Peirce’s philosophy of language

1 Pragmatic maxim

One of Peirce’s concentrations is on “the method of attaining to a more perfect clearness of thought” (CP5. 390), more perfectly clear than what Descartes conceived it to be: the third grade of clearness.

Peirce’s theory of meaning can be compressed into a rule, which he latterly called the pragmatic maxim: “The rule for attaining the third grade of clearness of apprehension is as follows: Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object” (CP5. 402). Taken separately, the maxim itself seemingly falls short of his own standard of clearness and has embarrassed a number of readers. The maxim claims that.

1. Our conception of an object is exactly the whole of our conception of the effects of that object.

2. We conceive the object has those effects.

3. It might be conceivable that those effects have practical bearings.

The original formulation of the maxim leaves a number of puzzles to be solved. What Peirce attempted to clarify was, at first sight, our conceptions of objects, and if so, can the maxim also be a semantic theory of linguistic signs? If it can, is it a theory of the whole universe of signs or a part of it? What is meant by the term “object”? Does it refer to physical things or anything that can be conceived of or said? If the effects are conceived or conceivable effects, are misconceived effects also included? If we conceive that the swiftlet-nest is rich in nutrition and promotes health, is the conceived effect of the kind a part of the meaning of “swiftlet-nest”? And further, why is the pragmatic maxim a method of attaining perfect clearness of meaning?

2 Pragmatism and semiotics

Peirce did not write distinctly at the time about what he wanted to make clear. In his 1878 article, he spoke about the clearness of our conceptions or ideas, but that was not all he said. In fact, language was in his view. Peirce writes that there is a misconception, which “is to mistake a mere difference in the grammatical construction of two words for a distinction between the ideas they express” (CP5. 399). For Peirce, words express thoughts, so making ideas clear is roughly the same as making the meaning of words clear. In applying his maxim to instances, Peirce told readers how to make clear such concepts as “hard,” “heavy,” “force,” and “reality.” This suggests that making the conception of reality clear is the same as making the term “reality” clear.

Peirce’s inquiry into meaning and his attempt to construct a theory of everything, i.e. semiotics, were undertaken almost simultaneously and they are inherently cohesive. He claimed that logic is “only another name for semiotic” (CP2. 227). But in disagreement with most twentieth century analytical philosophers, Peirce did not think of logic as a system of necessary truths, or logical statements as true a priori, but rather, he saw logic or semiotic as “the quasi-necessary, formal doctrine of signs” (CP2. 227). These words mean that “we observe the characters of such signs as we know, and from such an observation, by a process which I will not object to naming Abstraction, we are led to statements, eminently fallible, and therefore in one sense by no means necessary, as to what must be the characters of all signs used by a ‘scientific’ intelligence, that is to say, by an intelligence capable of learning by experience” (CP2. 227).

Peirce the semiotician gave a slightly different formulation of pragmatism, the doctrine defined by the pragmatic maxim. He continued to take pragmatism as a method of clarifying meaning, but the nuance was that he no longer concentrated on clearness of conception, but on the interpretation of all kinds of signs. In the 1902 Dictionary of philosophy and psychology entry “Pragmatic and pragmatism,” he insisted that pragmatism “is a method for ascertaining the real meaning of any concept, doctrine, proposition, word, or other sign” (CP5. 6). He continued to think pragmatism as the method of making concepts clear: “pragmatism does not undertake to say in what the meanings of all signs consist, but merely to lay down a method of determining the meanings of intellectual concepts, that is, of those upon which reasonings may turn” (CP5. 8). Both pragmatism and semiotics are Peirce’s approaches to meaning and interpretation.

However, we may discern a discrepancy in his formulation of pragmatism. There are seemingly two types of pragmatism, one is to make clear the meaning of intellectual concepts, another is to interpret clearly all signs, including conceptions, for Peirce thought that a thought was also a sign. The two types of formulation are apparently inconsistent. But the inconsistency is superfluous. My diagnosis is that semiotics is the theory of all signs, and pragmatism is the theory of an important subset of signs, that is, linguistic signs. He claimed that pragmatism was a method for ascertaining the real meaning of any concept, doctrine, proposition, word, or “other sign.” Here, “other sign” is not really “all other signs,” but presumably signs of linguistic character. This is compatible with his alternative formulation that pragmatism is a method of determining the meaning of “intellectual concepts.” For all linguistic signs are intellectual in nature: they are “conventional” and belong to the class of legisign. Now the relation between semiotics and pragmatism has become clear: the former is the theory of all signs, natural and artificial, while the latter is the theory of linguistic signs and their corresponding concepts. As Short (2007: 4) sees it, Peirce identified “thought as internalized discourse,” the idea of thought as internalized discourse, anticipating Fodorian “language of thought” or “mentalese” (Fodor 1994). So it is reasonable to say that Peirce’s pragmatism is his philosophy of language.

Peirce took pragmatism as a constituent of his semiotics. Semiotics, as he defined it, is the study of all signs, so it is much more extensive than a philosophy of language. Everything can be a sign, including natural objects, events, and processes. This is shown by his division of signs. Peirce divided signs by three trichotomies:

First, according as the sign in itself is a mere quality, is an actual existent, or is a general law; secondly, according as the relation of the sign to its object consists in the sign’s having some character in itself, or in some existential relation to that object, or in its relation to an interpretant; thirdly, according as its Interpretant represents it as a sign of possibility or as a sign of fact or a sign of reason. (CP2. 243)

The first trichotomy gives qualisign (such as a quality), sinsign (a single thing), and legisign (a conventional sign). In his second division, signs are further divided into icon (a picture), index (a pointer), and symbol (a concept). According to the third trichotomy, there are rheme (a sentence with blank places), decisign (a sentence), and dicent sign (an argument).

