather, it is mixed up with other distinctions which seem to be posterior to it from the point of view of the explanatory procedure, e.g. the distinctions between a conventional and a non-conventional sign, or between a linguistic and a non-linguistic sign, or between a descriptive and a referring, or indicating, sign.
Take ‘Symbol’ to begin with.
Peirce’s account of the meaning of a symbol [e.g. “conventional signs, or one depending upon habit, inborn or acquired”] seems either an attempt to confine the symbol to conventional signs (with not very satisfactory explanation of conventional signs) or else extend meaning of the symbol to such extent as to consider pretty well any sign [depends on meaning of his ‘or’].
Anyway, Peirce’s emphasis on ‘conventional’ nature of symbols is pretty heavy.
Then it is recognized that e.g. a diagram has highly conventional character; but nevertheless a diagram does not count as a symbol because “we can get more information by direct observation”.
This seems not a bad attempt to distinguish certain conventional or semi-conventional non-linguistic notational devices from linguistic ones (also conventional).
Again, we find it recognized that an icon and index (Peirce’s example is bad, but a personal picture and pointing would do) recognized as symbol.
Here we do seem to have recognition of a distinction between symbol (here roughly device for communication, whether conventional or not) and other signs.
Perhaps this distinction would have been recognized more clearly, if Peirce had not assumed that an icon per se cannot be a dicisign.
Peirce’s motives are good (namely the recognition that, for information to be conveyed, we must must have, in addition to a device for saying revealing what sort of information to be conveyed, also the means for locating or identifying that to which information refers).
But Peirce fails to see that icon and sentence may be in just same position in that respect.
Suppose I have on the wall
— a picture of Smith
— a placard with “Smith is there” written on it.
Suppose then we hear a loud noise outside the door.
I could then convey the information by taking up and showing to the addressee either the placard or the picture (with or without pointing).
The point is that icon and context alone and non-linguistic context alone, as also sentence and non-linguistic context alone, may “make assertion”, as it were.
A similar point can be made in connection with the dicisign.
Peirce rightly in case of a demonstrative, wrongly in case of a natural sign connects indices with “quasi-imperatives”.
But he says a weathercock is a dicisign.
A weathercock is a dicisign not because it “as it were tells us to” but because it “as it were tells us that”; i.e. we learn that from it.
This I think of same value as pointer to why one word ‘mean’ has such variety of different uses in connection with “what we can learn from things.”
But obviously there is a vast difference between why and which a natural and other signs tell us things.
This is marked by Peirce only by whether a dicisign is an index or a symbol.
Peirce is implying the need for a widest case of ‘symbol’, to distinguish communication from non-communication.
A similar point can be made in connection with rheme.
A rheme sometimes “elements in” communication, sometimes any non-informative sign.
A further complication through tying up symbol with ‘descriptive’ sign (or as he much less clearly says, signs with ‘general’ meaning).
This cuts out a demonstrative from a symbols although obviously conventional.
Instead, Peirce makes a highly shaky assimilation between ademonstrative and an indexical sign (which leads him to say very wrong dubious things about a demonstrative, e.g. that there is a ‘real’ connection between a demonstrative and its object.
Pierce fails to realize consistently (though on occasion seems to get across) that although the expression “this” is non-general (if that means non-descriptive), nonetheless ‘this’ has general meaning in the sense that there are general rules (non defining) for use of ‘this.’
Peirce fails to notice that from a natural sign one learns both what to expect and often where to expect it (i.e. indexical sign in a way analogous to combination of demonstrative + descriptive), and has been over imposed by contr very clearly explicit comparison between signs which have function of indicating individual, + signs from which we can learn something about an individual (indexical sign).
The class of the icon is rather a jumble.
It seems to include
—things that remind one of something (pictures on wall: no genuine use of ‘mean’ applicable here),
— a sketch
— a diagrams to aid construction of something (no ‘meaning’ here either)
— the use of pictures (or imitative gestures?) in communication (but here often we want to rule out what Peirce describes as distinguishing feature of icons, namely that by direct inspection we can learn more about object than is necessary for construction of icons; e.g.
if I draw a bird, I impart information about the presence of some bird or other, I shall make drawing as sketchy as is compatible with recognition as bird, just to prevent the addressee from studying picture further to learn details about bird.
I try to avoid making it like a map.
This cannot distinguish it from a map or a diagram, about which Peirce good (apart from logical diagrams).
