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Sign relations and classes (Peirce)
[edit] Semiotic elements
Peirce's definition of the triadic sign relation that formed the core of his definition of logic:
Namely, a sign is something, A, which brings something, B, its interpretant sign determined or created by it, into the same sort of correspondence with something, C, its object, as that in which itself stands to C. (Peirce 1902, NEM 4, 20–21).
This definition, together with Peirce's definitions of correspondence and determination, is sufficient to derive all of the statements that are necessarily true all sign relations. There is a lot more to the theory of signs than simply proving universal theorems about generic sign relations, however. There is also the task of classifying the different species and subspecies of sign relations. As a practical matter, of course, familiarity with the full range of concrete examples is indispensable to theory and application both.
In Peirce's theory of signs, a sign is something that stands in a well-defined type of relation to two other things, its object and its interpretant sign. Although Peirce's definition of a sign is independent of psychological subject matter and his theory of signs covers more ground than linguistics alone, it is nevertheless the case that many of the more familiar examples and illustrations of sign relations will naturally be drawn from the descriptive sciences of linguistics and psychology, along with our ordinary experience of their subject matters.
To say, therefore, that thought cannot happen in an instant, but requires a time, is but another way of saying that every thought must be interpreted in another, or that all thought is in signs. (Peirce, CP 5.254).
For example, one way to approach the concept of an interpretant is to think of a psycholinguistic process. In this context, an interpretant can be understood as a sign's effect on the mind, or on anything that acts like a mind, what Peirce calls a quasi-mind. An interpretant is what results from a process of interpretation, one of the types of activity that falls under the heading of semiosis. One usually says that a sign stands for an object to an agent, an interpreter. In the upshot, however, it is the sign's effect on the agent that is paramount. This effect is what Peirce called the interpretant sign, or the interpretant for short. The interpretant may be regarded as one of the sign's roughly equivalent meanings, and especial interest attaches to the types of semiosis that proceed from obscure signs to relatively clear interpretants. In logic and mathematics the most clarified and most succinct signs for an object are called canonical forms or normal forms.
Some of the understanding needed by the mind depends on familiarity with the object. In order to know that a given sign denotes, the mind needs some experience of that sign's object collaterally to that sign or sign system, and in this context Peirce speaks of collateral experience, collateral observation, and so on.
- A sign (or representamen) represents, in the broadest possible sense of "represents". It is something interpretable as saying something about something. It is not necessarily symbolic, linguistic, or artificial.
- An object (or semiotic object) is a subject matter of a sign and an interpretant. It can be anything discussable or thinkable, a thing, event, relationship, quality, law, argument, etc., and can even be fictional, for instance Hamlet. All of those are special or partial objects. The object most accurately is the universe of discourse to which the partial or special object belongs. For instance, a perturbation of Pluto's orbit is a sign about Pluto but ultimately not only about Pluto.
- An interpretant (or interpretant sign) is the sign's more or less clarified meaning or ramification, a kind of form or idea of the difference which the sign's being true would make. (Peirce's sign theory concerns meaning in the broadest sense, including logical implication, not just the meanings of words as properly clarified by a dictionary.) The interpretant is a sign (a) of the object and (b) of the interpretant's "predecessor" (the interpreted sign) as being a sign of the same object. The interpretant is an interpretation in the sense of a product of an interpretive process or a content in which an interpretive relation culminates, though this product or content may itself be an act, a state of agitation, a conduct, etc. Another way to say these things is that the sign stands for the object to the interpretant.
"Representamen" was Peirce's blanket technical term for any and every sign or sign-like thing covered by his theory. It is a question of whether the theoretically defined "representamen" covers only the cases covered by the popular word "sign." The word "representamen" is there in case a divergence should emerge. Peirce's example was this: Sign action always involves a mind. If a sunflower, by doing nothing more than turning toward the sun, were thereby to become fully able to reproduce a sunflower turning in just the same way toward the sun, then the first sunflower's turning would be a representamen of the sun yet not a sign of the sun.[1] Peirce eventually stopped using the word "representamen."[2]
Object, sign, and interpretant are constrained by a relation of informational or logical determination which is more general than the special cases of causal or physical determination. In general terms, any information about one of the items in the sign relation tells you something about the others, although the actual amount of this information may be nil in some species of sign relations. Moreover, when Peirce says that one thing determines some other things, he means determines in some measure, a measure that is not necessarily completely deterministic.
