Volume 2019, Issue 228 -

Here we describe Peircean post-1903 semiosis as a processualist conception of meaning, and relate it to contemporary active externalism in Philosophy of Cognitive Science, especially through the notion of cognitive niche construction. In particular, we shall consider the possibility of integrating (a) the understanding of “semiosis as process” within Peirce’s mature semiotics with (b) an elaboration of the concept of cognitive niche from the point of view of niche construction theory and process biology research.

Peirce holds that our logic should be the basis for our metaphysics. He also thinks that facts and propositions are structurally isomorphic. However, unlike many theorists who take propositions such as snow is white and grass is green as their paradigmatic examples, Peirce takes it rains (Latin: pleurit ) and similar propositions as his paradigmatic examples. I explore how his analysis of such propositions and the way in which they convey meaning becomes more complex from 1895 to 1909, how this impacts his metaphysics, and how he can claim that something like the common environment of two interlocutors can itself be an index.

This paper offers a selective but reasonably representative reconstruction of the evolution of Peirce’s “speech acts theory” across different, consecutive versions of speculative grammar. It examines Peirce’s pre-1903 theory of assertion, the Syllabus (1903) and “Καινὰ στοιχεῖα” (c. 1904), and reconstructs Peirce’s speech-act-oriented semiotic classifications after 1904.

Peirce’s semiotics is a formal doctrine of signs. As such, semiotics “would be concerned, in part, to determine the conditions for counting anything as true” (Liszka 1996: 2). Sometimes, semiotics is reduced to its first branch, speculative grammar, which concerns the classification of signs. However, critic and methodeutic are fundamental to guarantee the accuracy of the semiotic process. Critic gives “the conditions which determine the reasoning to be secure” (c.1902, CP 2.1) and methodeutic is the “study of the necessary conditions of the transmission of meaning by signs from mind to mind” (c.1897, CP 1.444). When we observe the system of sixty-six sign classes, we can find a method that provides confidence in the reasoning process. That means we can find classes of signs that represent critic and methodeutic in this system. The set of symbolic signs are the core of this process. In this paper, I will examine the interpretants of symbolic signs in order to describe the production of interpretants that increase the level of confidence in reasoning, contributing to the evolution of thought. The system of sixty-six sign classes provides a more complex set of interpretants, which might show the relation between the three branches of semiotics.

The purpose of this article is to explore the concept of diagram and diagrammatic reasoning involving semiotics in its three branches and not only in speculative grammar. We will concentrate on the apprehension of the movement of reasoning, which diagrammatically begins with speculative grammar, runs through critical logic, and consolidates at methodeutics. We seek to apply the trichotomic logic of Peirce to list the modes of reasoning with diagrams. Our intention is to move away from the categorization as taxonomy, and try to understand how sign classes can be used in the inferential process. Thus, considering a possible relationship between the hypoicon, the three classes of iconic signs in the system of ten classes of signs, and the methods of inference, we suggest three subclasses of diagrams in inferential terms that may offer a grading system, which would present degrees of accuracy or probative capacity.

In his semiotic system Peirce distinguished between two interpretants and two objects of a sign: an immediate and a dynamical interpretant, and an immediate and a dynamical object. It is argued that Peirce’s immediate object can be interpreted a qua-object which has the dynamical object as its basis, and the dynamical interpretant consists of an interpreter’s conception of the object of the sign. Peirce semiotic system is compared with the accounts given by Frege, Husserl, Meinong, and the Stoics.

My goal in this essay is not to investigate the sources, systematic applications, extensions, or coherence of Peirce’s admittedly fragmentary remarks on aesthetics, tasks that have been undertaken by others. Rather, I want, with both historical and systematic intent, to draw attention to some important links between Dewey’s aesthetic use of Peirce’s theory of quality and the remarkable, albeit not thematic, reconstitution in Dewey’s explicitly experiential or perception based aesthetics of central Peircean distinctions and typologies that bear upon the putative aesthetic importance of the divide between Peirce’s early and late theory of signs. In order to give concreteness to the discussion, practicing a kind of method of exemplification, I examine some engagements with art works where the analytical concepts are brought into play. My approach has, as a result, two blades: an upper blade in the form of a theoretical prelude and a lower blade in the form of an analytical staging of some powerful aesthetic encounters in light of the themes outlined in the theoretical prelude.

