Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes

of Signs and the Philosophy

of Representation
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Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes
of Signs and the Philosophy of
Representation
Rhetoric, Interpretation and
Hexadic Semiosis

Tony Jappy
 BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
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Title: Peirce’s twenty-eight classes of signs and thephilosophy of
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 Contents

List of Figures vi
List of Tables viii
Acknowledgements ix
Abbreviations x

Introduction 1

1 The Philosophy of Representation 7

2 The Transition 39
3 The Sign-Systems of 1908 75
4 Rhetorical Concerns 107
5 Interpretation, Worldviews and the Object 143

Conclusion 175

Appendix 179
Notes 189
References 202
Index 207
 List of Figures

Figure 1.1 The continuous nature of semiosis as conceived in

1902 23
Figure 1.2 Extract from R339, 239v (H450) 31
Figure 1.3 Cheyne Walk, London, © Museum of London
Picture Library. 33
Figure 1.4 At the Summer Palace 34
Figure 2.1 The six divisions of 1904 49
Figure 2.2 Artist, model and representation, Adobe Stock. 57
Figure 2.3 Hypothetical reconstruction of the hexad in the
1906 draft 62
Figure 3.1 The determination order of the correlates involved in
semiosis. 86
Figure 3.2 The typologies of 1903 and 1908 compared 102
Figure 4.1 Sign-action as conceived in 1903 112
Figure 4.2 The hypoiconicity of a sign with image structure 113
Figure 4.3 The hypoiconicity of a sign with diagram structure 113
Figure 4.4 The hypoiconicity of a sign with metaphor structure 114
Figure 4.5 The metaphorical structure of the sign I slaughtered the
sheriff 115
Figure 4.6 Train wreck at Montparnasse, 1895, Wikimedia
Commons 121
Figure 4.7 An image of domestic violence, Adobe Stock 127
Figure 4.8 Jerry Uelsmann, Symbolic Mutation, 1961, Courtesy
of the artist 127
Figure 4.9 The pictorial parallelism in Symbolic Mutation 128
Figure 4.10 John Goto, Flower Seller, 2002, Courtesy of the artist 130
Figure 4.11 Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #14, 1978, Courtesy of
the artist, Sprüth Magers and Metro Pictures, New York 133
Figure 5.1 Emanuel Leutze, Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its
Way, 1862, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest
of Sara Carr Upton 1931.6.1 160
 List of Figures vii

Figure 5.2 Frances Flora Bond Palmer, Across the Continent.

Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way, 1868,
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Hand-colored lithograph,
Image: 17 5/8 × 27 1/4 inches (44.8 × 69.2 cm)
Sheet: 21 5/16 × 30 1/8 inches (54.1 × 76.5 cm), Gift of Kathy
and Ted Fernberger, 2009 2009-215-2 162
Figure 5.3 John Gast, American Progress, 1872, Prints and
Photographs Division, Library of Congress 163
Figure 5.4 John William Waterhouse, ‘“I am half sick of shadows,”
said The Lady of Shalott’ (Alfred, Lord Tennyson,
The Lady of Shalott, Part II), 1915, oil on canvas, Overall:
100.3 × 73.7 cm (39 ½ × 29 in.) Art Gallery of Ontario,
Gift of Mrs. Philip B. Jackson, 1971, 71/18,
© 2016 Art Gallery of Ontario 166
Figure 5.5 Richard Redgrave, The Outcast, 1851, © Royal Academy
of Arts, London; Photographer: John Hammond 167
Figure 5.6 A crowd walking peacefully through a French town 169
 List of Tables

Table 1.1 Peirce’s Trichotomy of Representamens, 1867

19
Table 1.2 A Synthesis of MSS R478 and R540, 1903 31
Table 2.1 The typology of August 1904? 45
Table 2.2 The six-division typology of October 1904 48
Table 2.3 The typology of 13 October 1905 53
Table 2.4 The typology of 31 March 1906 64
Table 2.5 A tabular summary of objects, signs and interpretants
from R318 72
Table 3.1 The 1904 hexad of division set out in ‘cyclical’ correlate order 77
Table 3.2 A reconstruction of the 1908 hexad of divisions yielding
twenty-eight classes of signs 86
Table 3.3 Division order in typologies from 1903–04 to 1908, with some
interpretant series standardized to Ii, Id and If 92
Table 3.4 Hypothetical correlate classification of the noun beauty 93
Table 4.1 A synthesis of MSS R478 and R540 (1903)
showing the hypoicons 111
Table 4.2 A reconstruction of the 23 December 1908 hexadic typology 118
Table A.1 August 1904? 180
Table A.2 7 August 1904 181
Table A.3 8 October 1905 182
Table A.4 8 October 1905 183
Table A.5 9 October 1905 185
Table A.6 13 October 1905 186
Table A.7 31 March 1906 187
Table A.8 31 August 1906 188
 Acknowledgements

Although this is not a book on visual semiotics, I have employed visuals as

illustrations of many of the points made in the text, and so I would like to
thank the following for having permitted me to reproduce their marvellous
images: Jerry Uelsmann for his photographic metaphor, John Goto for his ironic
photographic tableau, and Cindy Sherman and her agents Sprüth Magers and
Metro Pictures, New York, for the use of film still #14.
I would also like to thank the following institutions for their enlightened
policy towards the reproduction of their images for academic purposes: The
Royal Academy of Arts, London, the Prints and Photographs Division of
the Library of Congress, Washington, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the
Smithsonian American Art Museum; thanks, too, to The Art Gallery of Ontario
and the Museum of London Picture Library.
For generously allowing me to use copyright material from Peirce’s
correspondence in the text I am also indebted to Professor Kenneth Laine
Ketner, of the Institute for Studies in Pragmaticism, Texas Tech University,
and to the Editor-in-Chief and the Managing Editor of Language and Semiotic
Studies (Vol. 1, No. 4, 2015) for permission to use material previously published
in their journal in Chapter 5. Thanks, too, to Professor André de Tienne, of the
Peirce Edition Project, for information concerning referencing conventions for
the Peirce manuscripts.
I should like to express my gratitude, too, to my commissioning editor, Andrew
Wardell, at Bloomsbury, for his patience, advice and constant availability during
the preparation of the manuscript, and to Paul Bouissac, the series general
editor, for having given me a second opportunity to canvass new ideas. None of
the aforementioned can in any way be held accountable for these ideas: they are
my sole responsibility. Finally, heartfelt thanks, too, to F., for the foot (again!),
the food, and the inestimable patience and moral support.
 Abbreviations

Primary Peirce sources are referenced in the text by letters in brackets as follows:
Peirce, Charles S. (1931–1958), Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 8
Volumes, Hartshorne, Charles, Paul Weiss and Arthur W. Burks (eds.),
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (CP)
Peirce, Charles S. ([1940] 2011), Philosophical Writings of Peirce, Buchler, J. (ed.),
New York: Dover. (B)
Peirce, Charles S. (1976), The New Elements of Mathematics, Volume Four:
Mathematical Philosophy, Eisele, C. (ed.), The Hauge: Mouton. (NEM4)
Peirce, Charles S. and V. Welby-Gregory (1977), Semiotic and Significs: The
Correspondence between C. S. Peirce and Victoria Lady Welby, Hardwick, C. S.
(ed.), Bloomington: Indiana University Press. (SS)
Peirce, Charles S. (1982), Fisch, M. et al. (eds.), The Writings of Charles S. Peirce,
Volume 1: 1857–1866, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. (W)
Peirce Charles. S. (1992), The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings,
Volume 1: 1867–1893, Houser, N. and C. Kloesel (eds.), Bloomington: Indiana
University Press. (EP1)
Peirce, Charles S. (1998), The Essential Peirce, Volume 2, Peirce Edition Project
(eds.), Bloomington: Indiana University Press. (EP2)

Peirce’s manuscripts are referenced by their number in the Robin Catalogue (e.g.
R339, which is the manuscript of Peirce’s Logic Notebook). For the interested
reader there exists an online version of this particular document:
Peirce Logic Notebook, Charles Sanders Peirce Papers MS Am 1632 (339).
Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., at this address:
http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:FHCL.Hough:3686182 Accessed March 2016.
Note that owing to the placement of editorial matter at the beginning of the
file the Houghton sequence numbers don’t correspond to the page numbers of
the manuscript. I have therefore included the Houghton sequence number in
brackets after the page reference. For example, the reference to page 285r in the
Logic Notebook appears in the text as R339 285r (H534).
The Oxford English Dictionary is referred to in the text as OED.
 Abbreviations xi

Correlates in the definitions of triadic and hexadic relations are abbreviated

in the text in bold:

Sign S Dynamic Object Od

Representamen R Immediate Interpretant Ii
Object O Dynamic Interpretant Id
Interpretant I Final Interpretant If
Immediate Object Oi Relations: S–O, S–I etc.
 Introduction

Among many others two reasons for undertaking this study stand out, one
anecdotal in origin, the other rather predictably academic. In a seminar one
day, in a discussion of the difference between a legisign and a replica by means
of one of Peirce’s favourite examples, the English definite article, a very sharp
student raised her hand and asked what sort of object the definite article
represented, given that a sign is defined in part as something that represents
an object. A rule? A law? But what sorts of objects were these? This, it seemed
to me, was a very pertinent question in the circumstances. But it was one
which began to bother me – how did we know what sorts of objects were
represented by the classes of signs I was describing? The system that I had
been presenting to these students defined the sign and two sorts of relations
into which it entered very precisely, but it was not designed to detect any
sort of object, and most researchers are content to recycle examples given by
Peirce himself. Identifying the object, then, a task which we accomplish over
and over again every minute of our lives, became a problem that required
further research, but this meant looking beyond the three-division system I
was describing.
The second reason came from a more conventional source. Writing in the
Introduction to The Essential Peirce, Volume One, Nathan Houser, the doyen
of Peirce scholars, recognizing that Peirce had been unable to complete the
classification of the sixty-six signs he had posited within his general theory, set
out a programme for semiotic theorists in the form of the following statement:
‘Perhaps in our present state of understanding of language and semiosis we have
no need for such complexity [sixty-six classes of signs] – just as we once had no
need for relativity physics – but where principal distinctions can be made, they
should be made, and, in any case, they will probably someday be needed’ (1992:
xxxviii).
2 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

The programme

The present study, then, is a contribution to that programme, but instead of

adopting as its scope the principal distinctions required for the ten divisions
yielding the sixty-six classes, it is restricted to six of those ten divisions, which,
when correctly combined, theoretically yield twenty-eight such classes. Both
the six-division and ten-division systems were Peirce’s final statements on the
classification of signs, and the viability of any attempt to establish the correct
ordering of either series of divisions is conditioned by stages in their evolution.
In this we follow what Peirce considered to be key to our understanding of the
development of Plato’s thought: ‘everything depends upon the chronology’.1
Consequently, the principle informing the restricted and therefore more feasible
part of the larger programme adopted in the study is that what is true of our
appreciation of Plato’s dialogues will also be true of Peirce’s theory of signs,
and for this reason in the chapters to come a chronological approach has been
adopted.
However, there is a drawback both to the larger programme outlined by
Houser and to the less ambitious one undertaken here. Peirce spent nearly half
a century developing his various contributions to logic and philosophy, and yet
the later statements characterizing these contributions are still only available
in a piecemeal fashion. Now the greater part of the research reported in the
pages to follow deals necessarily with Peirce’s later semiotic theory, namely the
period following the course of lectures he gave on logic at the Lowell Institute
in Boston in 1903. It is rather sobering, then, to have to admit that much of
the most interesting material from 1904 and after not only comes from largely
unpublished manuscripts and from letters, but even from drafts of letters. These
in particular contain some of the most illuminating semiotic material that Peirce
produced, but the fact that they were never sent confers on the enterprise an
unavoidably ‘but what-if ’, hypothetical character. If the Writings2 had reached
the period from 1903 to 1910 there would be no problem. They haven’t, and so
the present study is also an attempt to present some of the semiotic riches of this
period in spite of the difficulties induced by this editorial handicap.
We know from the available documents that Peirce struggled to finalize the
late sign-systems in 1908, and even now, over a century later, there is still no
consensus as to how the ten divisions they projected should be arranged, or
even as to the viability of such an enterprise in spite of its being a necessity,
as Houser has noted. Some authorities, Weiss and Burks (1945), for example,
have proposed a reordering of Peirce’s original scheme. Others, like Spinks
 Introduction 3

(1991), have claimed that the task of identifying the sixty-six classes is, if not
impossible, counterproductive.3 Yet others, more circumspect, like Liszka
(1996), have suggested that in view of the incomplete and disparate nature of
the available data, it is more prudent to concentrate on the three-division system
Peirce announced in 1903.4 But perhaps the most significant comment on the
problematic nature of the more complex of the late systems and on the need of
a research programme of the sort mentioned by Houser is that of another noted
Peirce scholar, Thomas Short:
For all the enthusiasm that Peirce’s later taxonomy has elicited, with its promise
of a vast system, an endlessly ramifying formal structure that applies everywhere
and to everything, close examination of it disappoints. It is sketchy, tentative,
and, as best I can make out, incoherent. Its importance lies not in what it contains
but in the kind of project it defines. That project has not yet been adopted by any
of Peirce’s devotees. (2007: 259–60)

Other authorities, Savan (1988) and Shapiro (1983), for instance, have indeed
attempted to characterize the later typologies and identify some of their defining
features. Nevertheless, Short’s rather extreme statement clearly describes the
sorry condition in which Peirce’s final statements on signs find themselves
within the Peirce community, even now, some ninety-odd years after Ogden and
Richards first brought them to the attention of the public in the ten pages devoted
to Peirce in their Appendix D (1923: 279–90). It is precisely the purpose of the
present study to take up the ‘project’ mentioned by Short, but the emphasis will
be less on how best to order those later divisions as on how coherent at least one
of the two systems announced in 1908 can be shown to be. As the title suggests,
the study develops two interrelated themes: the late 28-class sign-systems and a
‘philosophy of representation’; but in doing so it also investigates the evolving
logical status of Peirce’s object.
To begin with, it should be noted that in what follows the term ‘sign-systems’
refers both to the definition of semiosis – the complex process in which the
sign participates together with the object it represents and the effects that it
produces – and to the typologies which were derived from it. All of Peirce’s
definitions of the sign in 1903 and earlier were triadic in nature, whereas in the
period after 1904 they came to be defined as effectively involving six elements. In
this respect the year 1903 constitutes a sort of theoretical watershed, and the late
sign-systems are therefore those established after 1903 and based upon the more
complex definition of sign-action. As it happens, the ten divisions of the ‘later
taxonomy’ mentioned by Short which should, theoretically, yield sixty-six classes
of signs also include the very six from which twenty-eight can be obtained. This
4 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

being the case, one approach to a better understanding of the ordering problem
is to investigate the specificity of the six-division system before attempting to
master its more complex companion. By isolating characteristics of this simpler
typology and then comparing and contrasting them with the remaining divisions
of the 66-class system we might gain a greater understanding of how they differ
and, consequently, of how better to integrate the two, should this prove to be
theoretically possible.
There is, however, an even more compelling reason for examining the 28-class
system (which, apparently, Peirce referred to only once, namely in a letter to his
English correspondent, Lady Victoria Welby), an enterprise that so far has been
overshadowed by discussions of the more complex typology. Investigating the
simpler system as an independent, ‘stand-alone’ instrument for the identification
and classification of signs will also make it possible to exploit its analytical
power, which, if only in terms of the greater number of different types of signs
it identifies, must surely have a theoretical potential not possessed by the earlier
10-class system of 1903. One innovative aspect of this particular taxonomy is
to be found, for example, in the fact that Peirce’s best known division, which
distinguishes between icon, index and symbol, is entirely absent from the later,
hexadic 28-class system,5 which means that we have at our disposal two radically
different analytical approaches – an earlier and a later, both within a genuinely
Peircean framework – to the examination and classification of the same semiotic
phenomena, so to speak. They present, in effect, two distinct conceptions of the
classification of the same sign. And so an assessment of the nature and analytical
potential of the 28-class system is the first of the two major themes the study
develops.
Now Peirce defined semiotics6 as nothing other than logic, which he conceived
in two distinct ways, one narrow and one broad. As we see in Chapter 1, the
narrow dealt with the relation between signs and what they represent, whereas
he was led in 1903 to identify the broad, ‘grand’, logic as a veritable ‘Philosophy of
Representation’. The sheer ambition of such a project is astonishing, and testifies
to Peirce’s confidence in the theoretical framework he had established at the time
and in his attendant association of the sign with the process of representation.
However, this confidence can be seen to diminish with the development of the
later sign-systems, characterized as they are by a complex series of interpretants,
a development which may have neutralized or even appropriated the purpose he
had earlier attributed to a branch of logic which he referred to as ‘methodeutic’
or ‘speculative rhetoric’. For this reason, the waning influence of the philosophy
of representation and its relation to Peirce’s mature understanding of signs
 Introduction 5

constitute the second of the themes to be developed in the book, for in this age
of biosemiotics and zoosemiotics, which in their Peircean versions are based
essentially upon the 1903 semiotic ‘model’, it is important that the logical status
of representation itself and its altered status within the later systems as well as
Peirce’s more complex final conception of the sign they were based upon be
clarified.

Organization of the book

Chapter 1 begins the chronological development of the relevant concepts,

and traces Peirce’s general theory of representation as far back as the 1860s.
It comprises two major parts. In order to present the general background to
Peirce’s theory of signs the first part reviews selected influences from the modern
Western philosophical tradition which contributed to Peirce’s intellectual
development and which he ultimately came to break with. The second presents
Peirce’s semiotics as he introduced it during that course of lectures at the Lowell
Institute. Since most introductions to Peirce’s theory of the sign are hybrid in
the sense that they combine material from 1903 and the later definitions, the
description given in Chapter 1 will surprise many readers as all the statements
and quotations have been restricted to the 1903 period for purposes of
comparison with the later systems.
Chapter 2, the longest in the book, traces the ways in which Peirce’s
conceptions of the sign came under considerable pressure over the period of
the four years following the Lowell Lectures, that is, from 1904 to 1907, and
how the theoretical developments which occurred in this period contributed to
the pioneering features of the later sign-systems, and, ultimately, to the by-now
problematic status of the speculative rhetoric/methodeutic branch of the general
philosophy. The successive stages described in the chapter show Peirce breaking
with the philosophical tradition outlined in Chapter 1.
Chapter 3 introduces the hexadic sign-systems which evolved from the
principles discussed in the previous chapter. It shows how Peirce moves
innovatively from his earlier category-based conception of signification and
classification to one based upon three universes. A further purpose of the
chapter is to review the debate concerning the ordering of the divisions involved
in the late typologies, which to this day continues to be a subject of disagreement
among Peirce scholars to the almost complete neglect of the characterization
and exemplification of the sign-classes themselves.
6 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

Chapter 4 compares and contrasts the two very different typologies by

examining the way in which each accommodates a corpus of literal and figurative
signs. It shows how the triadic system of 1903 classifies signs according to the
way they represent their objects – the well-known division of the icon, index
and symbol is an excellent example of this principle, together with Peirce’s
highly original concept of the hypoicon – while the 1908 hexad classifies signs
according to the sorts of objects that they represent, a typology from which, as
mentioned earlier, the icon-index-symbol division is absent.
Having compared the earlier typology with the later in Chapter 4, Chapter 5
exploits the analytical potential of the later system in its own right. It begins with
a discussion of the way in which interpreters can react differentially to the same
sign. One course of enquiry into this problem is provided by the 1908 system,
and involves tracing the evolution of Peirce’s conception of the object over the
early years of the century. The final stage of this theoretical development is
used to show how a number of pictorial signs are determined by an object quite
different from the perceived entities they depict.
Most of these chapters have, in addition to their specific theoretical material
and the illustrations, a summary of the chapter’s main findings, a section which
expands upon some of the more complex ideas introduced in the chapter and, in
some cases, suggestions for further reading. The chapters cover as wide a variety
of pictorial representations as our copyright laws allow, without neglecting, of
course, the sorts of verbal examples that Peirce himself tended to use. Finally,
as an aid to understanding the rapidity with which Peirce’s theorizing on signs
developed in the period after the Lowell Lectures, I have included an appendix
containing eight increasingly complex typologies developed in the two years
between August 1904 and August 1906, all from his Logic Notebook, R339.
 1

The Philosophy of Representation

Since the study seeks to establish the theoretical differences between two of
Peirce’s sign-systems, the purpose of this first chapter is to provide the reader
with as complete a description as space allows of the one which was conceived
late in 1903.1 It is in this context that the term ‘Philosophy of Representation’ has
been adopted to cover all aspects of Peirce’s sign theory at that time:
Now it may be that logic ought to be the science of Thirdness in general. But as
I have studied it, it is simply the science of what must be and ought to be true
representation, so far as representation can be known without any gathering
of special facts beyond our ordinary daily life. It is in short The Philosophy of
Representation.2 (R465, 1903)

The expression itself is from a draft of the third of the Lowell Lectures on
logic but as it was used by Peirce after a discussion of degeneracy the editors
obviously thought it more thematically appropriate to group it with texts on
phenomenology in Volume One of the Collected Papers instead of in Volume
Two with the other texts on signs from the Lectures. This is of no consequence.
The expression usefully exploits the fact that Peirce grew over the years preceding
the lectures to conceive of logic in two ways – a specialized branch of logic and
a broader conception composed of three distinct but interrelated branches,
this being the ‘grand’ logic. Moreover, since up to and including 1903 Peirce
considered signs as the units of representation, and since, by ‘representation’ he
meant a signifying process of the widest possible scope,3 the notion that logic
should be considered as the general philosophy of representation – a love of
knowledge and a search for knowledge in the field of representation, therefore –
is entirely appropriate.
The chapter traces what one can consider to be the major developments of
the theory up to and including the Lowell Lectures on logic. From a semiotic
point of view it was a remarkable achievement, an autonomous and complete
descriptive system accounting for ten logically valid classes of signs. However,
8 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

like all theories, it was subject to revision, as a consequence of the intellectual

restlessness of its founder and his quest to discover all possible types of signs. For
convenience, the subject matter of the chapter has been divided into three distinct
sections. The broad lines of the trivium forming the philosophy of representation
are introduced first as an explanation of one theme from the general title of the
study; the second reviews the most relevant aspects of the theoretical background
to Peirce’s theory of signs and the advancement of knowledge leading to the period
of the Lowell Lectures; the third describes the theory of the sign developed in the
Lectures and their accompanying Syllabus of November and December 1903.4
This is not an arbitrary decision. Many Peirce scholars see three or four stages
in the development of Peirce’s thinking on signs, the 1903 stage being referred
to as the ‘interim’ stage by Atkin (2010) and Liszka (1996), for example. As I
shall be contrasting the 1903 system with the 28-class system of 1908 the third
section effectively corresponds to that interim stage. The chapter concludes with
a summary of the characteristics of Peirce’s theory of semiotics in 1903 and a
discussion of their interest for the general study. As the theory presented here is
necessarily a personal point of view, I have appended bibliographical references
to other accounts of the way Peirce’s logic developed in this particular period in
order to offer the reader a balanced presentation of the problem.

The philosophy of representation

Peirce’s logical trivium was based upon the structure of the medieval teaching
system composed of grammar, logic and rhetoric, itself an outgrowth of
Ancient Greek theory. In the Lowell Lectures he defined it and its relation to his
conception of logic in the following manner:
All thought being performed by means of signs, Logic may be regarded as
the science of the general laws of signs. It has three branches: (1) Speculative
Grammar, or the general theory of the nature and meanings of signs, whether
they be icons indices, or symbols; (2) Critic, which classifies arguments and
determines the validity and degree of force of each kind; (3) Methodeutic,
which studies the methods that ought to be pursued in the investigation, in the
exposition, and in the application of truth. Each division depends on that which
precedes it. (CP 1.191, 1903)

The three branches received different denominations over the years, but
the important point to note is that logic in the broad sense – a ‘grand’ logic
– is a field of study comprising three hierarchically organized branches, while
 The Philosophy of Representation 9

logic in the narrow sense is but one of the three. He termed the latter ‘critic’,
the branch of the philosophy of representation concerned with the validity of
inferences, these being classified within the relation holding between a sign and
the object it represents. Speculative grammar is the first of the three branches.
As the final sentence in the quotation notes, its relative position within the
group, or order of ‘application’, is significant since it deals broadly with the
conditions of signhood: determining what constitutes a sign is obviously a
priority, given that the other two branches necessarily depend upon an entity’s
having been previously identified as a sign within speculative grammar. The last
of the three, the least developed and the branch that Peirce ultimately found
most difficult to circumscribe to his satisfaction, is the one he refers to at this
point as ‘Methodeutic’. As Peirce understood it in 1903 this branch sought to
validate the conditions governing signs and the interpretants they were intended
to determine. The term ‘methodeutic’ alternated until 1906 with ‘speculative
rhetoric’, a case of a terminological instability which pertains specifically to
the nature and function of this third branch of the grand logic, and scholars
reviewing it have found considerable variation in the terms and definitions
concerning it: Kent (1987: 206), for one, identifies nine different denominations
for the methodeutic branch, while more recently Liszka (2000: 440) cites seven
different names for the rhetoric and something like 30 different definitions,
some of which will be met with in the following sections. This, then, was the tri-
partite structure of Peirce’s grand logic, his philosophy of representation of 1903.

The semio-philosophical background

It is a fact that no theory, philosophical or otherwise, suddenly breaks upon an

unsuspecting world ex nihilo, and Peirce’s semiotics is no exception: like that
of others, his thinking on signs was determined partly from what he had read
and absorbed from the Western philosophical tradition, from the Greeks and
the Scholastics in particular, and partly from his reactions to it. However, it is
the philosophy of the modern period that is most pertinent to the development
of his theory of the sign. In this context, the study of the nature and origin
of knowledge was decisive as far as the peculiar emphasis of the theory was
concerned, given that for Peirce knowledge could only be acquired by signs:
‘and a sign is something by knowing which we know something more,’ he was to
write to Lady Welby in 1904 (CP 8.332). Since one of the problems of knowledge
is to determine how the judgements which more sceptical positions enjoin us
10 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

to suspend are actually derived from sense data, it was essential for Peirce to be
able to offer a logical, as opposed to a psychological, account of their formation
and progress from their source at the ‘gate of perception’, as he puts it. And as he
was initially concerned to hypothesize how knowledge could be obtained from
perception his semiotics evolved into a powerful and original set of statements
concerning the sign. Furthermore, the inquiry into, and modelling of, the
cognitive processes by which knowledge is acquired inevitably determined
the number and nature of the elements involved in the model. In Peirce’s early
work there were three: sense data, percept and perceptual judgement. Since,
from the start, he always conceived the latter of these as being inferential in
nature, there was no theoretical reason why these stages or ‘moments’ in the
knowledge acquisition process should not be assimilated to those involved in
the interpretation of signs generally. The following sections, then, exploit this
aspect of Peirce’s semiotics by comparing and contrasting it with concepts from
the work of John Locke and Emmanuel Kant, two of the major figures of the
constructive, anti-sceptic strain of Western philosophy.
Testimony from Peirce himself argues, perhaps, for a more comprehensive
discussion of the latter than of the former: we learn that his earliest readings
in philosophy were in the ‘classical German schools’ (CP 1.4, c.1897); that in
1855, under the influence of his father, he began to study the first Critique two
hours a day over a period of three years until he virtually knew it by heart (CP
1.4, c.1897); and that, as a consequence, he was ‘in the early sixties a passionate
devotee of Kant, at least as regarded the Transcendental Analytic in the Critic of
the Pure Reason’ (CP 4.2, 1898). However, Kant’s influence upon Peirce’s early
thought has been extensively discussed by many major studies, Deledalle (1987)
and Murphey (1993), for instance, which renders such an enterprise redundant
in the present context. Locke, on the other hand, might initially seem an
improbable choice, for evidence from Peirce gives the impression that there were
other, more important influences: Aristotle, the Scholastics and, above all, Kant.
The decision to include comparison with Locke is to a large extent justified
by the fact that the chapter seeks to show how Peirce’s theories of knowledge
and the sign, which in this study has been identified as the philosophy of
representation, belong to an established empiricist philosophical tradition. In
this context Locke is a thinker with whom the general reader will probably be far
more familiar, whereas Peirce’s ‘obligation’ to Kant is probably best seen as a debt
by disagreement: having devoted much of his early philosophical energy to the
assimilation of the critical philosophy, Peirce came to define his own philosophy
in reaction to that of his teacher. The debt to Locke is potentially of the same
 The Philosophy of Representation 11

type, although less clear-cut and, in one area at least, possibly one that Peirce
was not entirely aware of. For while Locke’s use of the term ‘semeiotic’ to refer to
his doctrine of signs, for example, was subsequently taken up by Peirce, thereby
justifying at least a cursory study of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding,
Locke may nevertheless have exerted more subtle influences.
It should be noted that Peirce’s theory of semiotics and its place in the overall
scheme of the sciences underwent considerable modifications, but the general
tendency seems to be that whereas Peirce was initially a self-confessed Kantian
who spent his first years in philosophy throwing off the transcendental yoke, so
to speak, to the extent that he ultimately repudiated much of what he had learned
from his teacher, the influence he received from Locke followed the opposite
course: although never ever more than a background figure among the influences
Peirce explicitly and repeatedly acknowledged, Locke’s concepts of semeiotic and
experience were to become progressively more important as his own thinking
matured and his conception of the categories, for example, matured in the years
at the beginning of the twentieth century. The purpose of this second section of
the chapter, then, is not to engage in yet another analysis of, for example, Locke’s
epistemology and its alleged inconsistencies and contradictions or in yet another
piece of eighteenth-century exegesis – such a task is not only beyond the scope
of the present study, it is also irrelevant – but rather to pinpoint and illustrate
selected aspects of the specificity of Peirce’s thought by contrasting them with
earlier theoretical statements from the same tradition.

Semeiotic
By virtue of a ‘discontinued way of writing’, interrupted by political activities,
Locke took nearly twenty years to complete An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding (henceforth the Essay), and, by the time of his death, had prepared a
fifth edition of the text. In spite of the modifications brought to the three subsequent
editions published in his lifetime, the text nevertheless constitutes a single, relatively
homogeneous statement on the problem of knowledge. Peirce, in contrast, spent
some fifty years constructing and considerably revising a theory of semiotics,
cognition and scientific inquiry which was never completely consigned to a single
text, and consequently poses problems of interpretation of an entirely different
order. In spite of this, we begin with a discussion of what must naturally seem to
be Peirce’s principal debt to Locke, namely Locke’s ‘semeiotic’, or doctrine of signs.
Although the third book of the Essay, titled ‘Words’, is devoted to language and
various forms of linguistic use and abuse, it is not until the final chapter of Book
12 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

IV that Locke defines the object of his theory of signs and their specific function
in relation to the epistemological predicament exploited by scepticism, namely the
discontinuity between the apprehending mind and objects in the world:
Thirdly, the third branch may be called ∑εμειωτικὴ, or the doctrine of signs; the
most usual whereof being words, it is aptly enough termed also Λογικὴ, logic;
the business whereof is to consider the nature of the signs the mind makes use of
for the understanding of things, or conveying its knowledge to others. For, since
the things the mind contemplates are none of them, besides itself, present to the
understanding, it is necessary that something else, as a sign or representation of
the thing it considers, should be present to it; and these are ideas. ([1690] 1964:
IV, xxi, 4)

The passage calls for a number of comments. First, in anticipation of Peirce,

Locke locates his doctrine of signs within a scheme which classifies the sciences
of the understanding according to their specific function in the ‘commonwealth
of learning’ to which he alludes in the Epistle to the reader. Second, the ‘ideas’ that
Locke has been working into a theory of knowledge are here defined explicitly as
proxies, or surrogates, standing to the mind for objects, particularly substances,
which, by the nature of things, cannot be present there of themselves. What
Peirce actually thought of this definition is apparently not recorded, but there
can be little doubt as to his initial approval: it posits that signs or ideas enter,
together with ‘the things the mind contemplates’ and the mind or understanding
itself, into an embryonic form of the triadic relation governing his own sign,
object and interpretant. It implies, moreover, that with the obvious exception of
the immediate degree of knowledge which Locke had inherited from Descartes,
and, allowing for the fact that cognitions (i.e. ideas) are determined immediately
by qualities, such a process of knowledge acquisition functions by inference, and
considers not only ‘public’ representations but thoughts, too, to be the referents
of signs. Third, just as Peirce was to do two centuries later, Locke conceives his
doctrine of signs as a form of logic, the principal business of which being to
determine the nature of the signs used to register and communicate ideas. Peirce,
however, as mentioned above, considered logic in two distinct manners, although,
here as elsewhere, he was not entirely satisfied with his definitions. Consider, for
example, the following statement, an alternative to the quotation from the Lowell
Lectures with which the philosophy of representation was introduced above:

The term ‘‘logic’’ is unscientifically by me employed in two distinct senses. In its

narrower sense, it is the science of the necessary conditions of the attainment
of truth. In its broader sense, it is the science of the necessary laws of thought,
 The Philosophy of Representation 13

or, still better (thought always taking place by means of signs), it is general
semeiotic, treating not merely of truth, but also of the general conditions of signs
being signs … also of the laws of the evolution of thought.(CP 1.444, c. 1896)

Peirce had already defined logic at this time to be what he called, variously,
‘semeiotic’, ‘semiotic’5 or, on at least one occasion, ‘semiotics’: as we saw earlier,
it was both the entire grand logic and also the narrower branch of the trivium
(the term ‘critic’ itself was borrowed from Locke). Surprisingly, in a fragment
from 1906 he redefined the scope of his whole research enterprise by positing
independent logics for icons and indices, and restricting the scope of the trivium,
now no longer general, to the symbol alone, a position uncannily reminiscent of
his work in the 1860s:
Therefore, I extend logic to embrace all the necessary principles of semeiotic, and
I recognize a logic of icons, and a logic of indices, as well as a logic of symbols;
and in this last I recognize three divisions: Stecheotic (or stoicheiology), which I
formerly called Speculative Grammar; Critic, which I formerly called Logic; and
Methodeutic, which I formerly called Speculative Rhetoric. (CP 4.9, 1906)

The trivium, then, by this account, is restricted to the study of the symbol.
Later still, however, in a draft to Lady Welby, with whom he had begun to
exchange views on matters of signification and logic in 1903, he returned to the
earlier conception of the grand logic, considering it once more to be a general
semeiotic: ‘It seems to me that one of the first useful steps toward a science of
semeiotic (sémeiötiké), or the cenoscopic science of signs, must be the accurate
definition, or logical analysis, of the concepts of the science’ (CP 8.343, 1908).
Finally, he claimed in another draft to her that he was working on a ‘logic-book’
to be titled ‘Logic considered as Semeiotic’ (CP 8.377, 1908). The classificatory
wheel has come full circle.
The Peirce scholar Max Fisch has suggested with respect to such statements
that Peirce began his career as a logician by rebutting Locke’s conception of logic
as the general doctrine of signs (1986: 321–55):6 Fisch calls this ‘logic-within-
semeiotic’. No doubt still under the influence of Kant, and with a conception
of the categories restricted to thought, Peirce considered the business of logic
to be the study of symbols, more precisely, of arguments or inference generally.
By the mid-1880s, however, he had come to realize that a theory of signs cannot
dispense with icons and indices, and apparently conceded in deference to Locke
that logic might well have a second, broader application. Finally, by 1902, Fisch
claims, the original, restricted conception of logic was dropped altogether. ‘It has
taken Peirce most of his productive lifetime’, he concludes, ‘to come all the way
14 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

back to Locke’ and to see semiotics as ‘logic-as-semeiotic’.7 Whatever the merits

of Fisch’s analysis, it suggests that a comparison of Peirce’s later, more elaborate
version with Locke’s theory of semeiotic contributes to our understanding of
how a doctrine of signs can become a system of logic. Concerning the way each
locates his doctrine of signs within a classification of the sciences, however, they
differ considerably.

Architectonic
In the penultimate chapter of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant writes, ‘By the
term Architectonic I mean the art of constructing a system. Without systematic
unity, our knowledge cannot become a science; it will be an aggregate, not a
system …. Reason cannot permit our knowledge to remain in an unconnected
and rhapsodistic state, but requires that the sum of our cognitions should
constitute a system’ ([1787] 1974: 471).8 Now, with the exposition of his
cognitive theory completed, Locke undertook, in the final chapter of the Essay,
a schematic classification of the sciences involved in the study of ‘all that can fall
within the compass of human understanding’, namely, as he claimed, natural
philosophy, or knowledge of things; practical philosophy, or ethics; and, finally,
semiotics, which studies the signs used by the understanding for private and
public purposes, that is, the recording and communicating of ideas. Since the
majority of signs used by the understanding are words, he suggested that logic
might be an alternative name for this science. This classification is restricted
to three sciences, suggests a natural division of all objects of knowledge, but
distributes these objects across distinct, unrelated fields of inquiry: ‘All which
three, viz. things, as they are in themselves knowable, actions as they depend on
us, in order to happiness, and the right use of signs in order to knowledge, being
toto coelo different, they seemed to me to be the three great provinces of the
intellectual world, wholly separate and distinct one from another’ (Essay, IV, xxi,
5). By Kant’s definition, then, Locke’s classification is an aggregate, not a system,
or ‘organism’: in short, it is not governed by the architectonic principle.
In contrast, as we saw earlier, Peirce’s conception of science is systematic and
architectonic, and the various classifications of the sciences that he established
particularly in the early years of the twentieth century posit them explicitly as a
unified system in which the sciences were related organically. This architectonic
feature of his philosophy was not the only one he inherited from Kant, for
his research is characterized by the gradual emergence of a consistent set of
categories within a very personal conception of phenomenology, his extensive
 The Philosophy of Representation 15

use of the triad and the doctrine that every cognition involves an inference of
some form: all Kantian in origin, although the philosophical antecedents for sets
of categories can be traced at least back to Aristotle.