These divisions are not exclusive of each other. The three trichotomies can be considered jointly and result in ten classes of signs. They are qualisign (a feeling of red), Iconic Sinsign (a diagram as a token), Rhematic Indexical Sinsign (a spontaneous cry), Dicent Sinsign [a weathercock], Iconic Legisign [a diagram as a type], Rhematic Indexical Legisign [a demonstrative pronoun], Dicent Indexical Legisign [a street cry], Rhematic Symbol or Symbolic Rheme [a common noun], Dicent Symbol [an ordinary proposition], and Argument. Clearly, not all signs are linguistic. The linguistic signs mentioned here include concept (predicate), demonstrative pronoun, proposition (indicative sentence), argument (a set of sentences). What about proper names, which has become the focus in 20th century philosophy of language? Peirce took a proper name as a legisign, for it denotes an object in a general way. In a letter to Lady Welby, proper names are Rhematic Indexical Legisigns (CP8. 341). This suggests that a proper name is indexical of an object and can be used to form a sentence together with other terms.

In a letter to Lady Welby in December 1908, Peirce worked out a different division of signs. According to the way in which objects are presented, signs are divided into Descriptives (such as nouns and predicates), Designatives (denotatives, indicatives, demonstratives), and Copulants. Copulants “neither describe nor denote their objects, but merely express the logical relations of these latter to something otherwise referred to.” Such, among linguistic signs, as “If – then –,” “– is –,” “– causes –,” “– would be –,” “– is relative to – for –,” “Whatever, etc.” (CP8. 350). These three categories cover the basic part of a language.

For Peirce, a sign is a representamen which represents something else in a certain way. “A sign, or representamen, is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity” (CP2. 228). This is exactly a theory of language if “signs” are taken to be linguistic expressions. So the meaning of an expression contains three elements: first, the object it represents or stands for, where an object may be a physical object, an event, a process, a relation, an abstract entity, even a fantasy; second, the interpretant, which is created by the expression in the mind of the person the expression is addressed to, and which is perhaps a more developed expression or sign; and third, the ground, upon which an expression represents something. All linguistic expressions are abstract, as they do not represent an object in all respects. “Water” stands for water not in all respects of water, but in reference to “a sort of idea” (CP2. 228) of water. What sort of idea? Not a purely private idea, but an idea shared or able to be shared by all speakers:

‘Idea’ is here to be understood in a sort of Platonic sense, very familiar in everyday talk; I mean in that sense in which we say that one man catches another man’s idea, in which we say that when a man recalls what he was thinking of at some previous time, he recalls the same idea, and in which when a man continues to think anything, say for a tenth of a second, in so far as the thought continues to agree with itself during that time, that is to have a like content, it is the same idea, and is not at each instant of the interval a new idea. (CP2. 228)

Peirce evidently appealed to what is in the mind of speaker and hearer to make sense of an expression. Even if the object represented by the expression is physical in the external world, both interpretant and ground are not independent of the psychological. The interpretant is what is created by the expression in the mind of the hearer, and the ground is a shared idea of the object. However, the idea in his words is Platonic, but only in a special sort of Platonic sense, that is, in terms of what is common to the mental content in many minds. The idea is not a sort of entity with ontological priority, nor is it independent of all minds.

An expression stands for or represents or denotes its object, and it has an interpretant and a ground which are associated with the object. Since both interpretant and ground are ideas, the two elements can be conflated into one: the interpretant.

3 Object and interpretant

In Peirce’s semiotic framework, the pragmatic method of making meaning clear goes by way of a semiotic process, or semiosis. By “semiosis” Peirce meant “an action, or influence, which is, or involves, a co-öperation of three subjects, such as a sign, its object, and its interpretant, this tri-relative influence not being in any way resolvable into actions between pairs” (CP5. 484). To analyze a sign (here a verbal sign) and make its meaning clear, we should take into account the triadic relation among the sign, its object, and its interpretant. So we must in the first place clarify its object and interpretant.

Peirce distinguished two classes of objects, i.e. immediate and dynamic object, and three classes of interpretants:

It is necessary to distinguish the Immediate Object, or the Object as the Sign represents it, from the Dynamical Object, or really efficient but not immediately present Object. It is likewise requisite to distinguish the Immediate Interpretant, i.e. the Interpretant represented or signified in the Sign, from the Dynamic Interpretant, or effect actually produced on the mind by the Sign; and both of these from the Normal Interpretant, or effect that would be produced on the mind by the Sign after sufficient development of thought. (CP8. 343)

Peirce’s terminology has varied with his different writings. In one writing, three classes of interpretants are immediate, dynamic (or dynamical), and normal; in other writings, Peirce used the term emotional interpretant for immediate interpretant, and dynamic interpretant is also called energetic interpretant, and normal interpretant has more designations, such as final, logical, ultimate, and the like. When he talked of logical interpretant, he meant final or ultimate logical interpretant. Short (2007, Ch. 7) identifies nuances of those Peircean terms. Here for the sake of uniformity in articulation, I adopt immediate and dynamic object for Peirce’s two classes of object, and immediate, dynamic and logical interpretant for his three classes of interpretant.

In Peirce’s semiotics, both object and interpretant are not static, timeless entities, but plurals going through processes. Peirce’s sign covers both conventional signs and those natural. Language is conventional. A natural sign is naturally or causally connected to its object, for instance, a weathercock is a natural index of wind direction, but language is not so. The connection of a verbal sign with its object is conventional,

not by virtue of any character of their own as things, nor by virtue of any real connection with their objects, but simply by virtue of being represented to be signs. Thus, the word ‘cuckoo’ does present a resemblance to the bird; but its onomatopoeia is a mere accident of its origin. It is further most used when cuckoos, or some effects of cuckoos, are really present; but that slight real connection with the birds is insignificant. (CP8. 119)

My concern is what object and interpretant would be like if confined to verbal signs or linguistic expression. Peirce’s pragmatic maxim and his philosophy of language will surely become clear while a good understanding of the objects and interpretants is reached. This is achieved by an examination of the above five terms one by one.