Here there is a point that I resort to a drawing + to a diagram if language breaks down; but to drawings, if e.g. no intelligible language to hand, or physical impediment to use of language, to images e.g. if language would be impossibly lengthy or difficult to follow.
It doesn’t seem as if mere likeness is ever per se justification of use of ‘meaning’.
E.g. a photograph (indexical) requires causal link; the use of drawing or map requires additional special coincidences to make us use a communication willing to say that we have here case of communication.
I should not really be in a position to assess Peirce’s theory of a “sign” until I have some fairly good idea of the nature of the distinctions that have been or might be drawn within the body of “sign.”
For until I have a fairly clear notion of the similarities and differences among the entities which Peirce calls a ‘sign’, I cannot really judge down whether a single general theory of a “sign” is a possibility, and Incertainly cannot be in any very good position to decide which question (or questions) should be answered by such a theory.
I shall, therefore, at any rate, say only as much about Peirce’s claims about “sign” in general, as it is necessary as a preliminary tonconsidering his three detailed trichotomies of ‘signs.’
I shall try, at this stage at any rate, to evade the many difficulties raised by what Pierce has to say about a sign, or a sign-situation, to use Ogden’s and Richards’s phrase.
“A sign s, or representamen r, is something which stands to some interpretant i for some object o in some respect or capacity.”
“It addresses an interpretant, i. e., it creates in the mind of the interpretant an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more developed sign.”
That sign s2 which the first s1 creates I call the “interpretant” of the first sign.
The sign s1 stands for some object o.
It stands for that object, not in all respects, but in reference to a sort of idea, which call “the ground of the representamen.”
Peirce goes on to give an extremely unclarifying explanation of ‘idea’ here, which I think we can safely ignore.
Some sense can be made of the notion of the ‘ground of a representamen’ if (I hope the right sense) if ‘feature’ or ‘property’ or ‘characteristic’ be substituted for ‘idea’.
Peirce is, I think, simply saying that if x ‘stands for’ (‘is a sign of’ ‘represent’) y, this is always because of some particular feature which x has —e.g. its likeness to y.
The sign-object-interpretant is, Peircecsays, “a genuine triadic relation, that is its three members, or better, terms, are bounded together by it in a way that does not consist in any complexus of more primitive *dyadic* relations”.
A sign is a representamen with a mental interpretant.
In the passage from which these quotations are taken, and I think in many other places in Peirce’s work, an interpretant of a sign is regarded as being ‘mental’ in the sense of being a ‘thought.’
This is complicated by Peirce’s occasional distinctions between different kinds of interpretants.
However, this does not affect the fact that the kind of interpretant with which Peirce normally concerns himself is something which he would normally describe as a ‘thought.’
But it is Peirce’s view that thought itself consists of signs!
“The third principle whose consequences we have to deduce is that, whenever we think, we have present to the consciousness some feeling, image, conception, or other representation, which serves as a “sign.””
The development of this view lands leads him into some of his murkier obscurities.
But, fortunately we need not, for the present purpose, go into them.
Pierce’s view that thought consists of signs clearly lands Peirce with an infinite process.
For if a sign s1 has to have an interpretant s2, and s2 is itself a sign, s2 has itself an interpretant s3, a sign which itself … etc.
This consequence of his theory of signs Peirce himself points out in the passage under consideration, and, in the passage, shows no sign of unwillingness to accept it.
In fact, he regards it as involved in the “familiar idea of a Sign.”
Elsewhere, Peirce finds it necessary to say more — and on somewhat different lines — on this subject.
I may list the salient points so far.
A sign s stands to some interpretant i for some object o in some respect.
This involves a sign s being actually (or possibly) related by a triadic relation to an object onand an interpretant i.
This triadic relation is ‘genuine’.
The interpretant i is itself a sign thought, and so a sign, and therefore an actual or possible sign is a member of a further triad, which generates yet a further triad and so on *ad infinitum*.
Now, the following seem to me to be some of the more pressing questions which arise out of the passages I have just summarized.
What is Peirce’s theory of a “sign” a theory of?
Are we to understand Pierce’s ‘sign’ in its normal every day sense, or is it used in a non-everyday, technical way?
If the latter, to what purpose?
What is the force of Peirce’s contention that the ‘sign-relation’ is genuinely triadic?
Does this claim rule out a further explanation about the nature of the ‘relation’?
If not, what sort of explanation does Peirce favour?
Is the infinite process series of interpretants of a sign tolerable?