Phenomenology
Briefly, the final classification of the sciences that Peirce published in 1903
distinguishes between theoretical and practical sciences. The theoretical
sciences then subdivide into the sciences of review and the sciences of discovery.
Philosophy follows mathematics in the sciences of discovery, precedes a field
of inquiry Peirce calls ‘Ideoscopy’ and itself subdivides into phenomenology,
normative science and metaphysics: ‘Phenomenology ascertains and studies
the kinds of elements universally present in the phenomenon; meaning by the
phenomenon, whatever is present at any time to the mind in any way. Normative
science distinguishes what ought to be from what ought not to be … Normative
science rests largely on phenomenology and mathematics …’ (CP 1.186, 1903).
This abridged sample of the much larger classification is architectonic in that
the subdivisions tend to be trichotomic and the various fields of study are
ordered in such a way that the later presuppose theoretical principles established
in the earlier, obeying what might be called the ‘dependency principle’ of the
architectonic. Logic, as mentioned above in the introduction to the philosophy
of representation, depends upon ethics, which itself depends upon aesthetics.
The noteworthy feature of this classification resides in the fact that it departs
from previous versions with respect to relations between the categories and logic,
and also to the changing status of logic itself. In his earlier writings, Peirce had
made the categories, of which there were five in the mid-1860s, dependent upon
logic. By 1903, he had created a new science to deal with this part of the system,
which he called ‘phenomenology’9 and which was now independent of logic,
presupposing only concepts provided by mathematics. By this time, too, his
whole conception of logic had undergone considerable revision and no longer
fulfilled a constitutive function in his epistemology, but a regulative one, hence
its place among the normative sciences, that is, among the sciences which say
how things should be, and not what they are. As a result of a series of theoretical
problems pertaining to the coherence and mutual compatibility of the various
parts of the organism (cf. Murphey 1993), Peirce was obliged to modify the
relations between them if the architectonic principle advocated by Kant was to
be preserved. The subject-predicate conception of logic characteristic of Peirce’s
early period, for example, was entirely conventional. However, by 1870, when
16 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

he had come to appreciate the importance of De Morgan’s 1860 paper ‘On the
Syllogism IV and the Logic of Relations’, he had abandoned the subject-predicate
form of logic and he was beginning to publish on the logic of relations himself.
He subsequently divided logic into two distinct parts and classified formal logic,
including the logic of relations, as a branch of mathematics.
Thus by 1903, since phenomenology presupposes mathematics, it had become
possible for Peirce to distinguish between the material ‘content’ of the categories,
which he identified as Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness, and their formal
structure, namely the monad, dyad and triad, respectively. In other words,
whereas Locke had conceived a system of ideas which accounted simply for the
content of experience, and whereas Kant had made the form of experience a
function of one of twelve mind-given, but spurious categories,10 Peirce had, in
1903, in contrast to both, set up a system of three categories uniting both the form
and content of experience on the basis of the logic of relations. Furthermore, on
the strength of the theorem that any n-adic relation could be accounted for by a
triad,11 he was able to claim that the system was complete. It is in this way that,
instead of being derived from logic, the theory of the categories had become
‘pre-logical’ in Peirce’s scheme of 1903. This is the uncompromising description
he gave of the categories of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness in the course
of his Harvard Lectures on Pragmatism of 1903, where by the phenomenon, as
we saw above, he means ‘whatever is present at any time to the mind in any way’
(CP 1.186):
Category the First is the Idea of that which is such as it is regardless of anything
else. That is to say, it is a Quality of Feeling.
Category the Second is the Idea of that which is such as it is as being Second
to some First, regardless of anything else, and in particular regardless of any Law,
although it may conform to a law. That is to say, it is Reaction as an element of
the Phenomenon.
Category the Third is the Idea of that which is such as it is as being a Third, or
Medium, between a Second and its First. That is to say, it is Representation as an
element of the Phenomenon. (CP 5.66, 1903)

The notions of quality, feeling and reaction were to reappear frequently in

the years to come. Furthermore, he introduced at this point a concept derived
from the theory of prescission or mental ‘abstraction’, expounded in his early
work of the 1860s, namely a principle of degeneracy (CP 5.66, 1903). Anything
which is considered ‘regardless of anything else’ can have nothing prescinded or
mentally abstracted from it: nothing can be prescinded from a Firstness; it just
is as it is. On the other hand, Firstness can be prescinded from Secondness: the
 The Philosophy of Representation 17

table I am typing on exists, resists the weight of my computer, my elbows and my

cup of coffee, capacities which instantiate its Secondness. However, it necessarily
has properties, its Firstnesses: made of wood, dark brown, rectangular in shape,
hard to the touch etc., properties which can be prescinded mentally from the
table, but in themselves intangible. These are ‘degenerate’ forms of the table’s
Secondness. Similarly, Thirdness has two degrees of degeneracy; in other words
both Firstness and Secondness can be prescinded from it. Consider the simple
case of the following utterance: My table is made of mahogany. This is a sign
which conveys meaning to an interpreter, and illustrates Thirdness. However,
in order to be perceived aurally by anyone at all it has to produce airwaves
of a particular type, and thus has a material existence that can be plotted, for
example, as a sound spectrogram, this being the utterance’s Secondness. Finally
there is a feeling or quality about the way it is pronounced – whispered, cajoling,
screamed, hoarsely etc. This feeling or quality is perceivable but intangible, and
constitutes a form of Firstness – whatever the sound qualities heard, they are
such as they are, independently of anything else, and they produce a similar
qualitative effect as part of the interpretation. The principle whereby the simpler
categories can be prescinded from the more complex was to have important
implications for his theory of signs of 1903.
The reasons for the pre-eminence of phenomenology within the system at
that time and the reasons why a theory of cognition and discovery should need
such an elaborate structure will be illustrated below. For the moment, we note
simply that the normative, as opposed to the formal, mathematical aspect of
logic – in other words, the philosophy of representation – subdivides by the
architectonic principle into three branches, the first of which as we saw above,
being speculative grammar. This Peirce defines as the general theory of the nature
and meaning of signs and, since logic is a classificatory science,12 speculative
grammar determines, among other things, whether a sign is an icon, an index or
a symbol (CP 1.191, 1903).

Conceptions and signs

This leads to an important difference between the two empiricist conceptions of
the sign, and its implications for a general semiotic theory. In Locke’s case ideas
are either mental or verbal: no finer distinctions are deemed necessary, and the
function and interaction of signs are both very much static affairs. Moreover,
as mentioned before, Locke’s reference to the vague notion of ‘idea’ makes no
distinction between the content of experience and its formal structure. Peirce,
18 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

by contrast, was constantly preoccupied by such considerations, and this took

the particular form of an investigation into the way the sign functioned as a
cognition within the relation of representation which had preoccupied him for
almost forty years. Thus, in his earliest writings, where we find him struggling
with the problem of the categories and the way to deduce them in what he
considered a less fallible manner than that of his German master, he derived
the concept of representation from what he considered at the time to be the five
‘universal’ conceptions, but subsequently reduced to three when he made logic
dependent upon phenomenology and removed the categories from logic.
Like Kant, Peirce held that the function of conceptions was ‘to reduce
the manifold of sensuous impressions to unity’ (CP 1.545, 1867), the unity
in question taking at that time, as noted above, the form of a proposition of
conventional subject-predicate logic. In this view, for example, such conceptions
would be considered to be at work at this very moment in my understanding
to reduce the multitude of stimuli emanating from the external world to the
unity of the proposition: ‘My table is made of mahogany’. Unlike the said table,
the proposition is not ‘public’, is not ‘in the world’, as it were, until uttered,
but, rather, in someone’s mind. In this early scheme, three other conceptions
were involved in the passage from the manifold of substance to the unity of
being, namely quality, relation, and representation, these being respectively a
function of three types of ‘reference’ within the constitution of the proposition:
reference to a ground or character, reference to a correlate and reference to an
interpretant. This system is, clearly, nothing less than a prototypical definition
of the sign relation upon which Peirce was to build his entire logic. He notes,
‘Now the three links composing this chain [of conceptions], namely reference to
a ground, reference to a correlate, and to a correspondent afford the elements of
a complete system of logic’ (W1 353, 1866). Further, from an analysis of the three
items involved in the function of the third conception, representation, namely
the relate, the correlate and the correspondent, Peirce was able to classify the
various classes of representations:
[W]here the repraesentamen has a real agreement with its object, the
representation consists in a likeness; a simple quality is shown but the object
itself is not said to exist. In the second case, there is a real difference of the
repraesentamen from its object … in this case the representative character
of the one will consist in constant accompaniment of the other, so that it
indicates the existence of the latter without noting any characters of it. Such a
representation may be termed an index. In the third case, where the relation
of the repraesentamen is ideal, the ground of this relation is an attribute of the
 The Philosophy of Representation 19

correlate attributed to the relate … This gives a general sign, a word or conception,
for the repraesentamen will necessarily apply to everything which contains its
attributed quality. (W1 355)

By 1866, then, Peirce had not only deduced and illustrated his three categories,
he had also defined the basic conceptions involved in cognition, subordinated
them to the sign relation and had begun to work them into the logic that would
ultimately yield the subclasses of icon, index (or sign, as Peirce also called it at the
time) and symbol. Furthermore, in the 1860s Peirce was already trichotomizing
this division by distinguishing the three types of general signs according to the
elements involved in the sign relation. Thus, he defines symbols as ‘the objects
of the understanding, considered as representations … that is, signs which are
at least potentially general’ (CP 1.559), and he discriminates between symbols
‘which directly determine only their grounds … and are thus but sums of marks
or terms’ (CP 1.559),13 symbols which also ‘independently determine their
objects by means of other term or terms, and thus … become capable of truth
or falsehood, that is, are propositions’ (CP 1.559), and, finally, symbols ‘which
also independently determine their interpretants, and thus the minds to which
they appeal, by premissing a proposition or propositions which such a mind is
to admit. These are arguments’ (CP 1.559). This can be summarized in Table 1.1.
The subdivision of the symbol constituting the lowest level of the triadic
edifice described in Table 1.1, namely the term, is in all essential details the
general term posited by Locke in the Essay. This means that in 1867, at least this
part of Peirce’s logic was still virtually isomorphic with Locke’s. However, his
preoccupation with logic led him not to return to Locke’s original statement but
to develop a far more complex system of his own, with a decisive effect on his
semiotic theory. This involved the subordination of logic to phenomenology in
the classification of the sciences; the development of the categories of Firstness
and Secondness in addition to the Thirdness already present in the system of the
1860s; increased awareness of the nature of reality, of the function of the object
and of what Peirce termed the ‘Outward Clash’; and, finally, the development
Table 1.1 Peirce’s Trichotomy of Representamens, 1867

Sign-Object
Symbol
Argument
Proposition
Term
Index/sign
Likeness
20 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

of the interpretant. All of this represents a considerable departure from the

semeiotic of Locke.

Categories of the forms of experience

It remains to be seen how Peirce’s theory of cognition integrates the three elements
of the sign relation as conceived in 1903. We have already seen that Peirce’s early
work on the categories derived five universal conceptions: substance, being
and, between them three references, respectively, to ground, correlate and
interpretant. He subsequently dropped being and substance, leaving the three
‘material’ categories corresponding to these three references, quality, relation
and, finally, representation; seen in the light of the later categories of the forms
of experience, they realize, respectively, the monad, the dyad and the triad:
The metaphysical categories of quality, fact, and law, being categories of the
matter of phenomena, do not precisely correspond with the logical categories
of the monad, the dyad, and the polyad or higher set, since these are categories
of the forms of experience. The dyads of monads, being dyads, belong to the
category of the dyad. But since they are composed of monads as their sole
matter, they belong materially to the category of quality, or the monad in its
material mode of being. It cannot be regarded as a fact that scarlet is red. It is a
truth; but it is only an essential truth. It is that in being which corresponds in
thought to Kant’s analytical judgment. (CP 1.452, 1896)

These are forms that are to be found in many, if not most, of Peirce’s theoretical
concepts: trichotomies, the categories, the later universes of experience and their
three modes of being, his triadic relations and their three correlates etc. In 1866,
in an early attempt to define his categories he wrote, ‘These three conceptions are
all we require to erect the edifice of logic. Why they should be three is unknown;
although a reason can be given for every other logical division. But this number
may indicate an anthropological fact’ (W1 524). This aspect of his intellectual
background is obviously important for full understanding of his theory of how
signs function and of the various types of signs it is possible to identify. He
was, in a special sense of the term, an idealist: he belonged to a philosophical
tradition reaching back to Pythagoras via Newton, Descartes and Leibnitz, to
name but these; that is, to a tradition which holds that number is the key to our
understanding of the world around us (CP 1.421 c. 1896).
He was aware of the possible ‘anticipated suspicion …. that he forces divisions
to a Procrustean bed of trichotomy’ (CP 1.568, 1910) that he might encounter over
his insistence on the theoretical importance of the number three – its inevitable
 The Philosophy of Representation 21

association with the Trinity and thence with theology and religion – but declared
himself innocent of ‘triadomany’, that is, of attaching ‘a superstitious or fanciful
importance to the number three’ (CP 1.568, 1910). After all, by 1903 Peirce had
founded his semiotics upon his theory of phenomenology, which itself turned
upon the number three. Moreover, by virtue of the theorem mentioned above
that any n-adic relation could be accounted for by a triad, he had argued but
without real proof that three ‘objects’ or correlates were all that were necessary
in such cases, and that any higher n–adic relation could be accounted for by a
triad: ‘A triad is something more than a congeries of pairs …. Systems of more
than three objects may be analyzed into congeries of triads’ (NEM4 307, 1894?).
In matters of internal structure Peirce’s classifications are now far from Locke’s
aggregate of sciences.

Continuous interpretant series

Thus the sign relation that Peirce named ‘representation’ in his early work on
cognition and which is obviously the object of his philosophy of representation
of 1903 – ‘so far as representation can be known without any gathering of special
facts beyond our ordinary daily life’ – can be considered as the archetype of all
triadic relations, and the basis of all cognition. Just how the process pertains
to the sign relation and its three relates is best seen in the light of the work on
reference to an interpretant, particularly as it is realized in comparison. In a
rough draft of a paper subsequently published under the title ‘On a New List of
Categories’ (1867), Peirce defines the interpretant thus:
Reference to a correlate is clearly justified and made possible solely by
comparison. Let us inquire, then, in what comparison consists …. Suppose, we
look out the word homme in a French dictionary; we shall find opposite to it the
word man, which, so placed, represents homme as representing the same two-
legged creature which man represents. In a similar way, it will be found that every
comparison requires, besides the related thing, the ground and the correlate,
also a mediating representation which represents the relate to be a representation
of the same correlate which this mediating representation itself represents. Such a
mediating representation I call an interpretant, because it fulfils the office of an
interpreter who says that a foreigner says the same thing that he himself says.
(W1 522–23)

Within the theory of cognition this means that since there can be no first
thought, or intuition, the system is set in motion, so to speak, by the sense data
determined by the object of the cognition, and every thought determined by that
22 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

object determines an interpreting thought that refers to that same object within
a continuous process which admits of no first stage. Empirically, this is difficult
to accept, as we imagine cognitions to be the results of discrete events, but within
the logic of continuity it presents no problem. The process is well illustrated by
any text. Since they are recorded in an existential medium, all texts have a first
sentence, of which all subsequent sentences are the successively more complex
interpretants. By integrating previously given information, both negatively and
positively (e.g. by ellipsis and repetition), these successive interpretant sentences
collectively ensure the text’s syntactical cohesion and semantic coherence.
However, at ‘thought level’, so to speak, where the text originated, things are
quite different, for logically what functions as the first sentence of the physical
text is, in fact, an inference from prior cognitions, and it would be virtually
impossible to trace the text to any such origins at this level.14
In this way thoughts are translatable, and indeed are translated by interpretant
thoughts.15 It is in this manner that the chain of inference progresses. Since
Peirce denies that a cognition can be determined directly, immediately, by the
object of perception, as Locke’s epistemology would have us believe, and that
even one’s own existence is inferred and not intuited, three important principles
follow from this. First, the triadic model of representation illustrates the ‘kinetic’
progression of the inferential processes involved in cognition. Second, no formal
distinction need be made between our understanding of the world about us
(including the understanding of images) and the interpretation of verbal signs.
Since the two functions are isomorphic, Peirce dwells little on the ‘grammar’ of
linguistic interpretation: language signs are simply one class of signs covered
by the same general definition. Third, as we see below in the discussion of the
extracts from the Lowell Lectures and the Syllabus that accompanied them,
Peirce considered the interpretant itself to be a sign in 1903, and therefore that
the interpretant series was continuous:
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, ad
infinitum. (CP 2.92, 1902)16

It follows that the dynamic continuity of sign-action as conceived in 1902 can

be represented by Figure 1.1, where the symbol > signifies ‘bring X into relation
with Y’, and O, S and I indicate, respectively, object, sign and interpretant, each
subsequent interpretant becoming a sign for a new interpretant, (I1 = S2) for
example, and so on ad infinitum, as Peirce claimed.
 The Philosophy of Representation 23

O > S > (I1 = S2) > (I2 = S3) > (I3 = S4) ... (In = Sn+1)

Figure 1.1 The continuous nature of semiosis as conceived in 1902

This principle of a ‘continuous’ interpretant series was a characteristic of the

period in which Peirce conceived of the action of the sign as one of representation,
with the sign ‘standing’ for its object, and he maintained it for a short time after
1903. However, as two later chapters will show, this was a concept that he was
ultimately led to abandon: the notion of a continuous series of interpretant-signs
was not to last in the manner stated in 1903.

Sign, divisions and classes in 1903

The preceding sections should have provided sufficient background information

concerning Peirce’s debt to the philosophical tradition and the ways in which he
departs from it for the reader to understand Peirce’s semiotics of 1903. With this
in mind, we examine the relevant features which characterize the sign-systems
of the ‘philosophy of representation’ in what we can consider its final form
presented at the Lowell Lectures and in the brief Syllabus which accompanied
them. Most of this material comes from two manuscripts, R478 and R540, much
of which can be found in chapters 20 and 21 of volume two of The Essential
Peirce.17 At this point the reader should remember that by the concept of ‘sign-
system’ is meant not only definitions of the sign and sign-action, but also the
typology these may generate.
We have seen that it was his phenomenology, or his ‘Categoric’ as he called
it in the Carnegie Application of 1902, which justified his particular manner of
organizing the branches of logic.18 In the first of the eight lectures Peirce set out
once more the purpose of logic and the logician, and terminated the lecture with
another such highly organized classification of the three branches:

The ultimate purpose of the logician is to make out the theory of how knowledge
is advanced …. So Methodeutic, which is the last goal of logical study, is the
theory of the advancement of knowledge of all kind. But this theory is not
possible until the logician has first examined all the different elementary modes
of getting at truth … This part of logic is called Critic. But before it is possible
to enter upon this business in any rational way the first thing that is necessary
is to examine thoroughly all the ways in which thought can be expressed …
I, therefore, take a position … in regarding this introductory part of logic as
24 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

nothing but an analysis of what kinds of signs are absolutely essential to the
embodiment of thought. I call it … Speculative grammar. I fully agree … in
thinking that this Speculative Grammar ought not to confine its studies to those
conventional signs of which language is composed, but that it will do well to
widen its field of view so as to take into consideration also kinds of signs which,
not being conventional, are not of the nature of language. (EP2 256–57, 1903)

We note that in this case Peirce works backwards from the most specialized of
the three branches, methodeutic, which, following the tradition of constructive
philosophy alluded to earlier, is the branch which promotes ‘the advancement of
knowledge of all kinds’; he then introduces critic, which deals with inferences
and upon which methodeutic depends; he presents, finally, the branch that
deals with ‘signhood’, that is, the branch of the grand logic which establishes
the conditions qualifying a given entity as a sign, classifies all possible signs and
establishes an inventory of them. This organization is another illustration of
the dependency principle according to which branches appearing earlier in the
general system provide those coming after with relevant theoretical concepts
and processes. In what follows it is the last of the three mentioned in the extract,
and the most important for a theory of what constitutes a sign and the ways
in which it functions, namely speculative grammar, that we deal with, leaving
critic aside completely and reserving brief concluding remarks for methodeutic
or, as it was also referred to at the time, speculative rhetoric. After reviewing
the manner in which Peirce presents his phenomenology and the purposes he
ascribes to it, the sections to follow deal, first, with the sign, its definitions and
its two correlates; then with the divisions he defined, first two and then three;
finally, with the ten classes of signs which Peirce obtained from these three
divisions. For reasons given in the Introduction, all the quotations to follow,
except where stated otherwise, are necessarily from 1903 or earlier.

Phenomenology
In the lectures Peirce approaches the problem of what constitutes a sign and
the divisions and subdivisions it is involved in from two different directions –
initially by the application of his categories and, in a later manuscript, by
deducing the sign and its correlates in the signifying process by means of his
theory of triadic relations. In both cases the reasoning he applies is justified
by principles provided by his particular conception of phenomenology. This
material is organized thematically in the Collected Papers, with the result that
associated elements may appear out of chronological order. The prominence of
 The Philosophy of Representation 25

phenomenology and the categories in the sign theory of this period cannot be
emphasized enough. Since the definition of the sign is a priority, we begin by
examining the way in which the sign and its correlates were established.

Triadic relations, the sign and its correlates

What makes the sign-systems of 1903 particularly impressive is the way in which
many apparently diverse aspects of Peirce’s philosophy seem to be woven into
the theory. Referring once more to his phenomenology, Peirce introduces the
concept of triadic relations with which he is going to define the sign as the unit
or agency of representation:
The principles and analogies of Phenomenology enable us to describe, in a
distant way, what the divisions of triadic relations must be …. In the case of
triadic relations, no part of this work has, as yet, been satisfactorily performed,
except in some measure for the most important class of triadic relations, those of
signs, or representamens, to their objects and interpretants. (CP 2.233)

As seen above, he had already established the general concept of the triadic
relation to his satisfaction by the early 1890s (NEM4 307). This accomplished,
he had now to distinguish between the three correlates associated by the
relation, and he did so by defining them in terms of relative ‘complexity’. The
three correlates are the representamen, the object and the interpretant. If any
of the three is the simplest in nature, it is identified as the representamen,
and therefore the first correlate; if any correlate of the relation is more
complex than the others, it is the interpretant, while the object is of ‘middling’
complexity:
We must distinguish between the First, Second, and Third Correlate of any
triadic relation.
The First Correlate is that one of the three which is regarded as of the simplest
nature, being a mere possibility if any one of the three is of that nature, and not
being a law unless all three are of that nature. (CP 2.235)
The Third Correlate is that one of the three which is regarded as of the most
complex nature, being a law if any one of the three is a law, and not being a mere
possibility unless all three are of that nature. (CP 2.236)
The Second Correlate is that one of the three which is regarded as of middling
complexity, so that if any two are of the same nature, as to being either mere
possibilities, actual existences, or laws, then the Second Correlate is of that same
nature, while if the three are all of different natures, the Second Correlate is an
actual existence. (CP 2.237)
26 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

The passage not only reflects the ordering structure of triadic relations but
also introduces the concept of the three ‘modes of being’, namely, possibility,
existence and law in order of increasing complexity. These are given by the
categories and Peirce employs them as criteria in the classification of signs to
be discussed below. From this system of representamen, object and interpretant
Peirce then establishes the sign relation:
A Representamen is the First Correlate of a triadic relation, the Second Correlate
being termed its Object, and the possible Third Correlate being termed its
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. A Sign is a representamen of which some
interpretant is a cognition of a mind. Signs are the only representamens that
have been much studied. (CP 2.242)

From this it follows that for all triadic relations the first correlate is the
representamen. However, in the special case where the interpretant of a
representamen is a ‘cognition of a mind’ then that representamen is a sign. The
same idea is expressed in CP 2.274: ‘A Sign is a Representamen with a mental
Interpretant. Possibly there may be Representamens that are not Signs.’ A sign,
then, is a species of representamen, although as we now see, in this period Peirce
employs both terms almost interchangeably. Either is the unit of representation
as Peirce conceived the purpose of sign-action in 1903. The debate generated by
the presence of both terms in various definitions of signs at this time has been
vigorous, to say the least; however, discussion of it in this study is deferred to
Chapter 2. Both terms appear in the definitions of 1903:
A Sign, or Representamen, is a First which stands in such a genuine triadic
relation to a Second, called its Object, as to be capable of determining a Third,
called its Interpretant, to assume the same triadic relation to its Object in which
it stands itself to the same Object. The triadic relation is genuine, that is its
three members are bound together by it in a way that does not consist in any
complexus of dyadic relations. (CP 2.274)

The triadic relation thus defined is obviously composed of a single sign, a single
object and a single interpretant. It should be noted, nevertheless, that by virtue of the
properties of triadic relations the third correlate, the interpretant, ‘is determined to
be the First Correlate of the same triadic relation to the same Object, and for some
possible interpretant’ – in other words, while there is only one sign or representamen,
and one object, the triadic relation guarantees a possible interpretant series as
discussed above in the final section of the general philosophical background.
 The Philosophy of Representation 27

Divisions of signs
Once the logical status of the sign and its two correlates has been established
Peirce approaches the problem of identifying the divisions of signs from two
distinct but related viewpoints and in both manuscripts. In the first text, R478,
he introduces the problem with the following statement (in which the preferred
term is ‘representamen’, but this is of no consequence):
Representamens are divided by two trichotomies. The first and most fundamental
is that any Representamen is either an Icon, an Index, or a Symbol. Namely, while
no Representamen actually functions as such until it actually determines an
Interpretant, yet it becomes a Representamen as soon as it is fully capable of
doing this; and its Representative Quality is not necessarily dependent upon its
ever actually determining an Interpretant, nor even upon its actually having an
Object. (EP2 273)

At this point Peirce envisages only two trichotomies of representamens or

signs. Just why he should have considered the S–O trichotomy as the ‘first and
most fundamental’ is obvious. It was ‘first’ for the simple reason that it was
the division with which he had begun his research in logic almost forty years
earlier in the mid-1860s. He held it fundamental in 1903, too, since at that time
the sign was defined to represent an independent and usually absent entity,
namely its object. It therefore follows that the sign’s mode of representation is of
paramount importance for the identification of that object. He no doubt realized
subsequently that the three possible subclasses of the sign itself had to be defined
before he could define the three modes of representation in a logical manner.
This became possible once the status of the sign within his theory of triadic
relations was clearly established in the later manuscript (R540), together with
the degrees of complexity characterizing its three subclasses. In the paragraph
containing the extract quoted above he also applied the categories recursively
to the icon and introduced the concept of the three ‘hypoicons’ (EP2 273–74),
image, diagram and metaphor. These were accorded a special status in the
Collected Papers in the form of a separate paragraph, CP 2.277, presumably on
account of their very original logical status. However, a detailed discussion of
the hypoicons is deferred to Chapter 4, where they are compared to relevant
aspects of Peirce’s later semiotics.
The second trichotomy in the earlier manuscript, formed from the relation
holding between the sign and the interpretant (S–I), distinguished between the
three subdivisions of the symbol as Peirce conceived it in 1867: term, proposition
and argument as presented in Table 1.1, and these are now, respectively, ‘simple,
28 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

substitutive signs’; ‘double, informational signs’; and, finally, ‘triple, rationally

persuasive signs’ (EP2 275), their distinctive characteristics being indicated in
this case more by number than category. However, Peirce was to define these two
relational divisions more fully in the later manuscript (R540), and announced
the final set in the following manner:
Signs are divisible 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. (CP 2.243)

To the two announced in the earlier text he has now added a third, non-
relational trichotomy and placed it in initial position in the sequence, thereby
reflecting the order of correlates in the triadic relation defining the sign, namely
S, S–O, S–I: in other words, the order holding between representamen, object
and interpretant in the basic triadic relation was extended to that of the three
divisions. By now Peirce had no doubt realized that it was not logically possible
to propose a rigorous definition of the relations holding between the sign and
its object and the sign and its interpretant without having first established the
categorial nature and logical status of the sign itself.
This first trichotomy distinguishes between qualisign, sinsign and legisign,
these being, respectively, signs which are simple qualities, singular, existent signs
and, finally, general signs, signs which are laws or are rule-governed (CP 2.244–
246) and at the same time signs of laws. In order of growing complexity, they are
realized as, for example, colours and feelings in the first case; an individual thing
or occurrence, in the second; a regular sign such as the English definite article,
or, indeed, any verbal sign, in the third. Peirce had already suggested that a sign
by Thirdness ‘without Secondness would be absurd’ (EP2 270), and availing
himself of the principle of degeneracy, he introduces at this point the concept
of the replica: ‘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’ (CP
2.246). Thus through the application of his categories he has established that a
replica is an individual existent instance of the general sign: all language signs,
for example, are manifested through replicas, for the general signs themselves
are thinkable but unperceivable.
 The Philosophy of Representation 29

The implication principle

What is now the second trichotomy distinguishes between icon, index and
symbol. The interesting feature of this division is the principle by which the
subdivisions lower down the categorial scale are integrated – ‘involved’ is Peirce’s
term – into the higher in such a way as to account for the specificity of the class
of signs and its peculiar ‘perceivability’ or materiality. In this way the icon is
defined as a sign which refers to its object ‘merely by characters of its own’ (CP
2.247) which it possesses irrespective of whether the object exists or not. The
index, on the other hand, represents its object by virtue of a physical connection
with that object. In that case it must somehow share some quality or qualities
with that object, and, therefore, involves a ‘sort of icon’, the sign by quality: the
index must have some quality or qualities making it recognizable which can
be prescinded from it. For example, if we take a road-sign pointing to a nearby
town as an index it is possible to prescind from it the quality of directionality,
or in the case of an aria we prescind the tessitura quality of a soprano’s voice as
we hear her singing. This is how Peirce describes the involvement of the icon in
the index:
In so far as the Index is affected by the Object, it necessarily has some Quality in
common with the Object, and it is in respect to these that it refers to the Object.
It does, therefore, involve a sort of Icon, although an Icon of a peculiar kind; and
it is not the mere resemblance of its Object, even in these respects which makes
it a sign, but it is the actual modification of it by the Object. (CP 2.248)

In similar fashion the symbol represents its object by virtue of some law or
general convention – by ‘an association of general ideas’ in Peirce’s terms – but
it can only be interpreted by means of the instances it determines. This is how
Peirce describes the implication principle as it concerns the symbol:
A Symbol is a sign which refers to the Object that it denotes by virtue of a law,
usually an association of general ideas, which operates to cause the Symbol
to be interpreted as referring to that Object. It is thus itself a general type or
law, that is, is a Legisign. As such it acts through a Replica … There must,
therefore, be existent instances of what the Symbol denotes, although we must
here understand by ‘‘existent’’, existent in the possibly imaginary universe to
which the Symbol refers. The Symbol will indirectly, through the association or
other law, be affected by those instances; and thus the Symbol will involve a sort
of Index, although an Index of a peculiar kind. It will not, however, be by any
means true that the slight effect upon the Symbol of those instances accounts for
the significant character of the Symbol. (CP 2.249)
30 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

It follows from this that if the symbol involves a sort of index, and the index a sort
of icon, then at two removes a symbol, too, will by transitivity involve a sort of icon.
For example, any Halt sign by a road junction is only one of a thousand such signs
in any given country. It represents by its very existence the general law determined
by the government, and is therefore a replica of that general injunction. As a replica
it has indexical status in that it is placed in the exact position where the motorist
is enjoined to stop his vehicle. In addition, it is only recognizable as a Halt sign by
virtue of its distinctive characteristics or qualities – shape, colour, height, its verbal
elements etc. In short, it also involves an icon: in this case Thirdness involves a
Secondness which involves Firstnesses. This implication, or involvement, principle,
which is sanctioned by the phenomenology, is an important characteristic of
Peirce’s conception of signs in this period, and concerns all three divisions.
The second trichotomy of R478 is now the third of R540, and distinguishes
between rheme, dicisign and argument. The first is a sign of qualitative
possibility; it is understood, says Peirce, as representing ‘such and such a kind of
possible object’, and although it may provide information, it is not interpreted as
doing so (CP 2.250). This is the case with any common noun or verb: on their
own the words book, wife or give tell us nothing, they simply denote classes of
objects or processes, and are neither true nor false. The dicisign or dicent sign,
on the other hand, was defined in the earlier manuscript as an informational
sign, and is therefore a step up the categorial scale from the rheme: I gave my
wife a book, for example, is an informational sign. It can be either true or false,
although dicisigns always represent themselves to be true representations of
events or facts, otherwise communication would be impossible. It is a double
sign with a ‘syntax’ which associates two elements: a subject and a predicate, or,
paraphrasing statements in R478, an index and an icon (cf. CP 2.310). Finally
the argument, or triple sign, is any inference, of which three principal forms –
abduction, deduction and induction – are examined in the critic branch of
the philosophy of representation. It is a triple sign as it generally involves two
premisses and a conclusion as in any syllogism (CP 2.309).

The ten classes of signs of 1903

The final feature of speculative grammar is the ultimate goal of all Peirce’s
work in this branch, the identification of classes of signs. Having defined the
sign and its correlates, organized them into trichotomies and then subdivided
these according to categorial distinctions, Peirce is able to extract from the
resultant nine subdivisions ten classes of signs according to the complexity these
 The Philosophy of Representation 31

subdivisions exhibit. Table 1.2 summarizes the system of three trichotomies

established by Peirce in 1903, while the three categories serve as the criteria on a
scale of increasing complexity.
Table 1.2 is based upon a scheme to be found in Peirce’s ‘Logic Notebook’
and is reproduced as Figure 1.2. This shows how Peirce established the relations
between the various subdivisions and so identified the ten classes.
The rules drawn by Peirce in Figure 1.2 are simple. First, two vertical
lines associating three subdivisions form a class. For example, the first class,
the qualisign, is obtained by tracing the leftmost pair of vertical lines from
qualisign to rheme through icon. Similarly a second class is obtained by tracing
from sinsign to dicisign through index, yielding a dicent (indexical) sinsign, a
photograph for example. Finally, a third vertical trace leads from legisign to
argument through symbol, yielding an argument. At this point we note that

Table 1.2 A Synthesis of MSS R478 and R540, 1903

Division
Sign Sign-Object Sign-Interpretant
Category
Thirdness Legisign Symbol Argument
Secondness Sinsign Index Dicisign
Firstness Qualisign Icon Rheme

Figure 1.2 Extract from R339, 239v (H450)

32 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

there are redundant indications in some signs and so they are dropped in the
final terminology. For example, since the two vertical lines lead necessarily
from qualisign to icon to rheme, naming the latter two is superfluous; similarly,
as the two vertical lines show, an argument can only be linked to a symbol and
from the symbol to the legisign, so there is no point in mentioning either of
the latter two in the designation. Similarly since the tracing from sinsign to
dicisign necessarily passes through the index, mention of the latter is again
superfluous.
The second rule allows a downward diagonal trace from right to left, going
from the more complex subdivisions to the less. For example, it is possible to
trace a class from sinsign to icon, which necessarily leads to rheme. This yields
the iconic sinsign, ‘a sign by likeness purely’ (EP2 294), where mention of the
rhematic status of such a sign is superfluous. Similarly, tracing from legisign to
index to rheme yields the rhematic indexical legisign, a personal pronoun, for
example. Note that since each stage in this particular tracing is on a different
complexity level from the earlier, it has to be mentioned in the designation.
In this way Peirce was able to extract ten such classes, which he numbered in
order of relative complexity. His triangular table is to be found in paragraph
CP 2.264, while there is a much clearer representation on page 296 of Essential
Peirce Two. For completeness they are given as follows and can easily be traced
in Figure 1.2: 1, qualisign; 2, iconic sinsign; 3, rhematic indexical sinsign; 4,
dicent sinsign; 5, iconic legisign; 6, rhematic indexical legisign; 7, dicent
indexical legisign; 8, rhematic symbol; 9, dicent symbol; 10 argument. As a
conclusion to the discussion of the ten classes we examine three examples from
the subdivisions of Peirce’s ‘first and most fundamental’ trichotomy, since this
is the best known of all. The first is an eighteenth-century drawing of the river
Thames (Figure 1.3).
This image is composed of lines, shapes and, in the original, muted colours
– all qualities. It is an example of a sign by likeness or similarity, and on it we
recognize human figures, trees, buildings, boats and a river. It is thus what is
generally referred to simply as an icon, although the term ‘icon’ itself is not a
complete classification. As it is a sign by likeness alone it cannot offer proof of
the existence of the objects it depicts, and if translated into a sort of proposition,
its structure would be represented as ‘—is like this’, where the dash means
‘something, possibly’ and the ‘like this’ is the pictorial representation: there may
have been something with the qualities depicted but the image cannot prove
this. However, as a class the image on its own is to be identified as an iconic
sinsign – it must be inscribed on some sort of medium, here paper, otherwise we
 The Philosophy of Representation 33

Figure 1.3 Cheyne Walk, London, © Museum of London Picture Library.

should be unable to perceive the qualities composing it. That paper medium is
an existent object, hence the image is a sinsign. Continuing the analysis we note
that it has a caption: Cheyne Walk, London. If we take this complex indexical
proper noun into account, the syntactic structure of the sign is double and has
the structure of a proposition: a complex index functioning as the subject plus
an icon as predicate. The syntax of this more complex sign is now ‘Cheyne
Walk, London, is like this’, where ‘this’ is the pictorial representation. Since the
index is composed of verbal signs, it is necessarily a legisign or a replica of one.
The complete sign of image plus caption composes a dicisign, namely a dicent
indexical legisign.
Now compare Figure 1.4, a photograph. On its own as a photograph, it is a sign
by physical connection with its object: the entities represented in the photograph
have projected rays onto the film in the camera, thereby determining the visible
patterns of light and shade on the print. In this case, the photograph is a type of
index. However, if it is an index and hence a sign with its own existence, the object
of the photograph must also be an existent object, which makes the photograph an
informational sign, with a ‘double’ syntax (CP 2.309). This is how Peirce explains the
informational capacity of the photograph: ‘A better example [of an informational
index] is a photograph. The mere print does not, in itself, convey any information.
But the fact, that it is virtually a section of rays projected from an object otherwise
34 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

Figure 1.4 At the Summer Palace

known, renders it a Dicisign’ (CP 2.320): the section of rays, he says, constitutes
the quasi-subject of the photograph’s propositional structure while the print itself
is its quasi-predicate. In this case we classify the image in Figure 1.4 as a dicent
(indexical) sinsign (the photograph was a ‘one-off ’ at a particular, never-to-be-
repeated time and in a particular place). Note, however, that if we take the verbal
caption into account, this more complex sign contains instances of legisigns, here
a place-name, and the photograph plus caption is classified in this case, too, as the
replica of a dicent indexical legisign.