For Peirce, the basic part of a language is constituted by descriptives, which describe the properties of objects, designatives, which denote objects, and copulants, a copulant is neither descriptive nor denotative, but merely expresses the logical relations of things. However, to say that it expresses the logical relation of things, as I see it, is not exactly correct. Logical relations obtain between symbols and concepts, not between things. Relations between things are factual, although they may be reconstructed to become logical connectives. Peirce’s examples of copulant cited in Section 2 are linguistic signs; they represent or stand for relations. As a realist Peirce must have recognized that those relations are real.

Now we turn to Peirce’s key concepts concerning denotation and interpretation.

The immediate object of a sign is “the object as the sign represent it” (CP8. 343), “the Object as the Sign itself represents it, and whose Being is thus dependent upon the Representation of it in the Sign” (CP4. 536). This statement is very vague in meaning. As I understand it, an immediate object is as the object presents to mind when an expression is used to represent it, so it is distinguished from the object itself.

In his early years of epistemological pursuit, Peirce already took the nature of signs into account. These considerations are helpful. Concerning the object of cognition he said: “Every cognition involves something represented, or that of which we are conscious, and some action or passion of the self whereby it becomes represented. […] The cognition itself is an intuition of its objective element, which may therefore be called, also, the immediate object” (CP5. 238). And furthermore, “a thought-sign stands for its object in the respect which is thought; that is to say, this respect is the immediate object of consciousness in the thought, or in other words, it is the thought itself, or at least that the thought is thought to be in the subsequent thought to which it is a sign” (CP5. 286).

The immediate object appears to be the presentation of a sample (a piece of gold, a drop of water), a subset (a few dogs and cats), a part (an aspect of a mount, a stretch of river). The dynamic object in contrast should be the object itself, the object in its past, present, and future existence, observed or unobserved. In talking about the immediate object of an index, the rise of the mercury in an ordinary thermometer for instance, he said that “a mental representation of the index is produced, which mental representation is called the immediate object of the sign” (CP5. 473). In this case, the rise of mercury is the index of the increase of temperature. The rise of mercury is a physical object (event) itself, so we can have mental representation of it as the immediate object of the index. However, our mental representation of a verbal sign cannot be said to be the immediate object of it, that would be our feeling of a token (a voice or a mark) of a word or a string of words, it is not right to say that is the object of a sign. In his divisions of signs in respect to their immediate object, “a sign may either be a sign of a quality, of an existent, or of a law” (CP8. 336). They are not quality, existent, and law themselves, but are mental representations of these items.

The dynamic object of a sign is the “object in itself” (CP8. 333). It is dynamic because it is the cause of the sign being used, or the object exerts an influence or force on the mind and then the mind issues the sign. Dynamic object is the “[r]eality which by some means contrives to determine the Sign to its Representation” (CP4. 536). It is “really efficient but not immediately present” (CP8. 343). Dynamic object reminds us of Kant’s claim that things in themselves are the cause of our sensations although they are not as our sensations represent them. But Peirce gave up Kant’s agnosticism; he insisted that we could have the truth of things in themselves, and objects described by truth and captured by final interpretant are the same as things in themselves.

It should be noted that when talking about objects in themselves as dynamic objects, it is not only real objects in view. This also includes abstract and fictional entities:

We must distinguish between the Immediate Object, – i.e. the Object as represented in the sign, – and the Real (no, because perhaps the Object is altogether fictive, I must choose a different term, therefore), say rather the Dynamical Object, which, from the nature of things, the Sign cannot express, which it can only indicate and leave the interpreter to find out by collateral experience. (CP8. 314)

Signs denote immediate objects as they present to mind and also objects in themselves. The latter being dynamic in the sense that they are at the root of a semiotic process, signs denote them rather than describe them. What they really are is not contained in the intensions of signs, but to be cognized by collateral experience. Therefore, it takes dynamic science or “objective” science to investigate them. Peirce illustrates this by examining the sentence, “The Sun is blue.” Its Objects are “the Sun” and “blueness.” “So the ‘Sun’ may mean the occasion of sundry sensations, and so is Immediate Object, or it may mean our usual interpretation of such sensations in terms of place, of mass, etc., when it is the Dynamical Object” (CP8. 183).

With respect to the relations of signs to their dynamic objects, Peirce divides signs into Icons, Indices, and Symbols. Symbols are linguistic. Peirce defines a symbol

as a sign which is determined by its dynamic object only in the sense that it will be so interpreted. It thus depends either upon a convention, a habit, or a natural disposition of its interpretant or of the field of its interpretant (that of which the interpretant is a determination). Every symbol is necessarily a legisign; for it is inaccurate to call a replica [a token] of a legisign a symbol. (CP8. 335)

Furthermore, with respect to the nature of dynamic objects of signs, another division of sign is abstractives, concretives, and collectives. Abstractives are signs of possibles, such as color, mass, whiteness; concretives are signs of occurrences such as man, Charlemagne; and collectives are signs of collection such as mankind, human race (CP8. 366).

Immediate and dynamic objects do not oppose each other, but are at two terminals of a process of interpretation. At the starting point, a sign denotes the object as a collection of sensations; at the final point, it denotes the object itself, this suggests that we finally have the complete cognition of the object and thus immediate and dynamic object conflate into one object. Therefore, interpretation is indispensable for the semiotic process; the problem of the “meaning” of an intellectual concept “can only be solved by the study of the interpretants, or proper significate effects, of signs”. Peirce also calls the interpretant “proper significate effects” (CP5. 475).

The immediate interpretant of a sign is “the interpretant represented or signified in the sign” (CP8. 343), whereas, “emotional interpretant” is “a feeling produced by it” (CP5. 475). If the sign is a concept or a word, its immediate interpretant includes “the recognition of the concept” or the word. If the sign is natural, its immediate interpretant is our sensational cognition of the sign, for instance the symptom of a disease. As to concept or word, I understand its immediate interpretant as our ordinary or preliminary interpretation or understanding of it based on our ordinary cognition of the object denoted by it. In most cases, immediate interpretations are sensational or emotional, thus being “immediate,” but this is not always so. The name of a fictional entity such as “Unicorn” does not denote a real thing of which we can have sensational cognition. Perhaps “Unicorn” can be verbally defined in terms of “horse,” “horn” and the like, of whose objects we can have sensational cognition. Our ordinary understanding of a term might be wrong or merely chimerical, but it is not all ordinary understanding but right and common understanding in which immediate interpretant consists: “The Immediate Interpretant […] is the interpretant as it is revealed in the right understanding of the Sign itself, and is ordinarily called the meaning of the sign” (CP4. 536).