Peirce made various classifications of his semiotic elements, especially of the sign and the interpretant. Of particular concern in understanding the sign-object-interpretant triad is this: In relation to a sign, its object and its interpretant are either immediate (present in the sign) or mediate.
- Sign, always immediate to itself — that is, in a tautologous sense, present in or at itself, even if it is not immediate to a mind or immediately accomplished without processing or is a general apprehended only in its instances.
- Object
- Immediate object, the object as represented in the sign.
- Dynamic object, the object as it really is, on which the idea which is the immediate object is founded as on bedrock. Also called the dynamoid object, the dynamical object.
- Interpretant
- Immediate interpretant, the quality of the impression which a sign is fit to produce, not any actual reaction, and which the sign carries with it even before there is an interpreter or quasi-interpreter. It is what is ordinarily called the sign's meaning.
- Dynamic interpretant, the actual effect (apart from the feeling) of the sign on a mind or quasi-mind, for instance the agitation of the feeling.
- Final interpretant, the effect which the sign would have on any mind or quasi-mind if circumstances allowed that effect to be fully achieved. It is the sign's end or purpose. The final interpretant of one's inqury about the weather may consist in the effect which the true response would have on one's plans for the day which were the inquiry's purpose. The final interpretant of a line of investigation as such is truth and would be reached sooner or later but still inevitably by investigation adequately prolonged, though the truth remains independent of that which you or I or any finite community of investigators believe.
The immediate object is, from the viewpoint of a theorist, really a kind of sign of the dynamic object; but phenomenologically it is the object until there is reason to go beyond it, and somebody analyzing (critically but not theoretically) a given semiosis will consider the immediate object to be the object until there is reason to do otherwise.[3]
Peirce preferred phrases like dynamic object over real object since the object might be fictive — Hamlet, for instance, to whom one grants a fictive reality, a reality within the universe of discourse of the play Hamlet.
Signhood is a way of being in relation, not a way of being in itself. The role of sign is constituted as one role among three — object, sign, and interpretant sign — where the roles are distinct even when the things that fill them are not. In other words, the question of what a sign is depends on the concept of a sign relation, which depends on the concept of a triadic relation. This, in turn, depends on the concept of a relation itself. There are traditionally two ways of understanding what relations are, corresponding to definition by extension and definition by intension or comprehension. Peirce regards these aspects of relation as necessary but not sufficient, and he adds a third approach, the way of information — including the idea of change of information — in order to integrate the other two approaches into a unified whole. For further discussion of Peirce's sign relations, see the main article Sign relations.
Classes of signs
Peirce proposes several typologies and definitions of the signs. More than 76 definitions of what a sign is have been collected throughout Peirce's work. Some canonical typologies can nonetheless be observed, one crucial one being the distinction between "icons", "indices" and "symbols" (CP 2.228, CP 2.229 and CP 5.473). The icon-index-symbol typology is chronologically the first but structurally the second of three that fit together as a trio of three-valued parameters in regular scheme of nine kinds of sign. (The three "parameters" (not Peirce's term) are not independent of one another, and the result is a system of ten classes of sign, which are shown further down in this article.)
Peirce's three basic phenomenological categories come into central play in these classifications. The 1-2-3 numerations used further below in the exposition of sign classes represents Peirce's associations of sign classes with the categories. The categories are as follows:
| Name: | Typical characterizaton: | As universe of experience: | As quantity: | Technical definition: | Valence, "adicity": |
| Firstness. | Quality of feeling. | Ideas, chance, possibility. | Vagueness, "some". | Reference to a ground (a ground is a pure abstraction of a quality). | Essentially monadic (the quale, in the sense of the thing with the quality). |
| Secondness. | Reaction, resistance, (dyadic) relation. | Brute facts, actuality. | Singularity, discreteness. | Reference to a correlate (by its relate). | Essentially dyadic (the relate and the correlate). |
| Thirdness. | Representation. | Habits, laws, necessity. | Generality, continuity. | Reference to an interpretant. | Essentially triadic (sign, object, interpretant). |
The three sign typologies depend respectively on (I) the sign itself, (II) the sign's relation to its denoted object, and (III) the sign's relation to its interpretant. The sign typologies are filled out by embodiments of each of three phenomenological categories, trios of embodiments by:
I. the sign itself: qualisign, sinsign, legisign (also called tone, token, type, and also called potisign, actisign, famisign).