(1.1) Today we have naming of parts

Finally, the symbol. Utterance (1.1) is a verbal sign, composed of indices, namely
the deictics Today and we, the preposition of, the invisible present tense marker
of the verb have, and the plural marker –s. In addition, there are three symbolic
elements, the verbs have and name, and the noun parts – these are signs by
convention if only because we have to learn what they mean. The utterance is
an informational sign as it is composed of a double syntax associating a subject
and predicate. In terms of the class to which it belongs, it is the replica of a
dicent symbol and is therefore more complex than the two images with their
captions.
 The Philosophy of Representation 35

Summary and discussion

In the light of the principles established in the preceding sections we can now draw
up an inventory of the major characteristics of the grand logic, characteristics,
therefore, of the philosophy of representation of 1903. Within this system the
sign had a central function and position, being the determination of a single
object and in its turn the determinant of a single interpretant, although the
interpretant being conceived as a sign itself at this time determined a series of
subsequent interpretant-signs. Together with his new science of phenomenology
Peirce’s logic of relations provided a set of criteria for the definition of the sign in
the form of triadic relations composed of three correlates which Peirce identified
as representamen, object and interpretant, a sign in this system being defined as
a representamen with a mental interpretant, and also the unit of representation:
‘I call that which represents, a representamen. A Representation is that relation
of the representamen to its object which consists in it determining a third (the
interpretant representamen) to be in the same relation to that object.’ (R491,
1903).
To the original single ‘first and most fundamental’ trichotomy defining
the icon, index and symbol Peirce added two more: first, the constitution of
a separate sign-interpretant relational division to accommodate the term (now
rheme), proposition (now dicisign) argument division which had earlier formed
three subdivisions of the symbol in the original trichotomy of the mid-1860s;
second, a division for the sign itself, distinguishing qualisign, sinsign and
legisign in order of increasing complexity.
Peirce’s phenomenology, which made the three categories of Firstness,
Secondness and Thirdness that it defined independent of the logic, and by
being ‘outside’ logic, were eligible to constitute the criteria for the subdivisions
of the new, three-division typology. Thus by following a strict hierarchical rule
according to which a subdivision could only be associated with a subdivision
of equal or lower phenomenological complexity, the three divisions S, S–O
and S–I, in that order, yielded ten classes of signs. Moreover, the principle of
categorial degeneracy made it logically possible for a symbol to involve a ‘sort
of ’ index, and an index to involve a ‘sort of icon’, and therefore by transitivity,
for a symbol, too, to involve at two removes a sort of icon, a principle which,
as Jakobson first observed in a paper of 1965,19 underwrote the principle of
language motivation and the theory of iconicity. What we conclude from this is
the pervasive influence of the phenomenology on the theory of the sign at this
36 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

time, and how its principles seemed to hold what might seem disparate features
of the theory together.
However, this logically perfect and complete system was soon to be expanded
and made to coexist with another, more complex system for at least two major
reasons. First, the ten classes, although fully functional, were a meagre haul
for a logician wishing to identify as many types of signs as possible, and these
were all that could be obtained from the three correlates of the triadic relation.
Second, in the following extract from the Minute Logic, Peirce is describing
an earlier version of the grand logic and its three branches: obsistent logic
(critic), originalian logic (speculative grammar) and, finally, transuasional logic
(speculative rhetoric): ‘Transuasional logic, which I term Speculative Rhetoric, is
substantially what goes by the name of methodology, or better, of methodeutic.
It is the doctrine of the general conditions of the reference of Symbols and other
Signs to the Interpretants which they aim to determine’ (CP 2.93, 1902). As we
shall see, development of the interpretant system from 1904 on, together with the
less prominent role of the sign in what Peirce was to call ‘semiosis’, neutralized
the notion that a sign could ‘aim’ to determine anything at all, and it was to cede
its primacy as a determining agency to the object.
One indication of the intense intellectual activity to come concerning the
sign and its two correlates can be gathered from the definitions researchers have
found of the sign over the long period of Peirce’s work on it, approximately from
1865 to 1911. Robert Marty, for one, found seventy-six different definitions in
the period,20 while John Deely, in an appendix to his presentation at the 2014
Charles S. Peirce Centennial Congress, amended this number to eighty-five.21
For Marty twenty-seven of the seventy-six definitions were recorded up to 1903,
while thirty-four of Deely’s eighty-five occur within the same period of almost
forty years. This means that in each case almost two-thirds of the definitions
were composed in the eight-year period after 1903. Allowing for the fact that for
roughly fifteen years up to the mid-1880s, when Peirce came to reappraise the
importance of the index, his research into signs took relatively little of his time,
and also for the fact that several of the definitions from 1906 and 1907 come
from single manuscripts (R793 in 1906 and R318 in 1907, for example), it is
nevertheless clear that Peirce subjected the 1903 systems as described above to
a very rigorous theoretical review. It is to this reappraisal of the systems that the
following chapters are devoted.
Finally, readers wishing to turn to other accounts of the theoretical
development of Peirce’s thinking on semiotics in the period described above
would do well to consult some or all of the following: Atkin (2010), an exhaustive
 The Philosophy of Representation 37

internet page in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on the development of

Peirce’s conception of semiotics from beginning to end; Fisch (1986: 321–55),
Freadman (1996), a chapter in a collection of Peirce papers delivered at the
Charles S. Peirce Sesquicentennial Congress in Harvard in 1989; Liszka (1996),
although now over twenty years old, is still the best all-round introduction to
Peirce’s signs-systems, and is especially interesting on the period described
above; Houser (1992), a general overview of the material discussed in the second
part of the chapter, written by a philosopher and not by a semiotician; Short
(2007), a wide-ranging discussion of all aspects of Peirce’s theory of signs and
includes material from the later period. Note, in this respect, that they are mainly
hybrid descriptions: they associate concepts from later statements with those
made in 1903, a strategy which, for purposes of comparison, I have avoided in
this chapter.
 2

The Transition

This chapter traces some of the ways in which Peirce’s triadic conception of sign-
systems came under considerable pressure during the years following the Lowell
Lectures, principally between 1904 and 1907, and examines the theoretical
developments which occurred in this period, their contribution to the pioneering
features of the later sign-systems and, ultimately, to the problematic status that
befell the speculative rhetoric/methodeutic branch of the general philosophy.
Since the chronological approach has been adopted throughout this study, the
transitional period from 1904 to 1907 is examined from the point of view of
the various sign-systems Peirce developed prior to what constitutes a veritable
semiotic revolution.1
From a methodological point of view, the chapter will examine material year
by year from 1904, finishing with a discussion of a specific set of denominations
of interpretants from 1907. However, this essentially chronological approach
will, on occasion, require that material from later years be adduced in support of
ideas advanced in earlier ones. There are many important texts – manuscripts,
correspondence, published papers etc. – from this period which merit discussion,
but since this is not a general introduction to Peirce’s philosophy for reasons of
clarity and economy I have chosen to prioritize one major text and a relevant
classification per year.
It might be asked why we should bother to examine any of these classifications
in detail. The reasons are simple. First, in the four and a half years between
August 1904 and December 1908 Peirce established in letters, drafts and the
Logic Notebook no fewer than twelve different, mainly complete, typologies –
an amazing number – whereas in the almost forty-year period between 1866
and 1903 there was only one complete classification system – his single-division
‘first and most fundamental’ trichotomy – and none of significance from 1909
on, surely testimony to the considerable experimentation undertaken by Peirce
in the period to which this chapter is devoted.
40 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

Second, in their often very diverse ways, these typologies yield important
insights into the way Peirce’s conception of sign-action developed between the
two major statements on signs of 1903 and 1908, which is why a comprehensive
sample from the Logic Notebook has been included as an appendix. Moreover
such an analysis enables us to follow closely Peirce’s own methodology, namely
definition and division in the exemplary manner of a zoologist. The chronological
approach is primordial as the well-known 1903 system has to vie with the later
one from 1908 as a typological instrument, and it is of theoretical interest to
track the stages by which the later emerged from the earlier: this can be seen
from a comparison of selected typologies. In short, while Chapter 1 finished with
Table 1.2, which set out the ten classes obtained from his 1903 triadic definition
of the sign, the present chapter takes over from there, but the classifications,
which in all but one case are set out in tabular fashion, differ significantly in that
there are no longer just three correlates in his new conception of the action of a
sign, but six.
Third, and most importantly, there is Peirce’s testimony as to the importance
of these classifications in his logical researches. Anticipating the discussions of
the texts from which they have been extracted, we should consider the following
statement:
My excuse for not answering the question scientifically [that those signs that
have a logical interpretant are either general or closely connected with generals]
is that I am, as far as I know, a pioneer, or rather a backwoodsman, in the work of
clearing and opening up what I call semiotic, that is, the doctrine of the essential
nature and fundamental varieties of possible semiosis; and I find the field too
vast, the labor too great, for a first-comer. (R318 119, 1907)

There is no mistaking Peirce’s research project here – it is to identify all

possible varieties of signs. He doesn’t mention classifications as such at this
point, nor does he give a single typology of consequence in the text ‘Pragmatism’
from which the quotation is drawn. It is nevertheless by a complex process of
definition and division and with the subsequent classification of the results
that Peirce saw his task as a logician. Should there be any doubt as to this, the
following statement from a letter to William James echoes the first, but in more
detail: ‘My classification of signs, however, is intended to be a classification
of possible signs and therefore observation of existing signs is only of use in
suggesting and reminding one of varieties that one might otherwise overlook’
(EP2 500, 1909). The letter outlines the projected grand logic, the remnants
of the philosophy of representation, here referred to as his ‘System of Logic’,
and Peirce is describing yet again the field of speculative grammar.2 Finally, it
 The Transition 41

should be noted that alterations made on the classifications by Peirce in the

Logic Notebook, for example, concerning, principally, the denominations of the
interpretants, and deemed of theoretical interest, are included in ‘barred’ form:
for example, proper signified Interpretant, where the label ‘proper’ has been
struck out in the manuscript.
However, before examining the definitions and the typologies they generated
during this period the general scene is set by this astonishing judgement from
Peirce on his work on the classification of signs to be found on the page dated 1
November 1909, in his Logic Notebook:
During the last 3 years I have been resting from my work on the Divisions of
Signs and have only lately – in the last week or two been turning back to it;
and I find my work of 1905 better than any since that time, though the latter
doubtless has value and must not be passed by without consideration. Looking
over the book labelled in red ‘‘The Prescott Book’’, and also this one, I find the
entries in this book of ‘‘Provisional Classification of 1906 March 31’’ and of
1905 October 13 particularly important from my present (accidentally limited,
no doubt) point of view; particularly in regard to the point made in the Prescott
Book 1909 Oct 28 and what immediately precedes that in that book but is not
dated.
Namely, a good deal of my early attempts to define the difference between
Icon, Index, & Symbol, were adulterated with confusion with the distinction as
to the Reference of the Dynamic Interpretant to the Sign. (R339 360r (H674))

What is striking about these remarks is that only a year earlier Peirce had
confidently presented his six and ten divisions in a letter to Lady Welby dated 23
December, and had spent the days following working feverishly on attempts to
organize the latter set. His remarks pertain specifically to the Logic Notebook,
judging by the references to the typologies of 31 October 1905, and 31 March
1906, which seemed particularly important for their methodology and notational
conventions, and one can only suppose that he had forgotten the 1908 letter to
Lady Welby and the subsequent drafts in his portfolio. Surprisingly, too, the page
also testifies to his dissatisfaction, some 40 years after having first introduced it,
with aspects of the trichotomy defining the icon, the index and the symbol. The
note continues thus:
The amount of labour still required upon the ten trichotomies of signs (and
more than these ten I don’t enquire into, not because I don’t think they are in
truth there, but simply because it will be all I possibly can do to define and to
prove these ten) is enough of itself to occupy the ten ± years of efficient thinking
that may remain to me if no accident cuts them short. (R339 360r (H674))
42 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

We can therefore conclude that six years after the Lowell Lectures on
logic, Peirce was still not satisfied with his work on the classification of signs:
his methodology of definition and division had even at this late date not
produced results that satisfied him (if any would). This chapter therefore
also seeks to investigate possible reasons causing this dissatisfaction – the
intellectual restlessness which characterizes much of Peirce’s work is insufficient
justification – and it holds that these can reasonably be found in the typologies
he developed during the period between the Lowell Lectures of 1903 and the
revolutionary set of definitions and divisions set out in the letter of 23 December
1908, which is discussed in detail in Chapter 3.

1904

In spite of the fact that there are a number of texts of interest to a study of the
development of Peirce’s logic at this time, the main thrust of this section of the
chapter concerns the letter to Lady Welby dated 12 October 1904: it offers an
important definition of the sign and an accompanying six-division classification,
and therefore makes a useful starting-point to the chapter. Rather in the manner
of R478 (EP2 267–72), discussed in Chapter 1, the letter begins with a detailed
account of the categories which leads naturally to the definitions. This in itself is
of interest as the definitions of the sign and the twenty-eight or sixty-six classes
to which it can be assigned as described in the letter dated 23 December 1908,
on the other hand, are prefaced by a detailed discussion not of the categories, but
of three universes and their modes of being.

Two objects
In 1904 Peirce was led to expand the set of correlates involved in the action of
a sign and, with this expansion, to envisage a corresponding amplification of
the number of divisions of signs it made available: therein lay two theoretical
problems he was never quite able to resolve, namely the problem of reconciling
in a single typology two distinct types of trichotomy, one involving relations
between correlates and one involving the correlates themselves, and that of
establishing their order of occurrence in the classification. An early account of
what this expansion involved can be seen in the introduction to the typology
which he proposed to Lady Welby in the October 1904 letter, although he doesn’t
 The Transition 43

seem to have mentioned the possibility of this initial hexadic system generating
twenty-eight classes of signs:
I am now prepared to give my division of signs, as soon as I have pointed out
that a sign has two objects, its object as it is represented and its object in itself.
It has also three interpretants, its interpretant as represented or meant to be
understood, its interpretant as it is produced, and its interpretant in itself. Now
signs may be divided as to their own material nature, as to their relations to their
objects, and as to their relation to their interpretants. (CP 8.333)

An initial problem to be addressed, then, is what might have led Peirce to

expand the original correlate system in this way. One possible explanation
concerns traditional accounts of the sign and the two objects. Peirce notes on
several occasions that past logicians have generally recognized two objects, as
in this extract from the ‘Pragmatism’ text: ‘But all logicians distinguished two
objects of a sign; the one, the Immediate object or object as the sign represents it,
(and without this a sign would not be a sign); the other Real object, or object as it
is independent of any particular idea representing it’ (R318 373, 1907).3 He adds
to this as an afterthought a remark which, if taken independently of his attempts
in this particular set of notes to use the semiotics as his proof of pragmatism, we
would find particularly sibylline: ‘Of course, many signs have no real objects.’
As with his use of the term ‘representamen’, as he originally called the sign,
the adoption of the two objects could be accounted for by his acquaintance
with the philosophy of the eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher Thomas
Reid, through his knowledge of Sir William Hamilton’s edition of his work. The
following is a suggestive sample of Reid’s discussion of cognition quoted by
Deledalle (2000: 133):
The Leibnitio-Wolfians […] distinguished three acts in the process of
representative cognition: 1° the act of representing a (mediate) object to the
mind; 2° the representation, or more properly speaking, representamen, itself as
an (immediate or vicarious) object exhibited to the mind; 3° the act by which
the mind is conscious immediately of the representative object, and, through it,
immediately of the remote object represented. (Reid 1863: 877n.)

The terminology and concepts in this short extract are echoed in similar, if
not identical, fashion by Peirce in his discussions of the sign and its two objects:
‘representative object’ and ‘remote object’ correspond, respectively, to what
Peirce refers to in the letter to Lady Welby as the ‘object as it is represented’ and
the ‘object in itself ’, and thus, respectively, to what he most frequently refers to
44 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

as the sign’s ‘immediate’ and ‘dynamic’ (also ‘dynamical’, or ‘dynamoid’) objects.

In view of the preceding remarks, it is thus possible to conclude that Peirce was
led to adopt the two objects through respect for a philosophical tradition which,
according to Short (2007: 179–80), can be traced back to the Stoics.4 Peirce
himself had already used the expression back in 1868.5 A justification for just
two objects beside the three interpretants is to be found in the efforts to deduce
his pragmatism from his semiotic theory:
As I said above, the object is the idea or thing that the sign finds, the meaning
what it leaves. The immediate object resembles the emotional meaning in being
common to all signs, and also in being subjective. The real object corresponds
to the existential meaning very obviously. Plainly, the reason for there being a
third meaning but no third object must be grounded in the essential differences
between the relations of the two correlates of the sign. The object is antecedent,
the meaning subsequent to the sign. That third meaning, therefore, must be in
some sort of future tense. (R318 677–79, 1907)

There is, nevertheless, a more logically justified reason for establishing the two
objects and three interpretants in 1904,6 involving three important interrelated
concepts, namely, the complexity structure of the triadic relation within which the
sign operates and is exemplified in the correlate order of Representamen, Object
and Interpretant of any triadic relation; the three categories – which Peirce had
just defined anew in considerable detail in the letter to Lady Welby quoted earlier;
and, also, the notion of ‘degeneracy’ within the categories discussed in Chapter
1. These were not new ideas in 1903, as Peirce had already developed the idea of
degenerate grades in a ‘Guess at the Riddle’. However, there is an intriguing entry
in the Logic Notebook on the verso side of the page dated 10 July 1903 (R339
239v (H449)), although more likely to have been added at a date presumably later
than 7 August 1904 (R339 240r (H451)), in which Peirce gives the genuine and
degenerate forms of the icon-index-symbol division and the genuine and two
degenerate forms of the rheme-dicent-argument division (Table 2.1).7
There are two things of importance to note here. First, genuine-degenerate
categorial distinctions are used to define the subdivisions of the typology.
With respect to the object, the letter A serves to indicate the ‘degenerate’
form in the first division and what is presumably in this period the ‘doubly
degenerate’ form in the second, although Peirce doesn’t mention the term. B
is the genuine form in the first division and the degenerate in the second. C is
the genuine form in the sign-interpretant division, while B is the degenerate
form and A is the doubly degenerate form (indicated as ‘Dedegenerate’ in the
final line). Second, rather in the manner of the quotation from EP2 275 (below)
 The Transition 45

Table 2.1 The typology of August 1904?

August 1904? 239v (H450)

B Icon B Index B symbol
are Icon Index Symbol
in the genuine sense
A Icon A Index A Symbol
are Icon Index Symbol
in the degenerate sense
C Rheme C Dicent C Argument
are Rheme Dicent Argument
in the genuine sense
Rheme is represented in the proper signified Interpretant as if a Quality
of the Object
Dicent is represent [sic] in the signified Interpretant as if in a Real Relation to its
Object
Argument is represented in the signified Interpretant as if it were a Sign
Rheme professes to describe a quality
Dicent has two terms professing to describe Quality & Existent
Argument has 3 terms professing to be Major Quality, Minor Existent, Middle Sign
B Rheme B Dicent B Argument
are Degenerate Rheme Dicent Argument
B Rheme determines its interpretant formally by definition making it one sign
B Dicent determines its interpretant by force
B Argument determines its dynamic interpretant by its being represented as doing so
B Dicent has to be asserted C Dicent may be asserted
A Rheme A Dicent A Argument
are Dedegenerate Rheme Dicent Argument
NB probably follows 7 August 1904

Peirce associates the interpretants with the subdivisions of the two relational
trichotomies he had now defined, although here rhemes, for example,
are defined to be represented in the signified and dynamic interpretants,
whereas in R478 a member of a given subdivision may have an element from
another subdivision as its interpretant, for example, the index may have an
‘Individual [Singular] Symbol’ for its indirect Interpretant (EP2 275). The
denominations of the interpretants have changed – but the principle is more
or less the same. Moreover, there is no division corresponding to the sign on
46 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

the table. Nevertheless, even without the sign another notable feature of the
table is the order of presentation of the correlates Peirce is using as criteria
for the classification of the sign: the genuine precedes the degenerate form,
which, with respect to the single interpretant in this case, precedes the doubly
degenerate; another is the fact that the attempted typology deals with the
classes of signs from 1903. In later typologies Peirce replaces this method
of deriving subdivisions by divisions obtained by a combination of the six
correlates themselves and four relational criteria, each subdivided by either
of three modes of being, although Peirce may have conceived of a possible
hexadic expansion of the original triadic relation as early as 1903, as Short
has suggested:
Composed largely in one month, the ‘Syllabus’ shows a swift development of
thought; for example, in the third section, signs are divided by two trichotomies,
but in the fifth section, a third trichotomy is introduced and placed in first
position […]. In fact, several other trichotomies are suggested in the fifth section
as well, although this seems not to have been noticed. (2007: 237)

Short doesn’t enlarge on this statement. However, the idea that Peirce was
thinking of further trichotomies in 1903 is supported not so much by the
discussion of the various triadic relations in the fifth section of the Syllabus
as, rather, by a reference to three interpretants – immediate, imperfect and
indirect – in the earlier third section.
Although the immediate Interpretant of an Index must be an Index, yet since
its Object may be the Object of an Individual [Singular] Symbol, the Index may
have such a Symbol for its indirect Interpretant. Even a genuine Symbol may be
an imperfect Interpretant of it. So an icon may have a degenerate Index, or an
Abstract Symbol, for an indirect Interpretant, and a genuine Index or Symbol for
an imperfect Interpretant. (CP 2.294, 1903)

This brings us to the interpretants, accounting for the emergence of which

is more problematic. Whether by tradition or, more likely, as a result of Peirce’s
personal theory of the action of a sign, it is clear that the representamen and
the two objects were established philosophical concepts in his system in
1903.8 The three interpretants, on the other hand, were completely innovative.
Furthermore, as can be seen from the surprising remarks quoted above from
the Logic Notebook concerning the ten divisions (R339 360r (H674)), they
also had to be defined and proved. In view of the terminological hesitations
characterizing the various descriptions of the interpretants we cannot be sure
that he was ever able to do this to his satisfaction. Here again, as before, it is the
 The Transition 47

combination of the theory of the categories together with the ordering and the
relative complexity of the three correlates of 1903 that suggests the emergence of
the three interpretants: ‘It is now necessary to point out that there are three kinds
of interpretant. Our categories suggest them, and the suggestion is confirmed
by careful examination’ he wrote in 1907 (R318, 251). To this should be added
a description of the correlates from a relational perspective to be found in the
same series of variants, in which the third interpretant is seen as a future tense:
If there are three interpretants and only two objects, – the object and the
interpretant being the correlates of every sign, – the reason of this discrepancy
can only lie in some difference between the relations of the Object and of
the Interpretant, respectively, to the Sign. The object is the antecedent, the
interpretant the consequent of the sign. The reason sought must, then, be in
this, that the interpretant is, in some sense, in a future tense, relatively to the sign,
while the object is in a past tense. (R318 381, 1907)

Even later he writes to Lady Welby that it is the definition of the sign that
determines what the three interpretants are like: ‘Your ideas of Sense, Meaning,
and Significance seem to me to have been obtained through a prodigious
sensitiveness of Perception that I cannot rival, while my three grades of
Interpretant were worked out by reasoning from the definition of a Sign what
sort of thing ought to be noticeable and then searching for its appearance’ (SS
111, 1909). For whatever reasons he was led to establish three interpretants
it is important to note that the letter to Lady Welby included a relatively full
description of a new hexadic formula for the classification of signs. Table 2.2 sets
out the gist of the typology proposed by Peirce in the letter and, like Table 2.1, is
of interest for the way it reflects the innovative direction his conception of signs
was taking.

The hexad of 1904

Returning now to the letter itself it is interesting to note that after having detailed
the six new divisions Peirce paradoxically completes his presentation of the
material set out in Table 2.2 with the recapitulation of the ten classes obtained
from the 1903 Lowell Lectures. He seems not to have envisaged either in the
letter or in the Logic Notebook the possibility of generating twenty-eight classes
of signs. He recapitulates the ten classes, too, in the postscript to the draft of
28 December 1908 (CP 8.376), which suggests not only that he was far from
satisfied with his work on the ten divisions but also that he found the original
10-class system logically complete and correspondingly more satisfactory.
48 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

Table 2.2 The six-division typology of October 1904

12 October 1904 Letter to Lady Welby CP 8.334-8.339

As it is in itself, a sign is
of the nature of an appearance = qualisign
an individual object or event = sinsign
of the nature of a general type = legisign

In respect to their relations to their dynamic objects

Icon sign determined by its dynamic object by virtue of its own internal
nature
Index sign determined by its dynamic object by virtue of being in a real
relation to it
Symbol sign determined by its dynamic object only in the sense that it will be
so interpreted

In respect to its immediate object a sign may either be a sign of quality, of an existent,
or of a law

In regard to its relation to its signified interpretant, a sign is either a Rheme, a Dicent,
or an Argument

A sign may appeal to its dynamic interpretant in three ways:

1st, an argument only may be submitted to its interpretant
2nd, an argument or dicent may be urged upon the interpretant by an act of
insistence .
3rd Argument or dicent may be and a rheme can only be, presented to the
interpretant for contemplation

In its relation to its immediate interpretant, I would divide signs into three classes as
follows:
1st, those which are interpretable in thoughts or 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

The typology, like that of Table 2.1, maintains the subclasses of signs from
1903 – qualsign and icon, for example – but here includes a division for the
sign itself. The order in which the divisions are presented and set out for
purposes of comparison as Figure 2.1 is the same as that in Table 2.2,9 an order
which led Hardwick to remark that the ordering of the first and third of the
three interpretant trichotomies differed from the one Peirce seemed to prefer
(SS 35n22). Indeed the orderings displayed on the two tables above are the only
examples to be found either in the correspondence or in the Logic Notebook.
 The Transition 49

S, S−Od, S–Oi S−If, S−Id, S−Ii

Figure 2.1 The six divisions of 1904

We note, too, that the terminology concerning the interpretants is identical to

that in Table 2.1 and that the order in which they figure in the typology seems
similarly to be determined by phenomenological complexity. Of the three
interpretant trichotomies, the final one, S-Ii, was dropped, presumably because
Peirce realized that neither the Oi nor the Ii divisions can be relational as he
subsequently considered the correspondence between them as a sort of ‘mirror
image’ of each other (not Peirce’s term): the immediate object representing
the dynamic object and the immediate interpretant being the sign’s inherent
interpretability (SS 111), and as such a necessary ‘semantic reflection’ of the
former according to the sign’s particular mode of being.10

1905

Sign
Although this section deals with material from 1905, this year and the following
one could easily have been taken together as the relevant texts overlap with
respect to the theoretical material they contain. These are a draft dated by
Hardwick as July 1905 (SS 189–94), a manuscript R793 from 1906 which
presents a striking similitude to the 1905 draft, the relevant pages from the Logic
Notebook and an important text from 9 March 1906. The draft of 1905 begins,
as was the case in the Lowell Lectures and the 12 October 1904 letter to Lady
Welby, with a discussion of the categories (‘My three categories appear always
more clear to me’ (SS 189)), as a theoretical springboard for a presentation of
the sign. His discussion of the ‘three grades of structure’ of what he now calls the
‘phaneron’– Primans, Secundans and Tertians – leads him to define the sign in
terms of active and passive correlates:
A “Sign” is anything, A, which,
(1) in addition to characters of its own,
(2) stands in a dyadic relation r, to a purely active correlate,
(3) and is also in a triadic relation to B for a purely passive correlate,
C, this triadic relation being such as to determine C to be [in?]11 a dyadic
relation, S, to B, the relation S corresponding in a recognized way to the
relation r.
(SS 192)
50 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

The importance of this definition is that the idea of sign-action being a process
of representation is now replaced in this formal statement by the expressions
‘stands in a dyadic relation … and also in a triadic relation’: we see Peirce here
moving from the rigid triadic definition of a relation as in 1903 to this more
dynamic conception of sign-action involving an active-passive constraint, surely
evidence of a movement away from the sign as a substitute, ‘standing for’ its object.

Representamen
Moreover, according to the definition S, a relation, is different from A, defined
as the sign. This corresponds to remarks that Peirce then makes in the draft
concerning the concept of the ‘representamen’, a long-standing source of
contention among Peirce scholars and enthusiasts. He begins by introducing
the preferred terminology: ‘I use “Sign” in the widest sense of the definition.
It is a wonderful case of an almost popular use of a very broad word in almost
the exact sense of the scientific definition’ (SS 193) and then goes on to add: ‘I
formerly preferred the word representamen. But there was no need of this horrid
long word. On the contrary, it requires some stretching to cover such imperative
ejaculations of drivers, as, “Hi!” or “Hullah” …’ (SS 193). He adds a little later in
the draft that ‘I thought of the representamen as taking the place of the thing;
but a sign is not a substitute’ (SS 193). The whole draft seems thus to suggest
that during this period Peirce was beginning to realize that the correlates were
independent, each with its own specificity and function, and that sign-action
was to be represented as a truly dynamic process, positions confirmed by R793
and the draft of 1906.
Why should the concept of the representamen create a theoretical problem?
The confusion turns on what scholars consider to be a sign and how it relates
to the representamen. We have already referred to Peirce’s 1903 definitions
concerning triadic relations, which are composed of representamen, object and
interpretant in order of increasing complexity (CP 2.235–237), and to the rider
that ‘A Sign is a Representamen of which some Interpretant is a cognition of
a mind. Signs are the only representamens that have been much studied’ (CP
2.242). In 1903 the sign was clearly a species of representamen, representamens
also being the first correlates of triadic relations which do not necessarily have
mental interpretants. However, some Peirce scholars advance the idea that the
sign is, like semiosis, a process or relation in which representamen, object and
interpretant participate as its three correlates. This is essentially the position
adopted by Merrell, who writes:
 The Transition 51

Peirce’s sign sports three components (Figure 2.1). What usually goes for sign in
everyday talk Peirce called a representamen. He did so in order to distinguish
the representamen from the other two sign components, that, as we shall note,
can become signs in their own right. The representamen is something that enters
into relation with its object, the second component of the sign …. The third
component of the sign is the interpretant. (2001: 28)

Merrell’s Figure 2.1 represents the sign as a rotor-type three-way structure

with the three ‘components’ branching from a central hub. Quite apart from the
dubious nature of the idea that the object can also become a sign, the passage
and illustration clearly assimilate the sign to the entire triadic relation and
consequently to what Peirce was later to define as the process of semiosis. This
is essentially the idea advanced in Deely (2014), who doesn’t state unequivocally
that the sign has the representamen as one of its components, but quotes
Benedict (1985), who does:
The undeniable use for “representamen” in semeiotic is to be the name of one of
the three branches of the triadic relation. The other two branches have names;
i.e., object and interpretant. The remaining branch frequently, nay, almost
universally, has been called sign. However, that is really poor form! The word
“sign” should be reserved for the triadic relation. Refusal to do this has generated
and perpetuated a source of ambiguity that has been unnecessarily deceptive.
(1985: 265–66)

I suggest that the source of ambiguity has been perpetuated by scholars who
have not paid sufficient attention to Peirce’s post-1903 theory of the sign, and
to the 1905 draft in particular. For his part, Benedict was clearly indulging in
a piece of wishful thinking: ‘Concerning the matter of reinstating the term
[representamen], there seems to be an undeniable use for the term in semeiotic.
Of course, this assumes that the connotation of “sign” includes its being a triadic
relation’ (1985: 265). He has proved nothing but has neglected the later writings,
drafts and correspondence. For, by this time, Peirce must have been beginning
to think of the nature of the association of the six correlates and of the process of
‘semeiosy’, (CP 5.473, 1907) or semiosis, which he introduced in 1907 as being
the cooperation of three subjects, a sign, its object and its interpretant:
It is important to understand what I mean by semiosis. All dynamical action,
or action of brute force, physical or psychical, either takes place between two
subjects [whether they react equally upon each other, or one is agent and the
other patient, entirely or partially] or at any rate is a resultant of such actions
between pairs. But by ‘semiosis’ I mean, on the contrary, an action, or influence,
52 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

which is, or involves, a coöperation 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. (CP 5.484, 1907)

This strongly suggests that the scholars mentioned above, and many others
no doubt, have confused sign and semiosis, to the mystification of the newcomer
to Peirce’s semiotics. By this time Peirce preferred the term ‘sign’ and was in
the process of replacing the sign’s representative function (‘a sign stands for
…’) by one of mediation. The temporary rejection of the representamen was
surely representative of a shift of perspective in Peirce’s view of sign-action. The
rejection of the term was indeed temporary, for in 1911, in a projected article
titled ‘A Sketch of Logical Critics’ (R675), Peirce was to return to the concept of
the representamen, attributing to it a slightly different logical status, one akin to
the distinction made between symbols and their replicas in 1903, with the sign
nevertheless retained as a species of representamen:

In the first place, a “Representamen’’, like a word, —indeed most words are
Representamens, – is not a single thing, but is of the nature of a mental habit, it
consists in the fact that something would be. The twenty odd thes on an ordinary
page are all one and the same word, – that is, they are so many instances of a single
word. Here are two instances of Representamens: “—killed—”, “a man”. The first
of several characters which are each of them either essential to a sign’s being truly
called an instance of a Representamen or else necessary properties of such an object
is that it should have power to draw the attention of any mind that is fit to "interpret"
it to two or more "Objects" of it. The first of the above examples or instances of
representamens has four objects; the second has two. (R675 39–40, 1911)12

In view, too, of the fact that by now Peirce had expanded the original triadic
relation to what was effectively a hexad, the concept of the representamen
defined as the first correlate of a triadic relation was presumably no longer
operative. With this final remark regarding the possible reasons for Peirce’s
rejection of the concept of the representamen, we turn to the manuscript R793.
This particular set of pages seems to have been transitional between the 1905
draft and that of 1906, since it shares feature of each. What it has in common
with the 1905 draft is the reference to the phaneroscopic ‘grades of structure’,
namely the Primans, Secundans and Tertians on which Peirce constructed
the very formal definition of the sign given above. It shares with the draft the
definition of sign-action as a sign which is passive in relation to the object but
active in relation to the interpretant (R793 2). It also, more anecdotally, contains
the same jocular reference to seme, the Italian for seed, from canto XXXIII of the
Inferno: Ma se le mie parole esser den seme13 (SS 194, 1905; R793 14,14 c. 1906),
 The Transition 53

which seems to have been a cue for Peirce to introduce terminology which was
to figure prominently both in the 1906 paper ‘Prolegomena to an Apology for
Pragmaticism’ and the later, 1908 hexadic typology to be discussed in Chapter
3: ‘seme’ which he associated with ‘pheme’ and ‘delome’ in 1906 as alternatives
to the original rheme-dicent-argument triad, and introducing the terms ‘type’
and ‘token’ which were to figure prominently in the later typologies on the same
page (SS 194).15 We return to R793 below with the discussion of the equally
important draft of 9 March 1906. In the meantime, to complete this discussion
of Peirce’s theorizing in 1905 we examine the typology for 13 October 1905,
Table 2.3, one of the two which still found favour with him in the passage from
the Logic Notebook of 1909 quoted earlier in the chapter. We know that Peirce
was much occupied by classification systems during this period.16
Perhaps the most important feature of Table 2.3 is the fact that by 1905 the
six correlates yield a total of ten divisions capable, although Peirce seems not

Table 2.3 The typology of 13 October 1905

13 October 1905 262r (H497)

A Nature of Sign in itself

Abstraction = Qualisign
Existent = Sinsign
Combinant Type = Legisign
B Of Object
a Immediate
In what form Object is represented in Sign { Indef./ Sing. /General as far as
affects Form of Sign

b. Dynamical
α Nature of Object in Itself {Abstraction/Concrete/Collection
β Cause of/How Sign is/being determined to represent obj
Causation of sign's representing Obj
C Of Interpretant
a Immediate
In what form interpretant is repr. in sign
As far as it affects form of sign {Interrog/Imper./Significat.

b Dynamical
α Nature of Interpretant in Itself
As far as this affects Nature of sign {Feeling/ Fact/ Sign (? Sign.)
54 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

β Cause of sign being determined to affect/ being represented

Causation of Sign's affecting Interp. {Sympathy/Compulsion/Representat.

c Representative
α In what form sign is represented in Interpretant
As far as this affects form of sign,

β Causation of representation of Sign by Interpretant

As far as this affects nature of the Sign,

γ Rationale of Connection between Sign and Object effected by Interpretant

to have mentioned the possibility at the time, of generating sixty-six classes

of signs, whereas the earlier typology in Table 2.2 was restricted to a possible
twenty-eight. We note, too, that the order of presentation of the correlates differs
considerably in 1905. In the letter of 12 October 1904, for example, the order for
the two objects and the three (standardized as ‘immediate’, ‘dynamic’ and ‘final’)
interpretants was S–Od, S–Oi, S–If, S–Id, S–Ii, in which the order of occurrence
seems still to be dictated, like the material in Table 2.1 above, by the perceived
phenomenological complexity of the correlate in question: the dynamic object
is somehow genuine and therefore considered to be phenomenologically more
complex than the immediate, which, by definition, can never represent it other
than partially; and in this view, the final interpretant is genuine, the dynamic
degenerate and the immediate doubly degenerate. What we find in Table 2.3, on
the other hand, is ‘correlate’ order: the sign division comes first, followed by the
two objects, and, finally by the three interpretants. However, within this order
the immediate precedes the dynamic and the dynamic the final, which suggests
that Peirce was already adopting the order of semiosis which characterizes the
order the sign’s correlates in the hexadic typology of 23 December 1908.17
By July 1905 the genuine-degenerate distinction had been replaced by a set
of Greek letters, making the whole system more abstract. This is presumably
one of the reasons why the typology found special favour with Peirce in 1909,
together with the fact that it defined ten divisions. It is significant, too, that
the descriptions of the various divisions are organized hierarchically from
‘form’ to ‘nature’ to ‘connection-combinant’, early realizations of the distinction
between quality-possibility, existent and generality-necessitant characteristic of
the later modes of being. Furthermore, the terminology employed to identify
the correlates was beginning to take its final form: immediate and dynamic
are relatively stable from now on, while the final interpretant, identified as
 The Transition 55

the representative interpretant in Table 2.3 was to be the object of a series of

terminological hesitations. Finally, the typology in Table 2.3, unlike the two
previously discussed classifications, offers tentative subdivisions for each of the
criteria: qualisign, sinsign and legisign remain from 1903, but, surprisingly, icon,
index and symbol have disappeared as subdivisions. Other divisions anticipate
the typologies of 1908: Bbα, for example, has the subdivisions Abstraction,
Concrete, Collection, which later become the subdivisions corresponding,
respectively, to the three universes to which the dynamic object can belong.