Does Peirce tolerate it?
These questions cannot be dealt with without some further discussion of the question of what an interpretant is, and this will, I think, be found to have some bearing on the questions.
What about the ‘object’ of a sign?
Does such a notion involve hypostatization?
About these questions I shall at this stage anyway say as little as possible.
What is a theory of signs a theory of?
We can answer this question, as regards Peirce, straight away by saying that when Peirce says something about a ”sign” in general, what he says can be understood as saying something in general about ‘meaning.’
A weak support for this contention comes from noticing that the words he uses when talking about (and applies to) ‘sign’ in general, e.g. ‘stand for’ ‘represent’ (as in representamen), and elsewhere ‘denote’.
All these expressions (and “sign” itself) are traditional encountered in philosophical discussions of meaning.
Peirce maintains that meaning is not only a genuine triadic relation, but also is involved in any genuine triadic relation.
In support forcthis latter (not very intelligible) contention, Peirce considers some examples of triadic relations and claims that the idea of a ‘sign’ is involved — e.g. in the notion of a, b, c being identical.
It is clear that for Peirce ‘having a meaning’ and ‘being a sign’ are interchangeable expressions.
Let us take, more or less at random, some of the things that Peirce wants to call a ‘signs’:
— the rolling gait (of a sailor)
—a diagram
— a shout of “Hi”
— the word “that”
— any sentence (which is not nonsense)
— a weather-cock.
For most of these items there seem no great difficulty in framing sentences containing the expression “x mean y” which I am fairly sure would be able to replace sentences containing the word “sign” which Peirce would be ready to employ about the things in question:
Arolling gait means that the its owner is a sailor.”
A rolling gait is a sign of a sailor.
2) a “that one is the ripest” b “which one do you mean by ‘that’ (‘that one’)” [Not very natural, but cumbrous rather than contrary to usage]
The weathercock pointing south means that the wind is in that direction”.
The only one about which there seems some difficulty is the diagram (he doesn’t naturally speak of a diagram as ‘meaning’ this or that).
But I think one could (although alternative locutions would usually perhaps be clearer and come more trippingly to the tongue) talk about what parts or features of a diagram or map mean: e.g. if, considering a Mercator’s projection map, I find that the shape marked ‘Greenland’ is approximately the same size as the shape marked ‘Arabia.”
I’ve no idea whether or not this is in fact the case.
I may ask (or answer) the question:
“Does the approximate equality of size of that and that mean that Greenland and Arabia are (really) about the size same size”; or looking at a diagram of some kind of machine and noticing (say) some curious (nb) parallel sort of parallel lines circles, I might ask “what do these mean?” or “do these mean anything?”
What seems to emerge as a suggestion from the isolated examples in clauses, is that it may be natural to use ‘mean’
— when one knows or thinks or suspects that some ‘distortion’ is involved (as in case of ‘Greenland’ etc.)
— when one knows thinks or suspects that features in question have not a merely representative character, but are in some sense conventional (which is what I had in mind in second case (‘circles’).
It is important to remember that a map and a diagram often or always embody a ‘conventional’ feature or element.
One thing I think is quite certain.
When we should never point to an area on the map and say “That means Arabia”; and I am afraid that Peirce would want to give as answer to question “what is map or diagram sign of”, “that of which it is a map or diagram.”
This, if correct, means of course that to explain a ‘sign’ in terms of “meaning” will not wholly fit Peirce’s use of ‘sign’.
But I think the substitution will work fairly well.
In most cases, the answers to the question “what does x mean” would correspond fairly closely with the sort of answers Peirce would give or might be compelled to give to question “what is x sign of?”
Moreover I feel fairly confident that no other word but “mean” would do anything like as well.
It is here important to note that “sign” in any ordinary, un-technical sense cannot be applied to a considerable number of Peirce’s examples of ‘signs’ [e.g. ‘this’, ‘Hi’, a sentence, if we consider merely above-quoted examples].
The same applies to other words verbs which occur in Peirce’s explanation of sign — ‘stand for’, ‘represent [representamen]’.
I recognize that I have made quite a bit out of the question about the relation between “meaning” and “sign” on the one hand and Peirce’s words (“sign” etc) on the other, but I make no apology for doing so.
For, in general, the unannounced and unheralded use of technical or crypto-technical terms leads to nothing but trouble, obscuring proper questions and raising improper ones.