Establishing the correct order of trichotomies in Peirce’s projected ten-division typology of 1908 has been a preoccupation of Peirce scholars since at least 1945. Most seem to assume that the same phenomenological framework was adopted by Peirce in all his classification systems from 1903 to 1908 and that these ten divisions form a homogeneous set. The paper examines the status of typologies in Peirce’s semiotics and, by comparing two hexads of divisions from 1904 and 1908, shows how the theoretical framework of each was based upon entirely different principles.

Attempts to explain Peirce’s various classifications of signs have been a preoccupation of many Peirce scholars. Opinions are mixed about the sense, coherence, and fruitfulness of Peirce’s various versions, particularly the latter ones. I argue here that it is not a fruitful enterprise, even if sense could be made of them. Although Peirce makes his motivations for the classification of the sciences fairly explicit, it’s hard to find Peirce’s reasons for sign classification. More importantly, I try to make the case that such classifications are premised on a reductionist framework of semiosis that is contrary to the irreducible triadic character of signs that Peirce otherwise espouses. The reductionism is the result of Peirce’s use of certain models for his sign classifications, in particular, Mendeleev’s periodic table. I suggest that the remedy for the reductionism is to re-emphasize the processual and functional view of semiosis, rather than to focus on particular classes of signs. Corresponding to the three triadic conditions of semiosis, I argue that signs function to inform, represent or refer, and interpret, and that understanding these three function and how they interrelate may prove to be a more fruitful approach to sign analysis than sign classification.

The formal analysis of the principles leading the classification of the hexadic, decadic, and triadic signs from C. S. Peirce especially, gives rise to a general methodology allowing to systematically classify any n -adic combinatory named “protosign.” Basic concepts of the algebraic theory regarding the categories and functors will be used. That formalization provides an additional benefit by highlighting and systematizing formal immanent relationships between the classes of protosigns (or signs). Well known hierarchical structures (lattices) are then obtained. Thanks to the contribution of specific concepts in the Homological Algebra, new methodologies of analysis and creation of significations can be introduced.

This paper presents an account of how Peirce’s Universal Categories (UCs) of perception and experience may, as heuristic principles, inform gesture theory and multimodal analysis. Peirce’s UCs – Firstness (possibility), Secondness (actuality), and Thirdness (law, habit) – constitute the core of his phenomenology and thus also the foundation of his triadic semiotics. I argue that compared to the basic sign-object relations icon, index, symbol mainly used in previous gesture research, the more fundamental UCs allow one to discern additional facets of how coverbal gestures act as signs. This notably pertains to the phenomenology, multidimensionality, and multifunctionality of gesture. The guiding assumption is that compared to Thirdness-laden linguistic symbols constituting written, spoken or signed discourses, gestures may exhibit the UCs to more strongly varying degrees and in different, modality-specific ways. The multimodal analyses discussed in the paper show how Firstness tends to draw attention to the articulatory qualities of gestural signs, including aesthetic and affective strata, Secondness to their experiential grounding and contextualized meaning, and Thirdness to embodied habits of perceiving, feeling, (inter-)acting, thinking, and communicating with others. I further suggest that particularly through interacting with embodied image schemata and force dynamics, such habits may give rise to flexible regularities and schematicity in gesture.

The paper begins with a survey of the state of the art in multimodal research, an international trend in applied semiotics, linguistics, and media studies, and goes on to compare its approach to verbal and nonverbal signs to Charles S. Peirce’s approach to signs and their classification. The author introduces the concept of transmodality to characterize the way in which Peirce’s classification of signs reflects the modes of multimodality research and argues that Peirce’s classification of the signs takes modes and modalities in two different respects into consideration, (1) from the perspective of the sign and (2) from the one of its interpretant. While current research in multimodality has its focus on the (external) sign in a communicative process, Peirce considers additionally the multimodality of the interpretants, i.e., the mental icons and indexical scenarios evoked in the interpreters’ minds. The paper illustrates and comments on the Peircean method of studying the multi and transmodality of signs in an analysis of Peirce’s close reading of Luke 19:30 in MS 599, Reason’s Rules , of c. 1902. As a sign, this text is “monomodal” insofar as it consists of printed words only. The study shows in which respects the interpretants of this text evince trans and multimodality.

Peirce aspired for the completeness of his logic cum the theory of signs in his 1903 Lowell Lectures and other late manuscripts. Semeiotic completeness states that everything that is a consequence in logical critic is derivable in speculative grammar. The present paper exposes the reasons why Peirce would fall short of establishing semeiotic completeness and thus why he would not continue seeking a perfect match between the theories of grammar and critic. Some alternative notions are then proposed.