1906

A new definition of the sign

We review Peirce’s transitional description of the sign and its interpretants in a
draft to Lady Welby dated 9 March 1906, before discussing one of the complex
classifications the system generates.18 In this, probably the most detailed and
coherent exposition of his mature theory of semiotics, the several sheets
devoted to logic occur towards the middle of a 55-page draft from the Peirce
correspondence RL463 (pages 26–33 in the manuscript with pages repeated)
in which Peirce discusses, at times quite sternly, a ‘pragmatoidal’ poem from a
volume that Lady Welby had sent him, British and American diction (‘spoken
dialects’) and spelling reform, while the relevant passage is sandwiched between a
brief introduction to the Existential Graphs and a longer description of the Graphs
illustrated by diagrams. In the following passage he first defines the sign in a
radically different way from before and introduces the two objects, after which he
proceeds to describe functional aspects of the three interpretants in relative detail.
The resultant manner in which signs are now classified is no less radical, and has
important implications for the third branch of the philosophy of representation,
for a theory of communication and, indeed, for the ecology of signs:

I use the word ‘‘Sign’’ in the widest sense for any medium for the communication
or extension of a Form (or feature). Being medium, it is determined by
something, called its Object, and determines something, called its Interpretant
or Interpretand. But some distinctions have to be borne in mind in order rightly
to understand what is meant by the Object and by the Interpretant. In order
that a Form may be extended or communicated, it is necessary that it should
have been really embodied in a Subject independently of the communication;
and it is necessary that there should be another subject in which the same form
is embodied only as a consequence of the communication. The Form, (and the
56 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

Form is the Object of the Sign), as it really determines the former Subject, is
quite independent of the sign; yet we may and indeed must say that the object
of a sign can be nothing but what the sign represents it to be. Therefore, in order
to reconcile these apparently conflicting Truths, it is indispensible to distinguish
the immediate object from the dynamical object. (RL463 26–27, 1906)19

This definition of the sign, in a manner not dissimilar to that of the letter of
12 October 1904, introduces the two objects at the same time as the sign. This
was not an isolated case of Peirce defining the sign as a medium: ‘All my notions
are too narrow. Instead of ‘‘Sign’’ ought I not to say Medium?’ (R339 293r, 1906).
As noted by the editors of EP2 this was a prominent feature of Peirce’s research
into and on the sign in 1906.20 See, too, Robert Marty’s discussion of the seventy-
six definitions of signs.21 The following extracts are from manuscript R793:
For the purposes of this inquiry a Sign may be defined as a Medium for the
communication of a Form. It is not logically necessary that anything possessing
consciousness, that is, feeling of the peculiar common quality of all our feeling
should be concerned. But it is necessary that there should be two, if not three,
quasi-minds, meaning things capable of varied determination as to forms of the
kind communicated.
As a medium, the Sign is in an essentially triadic relation, to its Object which
determined it and to its Interpretant which it determines. In its relation to the
Object, the Sign is passive; that is to say, its correspondence to the Object is
brought about by an effect upon the sign, the Object remaining unaffected a
circumstance otherwise expressed by saying the Object is real. On the other
hand, in its relation to its interpretant the Sign is active, determining the
interpretant without being itself thereby affected. (R793 1–2, 1906)22

These very radical, and indeed prophetic, definitions raise a number of

interesting questions. What, for example, are we to understand by a sign being
a medium? What, too, are we to understand by the form that is communicated
from the object to the interpretants? And what are the ‘subjects’ that appear for
the first time in a definition of the sign? The following paragraphs address these
questions in turn.

Medium
Peirce is using the term ‘medium’ both literally as a mediating element in the
hexadic expansion of the original triadic relation, and metaphorically in the
sense of ‘vehicle’, as an artist might, for whom media or vehicles such as oil and
water bear pigments to make paint, while in Peirce’s case the sign is a medium or
 The Transition 57

vehicle bearing form to produce meaning. Examples of media that can convey
forms extended by the object in this way are to be found everywhere, from the
humble painter’s sketch-pad (Figure 2.2), blackboards, sound spectrograms and
computer screens to the sorts of neon billboards and giant electronic hoardings
outside department stores advertising the wares within: even human skin with
branding signs and tattoos can function as a communicating medium according
to the 1906 definition of the sign.
Figure 2.2 is a good, if simple, example of the way Peirce conceived the sign as a
medium at this time. This is a portrait and is obviously far more easily followed as
an example of the process of semiosis than, say, a written description of the same
scene. It is also necessarily incomplete as only readers of this study can register
and account for any interpretant effects that the sign has on them. If we ‘go behind
the frame’ and ignore the fact that we are looking at a photograph, and describe
the situation as artist and model experience it, we can see how the sign functions
as a medium. We identify the dynamic object as the sitter. The immediate object
functions as a ‘filter’ and is the determinant of the incomplete representation of
the model’s face being sketched on the sheet of paper, while the sign, as Peirce
described it in 1906, is the particular sheet from the sketch-pad on which the artist
is working. The artist, on the other hand, as we shall see, was not deemed by Peirce
to play a logically significant role in the determining process at the time.

Figure 2.2 Artist, model and representation, Adobe Stock.

58 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

Form
Now both the quotation from the 1906 draft and the extracts from R793 insist
upon the fact that the sign is a medium for the communication of a ‘Form’. Peirce
offers an explanation for this in a variant page 3 of the manuscript:

[That] which is communicated from the Object through the Sign to the
Interpretant is a Form. It is not a singular thing; for if a Singular thing were
first in the Object and afterward in the Interpretant outside the Object, it must
thereby cease to be in the Object. The Form that is communicated does not
necessarily cease to be in one thing when it comes to be in a different thing
because its being is the being of a predicate. The Being of a Form consists in
the truth of a conditional proposition. Under given circumstances something
would be true. The Form is in the Object, entitavely as we may say, meaning
that that conditional relation, or following of consequent upon reason, which
constitutes the Form is literally true of the Object. In the Sign the Form may
or may not be embodied entitavely, but it must be embodied representatively,
that is, that is, in respect to the Form communicated, the Sign produces upon
the interpretant an effect similar to that which the Object itself would under
favorable circumstances. (R793 4–5)

Clearly, if what is communicated from the object to the sign is an existent,

‘singular’, entity it would cease to be in the object once it found its way into the
sign, and would cease to be in the sign as soon as it inhered in the interpretant.
This is the basis of Peirce’s rejection of the term ‘vehicle’ as a correlate in a triadic
relation, for we find a certain hesitation in Peirce’s usage of the term. In the 1905
paper ‘Issues of Pragmatism in the Normative Sciences’, for example, Peirce also
introduces the definition of the sign as a medium of communication, proceeds
to give an extended analysis of the term from the point of view of the active-
passive correlate relations introduced in the definition of the sign in the 1905
draft above and justifies his reasons for not conceiving the sign as a vehicle at this
time by suggesting that the transmission of a fever by a mosquito functioning as
a vehicle is not a valid triadic relation since the ‘entity of a zymotic disease’ can’t
be in two places at the same time (EP2 391, 1905).23 However this rejection is
not consistent, see for example, CP2.231 from 1903, CP 5.547 and CP 5.599–601
from 1905 and CP 4.6 from 1906, and in any case, doesn’t apply to form.
Continuing the discussion of form we see that it is necessarily a quality:
that ‘monadic element of the world’ (CP 1.426, c. 1896) and consequently the
only category of being that can be simultaneously embodied in sign, object and
interpretant. In the abstract, the only forms that can be thus communicated
 The Transition 59

are monads, dyads and triads, or combinations thereof. This is Peirce’s earlier
description of them ‘… the logical categories of the monad, the dyad, and the
polyad or higher set … are categories of the forms of experience’ discussed in
Chapter 1 (CP 1.452, 1896). These are the basic forms structuring, for example,
the predicates of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness, the various subdivisions
defined in all of his classificatory divisions and are, indeed, to be found
throughout the logic. Media defined by the 1906 statement above simply need
to be perceivable and to accommodate such forms emanating, of course, from
the dynamic – or what Peirce sometimes called the ‘real’ – object (e.g. CP 2.310,
1903).

Subject
The question of form in the definition of the sign from the draft of 9 March
1906 raises the further question: what are we to understand by the ‘subjects’ in
the following extract from the quotation: ‘In order that a Form may be extended
or communicated, it is necessary that it should have been really embodied in a
Subject independently of the communication; and it is necessary that there should
be another subject in which the same form is embodied only as a consequence
of the communication’ (RL463 26)? By the term ‘subjects’ here Peirce is referring
to the correlates involved in semiosis, namely the object, the sign and the
interpretant (he identifies the utterer and the interpreter as two quasi-minds,
who are in no way subjects in the process). This in itself is interesting since, as
in another 1906 text, ‘Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmaticism’ (e.g. CP 4.
546), he is already anticipating with this terminology later definitions of the sign
in which the correlates are subjects which can be referred, as we shall see in the
next chapter, to one or other of three universes as opposed to the categories of
1904 and earlier.
But the draft, with its insistence on the communication of a form, is also
prophetic in another way. We today, since the work of Marshal McLuhan, see
communication in terms of contemporary technology. In Peirce’s day some
of the technological developments providing media were the rotary press for
newspapers and mail-order catalogues, the photograph and the telegraph,
together with Muybridge’s moving photography and Edison’s Kinetoscope
which no doubt inspired him to conceive of his Existential Graphs as ‘moving
pictures of thought’ (CP 4.8, 1906). For McLuhan what is communicated in a
message – its ‘form’ in Peircean terms – is less important than the particular
medium through which it is communicated ([1967] 2008: 8), and for McLuhan
60 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

the technology which functioned as the medium for the message even changed
society – individual, family, work, leisure etc. In McLuhan’s case the technology
included the telephone, TV and radio, for example, and these, he thought,
had a unifying influence, creating a ‘global village’ ([1967] 2008: 156–57).
Nevertheless, the formal configurations structuring the messages borne by these
technological advances cannot be other than those defined as the monad, dyad
and triad – Peirce’s categories of the forms of experience – irrespective of the
specific medium communicating them.
The actual message may be less important than the medium conveying it, as
McLuhan claimed, but what is signified by the message is a realization of one or
other, or combinations, of the formal configurations defined by the categories
of the forms of experience. Similarly, the media of today are supported most
spectacularly by the internet: Facebook, LinkedIn and Skype, for example, offer
not so much a global village as a global family or a global workplace. However,
irrespective of the type of media, even in those of today, the ‘ratio’ of form to
medium remains the same as when Peirce first defined it at the beginning of the
last century.

The role of the object

It is clear that the definition of the sign from the 1906 draft implies a very
far-reaching determination principle: the sign, before being uttered, has been
antecedently ‘pre-formed’ by what Peirce was subsequently led to identify as
the sign’s ‘partial objects’ and the relations holding between them. Whereas we
might intuitively think that the structure of a well-known statement such as:

(2.1) I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness

is determined spontaneously by the utterer, what Peirce is saying in the definition

is that from a logical point of view it is the object composed of its partial objects
and the relations holding between them that structure the sign. It follows,
therefore, that the whole process of semiosis is ‘objective’ in the sense that the
sole structuring ‘agency’ in the process is the dynamic object. This conception
of sign-action has implications for Peirce’s philosophy of representation, for
the speculative rhetoric branch in particular, for it means that a rhetorical
component in the traditional sense becomes redundant within this expanded
logic, since any inflections produced, even if they originate in some animate
agent, can only enter the sign through the structure of the object, if we accept
the definitions above and their implications. In other words, any such rhetorical
 The Transition 61

or methodological intention is not ‘added’ to the sign in any way by the utterer,
but is part of the form communicated to, or extended in, the sign by the object
and thence to the interpretants, most notably to what Peirce, in the draft refers
to as the ‘intentional interpretant’. Any rhetorical or methodological intent the
sign may convey, then, is, within this exposition of the general theory, already
programmed in the complex form extended by the object.
Another way of putting this is that in 1906 there is nothing in the sign that
hasn’t come from the object, or, rather, there is nothing in the immediate object,
for which the sign serves as the support, that hasn’t been as though filtered
from the dynamic object, and by defining the sign simply as a medium Peirce
is separating the materiality of the sign from the functionality it had enjoyed
previously; the sign has been ‘de-reified’, so to speak, from the monolithic status
it had in 1903, no doubt as a result of Peirce’s having defined six correlates of sign-
action from 1904 on as opposed to the three from the period before. In other
words, defining the sign as a medium frees it from the danger of the reification
inherent in negligently classifying signs as icons or dicisigns, for example, for
these are simply subdivisions.

The role of the utterer in 1906

In this same 1906 draft, true to the principle that psychological considerations
have no place in logic, Peirce minimizes the influence of utterer and interpreter
on the structure of the sign by invoking instead, as mentioned earlier, the very
much more abstract concept of the quasi-mind he had introduced earlier in the
draft. Quasi-minds – ‘theatres of consciousness’ as he puts it in 1907 (EP2 403) –
are the indispensable agents of any semiosis since without them there wouldn’t
be a sign in the first place;24 the commens itself being the most general ‘mind’
of all, the guarantor of every semiosis: ‘A sign is supposed to have an object or
meaning, and also to determine an interpretant sign of the same object. It is
convenient to speak as if the sign originated with an utterer and determined
its interpretant in the mind of an interpreter’ (R11 1, 1903). Logically, however,
neither utterer nor interpreter has any influence on the sign’s structure: it is the
object which, in an older sense of the term, ‘informs’ the sign, moulding its
structure in the process of semiosis.
Moreover, while it is obvious that for logical reasons and for reasons
of commodity Peirce’s examples are generally verbocentric, this is not the
motivation behind his choice of the term ‘utterer’ as the first of the two quasi-
minds. Consider this from the manuscript: ‘To signify that a person puts forth a
62 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

sign whether vocal, ocular, or by touch, —and conventional signs mostly are of
one or other of these three kinds or by taste, smell, and a sense of temperature
which are the media of many natural tests and symptoms, —I like the word
utter’ (R793 14, 1906). Any artist, like the one in Figure 2.2, as an incarnation of
Peirce’s utterer, is necessarily ‘outside’ the determination process; he is what for
Aristotle was the ‘efficient’ cause: difficult as it may be for us to admit, according
to Peirce’s conception of the sign as medium in 1906 it is the dynamic object
which structures the representation on the sign, not the artist.25

The three interpretants

After having introduced the dynamic (Peirce’s term is ‘dynamical’, but for
convenience the terminology has been standardized) and immediate objects
and the sign itself, Peirce goes on to complete the description of the process by
describing the three interpretants as follows:
There is the Intentional Interpretant, which is a determination of the mind of the
utterer; the Effectual Interpretant, which is a determination of the mind of the
interpreter; and the Communicational Interpretant, or say the Cominterpretant,
which is a determination of that mind into which the minds of utterer and
interpreter have to be fused in order that any communication should take place.
This mind may be called the commens. It consists of all that is, and must be, well
understood between utterer and interpreter, at the outset, in order that the sign
in question should fulfill its function. (RL463 29, 1906)26

In view of the fact that the interpretants are presented in the order of
intentional, effectual and communicational, and that the communication of
the form is from object to interpretant via the sign, the relations between the
correlates as described in 1906 can be represented in the scheme in Figure 2.3,
in which the arrow ‘→’ indicates that in the order of determination the correlate
preceding determines the one following, which, it must be understood, has been
reconstructed from the material in the draft:
Now the distinctions Peirce draws between the three interpretants are
important for a number of reasons. To begin with, the logical disjunction between
the intentional (i.e. immediate) interpretant as a determination of the mind of
the utterer and the effectual (i.e. dynamic) interpretant as a determination of the

Od Oi S intentional-I effectual-I communicational-I

Figure 2.3 Hypothetical reconstruction of the hexad in the 1906 draft

 The Transition 63

mind of the interpreter is highly significant as it introduces what we might call an

interpretive ‘differential’. Not only does the 1906 draft confine the sign’s structure
to the objective nature of semiosis, but it also explains how signs can produce an
effect or reaction which diverges from the one intended: if the two agencies or
theatres of consciousness involved in the communication have widely differing
experiences of the world, then the non-deterministic basis of Peirce’s semiotic
theory explains those cases where the effectual interpretant is not congruent with
the intentional. This latter distinction accords with an initially surprising remark
made in a discussion of the symbol by Peirce in the letter to Lady Welby of
October 1904, to the effect that the interpretant is a determination of the ‘field of
the interpretant’: ‘I define 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)’ (CP 8.335).
In the verbal example (2.1) given above the addressee might signal surprise or
commiseration by an appropriate facial expression or verbally thank the utterer
for having made the remark, but might equally reply with an irritated Nonsense!
or So what? These are all valid perceivable effectual interpretants, but only the first
two would be congruent with the spirit of the utterance. Peirce had clearly found
the need to account for the fact that interpreters interpret signs differentially,
each according to their experience of the world. The field of the interpretant was
a logical concept that accounted for this interpretative differential and reinforced
the logical validity of an autonomous effectual interpretant. Moreover, the fact
that interpreters can, and often do, dispute the event or situation represented
by the utterance is proof of the viability of the ‘commens’: the sign has been
interpreted, proving that the communicative process associating utterer and
interpreter has functioned correctly in spite of any disagreement.
Finally, one further very significant consequence of the definition of the
interpretants in this passage is that Peirce has broken with the more general
description of the single interpretant of the 1903 system and, having defined
three distinct interpretants, has assigned a specific function to each. Such a move
is more than a simple attempt to characterize and name the three interpretants,
it is a theoretical anticipation for the hexad of 1908, in which each as a ‘subject’
of semiosis can be associated with one or other of the three universes. This is a
logical necessity as in 1908 the sign has to be classified according to the universes
to which it, the two objects and the three interpretants happen to belong, evidence
of the extreme theoretical tension to which the status of the interpretant in the
original Sign–Interpretant branch of the grand logic was subjected after Peirce
64 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

had first envisaged it forty years earlier: not only do we have three interpretants
but the commens draft actually ascribes a specific position in the sequence and
recognizable function to each.

Table 2.4 The typology of 31 March 1906

31 March 1906 Provisional Classification of Signs 275r (H521)

A Sign is
in its own Nature
6 5 is either A Tone A Token or A Type
What has Whose being exists in whose being exists in
all its being dyadic relations the order of whatever
whether it may come hereafter to
exists or not be or in the order that
will be shown whenever
certain kinds of action
shall take place
in reference to its Immediate Object
8 6 is either Indefinite Singular or General Sign *
in reference to the Nature of its Real Object
7 5 1/2 ? is either Abstract Concrete or Collective *
in reference to its relation to the Real Object
9 7 is either Icon Index or Symbol *
in reference to its Intended Interpretant (1906 August 30
Transpose first & third)
5 4 is either Positive Imperative or Interrogative
in reference to the Nature of its Dynamic Interpretant
4 is either Poetic Stimulant or Impressive
or excitant of or excitant of or determinant of a
feeling action Habit
Eidoseme Ergoseme Logoseme
in reference to its relation to its Dynamic Interpretant
3 is either Sympathetic Compulsive or Rational
in reference to the Nature of its Normal Interpretant
2 is either Strange Common or Novel
in reference to the Passion of its Normal Interpretant
4 is either Substitute Suggestive or Argument
Suggestive Reactive
in reference to the Significance of its Normal Interpretant
1 is either Monadic Dyadic Triadic ??
 The Transition 65

To complete the discussion of the theoretical developments in Peirce’s theory

of the sign in 1906 we examine Table 2.4. There are two major taxonomies
in the Logic Notebook for 1906. Table 2.4 displays the one from 1906 which
found favour with Peirce as seen in the remarks of 1909 quoted at the beginning
of the chapter. Comparing this to Table 2.1 we have a far more sophisticated
classification system. There are seven columns on the table. The first is composed
of amends where Peirce has hesitated as to which number to attribute to a given
trichotomy. The first five entries in column one are therefore corrections while
column two displays his original numbering, though what the numbers refer to
is a mystery as the trichotomies are displayed down the page in the now regular
correlate order.
What theoretical advances are to be found on the table? First, much of the
terminology is ‘progressive’ in the sense that the equivalent terminology of 1903
has been replaced by terms only to be found in the later typologies: for instance,
‘tone’ (or ‘tuone’, a blend of ‘tone’ and ‘tune’ as Peirce writes on the verso side
of the sheet), ‘token’ and ‘type’ now stand for the original ‘qualisign’, ‘sinsign’
and ‘legisign’ found in Tables 2.1 and 2.2, and these are now defined in terms
of their ‘being’, a term which anticipates the subdividing of the trichotomies
with reference to universes as opposed to the categories of 1903. The earlier
triad of rheme–dicent–argument is here represented as suggestive–reactive–
argument. From another point of view, the third trichotomy anticipates the
subdivisions of the Od trichotomy on the hexad of 1908, which will be discussed
in the following chapter. Furthermore, the trichotomy concerning the nature of
the dynamic interpretant will later be replaced by sympathetic, percussive and
usual signs, which are similar to the subdivisions represented here as those of
the relation between sign and dynamic interpretant. Finally, the Greek-inspired
terms ‘eidoseme’, ‘ergoseme’ and ‘logoseme’ were not employed again although
Peirce was later to replace the term ‘representamen’ by ‘logon’ in a text of 1911
(R675 39).
Just why Peirce should have included this as the second of the two typologies
that he preferred in 1909 relates, presumably, to the sophistication of the table
compared to earlier efforts. He has mastered the organization of the independent
divisions, is relatively sure of his terminology, even though there are hesitations
in the designations of the interpretants. However, that he was not entirely
satisfied with the typology in 1906 can be seen from the logical transposition
of ‘positive’ and ‘interrogative’ in the intended (elsewhere designated as the
‘immediate’) interpretant, the three asterisks and the two question marks at the
bottom of column seven.
66 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

1907

1907 is important because Peirce introduces a new range of interpretants and thus
paves the way in part for the theoretical innovations of 1908, and also because
he is preoccupied by his theory of pragmatism and the need of what he calls in
the text a ‘logical’ interpretant. The disparate sets of texts composing R318 are
versions of a projected article on Peirce’s conception of pragmatism, an article
which was never published (cf. Editors’ introduction, EP2 398). Interestingly,
unlike his practice in the previous three years, the only classification system he
offers in this important manuscript is verbal rather than the more usual tabular
arrangement with its ten technical subdivisions. The only set of divisions to be
found in the manuscript is that suggested in the passage below. The divisions are
not identified as in the tabular versions examined above, although examples of
the subdivisions in the divisions themselves enable us to divine an order.

Now how would you define a sign, Reader? I do not ask how the word is
ordinarily used. I want such a definition as a zoologist would give of a fish, or
a chemist of a fatty body, or of an aromatic body, – an analysis of the essential
nature of a sign, if the word is to be used as applicable to everything which the
most general science of sēmei’otic must regard as its business to study; be it of
the nature of a significant quality, or something that once uttered is gone forever,
or an enduring pattern, like our sole definite article; whether it professes to stand
for a possibility, for a single thing or event, or for a type of things or of truths;
whether it is connected with the thing, be it truth or fiction, that it represents,
by imitating it, or by being an effect of its object, or by a convention or habit;
whether it appeals merely to feeling, like a tone of voice, or to action, or to
thought; whether it makes its appeal by sympathy, by emphasis, or by familiarity;
whether it is a single word, or a sentence or is Gibbon’s Decline and Fall; whether
it is interrogatory, imperative, or assertory; whether it is of the nature of a jest, or
is sealed and attested, or relies upon artistic force; and I do not stop here because
the varieties of signs are by any means exhausted. Such is the definitum which I
seek to fit with a rational, comprehensive, scientific, structural definition, – such
as one might give of ‘‘loom’’, ‘‘marriage’’, ‘‘musical cadence’’; aiming, however,
let me repeat, less at what the definitum conventionally does mean, than at what
it were best, in reason, that it should mean. (R318 585–89)

Most are recognizable from the examples: the first is, of course, the division
concerning the sign, the subdivisions being identifiable as tone, token and type
(or, according to the earlier nomenclature, qualisign, sinsign and legisign); this
is followed by examples of the Oi division and examples suggestive of the S–Od
 The Transition 67

division composed of icon (‘by imitating’), index (‘being the effect of its object’)
and symbol (convention or habit). This is followed by Ii (‘feeling’, ‘action’,
‘thought’), then Id (‘sympathy’, ‘emphasis’, ‘familiarity’). This division is followed
by the nature of the final interpretant (word, sentence, whole work) after which
there is a break in the conventional order of the interpretants with a return to the
division concerning the relation holding between sign and dynamic interpretant
(here ‘interrogatory, imperative, or assertory’ as opposed to ‘suggestive/
interrogative’, ‘imperative’ and ‘indicative’).27 Finally, he introduces a division
which is difficult to identify, but he anticipates a remark quoted from the Logic
Notebook of 1 November 1909 concerning the fact that the ten outlined are not
necessarily definitive, though what the others are we are not told.28 The last of
the series above is a possible candidate.

The logical interpretant

If the formal classifications are neglected in R318, there is, nevertheless, a set
of interpretants which are dealt with quite extensively in the manuscript, and
this identifies in order of increasing complexity the emotional, energetic and
logical interpretants.29 As with some other concepts developed by Peirce – the
representamen is a notorious case – this series has caused much debate among
commentators, dividing them essentially into three groups, as the following
quoted remarks suggest. Since the purpose of this chapter is to follow the
evolution of Peirce’s conception of sign-action, the divisions of 1907 and the
theoretical discussions they have provoked require attention. Briefly, the problem
concerns the relation between this triad of interpretants and the one considered
his final statements on the matter, namely the series described in a letter to Lady
Welby identifying the destinate (immediate), the effective (dynamic) and explicit
(final) interpretants, the first two of which had already figured in taxonomies
examined above, the last being termed ‘signified’, significant’, ‘representative’,
‘normal’ and ‘eventual’. In a letter dated 14 March 1909 he informed his English
correspondent that:
My three grades of Interpretant were worked out by reasoning from the
definition of a Sign what sort of thing ought to be noticeable and then searching
for its appearance. My Immediate Interpretant is implied in the fact that each
Sign must have its peculiar Interpretability before it gets any Interpreter. My
Dynamical Interpretant is that which is experienced in each act of Interpretation
and is different in each from that of any other; and the Final Interpretant is
the one interpretive result to which every Interpreter is destined to come if the
68 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

Sign is sufficiently considered. The Immediate Interpretant is an abstraction,

consisting in a possibility. The Dynamical Interpretant is a single actual event.
The Final Interpretant is that toward which the actual tends (SS 111)

The series immediate–dynamical–final can thus be taken as Peirce’s last word

on the subject (he describes them in more or less the same terms in another
letter of 14 March 1909, to William James, CP 8.314, where we find ‘dynamical’
for ‘dynamic’ and where the final interpretant is also referred to as the ‘ultimate’),
and the problem raised by the series from R318 is whether or not it adumbrates
the later or somehow exists as a ‘parallel’ triad. One initial attempt to integrate
the 1907 series, emotional, energetic and logical is in Savan 1988, in which the
author sees the triplet as realizations of the dynamic interpretant (1988: 55). On
the other hand, Short describes the relation between the two in the following
manner:
Much of this effort [the introduction of several divisions of object and
interpretant] was directed toward providing principles for a sign taxonomy,
developed in those same years.
We can see in that taxonomy … that he needed two quite different trichotomies
of interpretant. One, following from the teleological structure of semeiosis,
pertains to each sign: the immediate interpretant is a potentiality in which consists
the sign’s interpretability; the dynamic interpretant is any interpretant actually
formed (from zero to many); and the final interpretant is another potentiality, the
ideal interpretant of that sign the interpretative purpose. The other trichotomy
is an application of Peirce’s phaneroscopy and distinguishes among signs: an
emotional interpretant is a feeling or 1st; an energetic interpretant is an action or
2nd; and a logical interpretant is a 3rd, being a thought or other general sign or a
habit formed or modified. An immediate interpretant may be either emotional,
energetic, or logical, and so also dynamic and final interpretants may be of any
category, actually or potentially. A sign’s final interpretant, for example, is that
potential feeling or potential action or potential thought, habit-change, and so
on, that would best satisfy the purpose of interpreting that sign. (2007: 178)

For Short, then, the two series exist independently of each other but not in any
form of conflict: the final one described in the letter to Lady Welby quoted above
is teleological in nature; the second, from R318, is based upon Peirce’s categories.
This conception of the two series has been contested, notably by Lalor (1997), a
paper which was based upon earlier expositions of Short’s position. Lalor, as the
following extract shows, conceives of the two series in terms of subordination
and superordination, the one expounded in R318 (1907) being a special case
of the later, more general series of 1909. Writing when R318 was still dated as
 The Transition 69

a manuscript of 1906, he describes the situation as follows: ‘My thesis is that

the emotional/energetic/logical classification is a special case of the immediate/
dynamical/final one. More specifically, the 1906 trichotomy reflects the concrete
human case, the human experience of semiosis, while the 1909 trichotomy is
more abstract and lends itself to a characterization of semiotics generally’ (1997:
34–35). For Lalor, then, the classification of the interpretants as emotional,
energetic and logical reflects an anthropomorphic way of looking at semiosis,
while the later one lays down a general structural pattern which includes the
former (1997: 35).
Finally, Bergman (2009) adopts what can be seen as a conciliatory position:
both series are held to be realizations of a more general, formal series based, as
Short has it, on the categories: the macro-level with its immediate–dynamical–
final series makes available a formal ‘format’ susceptible of various realizations,
while the emotional–energetic–logical series reflects Lalor’s ‘anthropomorphic
way of looking at semiosis’:

Instead of arguing that the more general of the divisions of interpretant identified
by Peirce is the genus, both trichotomies may be seen as special cases of a formal
triad of first, second, and third interpretant … Consequently, the immediate-
dynamical-final division may be seen as a description of the macro-level of sign
action, while the emotional-energetic-logical division primarily characterizes
the concrete field of human interpretation. (2009: 123–24)

Judging by the wealth of contributions to the issue (only three of which have been
quoted above, but there are many others), this is clearly a matter of considerable
philosophical interest, but for a semiotician these distinctions are difficult to
admit. It doesn’t seem logical to imagine that in a single process of semiosis there
should be available two distinct series of interpretants, as the extract from Short
2007 seems to suggest, or in the other cases as a choice between one based on the
categories and the other based upon some teleological realization of a higher, more
abstract formal interpretant system. Interpretants can only be ‘generated’, so to
speak, by a sign, itself determined by two objects: for a given semiosis, there can be
only one series of interpretants, not two in parallel or two in succession. Moreover,
the idea of human semiosis alone involving the emotional–energetic–logical triad
is reminiscent of the remark that Peirce makes concerning the difference between
sign and representamen, namely that ‘A Sign is a Representamen with a mental
Interpretant. Possibly there may be Representamens that are not Signs’ (CP
2.274, 1903). There is another way of looking at the series from R318, one which
corresponds to the purpose of this chapter.
70 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

Consider, first, the context in which the series occurs. As mentioned above,
the texts composing R318 are versions of an article on Peirce’s conception of
pragmatism. Peirce defines it thus: ‘Suffice it to say once more that pragmatism
is, in itself, no doctrine of metaphysics, no attempt to determine any truth of
things. It is merely a method of ascertaining the meanings of hard words and
of abstract concepts’ (R318 15). Second, as far as I have been able to ascertain,
R318 is the only text in which this particular interpretant series occurs: the
logical interpretant, which has engendered most discussion, is a ‘local’ and
chronologically limited concept, and there is no reason not to suppose that, as
this chapter seeks to demonstrate, like the other series examined above, this one
is part of Peirce’s evolving conception of the interpretant which results in the
triad of 1909. This hypothesis can be substantiated by an examination of this
long extract from one of the (often disparate) variants to be found in R318 (it
corresponds roughly to CP 5.475):

But all logicians have distinguished two objects of a sign; the one, the Immediate
object or object as the sign represents it, (and without this sign would not be
a sign); the other Real object, or object as it is independent of any particular
idea representing it. Of course, many signs have no real objects. We turn to the
interpretant, to see whether there is any corresponding distinction; and we find
that in place of two, there are three different interpretants. First, there is the
“emotional interpretant”, which consists in a feeling, or rather in the quality of
a feeling. It is sometimes formed into an image, yet is more usually merely a
feeling which causes the interpreter of the sign to believe he recognizes of [sic]
the import and intention of the sign. A concerted piece of music, for example,
brings a succession of musical emotions answering to those of the composer.
This is an extreme case; usually the emotional interpretant consists merely in a
sense, more or less complex, perhaps amounting to an image, perhaps not, of the
meaning of the sign. All signs whatsoever must, in order to fulfill their functions
as signs, first of all produce such emotional interpretants. Next, many signs bring
about actual events. The infantry officer’s word of command “Ground arms!”
produces as its existential interpretant, (the sign having been first apprehended
in an “emotional interpretant”,) the slamming down of the musket-butts. The
less thought intervenes between the apprehension and this act, the better the
sign fulfills its function. All signs that are not to evaporate in mere feelings must
have such an existential interpretant, or as I might perhaps better have called it,
such an energetic interpretant. These two interpretants correspond to the two
objects of a sign. The emotional interpretant, immediately produced by the sign,
corresponds to the immediate object. The existential, or energetic, interpretant,
corresponds to the real object whose action is obscurely and indirectly the active
 The Transition 71

cause of the sign. But now there is a third interpretant, to which no object of the
sign corresponds. It is what we commonly call the meaning of the sign; but I call
it the logical interpretant, or logical meaning the sign. Obviously there is such
an interpretant; for the definition of the term aims to give it; and every vigorous
mind feels that such a definition, though aiming at the thing, hardly hits the
bull’s-eye. In rare cases it may; but as a general rule, it hits the target, but not the
bull’s-eye. (R318 373–79)

Here Peirce first defines the two objects, designated as ‘Immediate’ and
‘Real’. He then turns to the interpretants, identifying them in turn as the
emotional, the existential or energetic and, finally, the logical. In the course
of this description he establishes correspondences between the emotional
interpretant and the immediate object, and between the energetic interpretant
and the real object. This in itself is surprising as it suggests that a piece of
concerted music – or an air played on a guitar, another example Peirce gives –
has no real object, only an immediate one, and can only produce or generate
an immediate interpretant in the form of a feeling, whence, in 1907, the term
‘emotional’ interpretant. Similarly, commands such as the well-known ‘Ground
arms!’ example are determined by a ‘real’ object and determine both an
emotional and an energetic interpretant, in this case the slamming-down of the
musket butts. At this point, as was noted earlier in the chapter, he introduces
the even more surprising notion that there is a third interpretant ‘to which
no object of the sign corresponds’: concepts have no object but determine all
three interpretants. This is surely evidence that Peirce was still feeling his way
through the problem of the interpretant sequence that he had introduced at
least three years earlier, and that his thoughts on the problem were far from
complete: he realized that a concept couldn’t have an existent object but, rather
a class, and he presumably began to think in terms of necessitant objects. In
the case of the logical interpretant his explanation is as follows: ‘Of what kind
are signs which determine “logical interpretants”? They are exclusively such
as embody and convey thought proper, whether in the form of the concept,
or in that of the meaning of a proposition, or in that of the force of a reason,
or argument’ (R318 385–87). At this time, then, Peirce was restricting the
third interpretant, whether we call it signified, representative or logical, to
determination by thought, a type of sign which determined all three types
of interpretant. The resultant hierarchical relations between object, sign and
interpretant as conceived by Peirce in at least one variant of the intended article
are set out according to Table 2.5, in which concepts and intellectual thoughts
are shown not to have an object at all.
72 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

Table 2.5 A tabular summary of objects, signs and interpretants from R318

Object Sign Interpretant

Intellectual concept, thought Logical
Energetic
Emotional
Real The command 'Ground arms!' Energetic
Emotional
Immediate Concerted piece of music Emotional

What, if the explanation above is to be accepted, do we make of the ‘ultimate’

logical interpretant? This was, after all, an attempt to prove his version of
pragmatism: ‘Moreover, since pragmatism, in my view, relates to intellectual
concepts exclusively, and since these are all general, the mental element we seek
must be general. The principal general constituents of the mind are desires and
habits’ (R318 409). The only possible conclusion to any sequence of interpretants
of the logical type is a habit or change in existing habits, and this is the role Peirce
attributed at this time to what he conceived as the ultimate logical interpretant:
Shall we say that this effect may be a thought, that is to say, a mental sign? No
doubt, it may be so; only, if this sign be of an intellectual kind – as it would have
to be – it must itself have a logical interpretant; so that it cannot be the ultimate
logical interpretant of the concept. 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. (R318 67–69)

This is not, however, Peirce’s final word on the interpretants, and as suggested
earlier, these concepts are not found elsewhere either in an earlier or later text. They
were the bases of his attempt to prove his pragmatism but belong, with the others
from previous taxonomies, to this transitional period between 1903 and 1908.

