Jack, allo,
The first AI-supplied quote ascribed to Peirce is accurate except for its
volume number and paragraph number. It is from CP 8.328, not CP 1.337.
QUOTE: Firstness is the mode of being of that which is such as it is,
positively and without reference to anything else. It is the realm of
possibility, quality, feeling. END QUOTE.
The other two AI-supplied quotes ascribed to Peirce seemed not quite right to
me. I'll try to address the questions of substance a little (but that's more
work!) and not just questions of textual and citational accuracy.
Now, the quote labeled as from CP 2.303 seems like it's a translation from
another language into which somebody translated Peirce.
QUOTE: “The sign depends upon its interpretant for its interpretation, and
this interpretant again is a sign, which has an interpretant of its own; so
that the process of semiosis is unlimited.”
— CP 2.303 (1903 - by AI-Source)
END QUOTE.
I can't find that wording anywhere. It's true, I think, that, for Peirce,
semiosis is structured to perpetuate itself, at least potentially. I remember
decades ago we discuissed on peirce-l whether semiosis always goes on forever;
it's a pretty strong claim to make in cenoscopy. Anyway here is what I found
in*CP 2.303*:
QUOTE:
§4. SIGN †2
2.303. Anything which determines something else (its _/interpretant_/) to
refer to an object to which itself refers (its /_object/_) in the same way, the
interpretant becoming in turn a sign, and so on _/ad infinitum/_.
No doubt, intelligent consciousness must enter into the series. If the
series of successive interpretants comes to an end, the sign is thereby
rendered imperfect, at least. If, an interpretant idea having been determined
in an individual consciousness, it determines no outward sign, but that
consciousness becomes annihilated, or otherwise loses all memory or other
significant effect of the sign, it becomes absolutely undiscoverable that there
ever was such an idea in that consciousness; and in that case it is difficult
to see how it could have any meaning to say that that consciousness ever had
the idea, since the saying so would be an interpretant of that idea.
END QUOTE.
Next quote, labeled as being from CP 2.92
QUOTE: “There is no final, or absolute, interpretant. The process of
interpretation never ceases. The semiosis is infinite.”
— CP 2.92 (1903 - by AI-Source)
END QUOTE.
I can't find that wording anywhere. It doesn't sound like Peirce to my ear.
Peirce often enough wrote of final opinion, final interpretant, and he didn't
flatly deny its reality. It's more like a regulatory ideal, but I don't want to
get technical for the time being, because I don't want to get into whether
there are 3 interpretants or 9. Anyway, I don't find the AI-supplied quote
word-for-word or approximated in CP 2.92. Here is what does appear in *CP 2.92*:
QUOTE:
Peirce: CP 2.92
92. Transuasion in its obsistent aspect, or Mediation, will be shown to be subject to
two degrees of degeneracy. Genuine mediation is the character of a _/Sign/_. A _/Sign/_
is anything which is related to a Second thing, its _/Object/_, in respect to a Quality,
in such a way as to bring a Third thing, its Interpretant, _/into relation to the same
Object, and that in such a way as to bring a Fourth into relation to that Object in the
same form/_, If the series is broken off, the Sign, in so far, falls short of the perfect
significant character. It is not necessary that the Interpretant should actually exist. A
being _in futuro_ will suffice. Signs have two degrees of Degeneracy. A Sign degenerate
in the lesser degree, is an Obsistent Sign, or _Index_, which is a Sign whose
significance of its Object is due to its having a genuine Relation to that Object,
irrespective of the Interpretant. Such, for example, is the exclamation "Hi!"
as _indicative_ of present danger, or a
rap at the door as indicative of a visitor. A Sign degenerate in the greater
degree is an Originalian Sign, or _/Icon/_, which is a Sign whose significant
virtue is due simply to its Quality. Such, for example, are imaginations of how
I would act under certain circumstances, as showing me how another man would be
likely to act. We say that the portrait of a person we have not seen is
_/convincing/_. So far as, on the ground merely of what I see in it, I am led
to form an idea of the person it represents, it is an Icon. But, in fact, it is
not a pure Icon, because I am greatly influenced by knowing that it is an
_/effect/_, through the artist, caused by the original's appearance, and is
thus in a genuine Obsistent relation to that original. Besides, I know that
portraits have but the slightest resemblance to their originals, except in
certain conventional respects, and after a conventional scale of values, etc. A
Genuine Sign is a Transuasional Sign, or _/Symbol/_, which
is a sign which owes its significant virtue to a character which can only be
realized by the aid of its Interpretant. Any utterance of speech is an example.