For Peirce, some signs have no interpretant other than immediate ones. “Thus, 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” (CP5. 475). Peirce illustrates immediate interpretant by following a supposed instance: one morning, Peirce awoke before his wife who woke up afterwards and inquired: “What sort of a day is it?” This is an interrogative sentence, a question about the weather in that morning, so its object is the weather at that time. Its immediate interpretant is “what the Question expresses, all that it immediately expresses” (CP8. 314). To his wife’s question Peirce replied, “It is a stormy day.” This sentence is another sign. Its Immediate Object

is the notion of the present weather so far as this is common to her mind and mine […]. The Dynamical Object is the identity of the actual or Real meteorological conditions at the moment. The Immediate Interpretant is the schema in her imagination, i.e. the vague Image or what there is in common to the different Images of a stormy day. (CP8. 314)

The immediate interpretant is the first step of interpretation and the very basis for further interpretations. The immediate interpretant of “water” is our ordinary understanding of the term, by which we identify its immediate object, and through further practical transactions with the object, the cognition of water in itself and the logical interpretation of the term are made possible. “If a sign produces any further proper significate effect, it will do so through the mediation of the emotional interpretant, and such further effect will always involve an effort. I call it the energetic interpretant” (CP5. 475).

In view of the relation of a sign to its immediate interpretant, Peirce divided signs into three classes, that is “1st, those which are interpretable in thoughts or other signs of the same kind in infinite series; 2nd, those which are interpretable in actual experiences; 3rd, those which are interpretable in qualities of feelings or appearances” (CP8. 339).

The dynamic [or energetic] interpretant of a sign is the “effect actually produced on the mind by the Sign” (CP8. 343) or “the actual effect which the Sign, as a Sign, really determines” (CP4. 536), also including the reaction of the receiver. A sign’s standing for or representing something is always to someone. Here it is verbal signs that are in question. A sign read or heard produces some effects on the receiver who in turn reacts in the form of conduct or mental action. So I understand dynamic interpretant as the responsive actions on the side of interpreter:

The Dynamical Interpretant […] derives its character from the Dyadic category, the category of Action. This has two aspects, the Active and the Passive […] When an imagination, a day-dream fires a young man’s ambition or any other active passion, that is a more Active variety of his Dynamical Interpretation of the dream. When a novelty excites his surprise, and the scepticism that goes along with surprise, this is a more Passive variety of Dynamical Interpretant. […] But the agitations of passion and of surprise are the actual Dynamic Interpretants. (CP8. 315)

Peirce used a number of examples to illustrate the dynamic interpretant. When the captain of infantry gives the order “Ground arms!” the dynamic Interpretant is the thump of the muskets being on the ground, or it is the act of soldiers’ minds. When his wife asks, “What sort of a day is it?” its dynamic interpretant is Peirce’s answer to her question; his answer is the actual effect that the question has upon him, Peirce, the interpreter of the interrogative sentence. “It is a stormy day” is Peirce’s answer, an indicative sentence. Its dynamic interpretant is the disappointment of his wife or whatever actual effect it immediately has upon her.

The concept of dynamic interpretant is part of pragmatism or pragmaticism, although pragmatism is not exclusively an opinion about the dynamic interpretant. It suggests that “the meaning of any sign for anybody consists in the way he reacts to the sign” (CP8. 315). It should be noted that dynamic interpretant is still not the end; it is halfway to the final clarification of meaning, the rational purport or logical interpretant of concepts and words.

So comes the third interpretant: the logical interpretant. It is alternatively called normal, final, or ultimate interpretant by Peirce. I prefer the term logical interpretant or rational interpretant as this term is in good line with immediate and dynamic interpretant.

Logical interpretant is what logicians or philosophers of language have intended to capture in discussing meaning and interpretation. Peirce used “logical interpretant” in a roughly similar sense to “significance” and “interpretation.” English semanticist Victoria Welby defined her study as significs, the study of the interpretation of words. Her conclusion, according to Peirce, is that there are three senses in which words may be interpreted: Sense, Meaning, and Significance. According to Peirce, sense is definition or logical analysis, tantamount to what logicians normally call intension or connotation; meaning is the utterer’s intention, and significance agrees with Peirce’s logical interpretant, the deepest and most lofty of these (CP8. 184).

The logical interpretant of a sign is “the manner in which the Sign tends to represent itself to be related to its Object” (CP4. 536); “it is that which would finally be decided to be the true interpretation if consideration of the matter were carried so far that an ultimate opinion were reached” (CP8. 184). It is identified with “pragmatistic analysis” (CP8. 185) and is of a general nature. “It appears to me that the essential function of a sign is to render inefficient relations efficient, – not to set them into action, but to establish a habit or general rule whereby they will act on occasion” (CP8. 332). The logical interpretant is reached through the mediation of the immediate and dynamic interpretant. It is a general rule of action or a habit stably connected with the sign in question; the rule of action correlates with our general conception of the results of conduct carried far enough or the “effect that would be produced on the mind by the Sign after sufficient development of thought” (CP8. 343).

Since an intellectual concept is general in nature, so its interpretant must also be general; this is the logical interpretant.

It can be proved that the only mental effect that can be so produced and that is not a sign but is of a general application is a habit-change; meaning by a habit-change a modification of a person’s tendencies toward action, resulting from previous experiences or from previous exertions of his will or acts, or from a complexus of both kinds of cause. It excludes natural dispositions, as the term ‘habit’ does, when it is accurately used; but it includes beside associations, what may be called ‘transsociations’, or alterations of association, and even includes dissociation. (CP5. 476)

Habit-change or habit-forming as logical interpretant is the effect produced by the joint action of muscular exercise and unaided imagination. “[Readiness] to act in a certain way under given circumstances and when actuated by a given motive is a habit; and a deliberate, or self-controlled, habit is precisely a belief” (CP5. 480).

