g...@gnusystems.ca wrote:
To complete Peirce’s first trichotomy of sign types in NDTR, where the division is according to the nature of “the sign in itself” (rather than according to its relations to Object and Interpretant), we consider the sign which “is a general law” (CP 2.243).
CP 2.246: A Legisign is a law that is a Sign. This law is usually established by men. Every conventional sign is a legisign. It is not a single object, but a general type which, it has been agreed, shall be significant.
[Here we should (as Peirce did later) “notice a source of possible confusion. By a “General Sign,” or a “General Term,” we do not, in the ordinary language of Logic, … mean that the Sign itself is General: we only mean that its Object is so” (CP 8.356). Thus the generality of a Legisign (later called by Peirce a Type or Famisign) is different from that of a logical term, although the latter is necessarily also a legisign. The Legisign is general not because its utterer leaves it up to its interpreter to select its actual object (though it may do that), but because it is “something that exists in replicas” (EP2:311). Continuing 246:]
Every legisign signifies through an instance of its application, which may be termed a Replica of it. Thus, the word “the” will usually occur from fifteen to twenty-five times on a page. It is in all these occurrences one and the same word, the same legisign. Each single instance of it is a Replica. The Replica is a Sinsign. Thus, every Legisign requires Sinsigns. But these are not ordinary Sinsigns, such as are peculiar occurrences that are regarded as significant. Nor would the Replica be significant if it were not for the law which renders it so.
[Here Peirce makes a distinction between two types of Sinsigns, as he did earlier between two types of Qualisigns (see previous post, below). There are “ordinary” Sinsigns, such as “peculiar occurrences that are regarded as significant,” and there are also Sinsigns which are “not ordinary,” such as the Replicas of Legisigns. Thus the arrangement of pixels appearing on the screen before you as “the” would be meaningless if it were not a Replica of the word “the,” which is a Legisign. A Sinsign like a thundercrack, on the other hand, can mean that an electrical storm is in progress without being a Replica of a Legisign — or an eclipse of the sun can portend disaster, for some interpreters, even though there is no necessary connection between solar eclipses and disasters.]
To be continued with the next trichotomy …
Gary f.
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From: g...@gnusystems.ca [mailto:g...@gnusystems.ca]
Sent: 3-Dec-15 11:32
Moving on to the first trichotomy of sign types in “Nomenclature and Divisions of Triadic Relations”:
CP 2.244: According to the first division, a Sign may be termed a Qualisign, a Sinsign, or a Legisign.
A Qualisign is a quality which is a Sign. It cannot actually act as a sign until it is embodied; but the embodiment has nothing to do with its character as a sign.
[As a Sign, this “quality” must be a correlate of a triadic relation with its Object and Interpretant, “by which triadic relation the possible Interpretant is determined to be the First Correlate of the same triadic relation to the same Object, and for some possible Interpretant” (CP 2.242). Yet it cannot act as a sign until it is embodied, i.e. until it becomes involved in at least a dyadic relation, and thus enters the universe of existence. Yet its significance is its quality (not its embodiment), and qualities being monadic, there is no real difference between Sign and Object (or Interpretant either). So I think we might call this a doubly degenerate kind of triadic relation, where the Sign is virtually self-representing, and self-determining as its own Interpretant. Compare the “self-sufficient” point on a map which Peirce offers as an example of doubly degenerate Thirdness in his third Harvard Lecture, EP2:162.) Or, since this degeneracy is relative, we can say that the Qualisign is degenerate relative to the Sinsign and to the Legisign (just as the Icon is degenerate relative to the Index and the genuine Symbol, according to Peirce in both the third Harvard lecture of 1903 and “New Elements” of 1904).
On the other hand, some semioticians say that all ten of the sign types defined in NDTR, including the Qualisign, are genuine Signs. This flags a possible ambiguity in the concepts of genuine and degenerate; and possibly this problem is related to the concepts of embodiment, just introduced, and of involvement, which is introduced in the next paragraph:]
245. A Sinsign (where the syllable sin is taken as meaning “being only once,” as in single, simple, Latin semel, etc.) is an actual existent thing or event which is a sign. It can only be so through its qualities; so that it involves a qualisign, or rather, several qualisigns. But these qualisigns are of a peculiar kind and only form a sign through being actually embodied.
[Evidently it is the involvement of qualisigns in a Sinsign — which, I suppose, constitutes their embodiment — that makes them “peculiar,” because a “normal” Qualisign is disembodied (and does not act as a Sign). But perhaps this will be clarified by the definition of Legisign, which I’ll leave for the next post.]
Gary f.
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