In this particular instance, there are good reasons for discussing and emphasizing the need to restate Peirce’s remarks in terms of “meaning”.
Peirce’s “sign”, when it occurs in contexts in which there is some reference to an utterer U, does so most naturally most clearly in contexts where something is a sign to someone or ‘for’ so.
That is to say in context, where the utterer U or the addressee A are concerned, is roughly speaking in position of an addressee.
I do not of course say it cannot be used otherwise.
Moreover, If we do think of an utterer U and an addressee A as concerned thus, I may tend to neglect the fact that some at least of entities Peirce calls a “sign’ can be used as well as ‘encountered’, and that this may be very important.
It is clear that Peirce himself usually, though not always, does tend to think of an utterer U and an addressee A, and this no doubt has some connection with philosophers who do this tend to hold a “causal theory of meaning,” or at any rate philosophers who hold a “causal theory of meaning” tend (in the first instance at least) to treat a person as an utterer U or an addressee A.
It is important in view of this question about Peirce’s own position vis-a-vis a “causal theory” of “meaning.”
Some of the expressions Peirce uses (‘stand for’, ‘represent’) seem to me reflect, orchelp, or give rise to, an inclination to think of the “meaning,” e.g. of an expression, as always an object (if not a thing, something at least which is a particular, or something at any rate which is, for philosophical purposes, not too unlike a thing).
“This picture represents the death of Napoleon (or Napoleon in his youth)”
“This match represents the bowler Lindwall.”
“The letter “H” stands for ‘Henry’ ”
‘stand for’ ‘represent’ are much less common than ‘mean.’
The philosopher’s use of unfamiliar subjects (grammatical), which “Represent’, and “stand for” also seem to be connected with notion of ‘substitution,
And although this may be helpful, if it is generalized (as the use of verbs in questions perhaps induces us unconsciously to do) it may reflect, help, or give rise to the suggestion that, for every expression, there is something for which it is a substitute.
Cf. Russell’s use of ‘stand for’ in discussion of universals in his “Problems of Philosophy.”
Having I hope justified my intention of treating Peirce as attempting to give some sort of analysis of “meaning,” I want now to ask what it is.
I should say in advance that I do not think it possible to find any very detailed analysis of meaning in Peirce.
Peirce is too volatile and inconsistent for that.
But we may hope to find a motive for an analysis (or analyses), which could be useful as introduction to working out of at least some of these by others.
First, can we re-state Peirce’s claim that ‘sign-relation’ is triadic in terms of “mean”?
I take it that this would have to claim, roughly, that wherever we get a sentence statement, e.g. beginning
“x means ....”
or
“x meant ....”
this would always be capable of expansion into, or analysis in terms of a statement such as
x means (meant) ..... to ...... (person or persons)”.
Now, as regards these, there are one or two things he clearly does not mean.
Peirce very obviously does not mean that any statement about x “meaning” something entails that
“x has meant or will mean”
something is actually understood (interpreted) by any particular person at any particular time.
E.g.
It might be true that a recherché or difficult sentence might mean something, without in fact ever having been interpreted by anybody or even uttered (here must be some meaning for sentences which have or never will be uttered).
There is the possibility, too, of meaning to, being understood, being interpreted is the essential, not relative interpretation.
Since being interpreted by, or understood by, (actually ‘meaning to’) seems to involve the presence of an interpretant which is itself a ‘sign’, either the interpretant sign needs not itself be understood and has a further possible interpretant, it works as if either there is an endless series of constantly present interpretants, or else I at some stage come to an interpretant ‘sign’ which although perhaps capable of being understood, is not in fact understood (God?).
But I do not think Peirce, if asked, would say that either of these alternatives is the case.
“It is not necessary that an interpretant should actually exist”.
“An interpretant “in futuro” will suffice”.
I think the regress of natural interpretants should be avoided by his saying that e.g. I can understanding it might well be true that I understood a remark made to me, even if no interpretant ‘sign’ came before my mind, provided that I could provide an interpretant, i.e., provided I would have done do so if some further unspecified condition is fulfilled.
I am not sure that Peirce always thinks in this way about the original interpretant in the series.
But this has to do with what I have to say about interpretants.
Which is this “habit” that Peirce talks about, as constituting the ultimate “logical” interpretant for every “sign”?
Peirce can be pretty obscure here.
*Some* things are clear, though.
In some sense or other, Peirce’s reference to the causal effect of a “sign” (or of the “semiosis” of a “sign,” whatever being a causal effect of that is) may be no more than Peirce’s way of emphasising the genuinely triadic relation of the sign-situation, or as I prefer, “meaning.”