Summary and conclusions

The sign is defined no longer as a form of representation ‘standing for’

something else as a substitute. In 1906 Peirce breaks with the earlier conception
of the sign and now defines it as a mediating agency between the objects and
 The Transition 73

the interpretant sequence which they mediately determine. As a consequence,

it is the object which occupies the semiotic centre of influence, so to speak.
The only thing which can be communicated to the interpretants from the
dynamic object via the sign is the qualitative entity, form: were the influence
of the object an existent of some sort, it would no longer remain in the object
once it had been communicated to the sign – a semiotic impossibility. Form
is thus the only structured entity which can be embodied simultaneously
in objects, sign and interpretants. His temporary rejection of the concept
of the representamen in 1905 is perhaps indicative of this movement from
representation to mediation.
Within the various classifications discussed above and others in R339, the
order of determination is that of the triadic relations established in 1903. In
the first two hexadic taxonomies, we have S, Od, Oi, If, Id, Ii. After intensive
work on the classifications between 8 October and 13 October in 1905 Peirce
increased the number of divisions from six to ten, albeit with varying names for,
principally, what is elsewhere in this study referred to as the Final Interpretant,
and altered the ordering of the six correlates to S, Oi, Od, Ii, Id, If.
Of the three interpretants, the final is the most unstable over this period, being
referred to as the signified (1903, 1904); the significant and the representative
(1905); and the normal, eventual,30 communicative and habitual (1906).31
However, as seen above, this series terminates with the problematic and much
disputed ‘logical’ interpretant with which Peirce sought to prove his version of
pragmatism by means of his logic in 1907. We note, too, that he develops the
idea, already present in 1903 and earlier, that the interpretant is a sign – see the
terminology used for the final interpretant throughout the series. We end this
long chapter with a quote from Short 2004:
The fundamental revolution in doctrine that occurred in 1907 was to
have recognised that it is the habit itself, and not a concept of it, that is the
interpretant (more precisely, the ultimate logical interpretant) of a concept.
Verbal interpretants and verbal definitions, Peirce then said, are “very inferior to
the living definition that grows up in the habit.”
The revolution of 1907 is, then, a revolution in Peirce’s pragmatism as well
as in his semeiotic. In both, it is a step away from a too extreme intellectualism.
1907 is also the year when Peirce first drew his pragmatism and his semeiotic
together into one formulation. (2004: 228)

I prefer to think that the real revolution occurred the following year, when Peirce
breaks completely with the philosophical tradition described in Chapter 1, and it
is to this revolution that we turn in the chapter to follow.
 3

The Sign-Systems of 1908

This chapter introduces the hexadic sign-systems which evolved from the
principles discussed in the previous chapter. It shows how Peirce moves
innovatively from his earlier category-based conception of signification and
classification to one based upon three ‘universes’, each defined by its specific
mode of being (possibility, actuality and necessity). The chapter necessarily deals
extensively with problems concerning the ordering not only of the six divisions
yielding twenty-eight classes but also, when appropriate, of the ten divisions
from which Peirce was hoping to generate sixty-six, problems which continue
to divide Peirce scholars. This is no doubt the most discussed aspect of Peirce’s
later sign-systems – to the almost complete neglect of the characterization and
illustration of the sign-classes themselves. It is also the least understood, and,
among other things, it is with this neglect and attendant misconceptions that the
study seeks to engage.
A further reason for exploring the 28-class typology is that the letter to Lady
Welby in which it is advanced is apparently the only reference Peirce ever makes
to it, his ambition being, no doubt, to prove and exploit the more complex
66-class system. Moreover, the structure of this hexadic system is such that it
holds potentially important implications for the philosophy of representation
described in Chapter 1, in particular for what Peirce saw as speculative rhetoric
or methodeutic, the branch of the philosophy of representation which specifically
enquires into the conditions determining the relations between the sign and the
interpretants it determines.
The thematic structure of the chapter is determined by the order of
appearance of the topics in Peirce’s letter. The sections, which for obvious
reasons necessarily vary in length and theoretical scope, introduce and
describe in detail the most important aspects of the hexad of divisions
yielding the twenty-eight classes of signs, discussing and commenting on its
significance and the theoretical problems it has raised over the years. As the
76 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

present study concerns this particular typology the 66-class system which has
received far more attention from Peirce scholars will only be discussed as the
occasion requires: since the major theoretical issues concerning the hexad are
also those of the 66-class system they can be dealt with, however briefly, at the
same time.

The 1904 hexad reviewed

In order to bring out the innovative character of the 28-class typology, we begin
by recapitulating the nature of an earlier hexad, henceforth ‘hexada’. Table 3.1
sets out the typology described by Peirce in the letter of 12 October 1904 in a
more practical orthogonal form than the table presented in Chapter 2, since it
is easy to read from left to right ‘along’ it to identify classes of signs. As in other
texts, prior to presenting the sign and the six divisions which the expanded
definition of the sign now generates, Peirce had elaborated on his theory of
the categories, which he used at the time to justify the structure of the hexad.
One of the important characteristics of the table is the fact that it exploits an
unusual variant of what was referred to in Chapter 2 as ‘correlate’ order, the
order in which Peirce defined the three correlates of any triadic relation, namely
representamen (sign), object and interpretant in order of increasing ‘complexity’
(cf. EP2 290, and the discussion in Chapter 1). In the original description, the
interpretants were identified, respectively, as signified, dynamic and immediate
(SS 33–35), but in Table 3.1 the signified interpretant has here been standardized
to ‘final’.1 The order of presentation of the various divisions in Peirce’s 1904
letter is of interest as he seems to ‘cycle’ through the series, introducing the
object series by the division involving sign and dynamic object followed by that
of the immediate object, and the interpretant series first by the sign and final
interpretant relation, followed by that between sign and dynamic interpretant,
ending with the later-to-be-abandoned relation involving sign and immediate
interpretant. As seen in Chapter 2, this and the typology hypothetically dated
August 1904 were the only two that followed this particular order, as Peirce
was inspired, one assumes, by considerations of relative complexity. Most of
the other typologies, including the two from the drafts of late December 1908,
adopt a strict correlate order. On the other hand, the 28-class system and the
embryonic system from the 1906 draft adopt what will be called ‘semiosis’ order
(see Figure 2.3 in Chapter 2).
 The Sign-Systems of 1908 77

Table 3.1 The 1904 hexad of division set out in ‘cyclical’ correlate order

S S-Od S-Oi S-If S-Id S-Ii

Thirdness legisign symbol S (law) argument submitted S S interpretable
in thoughts
Secondness Sinsign index S (experience) dicent urged S S int. in
experiences
Firstness qualisign icon S (quality) rheme contemplated S S int. in
feelings

The hexad of 23 December 1908

What, then, makes the later, 28-class typology so innovative? In the letter dated
23 December 1908, he posited a hexad of divisions based upon the correlates
themselves which are now ‘subjects’ or members of three universes in a specific
order defined in the letter, this system generating twenty-eight classes of signs.
In order to bring out what can be considered the truly original nature of this
hexad we take the pertinent elements in the following order: the definition of the
sign and its implications; the three universes which function as criteria for the
classification of the various sign-classes; the three divisions described by Peirce
in the letter, to which are added by a reconstruction the final three from other
textual evidence.

Sign and universe

Peirce begins the relevant passage in the letter by defining the sign and its two
major correlates, referring not to the categories as before, but to three universes,
distinguished by three modalities of being. In short, having defined a hexad of
divisions in 1904 using the categories as distinguishing criteria he now defines
another basing his distinctions on an entirely different set of criteria:
It is clearly indispensable to start with an accurate and broad analysis of the
nature of a Sign. I define a Sign as anything which is so determined by something
else, called its Object, and so determines an effect upon a person, which effect
I call its Interpretant, that the latter is thereby mediately determined by the
former. My insertion of ‘‘upon a person’’ is a sop to Cerberus, because despair
of making my own broader conception understood. I recognize three Universes,
which are distinguished by three Modalities of Being. (SS 80–81)2

This immediately raises the problem, one which he had discussed in relative
detail in the 1906 Monist article ‘Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmaticism’,
78 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

concerning the logical difference between a category and a universe. One

solution – the one adopted by most if not all of the authorities who have debated
the 66-class system – is to consider that they are equivalent. Another, the one
which we adopt in this study, is to assume that although undoubtedly related,
they are, nevertheless, different, and that the difference is significant. What
complicates matters at this point is that most authorities on Peirce either seem
reluctant to adopt a clear position on this issue or else consider the two sets of
criteria as being of the same nature.
Short (2007), for example, one of the most authoritative of Peirce
commentators, has nothing to say of the modalities of being and only mentions
the concept of a universe in a quotation from Nelson Goodman: implicitly in
Short’s case, there is no point in distinguishing between universe and category,
even though the former is the far more frequently occurring concept in the late
typologies. On the other hand, one of the earliest attempts to explain Peirce’s
66-class typology was Savan (1988). In a laudable, pioneering effort to come
to grips with the three values associated with the immediate interpretant,
for example, he writes, ‘Guided by his categories, Peirce somewhat hesitantly
distinguished a Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness of the Ii’ (1988: 53).
That Savan should refer to the categories is only natural given that the second
section of his monograph is devoted precisely to this topic. That he should have
assimilated category and universe is, on the other hand, less acceptable.
But Savan is not the only authority to have adopted this theoretical strategy.
Anderson (1995), for example, in a commentary on Peirce’s paper ‘The Neglected
Argument for the Reality of God’, yet another text from 1908, has this to say: ‘The
final point of the first paragraph is Peirce’s introduction of the “three Universes of
Experience”. As Peirce indicates, these refer to the phenomenological categories
of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness. They are categories of experience
precisely because they are forced on us when we examine phanera and because
they are universal’ (1995: 140). What Peirce actually states in fact is: ‘The word
“God” so “capitalized” (as we Americans say), is the definable proper name,
signifying Ens necessarium; in my belief Really creator of all three Universes
of Experience’ (CP 6.452). Nowhere in either this or the following paragraphs
does Peirce mention his categories, nor does he ‘indicate’ explicitly in the first
paragraph that the universes refer to the categories. Nathan Houser adopts a
similar position: his Table 1 sets out the ten divisions of signs in columns as
does Peirce in most of his typologies. The criteria that Houser uses to classify
the ten characteristics identifying the divisions are the categories of Firstness,
Secondness and the Thirdness (2005: 459). However Peirce refers explicitly to
 The Sign-Systems of 1908 79

universes rather than categories when he experiments with a ‘cardinal points’

format in order to determine compatibilities for the first two divisions in his 25
December 1908 draft:
The inquiry ought, one would expect, to be an easy one, since both trichotomies
depend on there being three Modes of Presence to the mind, which we may term
The Immediate, – The Direct, – The Familiar
Mode of Presence.
The difference between the two trichotomies is that the one refers to the
Presence to the Mind of the Sign and the other to that of the Immediate Object.
The Sign may have any Modality of Being, i.e., may belong to any one of the three
Universes; its Immediate Object must be in some sense, in which the Sign need
not be, Internal. (CP 8.354, emphasis added)

And here, too:

To begin, then, it is evident that an Actisign, or one that belongs to the Universe
of Experience, which Brutely acts on the person, can also be a Denominative, that
is, that its Immediate Object is represented as belonging to the same Universe; so
that 12·22, the central class of our block of nine, is possible. Indeed, a pointing
finger is a familiar example of a Sign of that class. (CP 8.355)

As mentioned above, in this study we adopt the position that category and
universe are not synonymous and mutually substitutable.
A second problem arises concerning the relation between the three universes
mentioned in the letter and the better-known logical concept of the universe of
discourse. James Liszka, for example, shows how Peirce defines the universe of
discourse (1996: 91–92) but, ignoring the specific reference Peirce makes to the
three more general universes in the letter to Lady Welby, discusses the typologies
in terms of the categories. Bergman (2009: 104–05) assimilates the universe of
discourse to the sorts of universe that Peirce discussed in his letters to James of
1909, and in doing so raises a slightly different problem, for in the course of his
exposition in ‘Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmaticism’, Peirce makes the
following statement: ‘But of superior importance in Logic is the use of Indices to
denote Categories and Universes, which are classes that, being enormously large,
very promiscuous, and known but in small part, cannot be satisfactorily defined,
and therefore can only be denoted by Indices’ (CP 4.544, 1906). This is the
principle which justifies Peirce’s later remark to William James to the effect that
the ‘Object of “Napoleon” is the Universe of Existence so far as it is determined by
the fact of Napoleon being a Member of it’ (EP2 493, 1909), a problem to which
we return in Chapter 5. However, the general logical concept of the universe of
80 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

discourse has nothing to do with the three universes mentioned by Peirce in the
letter to Lady Welby quoted above, nor to the universe of existence about which
Peirce wrote to James, for Peirce (and Mrs Ladd-Franklin) had earlier defined
the universe of discourse in the following manner for Baldwin’s Dictionary of
Philosophy and Psychology:
Universe (in logic) of discourse, of a proposition, &c. In every proposition
the circumstances of its enunciation show that it refers to some collection of
individuals or of possibilities, which cannot be adequately described, but can
only be indicated as something familiar to both speaker and auditor. At one time
it may be the physical universe of sense (1), at another it may be the imaginary
“world” of some play or novel, at another a range of possibilities. “Universe”,
1902, vol. 2, p. 742.

But, as he states in a note to ‘Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmaticism’,

Peirce’s very personal use of the term ‘universe’ is unlikely to correspond to the
more conventional notion of a universe of discourse as defined above:
I use the term Universe in a sense which excludes many of the so-called
“universes of discourse” of which Boole [An Investigation of the Laws of Thought
etc. pp. 42, 167], De Morgan [Cambridge Philosophical Transactions VIII 380
Formal Logic, pp. 37–8] and many subsequent logicians speak, but which, being
perfectly definable, would in the present system be denoted by the aid of a graph.
(CP 4.544 n)

We can assume, therefore, that whenever he uses the term ‘universe’ in the late
semiotics Peirce is not referring to some universe of discourse or other unless he
specifically states that this is the case. As for the three modalities of being, these
fare even less well among Peirce scholars than the three universes, one notable
exception being Murphey (1993).3 As the 28-class system, based specifically
upon universes as distinguishing criteria, yields a set of entirely different classes
of sign from those previously advanced by Peirce – for example, the ten from
1903 – it is logically essential to respect the formulations given in the letter of 23
December 1908.

The three universes

The position, then, here, is that the assimilation of the three categories to the
three universes mentioned in the letter to Lady Welby is highly problematic
and potentially misleading. This does not mean, of course, that Peirce had
now discarded his categories – indeed he continues to discuss them in his
 The Sign-Systems of 1908 81

correspondence with Lady Welby and elsewhere (e.g. CP 1.288–292, c. 1908).

However, since ‘universe’ is the concept he uses in the letter of 23 December, this
is the concept employed in the following discussion: the three universes are not
categories although they are clearly related to the three categories of the forms
of experience, and are distinguished by the three modalities of being. Given this
decision, how are we to understand the notion of universe in this context? At
one point in ‘Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmaticism’ Peirce indicates
a preference for the term ‘predicament’ over that of ‘category’ (CP 4.549) –
‘predicament’ being defined by the OED as ‘That which is predicated or asserted’,
or ‘a class about which a particular statement is made’ – having already proposed
the difference between a category and a logical universe:
Oh, I overhear what you are saying, O Reader: that a Universe and a Category are
not at all the same thing; a Universe being a receptacle or class of Subjects, and
a Category being a mode of Predication, or class of Predicates. I never said they
were the same thing; but whether you describe the two correctly is a question for
careful study. (CP 4.545)

A category, says Peirce in this slightly inconsequential discussion with an

imaginary interlocutor, is not the same as a universe: ‘Let us begin with the
question of Universes. It is rather a question of an advisable point of view than
of the truth of a doctrine. A logical universe is, no doubt, a collection of logical
subjects, but not necessarily of metaphysical Subjects, or “substances”; for it may
be composed of characters, of elementary facts, etc.’ (CP 4.546, 1906). This would
clearly endorse the principle that ‘the Universes are receptacles of Subjects’ (CP
4.548). The correlates involved in semiosis must thus be considered as ‘subjects’
susceptible of belonging to one or other of three universes. This is not a new
position on Peirce’s part, as in the 1906 draft to Lady Welby discussed in Chapter
2 he had already employed the concept of the ‘subject’ in order to distinguish
between dynamic and immediate object:
In order that a Form may be extended or communicated, it is necessary
that it should have been really embodied in a Subject independently of the
communication; and it is necessary that there should be another subject in
which the same form is embodied only as a consequence of the communication.
The Form, (and the Form is the Object of the Sign), as it really determines the
former Subject, is quite independent of the sign; yet we may and indeed must
say that the object of a sign can be nothing but what the sign represents it to
be. Therefore, in order to reconcile these apparently conflicting Truths, it is
indispensible to distinguish the immediate object from the dynamical object.
(RL463 26–27, 1906)
82 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

In this case, as in the later letter, the correlates thus described are not
subdivided in any way by Firstness, Secondness or Thirdness but are subjects
or members of a given universe: the dynamic object is one subject, the sign is
another. This means that the interpretant is the subject in which the same form
is embodied as a consequence of the communication, and that the applications
of category or universe as criteria to the features of the sign to be classified
follow distinct processes. This is how Peirce introduces the universes in the
letter of 1908:
One of these Universes embraces whatever has its Being in itself alone, except
that whatever is in this Universe must be present to one consciousness, or be
capable of being so present in its entire Being. It follows that a member of this
universe need not be subject to any law, not even to the principle of contradiction.
I denominate the objects of this Universe Ideas, or Possibles, although the latter
designation does not imply capability of actualization. On the contrary as a
general rule, if not a universal one, an Idea is incapable of perfect actualization
on account of its essential vagueness if for no other reason.
Another Universe is that of, 1st, Objects whose Being consists in their Brute
reactions, and of, 2nd, the Facts (reactions, events, qualities etc.) concerning
those Objects, all of which facts, in the last analysis, consist in their reactions. I
call the Objects, Things, or more unambiguously, Existents, and the facts about
them I call Facts. Every member of this Universe is either a Single Object subject
alike to the Principles of Contradiction and to that of Excluded Middle, or it is
expressible by a proposition having such a singular subject.
The third Universe consists of the co-being of whatever is in its Nature
necessitant, that is, is a Habit, a law, or something expressible in a universal
proposition. Especially, continua are of this nature. I call objects of this universe
Necessitants. It includes whatever we can know by logically valid reasoning. (SS
81–82)

Why should Peirce turn to a classification in which the six correlates are
held to be subjects of one or other of three universes of possibles, existents and
necessitants? It is not implausible that the decision on his part should have
something to do with the expanded system of correlates which he only established
fully in 1904, whether or not he had already envisaged two objects either from
Hamilton or from the philosophical tradition or both (it will be shown in Chapter
5, in fact, that the definition of the three universes corresponds to the greater
scope attributed to the dynamic object after 1906). As noted by the editors of
volume two of The Essential Peirce (EP2 555n3), Peirce’s use of the concept of
a universe occurs frequently at this time.4 Just as 1905–06 seems to have been
 The Sign-Systems of 1908 83

the period in which Peirce began to define the sign as medium, so too, the years
1906–08 see Peirce beginning to develop the notion of three universes, each
defined by its own peculiar modality of being, and consequently, as mentioned
earlier, with no direct relation to the concept of the universe of discourse
introduced into logic much earlier by De Morgan. After 1908, particularly in the
correspondence, Peirce develops the broader notion of the ‘universe of existence’
(Cf. EP2: 492–94), another concept to be discussed in Chapter 4.

Classes of signs
After having proposed his new definition of the sign and its relation to the
three universes, Peirce begins the task of describing the sorts of signs the system
yields, and, discarding the qualisign, sinsign and legisign designations forming
the first division of the 1903 10-class system, introduces a new set: tone (or
mark), token5 and type, characterized by the particular universe to which each
is referred.
A Sign may itself have a “possible” Mode of Being. E.g. a hexagon inscribed
in or circumscribed about a conic. It is a Sign, in that the collinearity of the
intersections of opposite sides shows the curve to be a conic, if the hexagon
is inscribed … Its Mode of Being may be Actuality: as with any barometer. Or
Necessitant: as the word “the” or any other in the dictionary. For a “possible”
Sign I have no better designation than a Tone, though I am considering replacing
this by “Mark.” Can you suggest a really good name? An Actual sign I call a
Token; a Necessitant Sign a Type;6
It is usual and proper to distinguish two Objects of a Sign, the Mediate
without, and the Immediate within the Sign. Its Interpretant is all that the Sign
conveys: acquaintance with its Object must be gained by collateral experience.
The Mediate Object is the Object outside of the Sign; I call it the Dynamoid
Object. The Sign must indicate it by a hint; and this hint, or its substance, is the
Immediate Object. Each of these two Objects may be said to be capable of either
of the three Modalities, though in the case of the Immediate Object, this is not
quite literally true. (SS 83)

As in the letter to Lady Welby of 12 October 1904, Peirce begins the account
of his theory of signs with the classification of the sign itself. However, the
order in which this account develops, namely the correlate order as in Table 3.1
and the other variant so frequent in earlier taxonomies, has no particular
relevance to the order of occurrence of the correlates in the corresponding
hexadic classification. Note, too, that if, as Peirce suggests in this passage, it is
84 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

not quite literally true that the immediate object is capable of either of the three
modalities he sets up, neither the 28-class system nor the more complex system
could possibly yield their full quota of sign classes. Why the immediate object
should not be capable of the three modalities has to remain a mystery, as this
seems to be the only allusion Peirce makes to the problem.7 This is followed by
the subdivisions obtained for the dynamic and immediate objects, in that order:
Accordingly, the Dynamoid Object may be a Possible; when I term the sign an
Abstractive; such as the word Beauty; and it will be none the less an Abstractive if I
speak of “the Beautiful” since it is the ultimate reference, and not the grammatical
form, that makes the sign an Abstractive. When the Dynamoid Object is an
Occurrence (Existent thing or Actual fact of past or future,) I term the Sign
a Concretive; any one barometer is an example; and so is a written narrative
of any series of events. For a Sign whose Dynamoid Object is a Necessitant, I
have at present no better designation than a "Collective" which is not quite so
bad a name as it sounds to be until one studies the matter … If the Immediate
Object is a “Possible” that is, if the Dynamoid Object is indicated (always more
or less vaguely) by means of its Qualities, etc., I call the Sign a Descriptive; if the
Immediate [Object] is an Occurrence, I call the Sign a Designative; and if the
Immediate Object is a Necessitant, I call the sign a Copulant; for in that case the
object has to be so identified by the Interpreter that the Sign may represent a
necessitation. My name is certainly a temporary expedient. (SS 83–84)

We return to the remarks Peirce makes in this passage about the common
noun beauty below. In the meantime it should be noted that the description
leads to the following highly original formulation of the principle behind the
twenty-eight classes of signs. Peirce had already introduced the universes in
his definition of the sign, but the following passage now shows how the system
fits together. It begins with the statement of the hierarchy holding between the
three universes – strongly reminiscent of the terse manner in which he first
defined types of triadic relations in the Syllabus of 1903 (CP 2.235–347) – and
applies this to the determination sequence in this expanded version of semiosis,
now a cooperation between six elements and not the three mentioned in his
‘Pragmatism’ definition (R318 99–101):8

It is evident that a possible can determine nothing but a Possible, it is equally

so that Necessitant can be determined by nothing but a Necessitant. Hence it
follows from the Definition of a Sign that since the Dynamoid Object determines
the Immediate Object,
Which determines the Sign itself,
which determines the Destinate Interpretant,
 The Sign-Systems of 1908 85

which determines the Effective Interpretant,

which determines the Explicit Interpretant,
the six trichotomies, instead of determining 729 classes of signs, as they
would if they were independent, only yield twenty-eight classes; and if, as I
strongly opine (not to say almost prove) there are four other trichotomies of
signs of the same order of importance, instead of making 59049 classes, these
will only come to sixty-six. The additional 4 trichotomies are undoubtedly 1st,
Icons (or Simulacra Aristotle’s Indices Symbols
óνοíωμητα)
and then 3 referring to the Interpretants. One of these I am pretty confident
is into: Suggestives, Imperatives, Indicatives, where the Imperatives include
Interrogatives. Of the other two I think that one must be into Sign assuring the
Interpretants by
Instinct Experience Form
The other I suppose to be what, in my Monist exposition of Existential
Graphs, I called
Semes Phemes Delomes (SS 84–85)9
The very important first sentence of the extract clearly applies both to
determination order in semiosis and, I maintain, to the structure of the
classification system to which, by extension, it gives rise. The formula employed
so concisely by Peirce sets out the relations holding between necessitants and
possibles in such a way as to make any mention of existents redundant and,
at the same time, establishes a ‘universe hierarchy principle’ which renders the
subclasses of signs made available by the six trichotomies dependent upon each
other, and so reduces the 729 possible classes to twenty-eight.
The order of determination described in the second sentence of the extract
can be represented simply by the scheme in Figure 3.1 (in which, it should be
noted, the interpretants have been standardized for convenience to immediate,
dynamic and final, in that order, respectively, to Ii, Id and If in Figure 3.1).
Whether this is the order of the trichotomies in the classification system yielding
twenty-eight classes of signs is another matter, as we shall see below. Indeed,
more generally, while the order of the first six divisions seems to be clearly
set out in the ‘definition’ preceded by the hierarchy holding between the three
universes in the extract above, there is no guarantee that the introduction of the
four additional divisions corresponds to any particular theoretical order. In spite
of this, the hexadic structure of semiosis as Peirce defined it in 1908 corresponds
to the order at which he hinted in the draft of March 1906 discussed in detail in
Chapter 2, and is represented in Figure 3.1 as the following ‘formula’, in which
the arrows are intended to correspond to the determination process:
86 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

Od Oi S Ii Id If
Figure 3.1 The determination order of the correlates involved in semiosis.

Table 3.2 displays the 729 (36) possible combinations of subject ‘features’
or ‘characteristics’ of a given sign, which, when organized according to the
hierarchy principle that prefaces the description of semiosis given above, finally
yield twenty-eight classes.10 For example, anticipating a fuller discussion of the
subdivisions, a collective sign is compatible with a copulant, a designative or even
with a descriptive sign, according to which universe the sign’s immediate object
happens to belong. In other words, a given sign can be a collective, copulant
type etc., since the table displays compatibilities between the characteristics, or
what Peirce calls the different ‘respects’, of a given sign (CP 8.343) as regards
the universes to which the latter and its correlates happen to belong. Since
the classes are yielded by a static typology and not a dynamic process such as
semiosis, it might be wiser to conceive the relation between subjects in terms of
compatibility rather than state categorically that collectives determine copulants,
for example: collectives are compatible not only with the copulant, but also with
the designative and descriptive facets of signs. Thus the twenty-eight classes
offered by Table 3.2 are all subject to such compatibilities as the hierarchy allows:
to give another example, the combination of a designative sign – an existent – by
division Oi with a type – a necessitant – in the S division would be illogical, as it
would infringe the hierarchy rule.
There are three points to be noted regarding Table 3.2, which represents what
will henceforth be referred to as ‘hexadb’. First, as in the case of Table 3.1, Peirce
never set out his typologies ‘horizontally’, but, rather, ‘vertically’ in the manner of
the tables reproduced in Chapter 2 and the Appendix. The advantage of the layout
of the typologies in Tables 3.1 and 3.2 is that the classes of signs can be read quite

Table 3.2 A reconstruction of the 1908 hexad of divisions yielding twenty-eight

classes of signs
Subject
Od Oi S Ii Id If
Universe
Necessitant collective copulant type relative usual to produce
self-control
Existent concretive designative token categorical percussive to produce
action
Possible abstractive descriptive mark hypothetical sympathetic gratific
 The Sign-Systems of 1908 87

simply across the page. For example, a sign in Table 3.2 which is to produce self-
control is necessarily collective, and an abstractive sign is necessarily gratific, if
the hierarchy is respected. The way Peirce set out his typologies was very different
but this in no way invalidates the organization of reconstructed Tables 3.1 and 3.2.
Second, in his letter to Lady Welby, Peirce only identified the first three
divisions and the subdivisions they define. The final three trichotomies in Table
3.2 concerning the interpretants have been drawn from the typologies Peirce
established in drafts in the days following the 23 December letter. In this way,
for example, the three subdivisions related to the Destinate (standardized to
‘immediate’, Ii, in Table 3.2) interpretant are, in order of increasing complexity,
hypothetical, categorical and relative. Note, too, that Peirce was not entirely
happy with this particular division, as can be seen from paragraph CP 8.369:
‘V. As to the nature of the Immediate (or Felt?) Interpretant, a sign may be:
Ejaculative, or merely giving utterance to feeling; Imperative, including, of
course, Interrogatives; Significative. But later I made this the 7th Trichotomy
and for the fifth substituted – with great hesitation – : Hypothetic, Categorical,
Relative’ (the seventh division as he re-worked it would be ineligible to
figure in the hexad in Table 3.2 as the characteristic or facet it constitutes is a
relation, namely S–Id, and not an individual subject). Similarly, the Effective
(dynamic) Interpretant trichotomy is based upon the sixth division in CP
8.370: ‘VI. As to the Nature of the Dynamical Interpretant: Sympathetic, or
Congruentive; Shocking, or Percussive; Usual.’ The division containing the
classes of signs identified by the nature of the final interpretant, referred to in
the letter as the ‘Explicit’ interpretant, distinguishes between signs intended
to produce, respectively, in order of increasing complexity, feeling, action
or self-control. The ‘purpose’ of the final interpretant which is, after all, the
defining characteristic of the signs which this division identifies, might be
considered different from its ‘nature’, but by a process of elimination, the
classes of signs thus defined can be assumed to correspond to this division in
earlier typologies. Table 3.2 has in this way been obtained from an incomplete
description by Peirce but is easily reconstructed from other typologies, in spite
of his misgivings concerning the viability of the classes forming the immediate
interpretant division.
Returning to Table 3.2, we note two immensely significant consequences
of its fundamentally different way of classifying signs from the single division
of the period from 1867 to 1902 and from the three divisions yielding the ten
classes of 1903. To begin with, the S–Od division which Peirce claimed to be
the one he used most (CP 8.368) and the one yielding the universally known
88 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

division into icon, index and symbol, has disappeared from the scheme in
Table 3.2. The system here is based not on how a sign represents its object
– is not based on the sign’s mode of representation, in other words – but,
among other things, upon the sorts of objects it represents.11 Gone, too, is
the S–If division defining rheme, dicent and argument, the absence of the
dicisign being particularly significant in view of the importance Peirce seems
to have accorded it in the 1906 draft and of the importance attributed to
the proposition in traditional theories of logic, and it is no wonder that
Peirce was at pains to retain these two divisions in particular in his projected
66-class system.

Principles determining typology order

The abrupt passage from Peirce’s hexadic definition of semiosis in the letter of
23 December 1908 to the incomplete classification of the projected twenty-eight
possible classes of signs suggests, but in no way proves, that the latter should
be modelled on the former. This raises the problem of the order of occurrence
of the correlates in the two late typologies – both the 28- and 66-class systems
– a problem which preoccupied Peirce late in December 1908 (cf. CP 8.342–
379) and numerous Peirce authorities since. Restricting the discussion to the
hexadic system illustrated in Table 3.2, there are conflicting considerations
that merit discussion. To begin with, semiosis is a dynamic process defined
formally within the logic, while the various divisions established and employed
in sign typologies are the product of a different, if related, methodology. There
may be no reason for the second to be organized according to the order of
occurrence of the correlates participating in the former, although Peirce’s
cryptic definition in the remarks he made to Lady Welby in the letter of 23
December (SS 84), while hardly helpful in this respect, suggests that this is
indeed the case with this particular hexadic typology in spite of persuasive
arguments to the contrary. Indeed, it has been suggested that by placing the
Sign division (S in Table 3.2) in initial position in the typology, as his remarks
on the English common noun beauty suggest, Peirce was justified in classifying
this particular sign as an abstractive type (SS 83–84).12 This can only be done
if the sign division precedes that of the dynamic object in the classification
system, in complete contrast to the initial order given in Table 3.2.
Unfortunately, the exact position of the sign division is not the only problem
to have been raised in discussions of the ordering of the six and ten divisions.
 The Sign-Systems of 1908 89

Another issue stems from the way in which Savan (1988) and others have
interpreted Peirce’s sometimes disturbing, but understandable, habit of providing
the interpretants with alternative names. This was quite clear from the discussion
in Chapter 2 of the numerous typologies Peirce established between 1904 and
1908. For example, in the passage from the letter quoted above Peirce sets out
the interpretant order as Destinate, Effective and Explicit. With respect to this
issue Savan makes the following statement in an explanatory note: ‘(N: Peirce
sometimes used “Explicit Interpretant” as an alternative name for the Immediate
Interpretant, as in the Welby Correspondence (PW 84 [= SS 84]). Weiss and
Burks, and Lieb, mistakenly identify the Explicit Interpretant with the Final
Interpretant)’ (1988: 52). If this were the case, then the interpretant order for
hexadb above would be If, Id and Ii since ‘Explicit’ has been standardized to
‘final’ on the table, and for the ten divisions a similar order with the relational
divisions interleaved according to the opinion of the commentator. The order
established by Weiss and Burks, for example, basing their information concerning
the later sign-systems on material from Ogden and Richards’ Appendix D, adopts
the order of the hexad given in Table 3.2, with the final interpretant in final
position among the interpretant divisions, followed by the relational divisions
S–Od, S–Id, S–If and S–O–I (1945: 385–87). This is the order, too, adopted by
Irwin Lieb, according to the list established by Hardwick in Appendix B in the
Peirce-Welby correspondence (SS 162–163).13 Savan has clearly confused the
explicit interpretant with the immediate, following the principle of correlate
order discussed earlier, which is not the order given by Peirce in the letter to Lady
Welby: pace Savan and others, the explicit interpretant is simply an alternative
designation for the final interpretant.