II. the sign's manner of denoting the object: the sign as icon, index, symbol.
III. the manner attributed by the interpretant to the sign's denoting of the object: the sign as rheme, dicisign, argument (also called sumisign, dicisign, suadisign; also called seme, pheme, delome; and also regarded as very broadened versions of the traditional term, proposition, argument).
Every sign falls under one class or another within (I) and within (II) and within (III). Thus each of the three typologies is a three-valued parameter for every sign. The three parameters are not independent of each other; many co-classifications aren't found, for reasons pertaining to the lack of either habit-taking or singular reaction in a quality, and the lack of habit-taking in a singular reaction. The result is not 27 but instead ten classes of signs fully specified at this level of analysis.
These conceptions are specific to Peirce's theory of signs and are not exactly equivalent to general uses of the notions of "icon", "symbol", "index", "tone", "token", "type", "term", "proposition", "argument," and "rhema".
I. Qualisign, sinsign, legisign
(also called tone, token, type; and also called potisign, actisign, famisign)
This is the typology of the sign as distinguished by sign's own phenomenological category (set forth in 1903, 1904, etc.).
- A qualisign (also called tone and potisign) is a sign which consists in a quality of feeling, a possibility, a "First."
- A sinsign (also called token and actisign) is a sign which consists in a reaction/resistance, an actual singular thing, an actual occurrence or fact, a "Second."
- A legisign (also called type and famisign) is a sign which consists in a semiotic / logical relation, a (general) idea, a norm or law or habit, a "Third."
A replica (also called instance) of a legisign is a sign, often an actual individual one (a sinsign), which embodies that legisign. A replica is a sign for the associated legisign, and therefore is also a sign for the legisign's object. All legisigns need sinsigns as replicas, for expression. Some but not all legisigns are symbols. All symbols are legisigns. Different words with the same meaning are symbols which are replicas of that symbol which consists in their meaning but doesn't prescribe qualities of its replicas.[5]
II. Icon, index, symbol
This is the typology of the sign as distinguished by phenomenological category of its way of denoting the object (set forth in 1867 and many times in later years). This typology emphasizes the different ways in which the sign refers to its object -- the icon by a quality of its own, the index by real connection to its object, and the symbol by a habit or rule for its interpretant. The modes may be compounded, for instance, in a sign that displays a forking line iconically for a fork in the road and stands indicatively near a fork in the road.
- An icon (also called likeness and semblance) is a sign that denotes its object by virtue of a quality which is shared by them but which the icon has irrespectively of the object. The icon (for instance, a portrait or a diagram) resembles or imitates its object. The icon has, of itself, a certain character or aspect, one which the object also has (or is supposed to have) and which lets the icon be interpreted as a sign even if the object does not exist. The icon signifies essentially on the basis of its "ground." (Peirce defined the ground as the pure abstraction of a quality, and the sign's ground as the respect in which it resembles its object.[6])
- An index* is a sign that denotes its object by virtue of an actual connection involving them, one that he also calls a real relation in virtue of its being irrespective of interpretation. It is in any case a relation which is in fact, in contrast to the icon, which has only a ground for denotation of its object, and in contrast to the symbol, which denotes by an interpretive habit or law. He calls an index which compels attention without conveying any information about its object a pure index. If an indexical relation is a resistance or reaction physically or causally connecting an index to its object, then the index is a reagent (e.g. smoke coming from a building is a reagent index of fire). Such an index is really affected or modified by the object, and is the only kind of index which can be used in order to ascertain facts about its object. Peirce also usually held that an index does not have to be an actual individual fact or thing, but can be a general; a disease symptom is general, its occurrence singular; and he usually considered a designation to be an index, indeed a pure index, e.g., a pronoun, a proper name, a label on a diagram, etc. (In 1903 Peirce said that only an individual is an index (EP 2.274) and called designations "subindices or hyposemes," which were a kind of symbol; he allowed of a "degenerate index" indicating a non-individual object, as exemplified by an individual thing indicating its own characteristics. But by 1904 he returned to allowing indices to be generals and to classing designations as indices.)