If the sounds were originally in part iconic, in part indexical, those
characters have long since lost their importance. The words only stand for the
objects they do, and signify the qualities they do, because they will
determine, in the mind of the auditor, corresponding signs. The importance of
the above divisions, although they are new, has been acknowledged by all
logicians who have seriously considered them. . .
END QUOTE.
The ellipsis is as it appears at the end of CP 2.92.
Best, Ben
On 7/27/2025 9:57 AM, Jack Cody wrote:
Speaking of the past—and here I may depart from orthodoxy among Peirce
scholars—I do not consider Peirce’s system to be a literal description of the
world as it is, but rather a model for understanding consciousness. I realize
this may be rejected outright, but I cannot help but interpret it in this way.
When it comes to time—past, present, future—I read Peirce’s categories not as
fixed ontological boundaries, but as phenomenological modalities of temporal
consciousness. That is, I see time in Peirce much like I see it in quantum
theory: not as a clean succession of fixed states, but as an ongoing process of
semiotic determination. Peirce’s account of the categories—Firstness (quality
of feeling), Secondness (reaction or brute fact), and Thirdness (law or
mediation)—already admits a model of continuity that resists closure:
“Firstness is the mode of being of that which is such as it is, positively
and without reference to anything else. It is the realm of possibility,
quality, feeling.”
— CP 1.337 (1885 - by AI-Source).
In Peirce’s semiosis, the sign is not static: it unfolds through a process of
interpretation, where the Interpretant alters and extends the meaning of a
given sign. In this way, the sign is not an object, but a relational function
across time. Similarly, in quantum terms, the act of measurement—or
interpretation—collapses a possibility space into a particular state, but never
exhausts it. This is why, for example, a sign that emerges twenty years later
may retroactively restructure the significance of a prior event. The past is
made newly legible through present interpretation.
This is consistent with Peirce’s claim that semiosis is infinite and that
interpretants are themselves signs, capable of being interpreted again:
“The sign depends upon its interpretant for its interpretation, and this
interpretant again is a sign, which has an interpretant of its own; so that the
process of semiosis is unlimited.”
— CP 2.303 (1903 - by AI-Source)
As such, what we call "the past" is not determined once and for all, because it
remains open to revision by future interpretants. If the past were fully determinate,
then the most basic acts of reinterpretation, revision, or understanding would be
impossible.
This same structure is evident in the quantum method I use. In my deductive
framework, I describe recursive systems (S₁, S₂, …) as semiotic phases: each
invocation of S₁ alters it, such that S₁ becomes S₁′, and then S₁″, and so on.
It is never the same state again. This is not merely metaphorical—each call
alters the relational state space, just as each interpretive act in semiosis
transforms the “meaning” of the sign.
Only when S₁/S₁′ (S₁″… S₁ⁿ) is no longer invoked at all can we say that the past
configuration has truly ceased to be—no longer semeiotically active. In network or
systems theory, that point can be modeled through thresholds of signal collapse or
feedback saturation. But in consciousness or human reality, it is far less clear: the
"end" of a sign’s activity is not determined ontologically, but
functionally—whether or not it continues to be invoked.
This is in line with Peirce’s theory that semiosis is never complete. There is
no final interpretant “in this life”—and perhaps not even “in the next”:
“There is no final, or absolute, interpretant. The process of
interpretation never ceases. The semiosis is infinite.”
— CP 2.92 (1903 - by AI-Source)
A sign, like a quantum state, may lie dormant, but not concluded.
In that light, semiosis is akin to the quantum structure I devised (states and
call-backs) in that each is recursive, reinterpreting, historically contingent, and
indeterminate until it isn’t. What we take to be “the past” is, surely, that which may be
called upon within the present at any given moment (or otherwise we cannot even cite said
"past").
I must add, here, that owing to my relative "novice" status within this list I
have had to program an AI to grab Peirce quotations where I think they may or may not fit
but the message: I think it important to clarfy such things these days. As many of you
may or may not know, my own work is moving in divergent areas so I am trying much more,
these days, to find some common ground within the Peircean corpus. It's something that
must be addresssed, by me, personally, at any rate, for me to advance my other work and
thus this community is very helpful (in its agreements and disagreements).
(I add, think Marcel Proust and the cake — for those literary inclined among
us).
Best,
Jack
________________________________
From:[email protected] <[email protected]> on behalf of Jon
Alan Schmidt<[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, July 26, 2025 10:28 PM
To: Peirce-L<[email protected]>
Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Time and Semiosis (was Semiosic Ontology)
Gary F., List:
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