Phenomenological criteria
Savan is not the only Peirce scholar to dispute an order such as the one given
in Table 3.2. Yet other authorities prefer what was referred to above as ‘cyclical’
correlate order, in other words an ordering system which places the sign division
first, then the object divisions with the dynamic preceding the immediate,
followed by the interpretant series beginning with the final interpretant and
finishing with the immediate, the whole series interspersed with the relational
divisions according to the decisions of the authority concerned. This final–
dynamic–immediate order is favoured by, for example Morand, who offers a
‘phaneroscopic’ justification of the order (2004: 209–20). This is the case, too,
with Müller (1994: 145–49), who contests the ‘categorical’ order established
90 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

by, for example, Weiss and Burks, and considers, like Morand (2004), that the
immediate and dynamic interpretants and the immediate object are somehow
degenerate forms of the final interpretant (Müller’s term is ‘normal’) and
the dynamic object, respectively. Similarly, too, Diversey (2014) establishes
his ‘correct’ order by means of three rules, based, essentially, on different
levels within the basic S–O–I triad, and, significantly, the phenomenological
principle that genuine trichotomies [e.g. Od, If] precede allegedly degenerate ones
[e.g. Oi, Id, Ii].
This particular explanatory strategy, based on Peirce’s phenomenology,
seems to have originated with Weiss and Burks. They set out five principles
governing the construction of the various divisions (1945: 384), the fourth
of which being: ‘Thirds [e.g. legisigns, but their conception is broader than
this] have two degenerate forms, Seconds one degenerate form (1.365). The
application of this principle to the three divisions yields ten divisions.’ In
other words, while Peirce was discussing his categories in the passage cited –
CP 1.365 is from ‘A Guess at the Riddle’, composed almost thirty years earlier
than the 23 December letter – Weiss and Burks have extended the principle
to the sign relation, and for them the dynamic object has the immediate
object as its degenerate form while the final interpretant has the dynamic
and immediate interpretants for its degenerate and doubly degenerate forms,
respectively. See, for example, their entry for division (D) ‘The Nature of
the Doubly Degenerate or Immediate (Destinate, Emotional) Interpretant’
(1945: 386).
However, it is important to see in this matter that as far as the
phaneroscopic nature of the table is concerned, the only way in which we can
measure genuineness and degeneracy if we have to – and such a project is
surely irrelevant to the ‘universal’ criterion adopted by Peirce here – is not
orthogonally from dynamic object to immediate and from final interpretant
to immediate via the dynamic interpretant, but, rather down Table 3.2, from
necessitant to possible. If anything on the table has to be doubly degenerate, it
is surely an abstractive, for example, with respect to a collective, should we wish
to introduce phaneroscopic criteria into the classification. There is evidence,
however, from Peirce himself, and from the way the type/token distinction
functions in the later sign-systems, that he found distinctions based on
phenomenological principles less important than in 1903;14 and in any case the
typology of 23 December is not based on the categories but on three universes:
the classificatory criteria are ontological rather than phenomenological.
 The Sign-Systems of 1908 91

Terminological confusion

It seems probable in such cases, too, that the ordering choices of the authorities in
question depend upon how they, like Savan, have interpreted the denominations
‘destinate’ and ‘explicit’. The question is why should ‘destinate’ be equivalent to
‘final’, and ‘explicit’ to ‘immediate’? Savan, for example, adduces evidence for his
decision by half-quoting Peirce himself: ‘It is this significance, conveyed by the
simple presentation of the sign itself, that is the Immediate Interpretant. In a
passage that suggests why it might be called the Explicit Interpretant, Peirce wrote
that this interpretant is “all that is explicit in the sign itself apart from its context
and circumstances of utterance” (B 276)’ (1988: 53).15 What Peirce actually wrote
in 1907 was this: ‘For the proper significate outcome of a sign, I propose the
name, the interpretant of the sign … On these terms, it is very easy … to see what
the interpretant of a sign is: it is all that is explicit in the sign itself apart from its
context and circumstances of utterance’ (B 275–76). Peirce is, in fact, defining
the interpretant of any sign as whatever is explicit in the sign independently
of conditions of use, and Savan here is victim of his own misquotation. In this
particular extract from the ‘Pragmatism’ variants of 1907, the interpretants were,
remember, in order of increasing complexity, emotional, energetic and logical,
namely those discussed in the final sections of Chapter 2, and Savan has surely
misinterpreted Peirce at this point by assimilating the use of the adjective explicit
to the designation of a particular interpretant. There is no logical reason why
the Explicit Interpretant represented as If in Table 3.2 and in the ‘determination’
passage from the letter of 23 December quoted above should be anything other
than another term for the final interpretant, and this for two reasons.
First, consider Table 3.3, which sets out in linear sequence the order of the
‘subjects’ in the typologies discussed in Chapter 2. With the exception of the
first two typologies, from August 1904?16 and 12 October 1904, all the others
adopt the Ii, Id and If order of divisions, even when relational divisions are
interspersed between them in the sequence. This being the case, it is difficult
to see why anyone would want to resuscitate a rare version of correlate order
that Peirce himself had abandoned very early in his researches into six and ten
divisions of signs.
Second, if we return to the 1906 draft letter to Lady Welby discussed
in Chapter 2 we find the terminology concerning the more conventional
designation ‘immediate’ interpretant similar to that of the 1908 letter. Peirce,
remember, referred to it at the time as the ‘intentional’ interpretant, stating
92 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

Table 3.3 Division order in typologies from 1903–04 to 1908, with some interpretant
series standardized to Ii, Id and If
Typology order
Date
Aug? 1904 (S); S-Od, Oi; Isig (=If), Id, I(i)?
07/08/1904 (S), Oi, S-Od, Ii, Id, Isignified
12/10/1904 S, S-Od, S-Oi; S-If, S-Id, S-Ii
08/10/1905 S, Oi, Od, Ii, Id, Isig (=If)
09/10/1905 S, Oi, Od, If (incomplete)
13/10/1905 S, Oi, Odα, Odβ, Ii, Idα, Idβ, Ifα, Ifβ, Ifγ
06/03/1906 Od, Oi, S, Ii, Id, If (reconstructed with interpretants standardized)
31/03/1906 S, Oi, Od, S-Od, Ii, Id, S-Id, If, Pass(If), Signif(If)
31/08/1906 S, Oi, Od, S-Od, Ii, Id, '(S-Id)', purpose(If), influence(S), Ass. of S to
Interp.
23/12/1908 Od, Oi, S, Ii, Id, If, S-Od, S-Id, S-O-I, S-If (interpretants standardized)
24/12/1908 S, Oi, Od, S-Od, Ii, Id, S-Id, If, S-If, S-Od-If (interpretants
standardized)
25/12/1908 S, Oi, Od, S-Od, Ii, Id, S-Id, If, S-If, S-O-If (interpretants standardized)

that it was a determination of the sign, a condition which makes it immediate

in the determination sequence and necessarily the first of the interpretants
in that sequence. Furthermore, the intentional has to correspond to the
immediate if only because it is inconceivable that what Peirce referred to at
that time as the ‘communicational’ interpretant could be anything other than
the final interpretant in the series. For these reasons, then, in this study the
interpretant order established by Peirce in the 23 December letter of 1908
corresponds, as standardized (in bold) in Table 3.3, to immediate, dynamic
and final.
Continuing with this line of thought, consider Table 3.3 once more, which
sets out the nine typologies (one incomplete, another reconstructed from the
draft) which Peirce established in the years between 1904 and 1906, followed
by the three to be found in the letter and draft letters intended for Lady Welby
of December 1908. The typology reconstructed in Table 3.3 from the important
1906 draft (in bold, line 7 on the table) specifically places the interpretants in a
set logical sequence from the intentional (immediate interpretant Ii in Table 3.4)
to the communicational (final interpretant If in Table 3.3), with the effectual (i.e.
dynamic, Id) interpretant inserted between them. A determination of the mind
of the utterer, the intentional interpretant is thus both the determination of the
 The Sign-Systems of 1908 93

sign and the determinant of the effectual interpretant (SS 196), an early implicit
indication of the order of semiosis explicitly stated in the letter of 23 December.
This is not only further justification of the order of the correlates adopted in
Table 3.2, since the 1906 draft, as seen in Chapter 2, anticipates embryonically
the order of semiosis, but also justifies the identification of the three interpretants
described in the letter as Destinate, Effective and Explicit (respectively,
immediate, dynamic and final). As Table 3.3 clearly shows, the correlate order
adopted in the great majority of typologies is such that the interpretant sequence
invariably begins with the immediate. Moreover, in the typology of 31 March
1906 (Table 2.4), Peirce distinguishes between intended, dynamic and normal
interpretants, where ‘intended’ and ‘intentional’ in, respectively, the 31 March
1906 typology and the 1906 draft, can be considered virtually synonymous with
Destinate in this context.17 If the two terms are not exactly synonymous from a
semantic point of view ‘intentional’ and ‘intended’ are surely closer to ‘destinate’
than ‘explicit’ is.
Finally, if we set out the order of correlates in the classification as S, Od, Oi,
Ii, Id, If or even S, Od, Oi, If, Id, Ii, that is, with S in initial position in either
case, there is a strong possibility that such systems would have been dismissed as
rank nominalism by Peirce, as they make the compatibility status of the dynamic
object dependent upon that of the sign, thereby implying that all reality comes
under the ‘sway’ of categorematic verbal signs, whereas reality is, in fact, defined
as whatever is independently of what we think or say it to be:
Objects are divided into figments, dreams, etc., on the one hand, and realities on
the other. The former are those which exist only inasmuch as you or I or some
man imagines them; the latter are those which have an existence independent
of your mind or mine or that of any number of persons. The real is that which is
not whatever we happen to think it, but is unaffected by what we may think of
it. (CP 8.12, 1871)

Table 3.4 Hypothetical correlate classification of the noun beauty

Subject
S Oi Od Ii Id If
Universe
Necessitant beauty copulant
Existent designative
Possible descriptive abstractive hypothetical sympathetic gratific
94 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

In other words, he held that there was a reality ‘out there’ that was independent
of minds, signs and, more pertinently in the present context, language: reality
is such as it is, independently of what anyone thinks it to be and irrespective
of the language they speak. This suggests that, as in semiosis, it is the object
which determines the language sign, and not the other way around, and that the
principle can also be applied to the typology that semiosis determines.

Beauty

In addition to the discussion above, a number of other persuasive criteria seem

to argue in favour of the order retained in Table 3.2, which is, after all, the order
of semiosis. First, if in such a process a dynamic object and then an immediate
object can ‘determine’ a sign, that is, cause it to be such as it is, there is clearly a
logical reason why the sign must appear after these two correlates in the table. If
the sequence given in Figure 3.1 is correct – the hierarchy ordering the universes
applies to this as much as to the classifying system – then it is difficult to see
how in the process of semiosis the concept of beauty, for example (a possible,
according to Peirce (SS 83–84)), could determine the type (a necessitant) that
names it: such a determination would violate the universe hierarchy principle.
Moreover, in CP 8.366 Peirce later identifies as abstractives such basic material
qualities as colour, mass and whiteness: these can be found, for example, in a
painting or on frescoes (unlike intellectual concepts such as that represented by
the noun beauty), and as such would be compatible not with a type, but, rather,
with a simple mark. Note, too, that Peirce makes the following comment:

I was of the opinion that if the Dynamical Object be a mere Possible the
Immediate Object could only be of the same nature, while if the Immediate
Object were a Tendency or Habit then the Dynamical Object must be of the
same nature. Consequently an Abstractive must be a Mark, while a Type must
be a Collective, which shows how I conceived Abstractives and Collectives. (CP
8.367, 1908)

The type beauty – all words in a dictionary are by nature necessitant, and
are therefore classified as types (SS 83) – can only be classified as an abstractive
if the sign precedes the dynamic object in the classification system. As noted
above, the order displayed in Table 3.2 would be incorrect, and would need to be
replaced by a system displaying correlate order. Peirce’s surprising description
of the common noun beauty as an abstractive sign (SS 83–84) has potentially
significant consequences for the choice between correlate and ‘semiosis’ order,
 The Sign-Systems of 1908 95

and therefore requires examination. There are at least two ways in which to
approach the problem: first, to analyse the term with the sign in initial position
as Peirce places it in most of his correlate-order typologies, and as his remarks
to Lady Welby imply; second, to examine the problem from a more empirical
perspective.
In Table 3.4 the noun has been placed in the initial necessitant sign position as
Peirce’s comments suggest, while with respect to the dynamic object it is classified
as an abstractive.18 Now, according to the hierarchy principle, an abstractive
sign – necessarily a sign with a possible object by the Od division in Table 3.4 –
can only determine an immediate object and a sequence of interpretants from the
universe of possibles, identifying the sign here as also hypothetical, sympathetic
and gratific. This, in fact, is the real problem concerning the classification of the
common noun beauty as an abstractive sign: namely, the interpretant sequence
that it would determine if the solution proposed in Table 3.4 were adopted. For
it is difficult to see how the effect produced by a verbal sign might be limited
to feelings. Such a sign’s meaning has first to be ‘processed’, so to speak, at the
immediate interpretant stage in semiosis for it to be capable of producing any
subsequent effect at all, even a feeling: the object deemed beautiful might excite a
feeling of pleasure or well-being, but the word beauty itself, like any other verbal
sign, must surely require a mental immediate interpretant for the interpreter to
be able to understand it.
An alternative, but complementary, way of resolving this issue is by adopting
a more empirical approach to what appears to be a contradiction on Peirce’s
part: we hypothesize that as a common noun, beauty is neither a ‘complete’
informational sign (as a dicisign is) in the 10-class system nor is it a complete
representation of an object for classification by means of the hexad in Table 3.2.
However, once integrated into a full sentence classification poses no problem.
The justification for this is to be found in the way Peirce describes the relation
between a complete sign such as an utterance and the object or fact it represents
in 1907: ‘Thus the partial objects of an ordinary transitive verb are an agent and
a patient. These distinctive characters have nothing to do with the form of a
verb, as a sign, but are derived from the fact signified’ (EP2 408). In other words,
it is the object in all its completeness (it can’t be otherwise) which determines
the sign, and this is the principle at work in the 28-class typology, since signs are
classified initially according to the sorts of objects they represent.
Moreover, it was seen in Chapter 2 that it is necessarily the case that there is
nothing in the sign that is not already in the object. The event or fact represented
determines the structure of the sentence representing it. This being the case, how
96 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

does Peirce’s beauty example satisfy this condition? Consider, by contrast, the
‘complete’ generic utterance Beauty is truth, truth beauty. This very well-known
compound sentence postulates as equivalent collections of entities sharing certain
properties as exemplified by the following propositions: ‘Whatever is beautiful is
true and whatever is true is beautiful’, or ‘Beautiful things all possess truth and true
things all possess beauty’, or something of that sort. Keats’s line is a complete sign, a
dicisign in the 1903 system but a collective copulant type in that of 1908, and it has
to be analysed in terms of all the objects that determined it and the interpretant
effects that it produced, or was calculated to produce, in order to classify it.
All of which brings us back to Peirce’s remarks concerning the ‘simple’
common noun beauty. Clearly beauty is not a complete sign. As Peirce tells
Lady Welby, ‘it is the ultimate reference, and not the grammatical form, that
makes the sign [the word beauty] an Abstractive’ (EP2 480), the problem being
to determine the ultimate reference of what is, as it stands, nothing more than
a simple dictionary entry. It is difficult to conceive of the conditions in which
one might utter the word in a true situation of communication: Beauty! might
be a (highly elliptical) summons to a horse, or to one’s dog or cat. In any other
conditions the utterance would be laconic and mystifying to say the least.19
People simply do not communicate by means of single-word utterances of this
type, assuming beauty to be an effectively uttered sign, which it clearly is not – we
might encounter exclamative utterances such as Idiot! or Clever clogs! but only
in specific contexts. The word in Keats’s line refers obliquely to part of the more
general object, the beautiful part, but cannot be classified in isolation from the
generic utterance that represents that general object. It can, on the other hand,
be classified without difficulty within the 1903 system, simply because at that
time the object in itself was not a criterion needed to classify a sign: Peirce often
stated that the English definite article was the epitome of the legisign, but he
never went so far as to say what sort of object it was the sign of. What interested
Peirce was the sign, its mode of representation and the relation holding between
the sign and its interpretant, its information value. As a term or rheme, beauty is
not an informational sign. On the other hand, the hexad of 1908 classifies signs
according to the nature of the sorts of objects represented and as a linguistic sign
beauty is simply a collective type or famisign (CP 8.359).20
Perhaps the whole beauty question was yet another case of Peirce simplifying
matters as a ‘sop to Cerberus’. The word beauty is certainly an abstract noun
with respect to English grammar, but in addition to the discussion above, it is
difficult to see how Peirce would have associated a noun – a language sign – with
an emotional interpretant, since this is what an abstractive would have to do in
 The Sign-Systems of 1908 97

the 1907 interpretant system discussed in Chapter 2. As a noun, he would surely

have associated the term with what he saw then as the logical interpretant, the
interpretant to which only concepts could appeal according to his pragmatism
of the time. Presumably, if a classification of the noun on its own were required
it would be a self-control producing collective, much like a dictionary definition:
‘Such combined perfection of form and charm of colouring as affords keen
pleasure to the sense of sight: in the human face or figure’ (OED). The definition
introduces us to the concept; it is classified as ‘usual’ at the Id stage and confirms
a prior interpretation;21 and as such the combination of term plus definition
functions as a self-controlling sign. Whatever the solution adopted, it is clear
that anyone wishing to determine the order of occurrence of the divisions in the
more complex 66-class system will have problems of the sort posed by Peirce’s
example of beauty to contend with.

Hexadic classification

After this long discussion of the order of the subjects in Table 3.2, we examine
some of the sorts of classes of sign the subjects themselves determine, as they
constitute another major innovation in the 1908 hexad. As the table shows, the
list is composed of two divisions concerning the objects, one for the sign and
three for the interpretants. Moreover, each division is a trichotomy the subclasses
of which are obtained by reference to one or other of the three universes of
experience. The question now is what sorts of subclasses and what sorts of signs
does such a structure yield? As with other areas of the late semiotics, Peirce has
only provided an incomplete statement.

The objects
As far as the two object divisions are concerned we do have Peirce’s brief
examples to work with. In the draft of 25 December he has this to say of the
dynamic object division:
III. In respect to the Nature of their Dynamical Objects, Signs I found to be
either
1. Signs of Possibles. That is Abstractives such as Color, Mass, Whiteness, etc.
2. Signs of Occurrences. That is Concretives such as Man, Charlemagne.
3. Signs of Collections. That is Collectives such as Mankind, the Human
Race, etc.
98 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

By Abstractives I meant signs of immediate abstractions; but was in some

doubt what to do with abstractions resulting from experiment. I thought it
would be requisite to study subdivisions of these classes but never went into that
research. (CP 8.366)

We return to the discussion of the dynamic object in Chapter 5, as Peirce develops

the range of potential dynamic objects both in the ‘Neglected Argument’ text of
1908 and in letters to William James from 1909. For the time being suffice it to
note that in order of increasing complexity he distinguishes between qualitative
objects (colour, mass etc., as noted earlier); such existential singular objects (which
can also be found in groups or collections of singulars as in a class of pupils, or
twenty-two individuals running after a leather ball on a football pitch) as humans,
named individuals (e.g. Napoleon, Charlemagne, River Rat Jimmy), tables, towns,
aeroplanes etc.; and, finally, classes of entities such as those covered by concepts
like mankind etc., and usually represented, in English, by common nouns.
Within the immediate object division Peirce distinguishes between the three
ways in which a sign’s object can be ‘presented’, that is, represented immediately
on the sign-medium: as ‘mere ideas’, as ‘brutely compelling attention’ or as
‘rationally recommending themselves’ (CP 8.349, 1908), such presentations
yielding, moving from the possible to the necessitant via the existent, the
following three classes of signs with reference to their immediate objects:
A. Descriptives, which determine their Objects by stating the characters of the
latter.
B. Designatives (or Denotatives), or Indicatives, Denominatives, which like a
Demonstrative pronoun, or a pointing finger, brutely direct the mental eyeballs
of the interpreter to the object in question, which in this case cannot be given by
independent reasoning.
C. Copulants, which 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. (CP 8.350)

Alternative designations for these classes of signs are to be found in the drafts
from the days following the letter of 23 December, for example, descriptive,
denominative and copulative/distributive (EP2, 488), but in Table 3.2 we retain
those mentioned in Peirce’s letter. Note, too, that in the 1904 hexadic typology
given earlier (Table 3.1) the S-Oi trichotomy divides more vaguely into sign
of law, sign of experience and, finally, sign of quality. At the time Peirce was
employing the categories as criteria. In Chapter 4 we examine the sorts of signs
the two objects thus described actually determine, but for now we simply note
 The Sign-Systems of 1908 99

the properties Peirce ascribes to them in the letter, and that since both sign and
object can be individual, existent entities, the immediate object functions as a
sort of semiotic filter between them.

The sign
The final division for the subclasses of which Peirce actually provides examples
is the Sign division. In the 1903 triadic typology, he distinguished between
legisign, sinsign and qualisign (as have many commentators since in their
discussions of the 66-class system in spite of the fact that Peirce had introduced
a new terminology for these subdivisions). In the 1908 hexadic typology set out
in Table 3.2, the division was composed of type, token and mark. However, in
the extract below, written at most two days later, he suggests the triplet: potisign,
actisign and famisign. The latter term is a particularly felicitous denomination as
the idea of a legisign being a sign of law, etc., suggests a distance or remoteness by
virtue of its generality, while the term ‘famisign’, on the other hand, accentuates
the routine and familiar nature of the general signs that make up our daily lives:22
Consequently, Signs, in respect to their Modes of possible Presentation, are
divisible (S) into
A. Potisigns, or Objects which are signs so far as they are merely possible, but
felt to be positively possible; as, for example, the seventh ray that passes through
the three intersections of opposite sides of Pascal’s hexagram.
B. Actisigns, or Objects which are Signs as Experienced hic et nunc; such as
any single word in a single place in a single sentence of a single paragraph of
a single page of a single copy of a book. There may be repetition of the whole
paragraph, this word included, in another place. But that other occurrence is
not this word. The book may be printed in an edition of ten thousand; but THIS
word is only in my copy.
C. Famisigns, familiar signs, which must be General, as General signs must
be familiar or composed of Familiar signs. (I speak of signs which are “general”,
not in the sense of signifying Generals, but as being themselves general; just as
Charlemagne is general, in that it occurs many times with one and the same
denotation.) (CP 8.347)

The interpretants
However, it is surely the subdivisions of the three interpretants which are the most
innovative feature of the hexad defined by semiosis. They are also, unfortunately
for the researcher, the ones for which we have least information from Peirce
100 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

himself. Remember that the hexadic system Peirce described to Lady Welby in
his letter of 12 October 1904 was composed of a correlate division (S) and five
relational ones (S–Od, S–Oi, S–If, S–Id, S–Ii),23 each division subdivided into
three classes with respect to Peirce’s three categories. Although logically possible,
the twenty-eight-class potential of the 1904 typology seems to have been
neglected by Peirce as there seems to be no editorial evidence of him referring to
such a system before the 23 December 1908 letter. Alternatively, perhaps Peirce
imagined that the actual ordering of a series of relational characteristics of a
sign was problematic. As it was, he appended in a postscript the ten classes he
had established in 1903, adding ‘On the whole, then, I should say there were
ten principal classes of signs’ (SS 35), which suggests that any attempt to derive
twenty-eight classes from the 1904 hexad was unlikely to have been on Peirce’s
agenda at that point.
Whatever the case in 1904, there seems to have been a form of regression
in 1907, a time when Peirce was trying to work out the relations between the
logical, energetic and emotional interpretants and his theory of pragmatism.
These were presented ‘of a piece’, that is, without the subdivisions mentioned in
some of the earlier typologies to be found in the Logic Notebook and discussed
in Chapter 2, and each corresponded to a specific type of sign: respectively,
concept, military command and performance of a piece of music, for example.
This was presumably the reason why some Peirce scholars (e.g. Lalor (1997),
discussed in Chapter 2, considered the emotional, energetic and logical set of
interpretants as the specifically ‘human’ versions of the immediate, dynamic and
final interpretants.
The situation changes quite radically in the system presented less than
a year later in the 23 December letter, for each of the three interpretants is
now subdivided into what can be considered loosely as feeling, action and
habit or thought values, according to which universe signs are referred to. For
example, looking at the subdivisions from an orthogonal perspective we find
that as subjects of the universe of possibles, the immediate, dynamic and final
interpretants all present a monadic, qualitative, insubstantial character: with
respect to the first a sign is hypothetical, to the second it is sympathetic and
to the third the sign is gratific, signifying, one assumes, that its purpose is to
produce positive feeling.24 The triple distinction between feeling, action and
habit runs orthogonally through the entire interpretant series.
From a ‘perpendicular’ perspective, on the other hand, taking the Id division
as an example, Table 3.2 shows a three-way distinction between usual, percussive
and sympathetic. This was the sixth division of the earlier (decadic) typology
 The Sign-Systems of 1908 101

established on 31 August 1906 (R339 285r (H534)), distributed ‘according to

the Nature of the Middle Interpretant’. In that particular case, Peirce offered
the following alternative but equivalent values: ‘congruentive’ for the possible
subclass and ‘shocking’ for the existent one. While the congruentive/sympathetic
subdivision of signs can be understood with respect to an emotional response,
and the shocking/percussive subdivision with respect to an active, dynamic
one, too, the ‘usual’ subdivision is less easily understood. Presumably, by a
usual sign Peirce means that such a sign doesn’t disturb the interpreter’s mental
equilibrium and conforms in this way to experience and expectation, which it
ultimately confirms. Whatever the case, the sign must, as with all necessitant
subjects, be quite general. Indeed in most cases it must be something of the
nature of thought. Taking another example, if we examine now the case of the
type, a necessitant sign, we know it has to be collective by Od, and copulant by
Oi. What sort of sign will it be if, in the If division, its purpose is to produce
self-control? The only general sort of sign that could fit such a format is thought
itself or habit, and, unlike an action-producing token, is necessarily unavailable
for inspection.25
It follows, therefore, from the extended description of the interpretants and
the late development of the trichotomies defined within the Sign–Interpretant
branch of the grand logic that researchers now have to determine just what
it means, for example, for the mode of being of a dynamic interpretant to be
necessitant, or for the mode of being of an immediate interpretant to be that
of existence, if they are to understand the signs these distinctions enable them
to classify, and also if Houser’s programme for semiotics is to be undertaken.
Or, from another point of view, researchers have also to determine just what it
means for a sign to be, to name just two of the new series, relative or categorical.
True, some of the denominations of the subdivisions defined in the hexad are
familiar. For example, the three subdivisions of signs determined by the dynamic
object are ‘abstractive’, ‘concretive’ and ‘collective’, a series which echoes the
grammatical distinctions between the abstract, concrete and collective common
nouns of the grammar of English. Furthermore, the three subdivisions of signs
in the immediate interpretant trichotomy follow distinctions traditionally made
between relative, categorical and hypothetical propositions (cf. CP 2.325–6).
Nevertheless, although he was to refer on occasion to the sorts of ‘universes of
existence’ which might enable the researcher to comprehend at least one of the
universes to which the objects determining whether a sign was an abstractive,
a concretive or a collective belonged (e.g. CP 6.455 and CP 8.178, both from
1908), as Peirce left it the system poses many problems of identification
102 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

and classification, and it is little wonder, then, that he never was able to complete
a description of the posited twenty-eight and sixty-six classes of signs, and had
difficulty in developing the Sign–Interpretant branch of the grand logic to his
satisfaction.
In short, the interpretant sequence as it appears in both the six- and ten-
division systems suggests two lines of enquiry within the semiotics. First,
the subdivision of all the interpretants into possible, existent and necessitant
universes modifies the principle of continuous semiosis entailed by the earlier
principle in which one interpretant, as a sign, determines a following interpretant
– another sign – in a potentially unlimited series: this is now only possible for
one of the twenty-eight possible classes, the self-control producing collective.
Since action-producing signs terminate in ‘brute’ experience when referred to
an existent final interpretant, any such logical continuity immediately ceases.
Second, the interpretant sequence as presented in Table 3.2 requires us to review,
too, aspects of the general philosophy of representation described in Chapter
1, in particular the speculative rhetoric/methodeutic branch. We return to this
problem in Chapters 4 and 5.
Figure 3.2 displays the major differences in the classificatory principles
employed by the 10-class typology of 1903 and the 28-class system of 1908. The
first has a predicate-based organizing principle (the criteria for classification
are the predicaments or categories) which applies to the sign and two relational
facets of signhood; the second presents an array of subjects arranged in the order
of semiosis, each divisible in three ways according to the three modalities of
being which Peirce described to Lady Welby in the letter of 23 December; in
other words, according to whether the particular subject is necessitant, existent
(is an ‘occurrence’ or a fact concerning one) or possible.
We note, too, that unlike the triadic system of 1903 with its ten classes of
signs, the complex typological structure displayed in Table 3.2 generates
twenty-eight very different classes: one of abstractives, six of concretives and
twenty-one classes of collectives – the most complex class of all – and even to
name them requires considerable imagination. What sort of semiotic entity,

Sign + relations Subjects

Category S O-S S-l Universe Od Oi S li ld lf
Thirdness Necessitant
Secondness Existent
Firstness Possible

Figure 3.2 The typologies of 1903 and 1908 compared

 The Sign-Systems of 1908 103

for example, would be classified as a copulant, categorical sympathetic sign, or

one classified as a gratific percussive relative (note that as a consequence of the
logical constraints imposed by the hierarchy governing the three universes, in
the first case if the sign is copulant, it is necessarily collective, and, in the second,
if relative it will also necessarily be a copulant, collective type)? We are now a
far cry from the relative comfort of the rhematic symbols and iconic sinsigns of
yore …
More problematic, however, is the requirement that two apparently
contrasting classificatory principles should be combined if we are to obtain
sixty-six viable classes of signs. Just how compatible, we have to discover, are
predicates and universes, even though we can divine Peirce’s three categories of
the forms of experience – monad, dyad and triad – behind each? More specifically,
is it possible to add, as Peirce suggested at the end of his 23 December letter, a
further four more relational divisions to the organically ordered six in order to
obtain a logical ordering for the ten divisions and the projected sixty-six classes
Peirce hoped to derive from them, an issue to which an important branch of
Peirce scholarship for the last seventy years has applied itself? Whatever the
theoretical difficulties of such a task, we know that both systems, in spite of their
differences, are capable of accounting differentially for the very same semiotic
phenomena that we encounter everyday of our lives.

Summary and discussion

This chapter has sought to introduce and describe the theoretical aspects of the
28-class system of December 1908; to discuss the problems left to researchers
by Peirce’s scant indications as to how it is to be organized and used; and to
determine how such a system might be combined with other divisions to yield
the sixty-six classes of signs that preoccupied Peirce late in his career. It first
introduced the hexad and compared it with the earlier one from 1904. The
innovative features were: the nature of the divisions, here based on the correlates
of the sign in the effectively hexadic conception of semiosis implicit in the letter
to Lady Welby of 23 December 1908; the fact that these new divisions were
subdivided by referring each correlate to one of three universes – of possible,
existent and necessitant entities; the consequent disappearance of Peirce’s first
and most fundamental trichotomy identifying icon, index and symbol, and
the disappearance, too, of the sign–interpretant division which subdivides into
rheme, dicisign and argument.
104 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

With respect to this ordering problem, the material examined suggests that
the difficulties encountered may be due to conflicting interpretations of Peirce’s
varied terminology concerning the interpretants, and that they may also be a
consequence of an incompatibility between a predicate-based classification
and one based upon universes and the sorts of subjects they contain. Further
contributing issues of debate are, first, the attempts by many authorities to establish
phenomenological hierarchies between the subjects themselves as opposed
to hierarchies within divisions; second, the fact that these phenomenological
projects fail to take into account that in a predicative, category-based system,
items are classified according to shared properties. All legisigns, for example,
share the same law-like properties, whereas in a universe-based system the
subjects, namely the sign and its five correlates in the new hexadic conception
of semiosis, are not necessarily alike: objects, signs and interpretants differ
from one another, while the two objects and three interpretants differ among
themselves, but they nevertheless are members of one or other of three universes
or classes defined by their respective ‘modalities of being’.
It is therefore quite possible that a predicate-based system like that of 1903
might prove incompatible with the universe-based system of 1908. Indeed,
the attempt to organize the sixty-six classes is hampered by three potential
incompatibilities. To begin with, the ten divisions combine classes classified
in two very different ways (category vs. universe). Then there is the fact that
the two sets of divisions are derived from very different definitions of the sign,
the 1903 version being a triad (O determines S which determines I, so that I
is mediately determined by O) as opposed to the 1908 version where there is a
chain of determinations in which each ‘subject’ determines the one that follows
immediately (Od > Oi > S > Ii > Id > If). Finally, the ten divisions combine
classes obtained from these two very different definitions of the sign.
What many authorities have failed to see, too, is that what we have in hexadb
is an alternative, independent, autonomous sign-system which can function
without the icon-index-symbol subclasses and arguments and dicisigns. Its
theoretical bases reside in at least three features with implications for the entire
edifice of the philosophy of representation as described in Chapter 1. First, the
1906 description of sign-action acknowledges that while the sign communicates
form to the interpretants it is not the sign as conceived around 1902–03 but
the object which is logically the origin of the process, and that neither sign nor
object ‘aims’ to do anything in semiosis. Second, while in 1903 both sign-action
and the triadic classification system related the sign to a single, comprehensive
interpretant albeit with the capacity to generate an interpretant series, the
 The Sign-Systems of 1908 105

identification of the nature and function of the three distinct interpretants and
the way in which they are represented in, for example, Table 3.2, are surely
evidence of Peirce’s growing understanding of the role of the interpretant.
Third, the classification of the sign with respect to the three interpretants in the
1908 system is a very feasible solution to the inquiry into what he had earlier
seen as those ‘general conditions of reference of symbols and other signs into
the interpretants they aim to determine’ of 1902, while the labels themselves
identifying classes of signs with respect, in particular, to their final interpretants,
give a logical, impersonal account of every sign’s telic, purposive nature. Clearly,
Peirce has now left the heritage of Locke and Kant far behind.
Five years after the Lowell Lectures and the logically complete sign systems
described in Chapter 1 Peirce produced another fully autonomous system,
hexadb, but never exploited its potential. It is this task that Chapters 4 and 5
modestly take up. Having described hexadb in what must seem very abstract
detail we turn first, in Chapter 4, to concrete applications of the system and its
potential for rhetorical analysis and, at the same time, to a comparison of the
typologies of 1903 and 1908 in order to assess their compatibility.
 4

Rhetorical Concerns

The previous three chapters have described, respectively, the 1903 philosophy
of representation, some of the stages characterizing the development of Peirce’s
conceptions of signs, sign-systems and the typologies they gave rise to in the
period 1904–07, and, finally in Chapter 3, the hexad of 1908. After these at
times highly technical chapters, we turn now to two chapters concerned with
concrete examples of how the two systems function and, above all, how they
differ. Since one of the purposes of this study is to assess the compatibility
between the various divisions composing the three of 1903 and the six of 1908,
the present chapter seeks to compare the way each ‘accommodates’ a variety
of semiotic phenomena of obvious rhetorical intent – not, of course, with the
intention of deciding which is the better or the more adequate but simply
to show how they differ. This will also provide the opportunity to classify
signs by means of at least one of the innovative 1908 typologies, a task which
most commentators on the ordering of the ten divisions have conspicuously
eschewed.
To this end the chapter first returns to the philosophy of representation
and, in particular, to its third branch: speculative rhetoric. This is followed by
a detailed exposition of an important concept developed within the 1903 ten-
class system, namely Peirce’s theory of the hypoicons. This has been held over
to achieve the specific purpose of this chapter since, to all intents and purposes,
it can be considered as a specifically rhetorical ‘module’ within the earlier
typology. The chapter continues by analysing some of the examples discussed
in Chapter 1 before examining a series of case studies. In this way, the chapter
makes it possible to render in concrete terms the two very different conceptions
of the sign in 1903 and 1908 by showing how the later typology differs from the
earlier concerning their respective capacities to accommodate signs presenting
this evident rhetorical intent.
108 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

Speculative rhetoric

Speculative Rhetoric, it will be recalled, is the final branch of the Philosophy

of Representation before Peirce declared his preference for the appellation
‘methodeutic’, while the domain from which the examples are drawn is that of
rhetorically motivated signs, both verbal and pictorial. To see why, we return to a
pronouncement already mentioned in Chapter 1 concerning speculative rhetoric
from the ‘Minute Logic’: ‘Transuasional logic, which I term Speculative Rhetoric,
is substantially what goes by the name of methodology, or better, of methodeutic.
It is the doctrine of the general conditions of the reference of Symbols and other Signs
to the Interpretants which they aim to determine’ (CP 2.93, 1902, emphasis added).
This confident statement, characteristic of the 1902–03 period of the evolution of
Peirce’s theorizing on signs, obviously concerned at the time the single division
from 1866 to 1867. The general conditions Peirce mentioned are necessarily
logical conditions, and are the province of the Sign–Interpretant branch of the
grand logic. The importance of the 1902 statement is that rhetoric concerns
not only the traditional field of verbal communication but must be extended
innovatively to include indices and icons, the ‘other Signs’ of the definition: by this
token, like verbal signs, photographs and paintings with or without captions also
fall within the scope of speculative rhetoric. However, we have to bear in mind one
of the major differences between the 1903 conception of speculative rhetoric and
the 1908 hexad: by 1908 Peirce was working with not one but three interpretants.
A second definition makes a similar claim: ‘[Speculative rhetoric]’s most
essential business is to ascertain by logical analysis, greatly facilitated by the
development of the other branches of semeiotics, what are the indispensable
conditions of a sign’s acting to determine another sign nearly equivalent to itself ’
(EP2 328, 1904). It also states that the rhetoric benefits from the two branches
coming earlier in the general philosophy of representation. Equally significantly,
this same text, ‘Ideas, Stray or Stolen, about Scientific Writing’, promotes the idea
of a perceived similarity with the traditional art of rhetoric by suggesting that
good logical methodology involves signs efficiently determining their intended
interpretants, a technically flavoured formula not only for efficient persuasion
but also, more importantly, for efficient reasoning and hypothesizing.
Furthermore, Peirce had earlier made a crucially important distinction between
speculative rhetoric and speculative grammar: ‘In coming to Speculative Rhetoric,
after the main conceptions of logic have been well settled, there can be no serious
objection to relaxing the severity of our rule of excluding psychological matter,
observations of how we think, and the like’ (CP 2.107, 1902). In other words,
 Rhetorical Concerns 109

while speculative grammar is an empty formalism specifying the purely systemic

constraints on signhood and consequently is free from human bias, there is
absolutely no theoretical reason why the rhetorical branch of the grand logic should
not explicitly exploit the human factor in communication. Among other things, at
this time, Peirce authorizes us to consider the speaker’s communicative purpose
in the production of utterances. In 1904 he also suggests that the theoretical
boundaries between speculative, ‘theoretical’ rhetoric and the traditional ‘art’
should be neutralized in a number of ways: ‘A proposition of geometry, a definition
of a botanical species, a description of a crystal or of a telescopic nebula is subjected
to a mandatory form of statement that is artificial in the extreme. Evidently, our
conception of rhetoric has got to be generalized; and while we are about it, why not
remove the restriction of rhetoric to speech?’ (EP2 326, 1904, emphasis added). The
originality of this suggestion can be seen in the following extract from Peirce’s
heterogeneous sample of the variety of intentional signs susceptible of rhetorical
treatment: ‘every picture, diagram, natural cry, pointing finger, wink, knot in one’s
handkerchief, memory, dream, fancy, concept, indication, token, symptom, letter,
numeral, word, sentence, chapter, book, library, …’ (EP2 326, 1904). In other words,
unlike Roland Barthes, for example, who in his essay ‘Rhetoric of the Image’ states
that at least ‘in advertising the signification of the image is undoubtedly intentional’
(1977: 33), Peirce is here suggesting that there is no aspect of human communication,
let alone advertising, which does not involve some form of rhetorical, persuasive
intention. This, if we follow the gist of the 1904 essay, is the field of application
of both common (cenoscopic) rhetoric and its special (idioscopic), traditional
predecessor, a field which deals with potentially metaphorical signs as diverse as
images and verbal utterances, for example.
It was seen in the previous chapter that of the ten divisions on which he sought
to establish sixty-six classes of signs, Peirce considered the fourth trichotomy
defining the icon, index and symbol to be the one he used most (CP 8.368). This
being the case, one of the surprising aspects of his mature conception of semiosis
is the fact that the hexad examined in Chapter 3 eliminates not only the three
modes of representation (resemblance, physical connection and convention),
which are functions of the relation holding between the sign and its object,
but also, as a consequence, one of Peirce’s most notable subclasses of the icon,
namely the diagram, which he himself put to considerable use in his Existential
Graphs, and, concomitantly, his innovative conception of metaphor. It is this
problem which makes it of considerable theoretical interest to distinguish
logically between literal and metaphorical representation within the two distinct
conceptions of signs. Enter, then, the hypoicons.
110 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