- A symbol* is a sign that denotes its object solely by virtue of the fact that it will be interpreted to do so. The symbol does not depend on having any resemblance or actual connection to the denoted object but is a habit or acquired law (be it a habit of nature or a habit of convention which must be learned). Thus, a symbol denotes by virtue of its interpretant. Its sign-action (semeiosis) is ruled by a habit, a more or less systematic set of associations that ensures its interpretation. For Peirce, every symbol is a general, and that which we call an actual individual symbol (e.g., on the page) is called by Peirce a replica or instance of the symbol. Symbols, like all other legisigns (also called "types"), need actual, individual replicas for expression. The proposition is an example of a symbol which is irrespective of language and of any form of expression and does not prescribe qualities of its replicas.[7] The word is an example of a symbol which prescribes qualities (especially looks or sound) of its replicas.[8] Not every replica is actual and individual. Two words with the same meaning are symbols which are replicas of that symbol which consists in their shared meaning.[5] A book, a theory, a person, each is a complex symbol.
*Note: in "On a New List of Categories" (1867) Peirce gave the unqualified term "sign" as an alternate expression for "index," and gave "general sign" as an alternate expression for "symbol." "Representamen" was his blanket technical term for any and every sign or signlike thing covered by his theory[9]. Peirce eventually decided that the symbol is not the only "general" sign and that indices and icons can be general, too. The general sign, as such, he eventually called, at various times, the "legisign" (1903, 1904), the "type" (1906, 1908), and the "famisign" (1908).
III. Rheme, dicisign, argument
(also called sumisign, dicisign, suadisign; also called seme, pheme, delome; and seen as very broadened versions of the traditional term, proposition, argument)
This is the typology of the sign as distinguished by the phenomenological category which the sign's interpretant attributes to the sign's way of denoting the object (set forth in 1892, 1902, etc.):
- A rheme (also called sumisign and seme) is a sign that represents its object in respect of quality and so, in its signified interpretant, is represented as iconic, though it actually may be icon, index, or symbol. The rheme or seme stands as its object for some purpose. A proposition with the subject places left blank is a rheme; but subject terms by themselves are also rhemes. A proposition, said Peirce, can be considered a zero-place rheme, a zero-place predicate.
- A dicisign (also called dicent sign and pheme ) is a sign that represents its object in respect of actual existence and so, in its signified interpretant, is represented as indexical, though it actually may be either index or symbol. The dicisign or pheme is meant to have some compulsive effect on its interpreter. Peirce had generalized the idea of proposition to where a weathercock, photograph, etc., could be considered propositions (or "dicisigns," as he came to call them). A proposition in the conventional sense is a dicent symbol (also called symbolic dicisign) . Assertions are also dicent symbols.
- An argument (also called suadisign and delome) is a sign that represents its object in respect of law or habit and so, in its signified interpretant, is represented as symbolic. It represents a process of change in thoughts or signs, as if to induce this change in the interpreter through the interpreter's own self-control. A novel, a work of art, the universe, can be a delome in Peirce's terms.
The three sign typologies together: ten classes of sign
The three typologies, labeled "I.", "II.", and "III.", are shown together in the table below. As parameters, they are not independent of one another. The slanting and vertical lines show the options for co-classification of a given sign (and appear in MS 339, August 7 1904, viewable here[10]). The result is ten classes of sign.
Words in parentheses in the table are alternate names for the same kinds of signs.
|
Phenomenological category:
Sign is distinguished by the phenomenological category embodied by... |
1. Quality of feeling. Possibility. Reference to a ground. |
OR |
2. Reaction, resistance. Brute fact. Reference to a correlate. |
OR |
3. Repre- sentation. Habit, law. Reference to an interpretant. |
| I. ...the SIGN ITSELF: | QUALISIGN (Tone, Potisign) |
OR | SINSIGN (Token, Actisign) |
OR | LEGISIGN (Type, Famisign) |
| AND |  |
||||
| II. ...the sign's way of denoting its OBJECT: | ICON (Likeness, etc.) |
OR | INDEX (Sign*) |
OR | SYMBOL (General sign*) |
| AND | |
||||
| III. ...the sign's way -- as represented in the INTERPRETANT -- of denoting the sign's object: |
RHEME (Term**, Sumisign, Seme); |
OR | DICISIGN (Proposition**, Dicent sign, Pheme) |
OR | ARGUMENT (Suadisign, Delome) |
*Note: As noted above, in "On a New List of Categories" (1867) Peirce gave the unqualified word "sign" as an alternate expression for "index," and gave "general sign" as an alternate expression for "symbol." See note at end of section "II. Icon, index, symbol" for details.