The logical interpretant is not only the result of past behavior and imagination, but also future oriented. It goes through a developing process. The logical interpretants which come first “stimulate us to various voluntary performances in the inner world” (CP5. 481). Among these mental performances are imagining various situations and motives, and then tracing out “the alternative lines of conduct,” the initial interpretants open to us, remarking the way in which those initial interpretant could be modified. Not merely imagination, this conduct can be exercised in certain cases. “The logical interpretant must, therefore, be in a relatively future tense” (CP5. 481). “The species of future tense of the logical interpretant is that of the conditional mood, the ‘would-be’” (CP5. 482).

Thus, to the question “what sort of a day is it?” its significance or logical interpretation is Mrs. Peirce’s “purpose in asking it, what effect its answer will have as to her plans for the ensuing day” (CP8. 314). The logical interpretant of Peirce’s reply is the sum of the lessons of that reply, moral and scientific lessens for example. In discussing the interpretant of “Ground arms,” Peirce insisted that

the Final Interpretant does not consist in the way in which any mind does act but in the way in which every mind would act. That is, it consists in a truth which might be expressed in a conditional proposition of this type: ‘If so and so were to happen to any mind this sign would determine that mind to such and such conduct.’ (CP8. 315)

Peirce concludes that all logical interpretants take the following form: “Proceed according to such and such a general rule. Then, if such and such a concept is applicable to such and such an object, the operation will have such and such a general result; and conversely” (CP5. 483).

The above five classes of objects and interpretants are intimately connected. A sign is a third; a sign, its object and interpretant are in triadic relation. A sign “mediates between an object and an interpretant; since it is both determined by the object relatively to the interpretant, and determines the interpretant in reference to the object. In such wise as to cause the interpretant to be determined by the object through the mediation of this ‘sign’” (EP2: 410). The object and interpretant are two correlates of a sign and are its defining factors. And furthermore, object and interpretant correspond precisely each to the other. Specifically, “immediate object and emotional interpretant correspond to each other, both being apprehensions, or are ‘subjective’; both, too, appertain to all signs without exception. The real object and energetic interpretant also correspond to each other, both being real facts or things” (EP2: 410). Surprisingly but reasonably, logical interpretant does not correspond with any kind of object. This is because the logical interpretant is always “in a relatively future tense” (EP2: 410).

4 Pragmatic semantics

We now turn to the second formulation of the pragmatic maxim by Peirce: “In order to ascertain the meaning of an intellectual conception one should consider what practical consequences might conceivably result by necessity from the truth of that conception; and the sum of these consequences will constitute the entire meaning of the conception” (CP5. 9, italics in original). Peirce’s pragmatic maxim specifies a method of clarifying the meaning of rational concepts or verbal signs; this is the method of pragmatic or pragmatistic analysis which terminates in logical interpretant through immediate and dynamic interpretant. He sees the pragmatic principles such that “every theoretical judgment expressible in a sentence in the indicative mood is a confused form of thought whose only meaning, if it has any, lies in its tendency to enforce a corresponding practical maxim expressible as a conditional sentence having its apodosis in the imperative mood” (CP5. 18).

Now we have a comprehensive overview of what the pragmatic maxim says.

1. Pragmatism is a method of clarifying the meaning of intellectual conceptions. Sometimes he said that pragmatism is “a method of ascertaining the meanings of hard words and of abstract concepts” (CP5. 464). I understand that this is only an emphatic style of writing. Taking his semiotic approach into account, pragmatism is a method of ascertaining the meaning of all words and corresponding concepts, not merely hard words and abstract concepts, since every word and its correlate concept can be “hard” and “abstract” in some cases.

2. Every word is either a designative, or a descriptive, or a copulant. A designative is like an individual variable, and a copulant represents a [logical] relation; other terms are descriptives. Therefore, every word is a sentential rheme. Peirce’s discussion of the example “Burnt child shuns fire” shows that the ordinary subject is in fact a predicate in semiotic analysis. Thus, analysis of a term (a word or a phrase) turns on the analysis of a sentence. The analysis of the term “hard” turns on analysis of the sentence “this is hard” or “x is hard.”

What about proper names? For Peirce, proper names are indices; they play the same role as personal, demonstrative, and relative pronouns, the letters attached to a geometrical figure, and the ordinary letters of algebra. Indices are designative or designations, which “merely stand for things or individual quasi-things with which the interpreting mind is already acquainted” (CP8. 368n). Proper names denominate things, which are identified “by the clustering of their reactions” (CP4. 157). Different from descriptives, which signify or mean properties, the sole role played by a proper name is to denote an acquainted thing, so Peirce is forced to admit that “pragmaticism fails to furnish any translation or meaning of a proper name, or other designation of an individual object” (CP5. 429). The information we can obtain is about the object denominated by the name rather than about the name itself:

The first time one hears a Proper Name pronounced, it is but a name, predicated, as one usually gathers, of an existent, or at least historically existent, individual object, of which, or of whom, one almost always gathers some additional information. The next time one hears the name, it is by so much the more definite; and almost every time one hears the name, one gains in familiarity with the object. (CP4. 568)

In this sense, a proper name is not completely identical with any other names or signs. Thus, that Aristotle is the teacher of Alexander the great and the pupil of Plato is not analytic under any interpretation.

1. Every sentence expressing a proposition is implicitly a conditional imperative. This amounts to saying, taking the sentence as true, one should and would do so and so under such and such conditions. For example, the word “water,” familiar to every English-language speaker, denotes water as acquainted by everyone. Water has practical bearings: we drink it, we cook food with it, we wash clothes with it, we take a bath with it, we construct water supply systems for the convenience of using it, we take it from rivers and lakes, we find by observation that rain is the source of it, we come to know that flood is dangerous and act to control it, and so on. A person saying that “this is water” means that this person may do those things mentioned above under certain circumstances, they have done so in the past, and they will do so in the future under similar circumstances.