The hypoicons

In this section we deal successively with the editorial problem concerning

the hypoicons, why Peirce should have developed them, discussion of a small
illustrative corpus and a series of case studies of pictorial artworks, the rhetoric
of which is, in Barthes’s words, ‘undoubtedly intentional’.
The theoretical justification of the hypoicons is to be found in the two drafts
of Peirce’s late 1903 Lowell Lectures discussed in Chapter 1, namely R478 and
R540, which, as we saw, represent two distinct and complementary approaches
to the definition of the sign. R540 identifies more fully the three correlates of any
triadic relation and the three divisions they yield, whereas R478 first describes
the categories and the various processes of separation, and exploits them to
define two relational divisions: S–O and S–I.
Peirce’s original formulation is, as we saw in Chapter 1, as follows:
‘Representamens are divided by two trichotomies. The first and most
fundamental is that any Representamen is either an Icon, an Index, or a Symbol’
(EP2 273), the first sentence of which was edited out of the Collected Papers. It
should be noted, too, that while the definition of the three hypoicons concludes
a parent paragraph in the manuscript (EP2 274), paragraph 2.277 was published
as an independent paragraph in the Collected Papers. Originally, then, what we
know as CP 2.277 was simply the logical development of a trichotomy which was
subsequently ‘postponed’ to second position in Peirce’s 1903 triadic classification
system once he had defined the division concerning the sign itself in R540. This
is the passage from R478 in which Peirce introduces the concept of the hypoicon:
An Icon is a Representamen whose Representative Quality is a Firstness of it as a
First. That is, a quality that it has qua thing renders it fit to be a Representamen …
But a sign may be iconic, that is, may represent its object mainly by its similarity,
no matter what its mode of being. If a substantive be wanted, an iconic
Representamen may be termed a hypoicon. Any material image, as a painting, is
largely conventional in its mode of representation; but in itself, without legend
or label it may be called a hypoicon. (CP 2.276, 1903)

Since the categories had enabled him to establish the three possible degrees of
complexity of the sign, or ‘representamen’ as he called it at that time, he was finally able
to justify logically the three modes of representation, namely, in order of increasing
complexity, by resemblance,1 by physical connection and, finally, by convention. In
the original manuscript (R478) he simply applied this categorial principle to the
icon itself, by analysing the nature of the similarity which characterizes the icon. The
result is the system set out in Table 4.1, which completes Table 1.2 from Chapter 1.
 Rhetorical Concerns 111

Table 4.1 A synthesis of MSS R478 and R540 (1903) showing the hypoicons

Division
Sign Sign-Object Sign-Interpretant
Category
Thirdness Legisign Symbol Argument
Secondness Sinsign Index Dicisign
Firstness Qualisign Icon Rheme
metaphor
diagram
image

Three grades of resemblance

Why should Peirce have deemed it necessary to trichotomize the icon and thereby
define the hypoicons?2 It is safe to assume that if anyone had ever asked him in
how many ways one entity can resemble another, he would never have approved
of the idea that there was only one possible way. And, indeed, after having derived
the icon, index and symbol subdivisions through the application of his categories
he proceeded to derive the three hypoicons by recursively applying the categories
to the icon itself, a process recorded in an uncompromising statement establishing
the three degrees of structural complexity – in effect three grades of resemblance –
exhibited by the hypoicons. The trichotomy resulting from this recursive process
is the definition singularized as paragraph CP 2.277 in the Collected Papers
describing image, diagram and metaphor in order of increasing complexity:3
Hypoicons may roughly [be] divided according to the mode of Firstness which
they partake. Those which partake the simple qualities, or First Firstnesses, are
images; those which represent the relations, mainly dyadic, or so regarded, of the
parts of one thing by analogous relations in their own parts, are diagrams; those
which represent the representative character of a representamen by representing
a parallelism in something else, are metaphors. (EP2 274, 1903)

Since, as we saw in Chapter 1, R478 describes the categories in detail, it comes

as no surprise that these categories should be applied in the same manuscript to
the sign–object relation and recursively to the icon, the most basic of the three
subclasses thus derived. Furthermore, Peirce had already described his theory of
separation in detail in this very same manuscript. This made it possible for him to
state in the later manuscript that the index involves a sort of icon and the symbol
a sort of index (EP2 291–2). Since the recursive application of the categories
to the icon yields image, diagram and metaphor, it follows by transitivity that
112 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

symbols will involve an icon and, consequently, any or all of the three hypoicons.
Moreover, since, too, it can be hypothesized that the 1903 triadic definition of
the sign and the 1908 hexadic conception of semiosis and the set of divisions
each determines are logically compatible even though the criteria used by each
are different, the chapter addresses the problem posed by the later exclusion of
the icon and its three subdivisions, and shows that although these subdivisions
cannot be explicitly identified within the hexadic system, it is possible to derive
from it the sorts of distinctions the hypoicons realize.

Hypoicon, determination and the medium

The notion of sign–action as a process of determination began to enter Peirce’s
definitions of the sign from about 1902 onwards. See, for example, ‘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 an infinitum’ (CP 2.303, 1902), for example, or ‘A REPRESENTAMEN
is a subject of a triadic relation TO a second, called its OBJECT, FOR a
third, called is INTERPRETANT, this triadic relation being such that the
REPRESENTAMEN determines its interpretant to stand in the same triadic
relation to the same object for some interpretant’ (CP 1.541, 1903). In these and
subsequent definitions the interpretant is mediately ‘determined’, that is, caused
to be such as it is, by the object via the sign. The process is represented by the
following diagrammatic conventions: in Figure 4.1 the ‘ellipses’ represent the
three correlates and the arrows the stages in the mediation of the sign between
a single object and a single intepretant, a representation which will, hopefully,
render this complex system comprehensible.
Variations in this determination or mediation process in sign-action as
conceived in 1903 are represented in Figures 4.2 through 4.5 – respectively,
simple illustrations of the three increasingly complex types of internal structure −
in which some dynamic object mediately determines an interpretant by means
of a sign whose structure that object has already determined, a sign which,
depending upon the nature of the relation holding between it and its object, may
be an icon, an index or a symbol.

Object Sign Interpretant

Figure 4.1 Sign-action as conceived in 1903

 Rhetorical Concerns 113

Object Sign Interpretant

q1, q2, q3, ... qn q1, q2, q3, ... qn q1, q2, q3, ... qn

Figure 4.2 The hypoiconicity of a sign with image structure

The three ways in which the sign can resemble its object by virtue of Peirce’s
categorical principle are thus represented by Figures 4.2, 4.3, 4.4 and 4.5,
respectively, generic image, diagram and metaphor and a concrete example
of metaphor, while the arrows represent both the process of determination
and the instantiation of the sign as an inescapably ‘sensible’ – in other words,
existential – medium such as a sheet of paper, a cinema screen or the front page
of a newspaper. Note that it is the sign alone which has hypoiconic structure
since it is the ‘representing’ correlate in the process.
Figure 4.2 is a very basic representation of the qualities inhering in some
object which determine corresponding qualities – the First Firstnesses of
the definition – in a given sinsign. As Peirce suggests in the first of the two
definitions introducing the hypoicons given above, ‘Any material image, as a
painting’, illustrates the process: Leonardo’s Mona Lisa is a sinsign composed of
such qualities as lines, forms and colours arranged in a distinctive manner.
Figure 4.3 represents the structure of a very basic diagram, an icon composed
essentially of Second Firstnesses, namely the dyadic relations mentioned in the
definition and represented as the relation a–b between the two partial objects
a and b in the fact represented by the sign, such relations being a step up the
phenomenological scale from the Firstnesses composing the image. The diagram
is thus an icon of at least one of whatever dyadic relations inform the object
it represents (CP 4.418, 1903), and structures not only verbal utterances and
photographs but also all manner of instruments of measurement, the instructions
for building kits or installing electrical appliances, and the illustrations in
geometry manuals, for example.
Finally, metaphor is the hypoiconic structure partaking of Third Firstnesses –
mediation, synthesis, representation (see, for example, CP 1.378, c. 1890).
Whereas the simplified scheme of the diagram in Figure 4.3 contains a relation

Object Sign Interpretant

a b a b a b

Figure 4.3 The hypoiconicity of a sign with diagram structure

114 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

constitutive of some fact such as ‘I shot the sheriff ’, metaphor as defined by Peirce
places two such relations in parallel (indicated by the pairs of // symbols in Figure
4.4). These present counterpart mappings from elements belonging to some
generally uncontroversial, well-known fact or relation (a–//–b), and referred to
within cognitive linguistics as the ‘base domain’, which is the fact considered
to be the basis of the judgement and hopefully self-evident to the addressee or
interpreter, to the elements (a’–//– b’), elements in the target relation or ‘target
domain’, which is the fact or relation that is being judged or commented upon,
or is somehow controversial and not yet accepted. Note that the repetition of the
structure of the object in the structure of the interpretant is a way of showing
that the metaphor has been correctly interpreted. Should a child hear an adult
state that man is a wolf, for example, the child might reply, ‘But that’s silly, a wolf
is an animal.’ In such a case, the structure of the interpretant probably would not
realize the intended parallelism.
It should be evident from Figure 4.4 that some of the information given in the
simple parallelism in the object is missing from the sign, which displays a single
relation holding between partial objects drawn from the two distinct domains.
In this case, as the other partial objects in the original parallel are missing from
the sign, the sign is said to be ‘underspecified’ with respect to its object: the
sign can have no structure or form, as we saw in Chapter 2, that has not been
communicated by the object, but in the case of metaphor it doesn’t represent
all the elements characterizing the structure of the object. Furthermore, the
elements which the sign contains are drawn from two very distinct relations, here
a’ and a, with the result that metaphorical signs are diagnostically incongruous.
For these two reasons the ellipse representing the sign in Figure 4.4 contains a
single relation, although some metaphorical signs, as we see below, can represent
vectorially more than two.
It was Peirce’s logical nous that enabled him to see that there are signs more
complex than the common diagrammatic type, signs which represent an object
structurally and, as he saw it at the time, phenomenologically more complex than
themselves; signs, finally, which ‘synthesize’ in the guise of a judgement elements
from two distinct relations, representing two distinct ‘worlds’ or ‘universes of

Object Sign Interpretant

a (b) a (b)
a' a
a' (b') a' (b')

Figure 4.4 The hypoiconicity of a sign with metaphor structure

 Rhetorical Concerns 115

existence’ (cf., for example, EP2 492–97, and below). However, this ‘two-tiered’
parallel structure is too complex to be accommodated fully by the Secondness
of the existential medium (airwaves, paper, blackboard, computer screen etc.)
through which the structure of the object has perforce to be communicated, and
results in such one-dimensional, vectorial structures as the one displayed in the
sign in Figure 4.4. This is the necessarily simplified scheme of the structure of
the verbal sign (4.3) below represented as a phenomenological ‘bottleneck’ in
Figure 4.5, where the bracketed items in the parallelism informing the object are
‘sifted out’ by a phenomenologically less complex medium, which in this way
restricts the perceivable form of the sign, rendering it both underspecified and
incongruous. Consider the following simple verbal examples:

(4.1) I killed the sheriff.

(4.2) I shot the sheriff.
(4.3) I slaughtered the sheriff.

It follows from what was seen above that the object in each case is composed
of the partial objects I (in this case, of course, the utterer) and the sheriff. On the
other hand, the part of each utterance appropriated to representing how the sign
represents the relation between these partial objects is signified by a transitive
verb. In (4.1) killed is a neutral representation of the change-of-state process
involved in the fact represented. In (4.2) shot, as is generally the case in English,
represents additionally the manner of change of state: to shoot someone is to kill
them in a certain way, with a bow and arrow, for example, or, more probably in
this case, with a gun. Both verbs are literal verbal representations of this process,
which necessarily belongs to the same ‘universe’ or ‘world’ as the protagonists.
The hypoiconic structure of each is diagrammatic – a straightforward dyadic
relation holding between the two partial objects displayed in a very elliptical
and abstract manner in Figure 4.3, where the partial objects I and the sheriff
are represented, respectively, by the letters a and b, and the verbal process
associating them by a line. This is the basic structure of such utterances as John

Object Sign Interpretant

(butchers) slaughter (cattle) (butchers) slaughter (cattle)

I slaughter sheriff
I (kill) sheriff I (kill) sheriff

Figure 4.5 The metaphorical structure of the sign I slaughtered the sheriff
116 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

is in love with Helen and Cain killed Abel. It is also the basic simplex structure of
any clefts constructed on, for example (4.2) above:

(4.4) It was the sheriff that I shot.

(4.5) What I did was shoot the sheriff.

In (4.3), on the other hand, the verbal form slaughtered is highly charged
from a figurative point of view: it is both hyperbolic and metaphorical, for while
the two partial objects belong to the same universe of existence, the part of the
sign serving to represent the relation holding between them draws upon the
entirely different universe of the wholesale killing by butchers or slaughterhouse
workers of cattle, sheep or other animals for food: to slaughter the sheriff is to
treat him not as a human being but as an anonymous piece of meat. This is the
basic structure illustrated in Figure 4.5, which shows the original parallelism
in the object where the elements not appearing in the sign are in brackets. The
culturally well-known relation between butchers and cattle occupies the base
domain,4 while the controversial relation between the speaker (I) and the sheriff
occupies the target domain beneath. It is for this reason that any counterparts
in either relation not appearing in the sign can conveniently be indicated
in Figure 4.5 (and subsequent diagrammatic representations of metaphoric
structure) within parentheses, as they have been ‘bracketed out’ from the
structure in the object by the necessity of communicating this form through an
existential medium.
Now the process of drawing together facts belonging to distinct universes
of existence and placing them in parallel is obviously dependent upon, if we
retain Peirce’s preferred abstract conceptualization, some ‘quasi-mind’ having
perceived a resemblance between them and wishing to communicate it, and the
paragraph defining the hypoicons turns out to be pivotal between speculative
grammar, in which it is defined, Peirce’s category theory on which the definition
was based in 1903, and an early awareness of the universes of existence which
enables us to understand where the parallelism in metaphor, for example, comes
from.
Moreover, this complex situation is an ecological one, depending upon the
necessarily existential nature of the sign as medium – we couldn’t perceive it if
it didn’t exist – more precisely upon the three distinct structural configurations
informing the relation holding between an iconic sign and the existential medium
by means of which it has necessarily to be communicated, for example on the
page of a book. The hypoicons as defined in CP 2.277 in 1903 can therefore be
 Rhetorical Concerns 117

understood to be a logical accommodation of this complex ecological situation.5

As can be seen from the simple examples above, the form communicated by
the object to the medium is only fully represented in the first two cases. This
problem can be understood in terms of the relation or ‘ratio’ characterizing
the complexity of the form to be communicated, the number of universes of
existence composing the object and the necessarily existent and therefore,
singular, status of the sign as a perceivable medium. The explanation as to why
metaphoric signs are underspecified and incongruous can be explained logically
as opposed to phenomenologically in the hexad.
The hypoicons, then, constituted a module within the S–O division
redefining the scope of rhetorical phenomena, increasing its range from the
traditional binary literal – figurative distinction to a three-way division between
image, diagram and metaphor, based upon the three categories of the forms
of experience, namely the monad, the dyad and the triad, as seen earlier. In
short, Peirce’s hypoicons were one of the philosophy of representation’s major
contributions to the analysis of the whole range of ‘true representation, so far
as representation can be known without any gathering of special facts beyond
our ordinary daily life’ as Peirce has it in 1903 (CP 1.539). It was also the source
of a very vigorous branch of contemporary linguistic research, namely iconicity
theory, demonstrating that languages are not arbitrary in structure – they would
be unlearnable if this were the case – but, rather, motivated, even if the nature
of the motivation is not always immediately observable in verbal signs.6 We turn
now to the task of comparing the hypoicons with the analytic system provided by
the hexad of 1908. In what follows, the classification of each sign is not intended
to be definitive, as such an exercise could easily become repetitive and jejune,
but principally a heuristic for exploring the potential of the system. We begin by
examining some of the illustrations from Chapter 1.
Figure 1.3 in Chapter 1, the drawing of Cheyne Walk, was classified as an
iconic sinsign. We saw that as such it presents a likeness with some object but,
unlike a photograph, cannot afford proof of the existence of that object – an icon
is a relation, not an independent correlate. It has a rhematic syntax that we can
represent as ‘— is like this’ much like a predicate function. From the hypoiconic
point of view, the drawing on its own is imagic: it consists in a series of qualities
on an existent sheet of paper arranged in such a way that we recognize people
standing on the bank of a river. If we add the original caption it becomes the
replica of a dicent indexical legisign: the sign’s new syntax is such as to establish
a dicent association between the caption, a verbal sign and therefore a legisign
and the image. The resultant sign can be paraphrased as ‘Cheyne Walk is like
118 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

this’, where ‘this’ is the sum total of qualities on the image. In this way the degree
of hypoiconicity increases, too, and the new completer sign composed of image
plus caption is structured by a simple dyad and is therefore diagrammatic like
the verbal examples (4.1) and (4.2) above.
The problem is how to classify this illustration by hexadb. For convenience,
Table 3.2 from Chapter 3 is reproduced as Table 4.2. If we analyse the image
from the perspective of the hexad, the approach is very different. The first
point to note is that what we are looking at and classifying is, in fact, the way
the sign’s immediate object has composed the lines, colours and shapes into
an immediately recognizable representation of a given set of partial objects.
We saw in the preceding chapter that in the draft of 25 December 1908 (CP
8.366) Peirce identified the range of dynamic objects of signs according to the
universe to which they belong: possibles (colour, mass, whiteness etc.), existent
objects (humans, individuals such as Charlemagne) and collections or classes
(mankind, humanity etc.). In view of this, Figure 1.3, which clearly represents
existent objects such as humans, trees, buildings and river banks, among other
things, is a concretive sign – the fact that it is a drawing and possibly the fruit of
the artist’s imagination makes no difference; it is what it represents that counts,
here members of classes of existent entities. As it is, in itself, namely a sheet of
paper and an existent object, therefore, the drawing is classified as a token, and
logically must be designative.
As far as the interpretants are concerned, there is necessarily a problem
(which would beset any attempt at classification within the 66-class system,
too), namely how to identify the interpretants in such a case. There are two
ways to classify the interpretant sequence in Table 4.2: a priori as a prospective
deployment of the interpretants in, for example, a publicity campaign, or a
posteriori as when classifying an interpretation that has been witnessed and

Table 4.2 A reconstruction of the 23 December 1908 hexadic typology

Subject
Od Oi S li ld lf
Universe
Necessitant collective copulant type relative usual to produce
self-control
Existent concretive designative token categorical percussive to produce
action
Possible abstractive descriptive mark hypothetical sympathetic gratific
 Rhetorical Concerns 119

recorded. While with a little ingenuity and a lot of luck it would be possible
to follow the series of interpretants in a real-life interpretation sequence, in an
exercise like the present it has to be a matter of informed guesswork. Working
back from the final interpretant division for convenience, we can say that since
Figure 1.3 is a drawing we can assume that for the final interpretant the sign is
gratific, that is, intended to produce a feeling (it is hard to think that it might
have been part of some nineteenth-century town planning campaign targeting
council action on a new housing estate, for example). In this case, it may have
produced a verbal reaction from one or other of its viewers – ‘How nice!’ or ‘The
perspective is wrong.’ Or even ‘The river is too close to the buildings.’ These are
all viable dynamic interpretants and would make the sign percussive. Finally, if
percussive, the sign at Ii is likely to be categorical: the immediate interpretant is
what we might call the ‘semantic’ stage in interpretation, the stage in which we
turn the squiggles on the paper medium of Figure 1.3 into creatures from the
physical world – humans, river banks, trees and buildings. Another example of
this semantic stage of the process of interpretation is when we mentally transform
the colours, lines and shapes dancing on the medium of the cinema screen into
the creatures of our experience – men, women, Martians and so on – before the
next, active, dynamic interpretant stage when we laugh out loud, cower in our
seats or furtively wipe a tear from our cheeks.
Now let us examine Figure 1.4 once more, which shows two young Chinese
women sheltering from the sun beneath a parasol beside a lake at the Summer
Palace in Beijing. This is, as we saw earlier, a dicent (indexical) sinsign
(cf. CP 2.320, in which Peirce defines the section of rays from the model of
a photograph as its quasi-subject and the print thus obtained as its quasi-
predicate). Its hypoiconic status as a photograph is clearly diagrammatic since
the relations between the areas of light and dark on the print correspond term
by term to relations holding between the objects participating in the original
situation, although it also ‘involves’ in the sense of CP 2.247–248 clearly imagic
complex areas of light and shade which enable us to recognize via the immediate
interpretant stage the entities represented before we actually react to the image.
By hexadb, the photograph again is concretive since it represents exemplars of
existent objects: females, leaves, trees, boats on the lake and so on, and the sign’s
immediate object has communicated to the sign forms of fully recognizable
entities. The photographic print exhibiting these forms is a physical medium,
and therefore a token. Working back from a putative final interpretant again,
we assume that the photograph is gratific, intended not to produce some sort
of action – prohibit the use of personal parasols in these private grounds, or
120 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

introduce the hire of parasols on hot days, for example – but to produce a feeling
of compassion, amazement or wonder at the beauty of the photograph. If this is
the case, then the immediate interpretant is again the semantic stage when we
mentally transform the patches of light and shade on the print into the creatures
that we recognize – females, trees, boats and so on.
The important point is that whereas there is a significant difference between
Figures 1.3 and 1.4 within the 1903 classification – one is an icon, the other
an index – by hexadb both are classified in identical manner: they are gratific,
percussive, concretive signs, since both represent exemplars of objects that exist.
There is, nevertheless, an advantage in the hexadic classification. The 1903
system is predicate-based: the system employs Peirce’s categories in order to
distinguish the various subdivisions within a given trichotomy. Consequently,
whatever representation is classified as an iconic sinsign is logically the same as
any other iconic sinsign, and by this token there is no logical difference between
Figure 1.3 and, say, Leonardo’s Mona Lisa. Similarly, there is no logical difference
between Figure 1.4, the photograph of the two young women taken in 2015 in
China and Figure 4.6, the photograph of a train that fell through a station wall
in Paris 120 years earlier.
At this point the reader is no doubt thinking ‘This is as may be, but I can
see that one illustration depicts tiny humans on a river bank, and I know that
Leonardo’s painting has a seated woman smiling enigmatically’ or ‘But one
shows two women and a lake, the other an old-fashioned train’. Nevertheless,
if any one iconic sinsign or any one dicent sinsign were logically different from
all the others, Peirce’s system would be inconsistent. It follows, then, that when
making judgements concerning the items in a pictorial sign, for example, the
reader is unwittingly employing the methodology of hexadb, for this typology
classifies a sign not according to how it represents its object (and how it relates
to its interpretant) as does the 1903 system, but, first and foremost, according to
the readily identifiable sorts of things, entities or objects that it represents. Unlike
the system of 1903, a typology such as hexadb authorizes us, among other things,
to seek to identify the sorts of partial objects in the fact or event ‘filtered’ by the
immediate object onto the sign before us, whereas such a strategy in the earlier
system is not validated by the logic.
In short, from a semiotic perspective, any iconic sinsign with or without a
caption resembles nothing so much as any other iconic sinsign; any dicisign
resembles nothing so much as any other dicisign – and this without distinction,
since each and every one shares the properties which enable them to be classified
 Rhetorical Concerns 121

Figure 4.6 Train wreck at Montparnasse, 1895, Wikimedia Commons

as such. On the other hand, while every concretive sign (the division at Od in
Table 4.2) must be logically similar to every other concretive sign to qualify as
such, we are authorized to identify and list the different partial objects each
represents, for were we not able to do so, we should be unable to classify such
signs as concretives in the first place. Similarly, we recognize collectives and
abstractives, respectively, as such by virtue of the classes and qualities and so on
that they represent.
122 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

Universes

The following section of the chapter is now devoted to the way the hexad of
1908 accommodates rhetorical phenomena without recourse to hypoiconicity
and reference to icons, indices and symbols. The general theoretical framework
is provided by the concept of the universe of existence, which Peirce introduced
explicitly in his correspondence with William James. Although less detailed
in nature than the system of hypoicons, it is nevertheless applicable to a wide
variety of signs since it exploits the basic principle of the hexad, namely that we
analyse the sorts of objects that the sign represents rather than the manner or
mode in which it represents them. It is within this framework, therefore, that
the theoretical problems raised by the case studies can most conveniently be
examined.

Dylan Thomas
We begin with another verbal example, an extract from Dylan Thomas’s poetic
profession of faith, his brief Ars poetica, ‘In My Craft and Sullen Art’:
I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages ….

From the point of view of the topoi of classical rhetoric this extract is very rich:
hypallage in the first line (lights don’t normally sing, whereas humans writing
beneath them might do), the metonymy of bread, here representing more
generally the poet’s livelihood, and, finally, the highly complex associations
in his assertion that he doesn’t write poetry for the ‘strut and trade of charms
/ on the ivory stages’ either. In terms of paragraph CP 2.277 the hypoiconic
structure of these lines is definitely metaphoric, although it would take a far
more complex diagrammatization of the sequence of intricate parallelisms
informing the text than the one in Figure 4.4. Nevertheless, the 1903 system
enables us to identify the diagrammatic form of hypallage and metonymy, and
at least understand that it is informed by a series of parallelisms characteristic
of metaphoric structure.
What of the system of 1908? The principal purpose of the chapter is to
compare and contrast the two systems and the way each accommodates rhetorical
material. It is important to evaluate their differences and to attempt to assess their
compatibility since both contribute to the ten divisions that are intended to yield
 Rhetorical Concerns 123

sixty-six classes of signs. The concept of the universe of existence associated with
the two sign-systems of 1908 (i.e. the definition and the typology it generates)
offers an alternative method of teasing out the complex relations to be found
in the extract from Thomas’s poem, since the universe of existence in this
case is composed of the complex association of features involved in Thomas’s
conception of poetic creation.7
An initial indication of the theoretical interest of the principle involved is
provided in the following extract from a draft letter to William James composed
barely two months after the one to Lady Welby in which the twenty-eight and
sixty-six classes of signs were first mentioned. In it Peirce details a number of
cases where the sign’s dynamic object corresponds to what he terms the ‘universe
of existence’, and he makes what at first sight seems to be a very surprising
affirmation:
The Object of a Sign may be something to be created by the Sign. For the Object
of ‘‘Napoleon’’ is the Universe of Existence so far as it is determined by the fact of
Napoleon being a Member of it. The Object of the sentence ‘‘Hamlet was insane’’
is the Universe of Shakespeare’s Creation so far as it is determined by Hamlet
being part of it. (EP2 493, 1909)

In most of the definitions of the sign in which it appears, the dynamic object
had hitherto been defined as the determinant of the sign and, mediately, of its
three interpretants. It comes as somewhat of a surprise to find now that the
object can also be a determination or creation of the sign. However, Peirce’s
conception of the dynamic object, as we see in greater detail in the chapter to
come, was undergoing considerable development in the years 1908–09, as the
following definition shows:
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. (CP 8.314, 1909)

The reference to the notion that ‘perhaps the Object is altogether fictive’
explains the remark suggesting that the object may be a creation of the sign. In
the James draft Peirce gives the example of the proper noun Napoleon, noting
that its object is the ‘Universe of Existence’ so far as Napoleon the historical
figure is a member of that universe: it is the universe itself which constitutes the
sign’s dynamic object. At this late date, then, the object of any proper noun is in
124 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

this way the universe determined by the referent of that proper noun’s being a
member of it. Similarly, the writer of the present study and any and every reader
of it belong to a common universe of existence, and Napoleon, although a person
of the past, also determines it. Hamlet, on the other hand, a ‘fictive’ personage,
nevertheless also determines a universe (which, of course, impinges on our
own through our having seen the play or learnt about it somehow), namely the
universe of Shakespeare’s creation. In the draft letter to James, Peirce discusses
other examples of such ‘universes’, but the important point to note is that at
this time not only was he expanding his conception of the sign’s dynamic object
but also that he was coming to associate it more and more with the concept of
the universe of existence, one of the three enabling him to distinguish between
the subdivisions of the six or ten trichotomies yielding twenty-eight or sixty-six
classes of signs.8 It is this concept of the universe of existence, or, quite simply
of a universe of which the protagonist(s) represented in the sign Peirce calls the
‘Special Object’ (EP2 492), that provides a framework within which to interpret
the complex figurative language in the extract from Dylan Thomas’s poem
quoted above from the hexadic perspective.
With respect to the classification of the extract by hexadb, the exact nature
of the dynamic and final interpretants remains problematic. However, we do
know from what Peirce wrote to Lady Welby that all the words in a dictionary
are necessarily types (SS 83). This being the case, and temporarily setting aside
the type–instance (token) distinction for the sake of simplicity, the sentence in
the extract is necessarily collective and copulant (the multiple associations to be
examined below are also evidence of this). At division Ii the sign is relative, by
which Peirce presumably means that the interpretability of such a sign involves,
here too, the processing of multiple cognitive associations (syntactic, semantic
and rhetorical) as opposed to identifying people, for example, in a painting
by means of a categorical-determining immediate interpretant, since at the
necessitant level the six ‘subjects’ of the typology are referred to a universe of
generality and habit, a level where, for example, thought and not air waves or
the written page is the medium of the type. If the recited poem produces an
audible enthusiastic reception from whoever reads it, the sign is percussive, and,
one assumes, given the genre, that this deliberately enigmatic poem is gratific
rather than action-producing. In short, whereas the sign is the complex replica
of a dicent symbol by the early typology, it is a gratific, percussive, relative sign
by the later. On their own, such classifications have a mainly theoretical interest
and contribute little in either case to our understanding and appreciation of the
poem: it is not the final classification which is interesting but rather the abductive
 Rhetorical Concerns 125

processes that the interpreter employs heuristically in order to obtain it. A more
interesting form of analysis is, in fact, the reconstruction of those elements of
the universe of poetic creation that the poet rejects, poetic inspiration being
the particular universe of existence within which the meaning of the extract is
constructed. What follows, then, is a brief inventory of some of the allusions by
means of which the poet has composed this universe. To simplify, we restrict
the analysis to the final two lines of metaphor, a particularly important problem
in view of the fact that the hexad has no icon and therefore no hypoicons to
facilitate the task. Herewith the final two lines from the extract once more:
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages ….

The primary theoretical interest here is that the sources of Thomas’s

inspiration are defined negatively in the extract: the full extract lists not the
causes or reasons for composing poetry but some of the sources of inspiration
which do not belong in his universe of creation – he is not driven by ambition
nor does he write simply to earn a living, for example. In the final lines of the
extract, the ‘strut and trade of charms’ introduces the rejection of another reason
for composing poetry disguised in a number of luminously combined allusions
to universe-determining ‘objects’ or ‘special objects’ intended to enable us to
appreciate the poet’s ethical position and to reconstruct a contrario the particular
creative universe that the poet is targeting. The ‘strut’ is that of the peacock and
of a poet parading a gaudy appearance that dazzles the public, while the object
‘trade of charms’ characterizes a flashy, creation-debasing activity from the world
of finance. The expression ‘ivory stages’ denotes a further complex association of
objects – the ivory of the teeth is a synecdoche of the mouth, itself a metonym
for speech and the organ for reciting. The ‘ivory stages’, like the ‘sullen craft’ of
the poem’s title, constitute yet another case of hypallage,9 as the stages are not the
location where the mouth produces the recitation but the mouth itself. In this
case, too, we have a ‘universal’ correspondence, hypallage being in this theory
the attribution of a property of an object from one universe of existence to an
object belonging to another.
As a poet, Thomas, thinking possibly of the Eisteddfod, but more likely
and more mischievously, of lucrative public poetry reading sessions, claims to
be rejecting this latter institution which bestows public fame, appearance and
fortune as a reason for composing his poetry (this from a poet not averse to
giving poetry recitations on lecture tours!), writing only for the lovers, abed with
their arms round the ‘griefs of the ages’, one of the positive elements determining
126 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

his creative universe alluded to in the poem. Finally, there is a veiled reference to
the universe of Shakespearean drama, Macbeth to be precise, in the echo of the
‘poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no
more’. The ‘strut and trade of charms / on the ivory stages’ thus turns out to be
Dylan Thomas’s striking description of what we would more mundanely refer to
as ‘remunerated public readings of pretty-sounding poetry’.
The analysis above was intended to set out the broad lines of the 1908
approach made possible by Peirce’s late conception of the dynamic object and the
sorts of universes its special objects can determine: the poem blends a number
of both positive and negative objects of this sort. This broader conception of
the dynamic object is of particular importance within the theme of the chapter,
of which the remainder deals with a number of pictorial case studies where the
differences between hypoiconicity and this posited universe approach will be
made in greater detail.

Jerry Uelsmann: Symbolic Mutation

In this case we compare two photographs depicting the male fist and the
female face or, more generally, the vulnerability of the female at the hands of a
potentially violent male, a photograph being able to freeze its dynamic object(s)
in a determining moment of a universe in the Peircean sense. The immediate
object as communicated to the sign in Figure 4.7 displays an imminent attack
by a male on a cowering female victim. The partial objects thus represented
determine the clearly recognizable universe of existence of violence against
women. The elements composing Jerry Uelsmann’s photograph, Symbolic
Mutation (1961), on the other hand, determine a far more elusive universe
which, as in the interpretation of the Thomas extract above, we have to decipher
from the clues, here pictorial, provided by the image.
The reader will no doubt have realized that like the verbal utterances (4.2)
and (4.3), two replicas of dicent symbols discussed above, the two photographs,
although both dicent sinsigns, display markedly different hypoiconic structure.
Figure 4.7 is a straightforward dramatic diagram-structured representation of
the imminent violence, while Jerry Uelsmann’s image, Figure 4.8, like much of
his nature photography of the period, and indeed like much of his contemporary
photography which he continues to create in the analogue mode,10 is subtly
metaphorical, blending elements from two different contexts, a structure which
Figure 4.9 is intended to show in its barest essentials.
 Rhetorical Concerns 127

Figure 4.7 An image of domestic violence, Adobe Stock

Figure 4.8 Jerry Uelsmann, Symbolic Mutation, 1961, Courtesy of the artist
128 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

Object Sign Interpretant

(male bully) fist (male bully) fist

face in clenched fist
(female victim) face (female victim) face

Figure 4.9 The pictorial parallelism in Symbolic Mutation

From the point of view of hexadb we note, first, that the dynamic objects
represented by the two photographs are existents, a male and a female in each
case, which means that within the Od division both signs are theoretically
concretive. As signs, both are tokens, and with respect to their immediate
interpretants are categorical – we recognize the lines, shading and shapes on the
prints as the representations of human beings. Their disturbing tenor no doubt
provokes reactions of disgust or surprise as dynamic interpretants, and we can
therefore classify both in the dynamic interpretant division as percussive.
However, if displayed on a poster, for example, and in view of the telic
nature of the sign at the final stage of the interpretation process – to produce
self-control, an action or a feeling – Figure 4.7 would presumably be intended
to produce some sort of social change or at least consciousness-raising in the
observers of the image, and in this case would be a ‘literal’ action-producing
concretive. Uelsmann’s complex composite photograph, on the other hand,
is not literal but doubly figurative. First, it blends elements from two distinct
universes: different negatives, different moments and different worlds – the
fragile and vulnerable world of the female and the seemingly brutal world of
the male. Second, the partial objects of these distinct worlds are represented,
respectively, by synecdoche: the hairy-fingered male fist enclosing the fragile
face of the woman is all we see of either protagonist. In a manner recalling the
metonymic references in Bulmer Lytton’s ‘The pen is mightier than the sword’
– in other words, the journalist/writer is a more powerful agent of social change
than the soldier − or Wordsworth’s ‘The child is father of the man’, in which the
nominal elements stand not for an individual child, father or man (existents), but
as the representatives of general classes (necessitants), Uelsmann’s magnificent
image has generic as opposed to singular scope, and can be interpreted to
represent two general classes rather than two individuals. This suggests that the
sign, while apparently a concretive – it represents existents, namely a man and
a woman – is not a typical photographic concretive like the one in Figure 4.7. It
is a token combining existents defining two distinct universes: by its immediate
object it is thus copulant and with respect to its dynamic it is collective.11
 Rhetorical Concerns 129

In conclusion, then, we find two divisions within the hexadic system in which
Uelsmann’s photographic masterpiece differs from Figure 4.7. First, this is a
work of art and in spite of the negative judgement it appears to make on male–
female relations, with respect to its final interpretant, it is surely to be classified
gratific in a sense broader than merely giving pleasure. Second, in view of the
synecdochical structure of the photograph which transforms the individual
man and woman into representatives of general classes, in interpreting it we
unwittingly ‘promote’ the photograph in the dynamic object division to the
status of a collective. If this (necessarily speculative) analysis is correct, Figure
4.8 is a gratific, percussive, copulant (the image obviously represents its partial
objects as humans but the striking synecdochical arrangement is determined by
a complex structuring at the necessitant Oi stage which produces the generic
impression) collective sign, the photograph’s immediate interpretant being the
mental conversion of the pictorial elements of the two quite distinct universes
which are represented elliptically in the forms communicated by its immediate
object.

