> On Jan 25, 2019, at 12:47 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt <jonalanschm...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > How should we characterize these various ways of uttering the same > Proposition? For example ... > We are going to the restaurant. > We are going to the restaurant? > We are going to the restaurant! > The only change here is the punctuation at the end, but I trust that the > reader can imagine how these three sentences would also sound quite different > when spoken, rather than written. Clearly Peirce held that these are not > three different Signs; so are they three different Types of the same Sign, or > three different _____ of the same Type? Once again, if the latter, what > fills the blank? >
Worth noting that the distinction here is of course the characteristic focus of speech act theory of John Searle. I think Peirce had a somewhat similar albeit deeper notion as well. Jarrett Brock wrote an interesting paper on Peirce’s speech act theory in Transactions back in the 80’s that I have in my notes. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40319937?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents <https://www.jstor.org/stable/40319937?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents> One can debate how close this is to Searle of course. I think unlimited semiosis undermines a lot of Searle’s particular approaches. One rather key difference as well is how Peirce conceives of propositions. Quoting Peirce, A proposition, as I have just intimated, is not to be understood as the lingual expression of a judgment. It is, on the contrary, that sign of which the judgment is one replica and the lingual expression another. But a judgment is distinctly more than the mere mental replica of a proposition. It not merely expresses the proposition, but it goes further an accepts it. I grant that the normal use of a proposition is to affirm it; and its chief logical properties relate to what would result in reference to its affirmation. (MS 517, 40-41; NEM 5.248) This is just the illocutionary act and its content. It is very important that this distinction should be understood. The various acts of assertion or assevation, judgment, denial, effective command, and teaching are acts which establish general rules by which real things will be governed. No mere icon does that, for it only signifies a character and is perfectly passive; no index does it, although it is effective in the special case. No mere proposition does it. But it is of the nature of every complete symbol that it effects a general mode of real happening. (ibid, 36-38) So I’d say there are either three different modes of meaning of the same sign.
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