2. The meaning of a word is to be determined by ascertaining the meaning of all the sentences in which the word occurs. Since every sentence in the indicative mood is an instruction of conduct, it will lead to certain practical lines of conduct, which produce various consequences, the sum of which are the meaning of the word. There is an ambiguity here. In the first formulation of the pragmatic maxim, Peirce says the effects of the object are of our conception, and in a later formulation, he says of the “practical consequences,” which “might conceivably result by necessity from the truth of that conception” (CP5. 9). There seems to be an indecision between the lines of conduct to which the sentence gives rise and the effects of these lines of conduct, that is, the interactions of speakers and objects. Peirce seems to mean the latter. “The import, or adequate ultimate interpretation, of a concept is contained, not in any deed or deeds that will ever be done, but in a habit of conduct, or general moral determination of whatever procedure there may come to be” (CP5. 504). So the habits of conduct connected with an expression are part of the method with recourse to which the meaning is determined, and these habits of conduct are in themselves not the meaning intended. The operation with the object of the expression will produce various effects, the totality of which constitutes the meaning of the expression. But the effects, if any, which are not in accord with a law should be excluded. The meaning of an expression is its rational purport, which must be of general nature.

“Water” again. The meaning of “water” is the meaning of “this is water”; it is the sum of the consequences resulting from practical conduct taking the sentence as true. However, it is not the adding up of all individual effects, but a sum organized by some rule. Those effects are resultant from drinking, washing, irrigating, and so on, even using it in a chemical laboratory. After a number of operations with water, the rational purport of “water” may be summed up as that which denotes the matter as commonsense and science define it.

Thus, in most cases pragmatism offers a method of determining the meaning of words not strange to commonsense and science. It is a critical reiteration of the intuition of ascertaining meaning in commonsense and in science. For Peirce, pragmatism is precisely a scientific method applying to meaning clarification. A pragmatist’s “method of ascertaining the meanings of words and concepts is no other than that experimental method by which all the successful sciences […] have reached the degrees of certainty that are severally proper to them today; this experimental method being itself nothing but a particular application of an older logical rule, ‘By their fruits ye shall know them’” (CP5. 465). In addition, for Peirce, commonsense and science are in line with each other; it is Peirce himself who called pragmatism “critical commonsensism” (CP5. 494).

What gives rise to problems are metaphysical words and concepts; pragmatism is “the opinion that metaphysics is to be largely cleared up by the application of” the pragmatic maxim (CP5. 2). Peirce is not averse to metaphysics, but rather loves it very much. Feeling that most metaphysical terms are not clear, he proposed the pragmatic maxim to make metaphysical ideas clear. For example, what is meant by “reality” or “real”? To say something is real is to say that it exits independently of any opinion. But this definition, if it is a definition, does not reach the third grade of clearness. Peirce applies pragmatic rules to the term and claims that “reality, like every other quality, consists in the peculiar sensible effects which things partaking of it produce. The only effect which real things have is to cause belief, for all the sensations which they excite emerge into consciousness in the form of beliefs” (CP5. 406). Now the meaning of “x is real” turns on the question whether the belief in x is true. To the question of the velocity of light, Peirce listed five procedures in the way of experimental methods to answer it, and conceived that there might be sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth procedures to deal with it. If the investigation is carried long enough, scientists will finally agree that the velocity of light is so and so, however much they disagree with each other at the start. Thus, the velocity of light in a vacuum being 299,792,458 m/s is real if it is true.

The application of the pragmatic maxim to metaphysical terms has the implication that if a term is in no way made clear in meaning, that is, has no practical effect or sensible effects, then it is meaningless and should be dropped. “No doubt Ockham’s razor is logically sound. A hypothesis should be stripped of every feature which is in no wise called for to furnish an explanation of observed facts” (CP5. 26).

1. Peirce’s philosophy of language is a pragmatic semantics, as I see it. It is pragmatic in that it is an actionist theory of meaning. It could be entitled “practicalism” if “practice” means what we do and think in our life world. But “practice” was formerly attached to politics and ethics by philosophers like Aristotle and Kant; to avoid confusion, Peirce preferred his favored term “pragma,” of Greek origin. I think “actionist” is a good explication of the term “pragmatic.” This is supported by another formulation of his pragmatism that Peirce made: “The entire intellectual purport of any symbol consists in the total of all general modes of rational conduct which, conditionally upon all the possible different circumstances and desires, would ensue upon the acceptance of the symbol” (EP2: 346). Peirce’s pragmatic analysis is not a pragmatics, although his analysis is to be done in terms of the intentions of utterer and interpreter. He did not fancy the idea that the meaning of an utterance is to be determined by speech circumstances and changes from one situation to another. In his view, the significance or rational purport of a concept, a verbal sign, or a symbol is of a general nature and applies to all situations. Therefore, Peirce’s theory of interpretation is a sort of semantics, but it is a semantics with pragmatic characteristics.

For mainstream theories in logic and semantics, a term is defined by its denotation and connotation (Mill 1886 [1843]: 20) or reference and sense, denotation and connotation exhaust, or nearly exhaust if not completely, the meaning of a term. According to Frege, “a sign […] express its sense and designate its reference” (Frege 1960 [1892]: 61). Peirce has pointed out that medieval logicians held a similar view. This is a dictionary view of semantics, I think. As Quine pointed out, dictionary meaning is a record of already existing usages rather than the ground of meaning (Quine 1961 [1953]: 24). So all dictionary views of meaning are imperfect. Peirce’s pragmatic semantics is new and more perfect, though he himself did not pretend that it was new.