Although not identical with them, this “habit” is obviously fairly closely connected with an observation, or an experiment.
Peirce:
“It is not necessary that the sign’s interpretant i should actually *exist*.”
“An interpretant *in futuro* may suffice”.
“It is rather important to emphasise that, by ‘interpretant,’ I mean ‘possible interpretant’.
For Peirce, this is not a mere habit, but a controlled — i. e. deliberatively formed — habit.
This habit may be the conclusion of an ‘ideal experimentation,’ i.e. where one imagines oneself in certain circumstances, and doing certain things.
The habit in question is described as a “habit of action” in a given way.
Whenever we desire a given kind of result, a readiness to act, given certain motives and conditions, is said to be a belief.
This habit may be a conjecture which is an ‘ideal experimentation,’ and the expression of’a ‘belief,’ or equivalent to a habit of the kind in question.
“The most perfect account of a concept that an expression can convey consists in the description of the habit that that concept is calculated to produce.”
“But how otherwise can a habit be described than by a description of the kind of action to which it gives rise, with a specification of the motive and the conditions?”
There seem to be various scenarios.
One is the habit of giving or uttering experiment or observable result when stimulated by the occurrence of the sign.
Another scenario is a habit of making a confirmation, i, e., testing or confirming the proposition expressed by the sign.
A habit may involve a *belief* in the proposition expressed by the sign.
The habit seems to tie in best with talk of belief.
This doxastic interpretation of the habit seems however to commit Peirce to holding that a sentence must be believed if fully understood.
But this is perhaps avoidable if the belief need not be an actual one, but only would be brought about by the sign in a certain case.
Descriptive meaning is roughly a tendency to arouse belief.
This might link with the operation-sensible result rule, since a tendency to perform an operation if one desires the result would be one of the
tendencies of which the habit (now construed as a belief) would consist.
Peirce:
“In every case, after some preliminaries, the activity takes the form of an experimentation in the inner world.”
“The conclusion, if it comes to a definite conclusion, is that, under given conditions, the interpreter will form the habit of acting in a given way, whenever he may desire a given kind of result”.
Peirce:
“Meantime, do not forget that every conjecture is equivalent to, or is expressive of, such a habit that having a certain desire one might accomplish it, if one performs a certain act”.
Peirce:
“Consequently, the most perfect account of a concept that an expression can convey consists in a description of the habit which that concept is calculated to produce.”
“But how otherwise can a habit be described than by a description of the kind of action to which it gives rise, with the specification of the conditions and of the motive?”
Peirce would be holding a “causal theory” of a Stevensonian type, mixed up with a meaning-explainability theory.
There is some confusion as to whether explainability is requisite of meaning, and whether it will do as definition.
It would no longer follow from definition.
So you might skip over to it from another theory.
Then there is the issue of an ambiguity of interpretation.
Peirce’s unexpectedly says, about the definition of a “sign,” that the meaning is not the object o, but the interpretant i.
No doubt Peirce sees reasons for this.
A habit is one of giving operation-result type rule when stimulated by a sign (in one’s own thought or otherwise).
A habit is one of going about confirming sentence — the meaning of sentence is the habit of going about confirming it.
It is important which counts as an “interpretation.”
It would just be an expression of a belief that finally will give meaning of e.g. this island.
This is not a belief that seems very reasonable for one to have.
If it just means that one would if necessary confirm it, this does not seem to tie “sign” with “belief.”
Peirce’s “object” is usually roughly, I think, what Mill would call “denotation,” as opposed to “connotation.”
The interpretant i is connected with the “connotation,” but still here the interpretant is said to be a representation “representamen of same object as sign” (= has same denotation?) if we suppose interpretant not always synonymous/definition with sign (seems undoubtedly an account of anything we can do) then why bring it in at all.
Is Peirce a “metaphysical” object?
The object of a sign has to be there anyway, by definition.
But this might be got over by Peirce’s pretty unintelligible distinction between two kinds of object.
“The ‘meaning’ of a sentence is thus the habit of going about confirming it, and this is described by a conditional formula”.
An interpretant can be what Peirce calls an “emotional” one.
Some examples:
— A feeling, i. e., a sensation.
Music, for example, conveys — and is intended to convey — the composer’s ideas, usually feelings.