It is curious facts that Peirce scholars tends to take the three Peircean categories for granted, whereas Peirce himself claimed they must be derived by means of phenomenology, later rebaptized phaneroscopy. As I have suggested elsewhere, this is the essential difference between Peircean and Husserlean phenomenology, which are in other respects identical, whether or not there is a historical connection. I have tried to show that the meanings of the three categories, so differently epitomized in Peirce’s numerous writings, can (more or less) be reduced to common denominators. Quite independently of this, I suggested in some earlier work that, by taking our point of departure in Peirce’s notion of “ground” as being that which differentiates the different kinds of signs, we can account for iconicity, indexicality, and symbolicity, quite apart from their embodiment in signs. The task of the present paper is to investigate to what extent this two threesomes can be related to each other.

This article offers an interpretation of Peirce’s pan-semeiotic view of the universe. According to Peirce, the entire universe is composed of signs or processes of signification (see for example CP 5.448 footnote). The consequence of this can be seen as twofold: processes of signification have a naturalistic foundation and the universe has an inherent semeiotic character. Peirce understands the universe as depending on the relationship between things, which can become signs and signs, can only become interpreted by other signs and so on ad infinitum (CP 8.191; see also Fisch 1986). Furthermore, man himself is a symbol, says Peirce, and, of course, the cultures of which he is a member must also be interpenetrated and work by the logic of signs. Hence, universe, man, and culture come together because of the sign relation having a rationale in a strong ontology. Or put in other words: Peirce’s sign is truly general and ontological and he sees continuity wherever he looks and for him there is no absolute separation between the processes of the universe, the existence of man, and culture mediating between the first mentioned. Peirce himself did not, however, to the best of our knowledge, explicitly unfold this semeiotic relationship between universe, man, and culture, and the aim of the following is to show a glimpse of this semeiotic relationship also remembering, to some extent, the ontological rationale it purports to yield with its metaphysical synechism. We see the glimpse of the relationship between universe, man, and culture from Peirce’s three sign trichotomies of 1903 where we find some of his most mature thoughts concerning semeiotic.

Taking its point of departure in the origin of the notions of “diagram” and “iconicity” in Peirce’s philosophy of logic, this paper reviews and discusses a series of dimensions along which such diagrams may be compared, measured and subdivided: diagrams versus images and metaphors, operational versus optimal iconicity in diagrams, diagram tokens versus diagram types, diagrams as general signs; corollarial versus theorematic diagram reasoning; pure versus applied diagrams; logic diagrams versus diagrams facilitating logical inferences; continuous versus discontinuous diagrams; diagrams in non-deductive reasoning. Most of these developments occur in the mature Peirce after the turn of the century and thus form an important part of his mature semiotics – yet, they do not relate in any simple or straight-forward manner to his attempts at enlarging his combinatorial semiotics from its bases in the three-trichotomy theory of the 1903 Syllabus over the six-trichotomy theory of 1904–1906 to the sketchlike ten-trichotomy version of 1908, where diagrams rarely figure in the names of sign-types discussed – why?

This inquiry capitalizes on the relational character of Peirce’s index. Its evolution from object finder in the physical world, to enhancer of communication between minds, to modal/perspectival coordinator is examined. Its relational character organizes events into episodes, and obviates perspectival alterations in dialogic reasoning. This shift demonstrates Peirce’s last word regarding Index: a sign intrinsically dialogic, whose interpretants increase levels of consciousness, and advance communicational interaction by commanding self/others to believe/act in novel ways. Its power to coordinate specific, vivid images provides index with the means to suggest novel propositions, assertions, and arguments. Peirce memorializes this relational role by characterizing index as Dicisign, and afterward as Pheme (1904, CP 8.334–8.339; 1906, MS 295: 26; 1908, EP 2: 489–490). As truncated Argument, Index provides the catalyst for interpreters to determine the meaning of interpretants be they Energetic, Logical or Final. Its non-symbolic character provides interpreters the impetus to utilize inferencing powers to attach meanings, thus expanding kinds of interpretants. Index constitutes the most diverse semiotic tool for interpreters – it traces subtle deontic, epistemic, and logical shifts. In situating and resituating events in time, place, and participatedness, Index aptly measures actual and potential shifts in affect, attention, location, credibility, and the like. Ultimately, index integrates the logical with the phenomenological and the empirical with the semiotic – when it deploys relational operators to trace event templates and to predict participant’s perspectives. As such, interpreters restructure thought and action and recommend sound courses of action for diverse event participants.