**Note: A term in the conventional sense is not just any rheme; it is a kind of rhematic symbol. A proposition in the conventional sense is not just any dicisign, it is a kind of dicent symbol.
| Sign's own phenome- nological category |
Relation to object |
Relation to interpretant |
Specificational redundancies in parentheses |
Some examples | |
| I | Qualisign | Icon | Rheme | (Rhematic Iconic) Qualisign | A feeling of “red” |
| II. | Sinsign | Icon | Rheme | (Rhematic) Iconic Sinsign | An individual diagram |
| III. | Index | Rheme | Rhematic Indexical Sinsign | A spontaneous cry. | |
| IV. | Dicisign | Dicent (Indexical) Sinsign | A weathercock or photograph | ||
| V. | Legisign | Icon | Rheme | (Rhematic) Iconic Legisign | A diagram, apart from its factual individuality |
| VI. | Index | Rheme | Rhematic Indexical Legisign | A demonstrative pronoun | |
| VII. | Dicisign | Dicent Indexical Legisign | A street cry | ||
| VIII. | Symbol | Rheme | Rhematic Symbol (–ic Legisign) | A common noun | |
| IX. | Dicisign | Dicent Symbol (–ic Legisign) | A proposition (in the conventional sense) | ||
| X. | Argument | Argument (–ative Symbolic Legisign) | A syllogism |
|
(I)
Rhematic Iconic Qualisign |
(V)
Rhematic Iconic Legisign |
(VIII)
Rhematic Symbol Legisign |
(X)
Argument Symbolic Legisign |
||||
|
(II)
Rhematic Iconic Sinsign |
(VI)
Rhematic Indexical Legisign |
(IX)
Dicent Symbol Legisign |
|||||
|
(III)
Rhematic Indexical Sinsign |
(VII)
Dicent Indexical Legisign |
||||||
|
(IV)
Dicent Indexical Sinsign |
|||||||
*The Roman numerals appear on the manuscript but were added by an editor. [11]
[edit] Notes
- ^ "A Syllabus of Certain Topics of Logic", EP 2:272-3, 1903
- ^ A Draft of a Letter to Lady Welby, SS 193, 1905
- ^ See "On the Use and Abuse of the Immediate/Dynamical Object Distinction" by Joseph Ransdell.
- ^ "Minute Logic", CP 2.87, c.1902 and A Letter to Lady Welby, CP 8.329, 1904. Relevant quotes viewable at the Commens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms Eprint, under "Categories, Cenopythagorean Categories"
- ^ a b "NEW ELEMENTS" ("Kaina Stoicheia") MS 517 (1904); EP 300-324, scroll down to /317/, then first new paragraph
- ^ Cf. the Scholastic conception of a relation's foundation, Deely 2007, p. 61 (Google Books, registration required)
- ^ MS599 c.1902 "Reason's Rules," relevant quote viewable under "MS 599" in "Role of Icons In Predication," Joseph Ransdell, ed.
- ^ "A Syllabus of Certain Topics of Logic", EP 2:274, 1903, and "Logical Tracts, No. 2", CP 4.447, c. 1903. Relevant quotes viewable at the Commens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms Eprint, under "Symbol".
- ^ "A Syllabus of Certain Topics of Logic", EP 2:272-3. Relevant quote viewable at the Commens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms Eprint, under "Representamen"
- ^ Source: Joseph Ransdell, Professor Emeritus, Philosophy, Texas Tech University.
- ^ See peirce-l post by Anderson Vinicius Romanini (and a cached resume during server problems) "Re: representing the ten classes of signs (corrected)" 2006-06-16 Eprint and peirce-l post by Joseph Ransdell "Re: 1st image of triangle of boxes (MS799.2)" 2006-06-18 Eprint. The manuscript can be viewed (and magnified by clicking on image) here The image was provided by Bernard Morand of the Institut Universitaire de Technologie (France), Département Informatique.