Firstly, it is a new explanation of meaning. At first sight, Peirce seemingly introduced some additions into the explanation of meaning: dynamic object sounds like denotation and logical interpretant sounds like the Fregean sense – the right definition supported by scientific findings – but immediate object and dynamic interpretant are something new. If so, Peirce’s contribution consists in having introduced some new elements into the old picture. But this is an oversimplified narrative. The move from immediate to dynamic object is a continuous process, as is the move from immediate to logical interpretant through dynamic interpretant. As a continuous process, every stage should not be dismissed from it. Immediate and dynamic object with corresponding immediate and dynamic interpretant plus logical interpretant form a systematic whole which gives explanation of meaning essentially different from mainstream logical theory.

Secondly, the explanation of meaning is a lasting activity, a process, not a fixed result to be recorded by semantics. It is a process moving from immediate object to dynamic object, from immediate interpretant through dynamic to logical interpretant. Immediate object corresponds to the object as commonsense understands it, in other words, the initial correlation between immediate object and immediate interpretant is established through commonsense. It can be said that immediate object and interpretant are our initial interpretation of signs – linguistic expressions here. In this stage, meaning is not very clear and falls short of the third grade of clearness. Now through dynamic interpretation, we finally reach dynamic object and logical interpretation. This may go through a long process, but the result is the interpretation of a sign of third grade clearness.

Thirdly, Peirce’s pragmatic semantics is actionistic, which is only another way of saying that semantics is to be pursued by the same method as the sciences. As a practitioner of experimental science, Peirce devoted all of his life and energy to specifying the details of scientific method and to extending its application to philosophy:

Modern students of science have been successful because they spent their lives not in their libraries and museums but in their laboratories and in the field; and while in their laboratories and in the field they have been not gazing on nature with a vacant eye, that is, in passive perception unassisted by thought, but have been observing – that is, perceiving by the aid of analysis – and testing suggestions of theories. (CP1. 34)

Modern science is experimental, so the laboratory is more important than the library. Scientists construct hypothetical theories, make observations and experiments, and test the logical consequences of the theories in question.

Semanticists should do their work through the same procedure. This is because language and our knowledge of nature are woven together. We gain knowledge of the world and ourselves by perceiving and thinking; we employ our knowledge in our practical lines of conduct. Our knowledge is formulated by language. We could not have clear thought and exactly correct inference without the aid of language, including artificially convened symbols. Therefore, the meanings of linguistic signs are intimately connected with our world knowledge. We use words to talk about nature and ourselves. Words, or an important part of them, conventionally denote things and objects. Their meanings are shaped by our cognition of the world. This suggests that the meaning of our words, or the rational purport of them, is to be determined by our cognition of the world.

Science has its special terms defined by operating laboratory devices and observing the results of experiments and measurements. Our ordinary terms are explained and understood in the same way. For Peirce, science continues with commonsense. Our everyday world is a world of believing, desiring, and conducting. Our use of words and doing things are interwoven together. Not only do believing and saying something imply that one will do something in a certain circumstance, but also the effects of our conduct determine our understanding of what we say.

Thus, Peirce’s explanation might be reformulated as follows. Take a noun or noun phrase as an example. It is conventionally used to denote an object or a set of objects, and this object is the object of our perception and operation. In the process of perception and operation, the properties of the object and its relations with other objects are captured. The meaning of the noun consists in our ideas of those properties and relations. However, our ideas cannot be private and subjective, as they should be shared by all or most normal speakers. The transition from perceptional ideas to rational purport is a thinking procedure just like those that scientists take in their search for truth. It is mainly a procedure of inference: generalization, abstraction, abduction, deduction, and induction.

It can be concluded that Peirce’s philosophy of language is in good conformity with his metaphysics, epistemology and philosophy of mind.

5 Meaning in the head

For Peirce, meaning is just in our minds or heads. He gave up the dualism of mind and body, and saw mind and the world as a seamless whole. The mainstream idea of anti-psychologism is presumably resultant from the concern that what is psychological is private, subjective, and arbitrary. This concern is based on a wrong concept of mind in which the mind is a separate, self-enclosed entity, and it might have a window through which it can see the world, but there is no way to ascertain whether the picture through the window is right. This concept of mind is the deep root of skepticism of meaning and of knowledge.

Gottlob Frege and Hilary Putnam are representatives of anti-psychologism in the philosophy of language, the difference between them being that the former postulated a third realm as the cradle of meaning, whereas the latter had no idea of a third realm. However, I think both of them have failed in their explanation of meaning when they dismissed mind, the mental, or the psychological, from consideration.

Frege divided meaning into sense and reference. The sense of an indicative sentence is a proposition or a thought, whereas its reference is Truth or Falsity (Frege 1956, 1960). Thoughts are not something in the minds of persons, but are items in the “third realm,” a timeless, eternal, and unchangeable realm beyond or above the physical and the mental (Frege 1956: 309). From his compositional principle that the meaning of a complex expression is the function of the meanings of its constituents, it follows that the sense of a name should be a concept in the third realm.

Frege’s picture of meaning is full of mysteries and inconsistencies, as I see it.

First, it is dubious in ontology. The third realm is just a wishful postulate in Frege’s mind. He offered no detailed specification of the realm. I think he could not since there is no such a realm.

Second, the postulate of the third realm leads to a number of inconsistencies. Where is truth as the reference of a sentence located? If it is located in the third realm, then both the sense and the reference would be in the third realm. If it is not located in the third realm, would Frege postulate a fourth realm because truth is neither a physical thing nor a piece of psychological entity? Frege further postulated the mind in contrast to the minds of persons (Frege 1956: 308). Where does the mind inhabit? It is not thought, but the bearer of thought. A fifth realm is thus to be postulated. The postulate of the third and perhaps more realms makes Frege’s explanation of sentences incompatible with his explanation of names. For Frege, both the sense and reference of a sentence are in the third⁺ realm, and the reference of a name is an object in the physical world. His compositional principle implies that the reference of a sentence should be a function or composition of physical objects. It follows that the composition of physical objects should be an inhabitant in the third realm. If sense determines reference, how is it possible that something in the third realm determines something else in the physical world in the case of names. Furthermore, the content of an indicative sentence can be transformed into a noun phrase. As a sentence, it denotes truth or falsity; but as a noun phrase, it denotes a physical event. Furthermore, Frege’s theory of meaning based on the third realm is fatally imperfect. He claimed that indicative and interrogative sentences express thought and therefore have senses. But imperatives do not. And Austin showed that performative utterances were neither true nor false (Austin 1979 [1961]: 234). Both imperative and performative utterances are neither true nor false, and thus do not express propositions. Since they have neither senses nor references, it follows that they have no meaning. This is an implausible consequence.