Then there’s a feeling of recognition, i. e., a feeling we come to interpret as evidence we comprehend the sign.
The immediate interpretant is the “total unanalysed effect” the sign is calculated to produce.
“I have been accustomed to identify this with effect the sign first produces on a mind without any reflection on it.
An interpretant can also be “energetic,” when it “functions through mediation of an emotional interpretant.”
Such further effect involves an effort” (“ground arms”).
An energetic interpretant may be a muscular effort, but it is more usually a merely “mental” effort.
The emotional and the energetic interpretants are not the meaning of a sign, because they are individual.
An interpretant may be “logical,” the ‘meaning’ of sign, in its primary acceptation of a sign into another system of signs.
“The meaning of a sign is the sign it has to be explained into.”
This is confined to “intellectual concepts.”
“The performance of a piece of concerted music is a sign.”
It conveys, and is intended to convey, the composer’s musical ideas; but these usually consist merely in a series of feelings”.
“This emotional interpretant may amount to much more than that a feeling of recognition.”
“In some cases, this is the only proper significate effect that a sign produces”.
“The immediate interpretant is the total unanalysed effect that a sign is calculated to produce”.
— Peirce, Letter to Welby, cited by Ogden’s & Richards’s “MM.”
“If it produces any further proper significate effect, a sign does so through the mediation of the emotional interpretant, and such further effect always involves an effort.”
“I call it the energetic interpretant.”
“The effort may be a muscular one, as it is in the case of the command to ground arms.”
“But it is much more usually an exertion upon the inner world, a ‘mental’ effort”.
“‘meaning,’ which is, in its primary acceptation, the elucidation of a sign into another system of signs.”
“The meaning of a sign is the sign it has to be elucidated into.”
There are various theories to account for this.
One theory focuses on the causal effect — what the sign effects, or tends to effect.
This causal effect may be construed behaviouristic, but not necessarily so.
Then, there is utterer U’s intention, e.g. the intention of the user of a sign — e.g. the explanation provided by Ewing.
There is also the ability to give a rule, e.g., as in Peirce’s account of the ‘logical’ interpretant.
Peirce speaks in a language of time but he really does not have to.
The relation to metaphysics only applies against behaviouristic alternatives.
There seems to be restriction to expressions like “... represents ...,” “... stand for ...”
These obviously require intention (only in theory do, but can’t see any evidence that this obvious to Peirce.
Question is for Buchler that only “... represent ...” as treating something for certain purposes as it may involve an utterer’s intention, but not obviously the user’s intention.
The logical interpretant is what the sign refers to.
This, again, doesn’t help.
Peirce objects to Lady Welby that an “intention” will not do because a natural sign has no utterer.
[maybe means sign special department intentional theory]
The idea of interpretants as significate effect [rep. in Buchler 276 seq. “Pragmatism in Retrospect.”
Why does Peirce get worried about the logical interpretant as the meaning of a sign?
A series of thoughts as interpretants must be ended by some *ultimate* logical interpretant which (sign) is *not* a sign, at any rate in the same way as the non-ultimate interpretants are) but is a habit.
Are we imprisoned in language?
But why bring in habit?
Why not a different kind of rule?
This fact is the rule.
There is the circularity difficulty: no sign that he is [illeg.] symbol [illeg.] it.
But not aware.
Peirce:
“Now, a natural sign or a symptom has no utterer”. (Peirce to Welby, mm 288) “Pragmatism in Retrospect: A Last Formulation”, b 269–289; on p. 275
The interpretant is said to be “the proper significate outcome or effect” of the sign.
Peirce’s notion of an ultimate logical interpretant is highly obscure.
It is not purely habit but controlled (dependent on deliberate formation).
It is of the same nature, although not a thought.
Consider engendered (“the conclusion of”) mental experimentation “imagining yourself acting in certain ways.
Consider trial rules of form (given experiment observation their sensible result).
A rule like this is not enough because it doesn’t tell us of the essential nature of effect of the on the interpretation of semiosis of sign” — semiosis explain as action or influence involving sign/object/interpretant.
Nevertheless, habit is in some way connected with some type of rule.
Habit is described as “habit of action” given certain conditions and motives; and readiness to act given certain conditions and motives is earlier said to be just belief (same earlier passage conjecture seems to be expressive of or equivalent to a habit of kind in question)
It looks then that it is possible that habit might be a quasi-belief or conjecture in what the sign (not interpretant) asserts (habit of ‘imagining’ oneself acting as if …).
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