Third, it is dubious in epistemology. The third realm things have no space–time properties, and have no causal interactions with persons, so how do we get knowledge of them? By what evidence do we judge their existence? How do we specify the properties and relations of them? Frege claimed that we human beings have a special mental capacity, the power of thought, and thereby we comprehend the thought in the third realm (Frege 1956: 307). Not only is the kind of power of thought mysterious, but also a further inconsistency obtains: this sort of mental power is exactly psychological.

Fourth, Frege’s argument against psychologism is based on a wrong presupposition, the presupposition that all items belonging to the psychological realm are transitive, private, arbitrary, and subjective. This is false. Surely there are many things in the minds of persons that do conform to the above descriptions, but not all. There are a great many mental things that are stable, persistent, and shared by persons. Such are what can be communicated by language. It is indeed a mistake to subordinate logic and mathematics to psychology. But it is also a mistake to presume that psychology is the sole branch of the empirical sciences that has as its object the study of the psychological, of mental states, events, processes, and contents. When talking about the origin, cognition, change, and other aspects of logical and mathematical concepts and laws, it is inevitable to talk about our minds.

We now turn to Putnam. He contended that “meanings just ain’t in the head” (Putnam 1975: 227), but his argument is likewise not immune to inconsistency and confusion. Putnam wrote that the traditional concept of meaning “rests on a false theory” which has two unchallenged assumptions: “(1) That knowing the meaning of a term is just a matter of being in a certain psychological state […]. (2) That the meaning of a term (in the sense of ‘intension’) determines its extension (Putnam 1975: 219).” In Putnam’s treatment, Frege was placed among the proponents of a traditional theory of meaning. We have seen that Frege resolutely rejected the idea that meanings or senses are something in the mind. I believe Putnam confused “knowing the meaning of a term is so and so” with “the meaning of a term is so and so.” The state of knowing is certainly a psychological state, but few philosophers think that the meaning of a term is so.

Putnam’s argument is made by means of his lovely science fiction example, his Twin Earth fantasy. But a Twin Earth is simply empirically impossible. Or, the Twin Earth scenario is simply false. Starting from a false premise, one can argue for everything. One cannot investigate a world of pure imagination in the same detail as we investigate the real world. Putnam simply announced in haste that the Earth and Twin Earth are similar to each other from molecule to molecule, so that Earth Oscar and Twin Earth Oscar would be simply in the same psychological state when they both say “water,” and according to the scenario design, Earth water is H₂O, but Twin Earth water is XYZ, the word “water” used by the two Oscars denotes different objects (has a different meaning) although they are in the same psychological state. But if the two sorts of water are chemically different, or have different components, their chemical interaction with other objects or matter would be different, the two Earths could not be so similar as Putnam put it. Putnam has not argued for his claim, he merely supposed it when constructing the Twin Earth story in advance.

Long before Putnam and contemporary with Frege, Peirce formulated a theory of meaning and interpretation which took what is in minds into account. The clearness of understanding is warranted by conduct, by our interaction with the objects in the world. A person has a clear understanding of terms denoting familiar objects, the familiarity of which is the result of operating those objects. If the object of a term is what one has never met, one’s understanding of it would be irremediably dim.

6 Concluding remarks

Peirce’s philosophy of language is more “philosophical” than it is supposed to be. It is less a theory of what meaning is than a theory of the foundations of semantics. Mill and Frege, the representatives of traditional semantics, tried to make manifest the meaning of words in terms of connotation and denotation, or sense and reference. The disputation is whether proper names have sense. Russell took names as descriptions in disguise (Russell 1905). Putnam and Kripke insisted that names and natural kind terms simply denote objects without any intermediate (Kripke 1980 [1972]; Putnam 1975). Supposing that all of them are right, one may still be entitled to ask by virtue of what a term expresses its sense and denotes its referent. Peirce’s pragmatism is the attempt to answer this further question. Just as the title of Peirce’s 1878 article indicated, the problem is not what clear ideas are like, but rather how to make ideas clear. Peirce’s pragmatism is precisely a method of making ideas clear, a method of semantic inquiry, not confined to semantics proper. In his comprehensive framework of semiotics, to make ideas clear requires examining the interpretants and objects of corresponding linguistic signs, specifically immediate, dynamic, and logical interpretants and immediate and dynamic objects. Pragmatism as a method of accounting for meaning is the counterpart of Peirce’s method of science, as Peirce has argued (CP5. 465). It is from the methodological point of view that Peirce’s pragmatism, semiotics, and logic of inquiry are unified into a coherent system of philosophy.

Peirce’s pragmatic maxim applies to central concepts of philosophy. Take “truth” or “being true” as an example. Peirce himself interpreted truth as reality independent of personal belief, and also as the final consensus of an infinite community of inquirers. This might be the logical interpretant of the symbol “truth.” Peirce himself did not discuss the dynamic interpretant of “truth,” but took many existent beliefs as true. A compromise of Peirce’s fallibilism and anti-skepticism is to take into account three interpretants and two objects of “truth.” The dynamic interpretant of “truth” might be justified or verified belief, or current consensus, as James suggested (James 1907, 1979 [1909]). James never denied that truth is agreement with reality. Taking agreement with reality as the logical interpretant of truth and verification as the dynamic one, and noting that James saw truth as a process, we have a better understanding of pragmatism’s conception of truth. At this point, it is reasonable to say that James’ pragmatism is not a deviation from Peirce, but a development or a “substantial extension” (Pihlström 2004: 30) of Peirce’s pragmatism.