John Goto: Flower Seller

John Goto’s 2002 photographic tableau Flower Seller, Figure 4.10, is another
example of how the partial objects frozen in the image determine a micro-
universe. Within the 1903 system, it would be classified (independently of its
caption) as a dicent sinsign – an informational sign – as is the case with all
photographs, this one being, within this sort of analysis, no different logically
from any other dicent sinsign. However, independently of any classification, any
observer of the photograph would surely recognize the tension generated in the
image between the plight of the ex-serviceman and the emblems of his service to
his country. The 1908 system, which has no means of identifying icons, indices
and dicent signs and so on, requires therefore that we ‘enter’ the image. In this
way, the sign’s ideologically charged message is to be inferred from the analysis
and not simply from collateral knowledge of British politics of the period. This
will involve, too, reconstructing another universe of existence, the universe of
which this bleak tableau is the antithesis.
What are the significant details to be seen in the image? An inventory of
the objects composing the situation depicted confirms a depressing, cold winter
scene in what appears to be a deserted, ultramodern shopping precinct.12 The
drab grey-blue backdrop (in the original) is formed of a building dominated
by curtained windows, the multiple glass panes separated by steel struts and
130 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

Figure 4.10 John Goto, Flower Seller, 2002, Courtesy of the artist

bars. There are more grey metallic tubes forming a cage-like enclosure round the
ex-serviceman, this dehumanized tube motif picked up by the Zimmer frame
he is obliged to support himself with. Apart from the man and the bucket of
flowers, these mineral surroundings are broken by a single plane-tree, its bare
branches bearing one or two lingering green leaves. These, together with the
barely visible flowers and the insignia, are the only bright colours in the image.
The ex-serviceman wears an old-fashioned mackintosh, now a world too wide
for his shrunk frame and probably acquired from a charity shop. He stares
grimly into the distance, waiting for a sale from the two buckets of flowers at
his feet, from which we infer, even without the title of the image, that he has to
sell bouquets of flowers to survive: in short, he has been forced into a form of
 Rhetorical Concerns 131

begging. In contrast to this sorry plight the ex-serviceman sports two stars and
a medal, insignia which testify to his wartime devotion to his country. Worn
in the correct order, we find the 1939–1945 Star showing that he had served
in the Battle of Britain, the Air Crew Europe Star and, finally, the War Medal
1939–1945 bearing an oak leaf emblem awarded additionally for brave conduct.
Flower Seller is one of a series of digitally manipulated photographic tableaux
from 2002. This tableau is from the third part of a general series. This particular
series, Gilt City, is a satirical reflection of British capitalist culture under the
government of the time, although not all the tableaux are as desolate as Flower
Seller in spite of the critical regard to which they subject contemporary society.
The context is the economic situation in Britain in the early years of the century.
The title Gilt City plays on the homophonic similarities between the words gilt (a
thin layer of gold and a type of security issued by banks) and guilt (recognition
of a dereliction of duty), whereas the general title of the three series of tableaux,
Ukadia, is a mocking fusing of UK and Arcadia, a mythical pastoral, uncorrupted
and harmonious utopia. However, the ironic tension between the straitened, far
from Arcadian circumstances of the ex-serviceman and the insignia testifying
to his distinguished and selfless service to his country is to be seen as a virulent
condemnation of social neglect.
Hypoiconically, irony is a diagrammatic structure, but this tells us little without
taking the sign’s immediate object into account, a theoretical manoeuvre made
available by hexadb. How, in this case, do we account for irony from the object-
universe perspective? Consider, to begin with, the following definition of irony
provided by the OED: ‘1.A figure of speech in which the intended meaning is the
opposite of that expressed by the words used; usually taking the form of sarcasm
or ridicule in which laudatory expressions are used to imply condemnation or
contempt.’
Translated into the analytic process ascribed to the hexad of 1908 irony can
be seen as the tension between what should be the case (an ideal universe) and
what actually happens to be the case (the universe represented), and while
irony can often be humorous here it is used as an acerbic comment upon the
economic priorities of the British government in the early years of the century.
In the manner of the rag-and-bones man and cockle and mussels sellers like
Molly Malone, flower sellers have all but disappeared from modern cities, a
situation which adds to the irony of Goto’s tableau. In contrast, nineteenth-
century representations of the flower seller usually depict smiling young girls
with flowers in a basket, not in the metal buckets of Goto’s veteran, and these
constitute the conventional determinants of the positive universe implied by the
132 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

irony of Figure 4.10. As a work of art the photograph is a (collective) copulant

token: what makes it figurative is the filtering out of the implicit universe at the
Oi stage, leaving us to contemplate its depressing antithesis.
Thus, the irony in the sign’s ideologically charged message is to be inferred from
the mental contrasting of these two universes. The disparity between the bleak
universe of existence seen and the generous universe in which the ex-serviceman’s
wartime valour would be recognized and rewarded implied in the derisive title
of the general series is the source of the irony of the image, and constitutes a
derisive condemnation of the seemingly widespread heartless manner in which
supposedly advanced cultures neglect the welfare of their former warriors.

Cindy Sherman: Untitled Film Still #14

For Peirce, as seen in Chapter 1, the index is a sign whose relation to its object
is one of physical connection. The rays emanating from the model constitute ‘a
section of rays projected from an object otherwise known’ (CP 2.320), while the
print itself is, as we saw, a sort of quasi-predicate. There is, nevertheless, an aspect
concerning the index which requires investigation. From what has been seen and
in view of the important existential status of the index in the communication of
information, it might seem that existence exerts an inescapable ‘tyranny’ on the
sign-user. The indexical nature of the photograph is thus the problem submitted
to the two sign-systems in this section. We examine this problem through a
study of Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Still #14 (Figure 4.11).
The image represents a young well-dressed woman standing beside a mirror
through which we see a glass of champagne on the far side of the table in the
foreground. She looks anxiously off-camera and is holding what looks like a
knife in a woollen sheath in her right hand. The still, number 14 out of almost
seventy such images, purports to be a publicity genre once much used in the film
industry for promotional purposes: photographs taken on the set with the actors,
for example, were used to give advanced publicity of the film and also, as here,
of its stars, in newspapers and magazines. As a photograph, Figure 4.11 is to be
classified conventionally as a dicent sinsign. It is theoretically diagrammatical in
structure, but as it has no meaningful title to ‘arrest’ interpretation, there is no
reason to rule out its being metaphorical or, indeed, allegorical – which is the
whole purpose of not attributing a title to a work of art. And yet we know from
the caption that this is one of a series, and from collateral experience that the
photographer is Cindy Sherman, and that she is the protagonist of the entire set
of sixty-nine such stills.
 Rhetorical Concerns 133

Figure 4.11 Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #14, 1978, Courtesy of the artist,
Sprüth Magers and Metro Pictures, New York

The context is the 1970s. In 1977 the art critic Rosalind Krauss published
an article in two parts celebrating the consecration of the photograph as an art
form in the review October (Krauss 1977) and this the year that Susan Sontag
published a very different view of the indexical realism of the photograph!13
After an extensive discussion of Roman Jakobson’s concept of the ‘shifter’14 –
Jakobson’s name, borrowed from Otto Jespersen, for indexical expressions such
134 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

as I, you and the demonstratives and so on – in works by Marcel Duchamp, she

had this to say of the photograph’s artistic basis:
13. If we are to ask what the art of the ‘70s has to do with Duchamp and the
shifter, we could summarize it very briefly by pointing to the pervasiveness of
the photograph as a means of representation. It is not only there in the obvious
case of photo-realism, but in all those forms which depend on documentation –
earthworks, particularly as they have evolved in the last several years, body art,
story art – and of course in video. But it is not this heightened presence of the
photograph itself that is significant. Rather it is the photograph combined with
the explicit terms of the index. (1977: 78)

The reasons for dignifying the explicitly indexical nature of the photograph in
this way were no doubt due to the works of numerous photographic artists from
Alfred Stieglitz to Edward Weston and, in a more realistic register, from Weegee
to Diane Arbus. Although she had died eight years before the publication of this
article, Diane Arbus was probably the photographer who had most exploited the
deictic potential of the photograph. Directing her camera at the denizens of the
streets and homes of New York, she produced a corpus of astonishing portraits
characteristic of that very American motif, the grotesque: a giant dwarfing his
parents in their living room, a wild-eyed child in a park with a toy grenade and a
middle-aged couple sitting naked and drinking tea together, all starkly captured
by the ‘explicit terms’ of the index and the inescapable realism of the photograph
that Rosalind Krauss was later to celebrate. It is to the existential force of the
index that this apparent referential tyranny is due, and it might suggest that the
photograph is a ‘nominalist’ medium: what you see is what you get.
But this would be to ignore the creative imagination of the photographer. For
while the art critic was celebrating the apotheosis of the photograph as index, an
obsessive young photographer was working intently to subvert it: the sixty-nine
stills from Cindy Sherman’s photographic series, Untitled Film Stills, produced
between 1977 and 1979, show the artist in various guises imitating the heroines
to be found in the stills that were taken during shooting sessions of films made
in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s for the promotional purposes mentioned earlier.
Here we have a photographer playing the part of an actress playing the part of a
‘real’ person. Sherman’s stills, no less than any other photographs, including those
made digitally or digitally modified, necessarily represent themselves to be true
representations of the world – they are dicent quasi-propositions, remember –
and what we get is indeed what we see on … the print. However, Sherman’s
creative genius was to circumvent the alleged referential inviolability of the
index by simulating the one element one would expect to remain inviolable in a
 Rhetorical Concerns 135

dicent sign such as a photograph – its dynamic object, that logical determinant
of a myriad universes.
Within the hexadic typology Sherman’s film still can be classified as a
sympathetic, categorical copulant collective token – it was produced for aesthetic
reasons, to produce some sort of feeling; as a sign it is neither percussive
nor usual (a logical impossibility) but sympathetic, and if sympathetic it is
necessarily gratific; it is categorical, for when we examine it, we recognize the
apprehensive female protagonist of some plot; as it represents a human being, in
other words an entity from the universe of existents, it would seem necessarily
to be concretive. But this would be to discount its representing not one but three
universes, with Sherman’s still placed ‘in front’ of two others, and in this case
the sign is also, logically, copulant at Oi, which ‘hides’ the two ‘earlier’ universes
forming a necessitant, that is, complex, object at Od. Note that stills of the
original genre, which were produced for practical reasons to publicize a film,
would be classified as concretives intended to produce action – attract audiences
to the cinema.
However, the more interesting analysis involves the sorts of universes that
constitute the photograph’s dynamic object. Whereas the irony of John Goto’s
flower seller tableau places two universes ‘side by side’, Cindy Sherman has
placed one in front of the other, this other being itself in front of the ‘real’
universe simulated by the actress: we see one feigned universe and divine at
one remove behind it the real world, similarly feigned, reminding us irresistibly
of how Jean Baudrillard defined simulation: ‘To dissimulate is to feign not to
have what one has. To simulate is to feign to have what one hasn’t. One implies
a presence, the other an absence’ (1988: 167),15 this under the section title of
the ‘divine irreference of images’. It follows from this that some images may
simply not have what they feign to have, that they may not refer to what they
seem to refer to – they are ‘irreferent’ – and Sherman’s stills are a marvellously
imaginative case in point.16 Moreover, by not giving the stills a title, the observer
is drawn into trying to identify the genre of the still: some suggest a Hitchcock-
style thriller, others, with Sherman disguised as a Loren-type heroine, seem to
imitate films from the Italian repertoire. Although Sherman herself may not
have read it, her teachers at Buffalo State College most probably had, and the
influence of Derrida’s ‘Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human
Sciences’ (1970) is evident in her refusal to ‘close’ and ‘arrest’ interpretation
of the stills by giving them a title. In the Stills, then, Sherman simulates; she
simulates jubilantly, in a movement of post-structuralist excess that Baudrillard
would no doubt have approved of. She simulates at two removes: she simulates
136 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

a genre which represents actors simulating some event, and the photographs’
dynamic objects are not really what they seem, yielding a form of simulation en
abîme as it were.

Summary and discussion

The chapter has sought to show how the two conceptions of the sign differ in
the manner in which they enable us to approach deliberately chosen rhetorical
signs. Although Peirce dropped the designation of ‘speculative rhetoric’, the
transuasional nature of methodeutic makes it possible to review the status of the
philosophy of representation in the period 1908–09, and it was for this reason
that the exposition of the hypoicons was held over from Chapter 1. The material
discussed above calls for a number of remarks.
First, it follows from the examination of the examples that since there is no
possibility of referring to the icon and its subdivisions, Peirce’s conception of
semiosis and the typologies it generates in the 1908–09 period don’t allow us
to make the traditional literal and metaphorical distinction. On the contrary,
they draw us into a quite different analytical and critical paradigm or model
which should not be seen as an attempt to introduce a new method of analysing
literature and pictorial signs, but, rather, simply an exposition of the way the
1908 system might deal with such signs: this is semiotics, not literary criticism or
picture theory. Whereas hypoiconicity enables us to decide that the sign is literal,
or, in a more logical formulation, diagrammatic, or is metaphorical in Peirce’s
logical sense, the later system invites us to examine the nature and number of
universes of existence represented or implied by the sign. The theoretical interest
of such universes of existence cannot be emphasized enough, though there is
much work to be done in the field. They are the forerunners of the conceptual
domains of the cognitive linguist, the base and target domains referred to in
present-day discussions of metaphoric structure (as in the case of Figures 4.4,
4.5 and 4.9)17 and the input and blended spaces and generic structures of blend
theory, set out, albeit sketchily, in the draft letter to James three quarters of a
century earlier. They are in the embryonic forerunners, too, of the ontologies of
AI and of computer and information science.
Returning to the case studies, it was seen that in the case of the Thomas
extract, the principal universe was that of his conception of poetic creation,
which, in the extract, he defined in negative terms. The metaphorical element
of the extract was shown to rest on allusions to several very different universes
 Rhetorical Concerns 137

of existence: peacocks and preening, the Stock Exchange, the eternal troubled
relations of lovers, a Jacobean play and recitation in theatre and auditorium.
Similarly, the analysis of the photographic cases within the later system required
recourse to universes of existence placed side by side in the same image, or, in
the case of irony a second universe implied by the one represented, or finally, in
the case of simulation, a series of universes placed, as it were, one in front of the
other.
Now it is possible that a photograph such as Figure 4.8 would not be considered
metaphorical within conventional theories of rhetoric, but according to Peirce’s
1903 definition in CP 2.277, metaphor is a complex form and applies far beyond
the scope of the traditional trope. And it is not inconceivable that his awareness
of the association of partial objects from two or more distinct universes within
a single sign had led Peirce to entertain the notion of a parallelism as mentioned
in CP 2.277, partial objects being a concept that from 1907 on was becoming
increasingly important in Peirce’s later conception of signs. Just why metaphorical
signs such as the two examined above – one verbal and the other photographic
– should always be underspecified and, consequently, incongruous, is, of course,
another question, no doubt a consequence of the tension between the two-
tiered parallel structure characterizing the dynamic object and the singularity
of the inescapably existential medium of the sign. Nor is it hard to imagine that
the irony in Figure 4.10 and, above all, the simulation in Figure 4.11 would
be refused figurative status within a conventional theory of rhetoric. And yet,
through recourse to Peirce’s conception of the universe of existence it is possible
to detect and to analyse these signs in a rigorous if unconventional manner. The
power of this conception, as we see from the examples Peirce offers to William
James in the draft, is that it neutralizes any distinction between the supposedly
‘real’ world and the worlds created by fiction, poetry and film: the universes
as determined by the entities they exhibit are all universes of existence, even
the ‘fictive’ ones. They involve actions and plots that we try to follow using our
experience of human intercourse irrespective of whether the representation is
a universe inhabited by one hundred and one spotted dogs, by the heroines of
the novels of Jane Austen or by the histrionics of the protagonists in a televised
football match.
This said, it has to be admitted that paragraph 2.277 has been problematic
for Peirce scholars. Thomas Short, for example, simply quotes the paragraph
and declines to comment on it (2007: 218). David Pharies, on the other hand,
in an interesting study of image and diagram, makes the following disarming
observation on the passage: ‘This is one of the more obscure passages I have had
138 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

occasion to quote, and I do not profess to understand it completely. The central

message, however, seems to be that hypoicons have three degrees of complexity’
(1985: 36).This is understandable as the passage is obscure to say the least. The
description of image, diagram and metaphor given in the paragraphs above is
my own reading of CP 2.277, but of course it is not the only one. Peirce himself
developed the theory of the diagram in his Existential Graphs, and there are
other accounts of Peircean metaphor. The interested reader may like to consult
the following brief selection: Anderson (1985), Haley (1988), Shapiro and
Shapiro (1988), Factor (1996), Haussman (1996), Danaher (1998) and, more
recently, Lattmann (2012). Shapiro (1998) is a remarkable microscopic study of
a certain form of iconicity exhibited by Shakespeare’s sonnets, and is the perfect
illustration of the sort of analysis for which the hexad of 1908 is totally ill-fitted.
The second conclusion to be drawn from the problems discussed in the chapter
is that if we remain within the 1903 system and the triple distinction between icon,
index and symbol all captionless paintings are necessarily classified alike, namely
as iconic sinsigns, and all photographs as dicent sinsigns along with others of
the same class, such as barometers, thermometers and windsocks along a motor
way: there is no logical way of distinguishing between the countless members of
each of these two general classes, since the members of each necessarily share
the same properties. The only way we have to distinguish between them is by
looking at their internal contents, and that, precisely, is the logical scope of the
hexadic system, which, as we saw in Chapter 3, classifies signs not according
to how they represent but according to the sorts of objects they represent, such
objects being members of the three distinct universes indicated in Table 4.2, each
distinguished by its specific mode of being.18 In short, as we saw in Table 3.5
from the previous chapter, in the first case elements of the typology such as the
sign, the Sign–Object relation and so on are subdivided by categories, which are
simply predicates, while in the later system the subdivisions are referred to one
or other of three universes, which, as Peirce notes in ‘Prolegomena to an Apology
for Pragmaticism’, are receptacles. As semioticians we are authorized therefore to
examine the contents of these receptacles in the ways in which they have been
filtered into the sign by its immediate object.
The third remark concerns the combined problems of interpretation,
speculative rhetoric and the philosophy of representation. As we saw above,
Peirce defined speculative rhetoric/methodeutic as transuasional logic, which
was ‘the doctrine of the general conditions of the reference of Symbols and other
Signs to the Interpretants which they aim to determine’ (CP 2.93, 1902). The
role of the sign within semiosis underwent a theoretical revision in the period
 Rhetorical Concerns 139

following and the turning point most probably occurred in 1906, when we find
Peirce abandoning the term ‘speculative rhetoric’ in a fragment from 1906:
Therefore, I extend logic to embrace all the necessary principles of semeiotic, and
I recognize a logic of icons, and a logic of indices, as well as a logic of symbols;
and in this last I recognize three divisions: Stecheotic (or stoicheiology), which I
formerly called Speculative Grammar; Critic, which I formerly called Logic; and
Methodeutic, which I formerly called Speculative Rhetoric. (CP 4.9)

This was the period in which he was beginning to define the sign as a
medium for the communication of a form in the 9 March 1906 draft to Lady
Welby (RL463; SS 195–201), the manuscript ‘The Basis of Pragmaticism in the
Normative Sciences’ (R283; EP2 371-397) and R793, all of which were discussed
in Chapter 2. Moreover, with this definition came the re-evaluation of the
role of the dynamic object in semiosis. With the realization that the number
of divisions of signs was significantly greater than the original three of 1903,
Peirce must also have become aware of the extreme theoretical tension to which
the original Sign–Interpretant branch of the grand logic was now subjected.
Instead of the three subdivisions concerning the interpretant, he now had nine
different ‘values’ to attach to the sign within the 28-class system. As evidence of
the problematic status of speculative rhetoric/methodeutic in 1908, consider the
following passage from Susan Sontag’s On Photography:
Photographs shock in so far as they show something novel. Unfortunately, the
ante- keeps getting raised—partly through the very proliferation of such images
of horror. One’s first encounter with the photographic inventory of ultimate
horror is a kind of revelation, the prototypically modern revelation: a negative
epiphany. For me, it was photographs of Bergen-Belsen and Dachau which I
came across by chance in a bookstore in Santa Monica in July 1945. Nothing
I have seen—in photographs or in real life—ever cut me as sharply, deeply,
instantaneously. Indeed, it seems plausible to me to divide my life into two parts,
before I saw those photographs (I was twelve) and after, though it was several
years before I understood fully what they were about. What good was served by
seeing them? They were only photographs—of an event I had scarcely heard of
and could do nothing to affect, of suffering I could hardly imagine and could do
nothing to relieve. When I looked at those photographs, something broke. Some
limit had been reached, and not only that of horror; I felt irrevocably grieved,
wounded, but a part of my feelings started to tighten; something went dead;
something is still crying. (1977: 19–20)

The extract illustrates the ambivalence of Peirce’s conception of the

interpretants in 1908 and as represented in Table 4.2. The text can be analysed
140 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

into stages in what we might call an interpretant ‘chain’, and as suggested earlier,
working with the interpretants involves either classifying observed effects
on people and so on or in planning rhetorical protocols. In Sontag’s case, the
former applies: the immediate interpretant is when the child of twelve identifies
the lines, shapes and patches of grey as terrible, emaciated human forms. The
images were percussive (‘something went dead; something is still crying’),
and as far as the final interpretant was concerned, the interpretive process
had not terminated in 1977. This is a brief analysis a posteriori; that is, we take
an interpretation and follow it through the various stages of its evolution, in
this case in a rather schematic manner. However, there is nothing to stop us
from using the system a priori as a publicist might: planning the image to be
given of the product (by manipulation of the immediate object), the support
on which the inherited forms are to be communicated (the sign), planning the
immediate interpretant (for this, after all, as Peirce states in the draft of 9 March
1906, is a determination of the mind of the sign’s utterer (SS 196)), targeting the
dynamic interpretant and, finally, persuading the observer to act (by buying the
product, for example). Such strategies raise a very important issue, which we
see in the passage above, namely the status and nature of the dynamic object.
In the text it is clear that the images after due reflection (‘several years before
…’) represent not so much suffering humans as ultimate horror: this being the
case the dynamic object is far more general than its very physical representation.
Similarly, in the hypothetical case of the publicist, there is no logical necessity
for the dynamic object to resemble its necessarily incomplete representation
communicated by the immediate object. Indeed, as Peirce explains in the Logic
Notebook, the ‘immediate object of a sign may be of quite a different nature from
the real, dynamical object’ (R339 277r (H523), 1906). If there are cases where the
dynamic object of a sign may not be what it seems to be, how is semiotic theory
to accommodate such a situation?
Thus the need to establish the values of the interpretant division and their
subdivisions, in addition to the broader conception of the dynamic object, seems
to have placed an intolerable strain on Peirce’s conception of methodeutic. In
the letter to William James of December 1909, Peirce describes in relative detail
the first two books – the former speculative grammar and critic – of a projected
treatise on the system of logic, this being a 1909 version of the philosophy of
representation, and then laconically summarizes the scope of methodeutic by
means of a simple ‘My Book III treats of methods of research’ (EP2: 500–2, 1909).
This was the branch of the grand logic of which he had confidently asserted in
the first of his Lowell Lectures on logic in 1903 that it was the last goal of logical
 Rhetorical Concerns 141

study, the ‘theory of the advancement of knowledge of all kinds’ (EP2 256). In
the end, the task seems to have proved beyond him, and perhaps like Samson,
calm of mind all passion spent, in a letter to Lady Welby, he deferred completion
of the typologies and the search for further examples to the attention of later
investigators:
On these considerations [his definitions of the six correlates in semiosis] I base a
recognition of ten respects in which Signs may be divided. I do not say that these
divisions are enough. But since every one of them turns out to be a trichotomy,
it follows that in order to decide what classes of signs result from them, I have
310 or 59049, difficult questions to carefully consider; and therefore I will not
undertake to carry my systematical division of signs any further, but will leave
that for future explorers. (CP 8.343, 1908)

If Peirce here expresses doubts as to his ability to take the task he has set
himself further, and if the methodeutic branch of the grand logic seems to
defy completion, there remains, nevertheless, hope for an explanation of how
dynamic objects may differ from their representations in the sign. It is to this
problem that Chapter 5 is devoted.
 5

Interpretation, Worldviews and the Object

In the previous chapter a number of signs were analysed within the theoretical
frameworks of the 1903 and 1908 sign-systems in order to assess their differences.
In this final chapter, we examine a number of features of Peirce’s late semiotics in
its own right, investigating primarily the importance of the object as he developed
it during the years 1908 and 1909. It is universally admitted that his introduction of
the concept of the interpretant and the profound revisions it was subjected to over a
period of nearly fifty years were one of Peirce’s greatest contributions to logic. Less
chronicled is the fact that his conception of the object also underwent an important
evolution, and thus it is the principal objective of the chapter to explore and exploit
its interest for semiotic analysis. The major problem, already alluded to towards the
end of the previous chapter, concerns specifically the semiotic status of the dynamic
object, its relation to the way it is represented in the sign by its immediate object
and the interpretations it gives rise to. For example, it was suggested that there was
no reason not to employ the structure of hexadb in a priori fashion as a publicist
might: planning the public image to be given of some product, its carefully planned
form as it is to appear on a given support or medium (hoarding, television spot,
advertisement in a newspaper etc.). Such a strategy raises the problem of the status
and nature of the dynamic object of such a campaign, given that the dynamic object
is, after all, the determinant of the sign: the image the team of publicists wishes
to give of the product or the sponsor or, perhaps, the product itself as it appears
on the advertisement, or perhaps some more nebulous object involving marketing
dynamics. It is essentially to this complex relation holding between what actually
constitutes a dynamic object and the way a sign represents it that the following
sections are devoted.1

The problem

Considering once more Susan Sontag’s remark in On Photography to the effect

that ‘one’s first encounter with the photographic inventory of ultimate horror is
144 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

a kind of revelation, the prototypically modern revelation: a negative epiphany’

(1977: 19), the question arises as to what the dynamic object of this particular
photographic inventory might be. Is it the emaciated faces or bodies of the
victims of these atrocities, is it some more general agency or is it, as Sontag
suggests, ‘ultimate horror’? Yet another example is to be found in the previous
chapter: when introducing the two photographs representing, respectively,
an individual man and woman (Figure 4.7) and the two classes of men and
women (Figure 4.8), it was suggested that the partial objects they represented
characterized the clearly recognizable universe of existence of violence against
women. The reader, indeed, may have thought that they were both different
representations of the same problem – domestic violence. In either case we have
two dynamic objects considerably more general than the references to men and
women. The general potential of the dynamic object can be illustrated, too, by
any of the analyses to be found in Hariman and Lucaites’s No Caption Needed,
a meticulous study of the ideological implications of what they call ‘iconic
images’, that is, ‘famous pictures from the news media’ (2007: 6). They show,
for example, a photograph of the Kent State University massacre of 1970 to be
far more than the representation of a screaming, kneeling female student beside
the body of her dead comrade (2007: 139–60). For what we see in many images,
whether photographs or paintings, cannot simply be reduced to what is ‘literally’
represented. These three examples, the Sontag extract, the Uelsmann photograph
and the Kent State massacre photograph2 are all, in various ways, interpreted to
represent an object more complex than the ‘contents’ of the image, in spite of the
fact that their respective immediate objects can only communicate parts of that
object to the sign representing it; and they all are ideologically charged. This
relation between object and ideology must also be accounted for.
A less contentious example of how the object of the sign can be interpreted
as being different from what appears to be the object depicted is to be found
in the discussion of a Dutch painting titled A Young Man and Woman Making
Music, c. 1630, by Jan Miense Molenaer. The painting was the subject of part
of a podcast from the National Gallery of London devoted to an exhibition
titled ‘Vermeer and Music: the Art of Love and Leisure’.3 The curator of the
exhibition, Betsy Wieseman, describes the painting to a visitor towards the end
of the podcast, and in the course of her description of what the musicians are
wearing, and how the painting relates to the period, she remarks that what it
really represents is not so much a couple making music together but, rather, ‘a
sort of joie de vivre’: ‘I always have the sense that they’ve just reached the rousing
chorus of the song … that they’re really into it and they’re having a good time
 Interpretation, Worldviews and the Object 145

and the music has taken over. It really represents a sort of “joie de vivre”. And
Molenaer communicates that in such a vivid way’ [emphasis added].4 In short,
the painting really represents not so much a couple playing music but the joy of
living, a warm feeling of enjoyment of life, exuberance and youthful high spirits.
The sentence containing the adversative value of the adverb really suggests that
what the observer is looking at is somehow different from the figures and their
pose represented on the canvas: what we are looking at, in fact, is more complex
than what is to be identified superficially by an inventory of the partial objects
represented on the painting. Such representations seem somehow to redirect the
observer or the reader to the real object.
The problem for Peircean semiotics, then, is to account for this discrepancy
between what we see and what the painting, photograph or other, not necessarily
pictorial, sign really represents and how it does so. Other examples of this
particular type of indirection are ‘it actually represents …’, ‘what it actually
represents is …’, ‘what it really represents is …’. Such expressions, which on any
Internet search turn out to be too numerous to quote, represent differences in
interpretation, no doubt, but, above all, a perceived disparity between what is
apparently represented, or what has already been proposed as an interpretation,
and what someone thinks is really, or actually represented: in Peircean terms
a difference or tension between the immediately perceived object – in a
representation, in an action, in almost any significant aspect of everyday life – and
the real object, the object which the observer/speaker thinks is really/actually/
in fact the case, the real or actual determinant of the sign. The problem, then, is
not to decide who is right or what the correct interpretation is, but to discover, as
in the case of the photographs and text mentioned above, the semiotic principle
behind this very frequently encountered tension between the perceived entity
and what it represents.

Symbols

One possibility of accounting for the special form of indirection implicit in

Wieseman’s remark above within the 1903 paradigm is the symbol, since this
is a sign which within the semiotics represents general objects. This Peirce had
defined in 1903 in an extract already discussed in Chapter 1:
A Symbol is a sign which refers to the Object that it denotes by virtue of a law,
usually an association of general ideas, which operates to cause the Symbol to
be interpreted as referring to that Object. It is thus itself a general type or law,
146 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

that is, is a Legisign. As such it acts through a Replica. Not only is it general
itself, but the Object to which it refers is of a general nature. Now that which
is general has its being in the instances which it will determine. There must,
therefore, be existent instances of what the Symbol denotes, although we must
here understand by ‘existent,’ existent in the possibly imaginary universe to
which the Symbol refers. (CP 2.249)

Now various forms of symbolism are, no doubt, to be found in all cultures.

For example, peaches symbolizing longevity are a common symbol in Chinese
art, appearing in depictions or descriptions in a number of fables, paintings and
other forms of art, often in association with thematically similar iconography
such as deer or cranes. In itself, a peach represented in an image or offered as a gift
is, on one ‘literal’ level, a simple piece of fruit, but can on a second, more general,
level, like the representations of deer or cranes, refer or redirect the interpreting
mind to a more general object – longevity or immortality. In a similar manner,
the Ancient Greeks believed the flesh of the peacock to be imputrescible – it was
held not to be subject to decomposition after death, and thus became a symbol
of immortality, and later figured in much early Church imagery and architecture
(in iconostases, for example) as a symbol of the promised afterlife.
What is common to all symbols, as understood in the above manner, is
the fact that their instances represent themselves as existent entities, and, at
the same time, as something general. Yet another example of a symbol can
be seen in the little dog which accompanies the music-making in Molenaer’s
painting mentioned earlier: by a form of indirection a dog can often be found
in much Christian imagery as symbol of fidelity in marriage and, by extension,
in religious faith: see, for example, van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait in the National
Gallery or Carpaccio’s Vision of St Augustine. The instances Peirce’s definition
identifies are existent instances of general types or laws. The best examples of
symbols in this sense are the words of any natural language – nouns and verbs
in English, for example. As we saw in Chapter 1, from his earliest writings on
signs until 1902, symbols were either arguments, propositions or terms, the
traditional matter of logic. In 1903 he established these in a separate division,
the Sign–Interpretant division discussed in Chapter 1, and maintained their
verbocentric bias (EP2 275–76).5 To qualify as symbol a sign has to be a legisign,
a sign that is interpreted in a regular, law-like fashion. This is the case with
peaches, peacocks and little dogs, even though they don’t enter into complex
legisign patternings in the manner of a verbal sign such as a definite article
and the common noun with which it is associated. Nonverbal symbols are the
creations of habit and experience and are no less law-like than a rule of grammar,
 Interpretation, Worldviews and the Object 147

a fact which determines the sorts of object they represent. The problem is that
although the little dog in Molenaer’s painting may be for us and for the Christian
Church a symbol of fidelity, this doesn’t enable us to explain how the painting
really represents an object other than the participants represented in the music-
making. In fact the reason is quite simple: anyone observing a painting with a
dog in it, for example, and judging it to be a symbol of ‘fidelity’, is clearly using
the term ‘symbol’ in the Peircean sense of 1903, but, and this is an important
point, is identifying the object ‘fidelity’ by means of the 1908 system. A symbol
is defined to be a conventional way of representing an object – it doesn’t identify
that object. To do this we look in 1908-fashion ‘directly’ at the forms which
the sign’s immediate object has communicated to it. In this way the immediate
object functions as a logical filter ‘shifting’ part of the dynamic object’s form
to the sign, irrespective of the universe to which it belongs, and enables us to
attempt to identify the dynamic object. In short, the symbol of 1903 doesn’t
enable us to identify an ‘indirect’ object of the sort exemplified in statements by
Sontag, Hariman and Lucaites, and in the Molenaer painting, the identification
is obtained in a different way.
There remains another possibility of accounting for what, in the system of 1903,
a given sign might really represent, and for how it might represent something
other than the object represented by the sign as in Molenaer’s painting, and this
can be sought in Peirce’s conception of the hypoicon, which was exploited in
Chapter 4. Since through the implication principle, an index can involve a sort
of icon and a symbol can involve a sort of index, it was seen that from this a
symbol can by transitivity involve a sort of icon, and, necessarily, one or other
of the three hypoicons. The problem is that when we identify the metaphorical
or diagrammatic status of a sign we are again simply stating how it is organized
internally – iconicity cannot tell us what the sign represents, only how it represents
it, since iconicity is the ‘sub-form’ of any sign’s mode of representation. In this
respect the hypoicons are no different from the index and symbol: these inform
us not of what the object is, or of what it might be really, but simply of how it
is represented, by physical contact or by convention. For instance, when Peirce
tells us that ‘Examples of Indices are the hand of a clock, and the veering of a
weathercock’ (EP2 274, 1903), he is talking about these as signs, indicating how
they represent their objects but not the objects themselves, for example, the time
of day or the direction the wind is coming from. He does give many examples of
the objects of signs but they are not obtained from the mode of representation.
Consider, too, at this point, this extract from ‘New Elements’: ‘It will be observed
that the icon is very perfect in respect to signification, bringing its interpreter
148 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

face to face with the very character signified’ (NEM4 242, 1904). In fact, from
the point of view of the 1908 hexad, what the interpreter is brought face to face
with is, rather, the form inherited from the immediate object for which the sign
functions as the medium. It seems reasonable to conclude, then, that even when
a symbol in the Peircean sense is informed by hypoiconicity, whatever the real
object of that sign may be, whatever it really represents, hypoiconicity on its own
cannot provide a satisfactory explanation of this form of indirection, which is
why we need to review the various stages in the theoretical development of the
object in semiosis.

A brief historical review of the object

The first stage is formed, of course, during the period from the mid-1860s to
1903. This, as we saw earlier, was a period in which Peirce had defined a single
division with the subdivisions of likeness, index or sign and symbol. The latter
was, until 1902–03, subdivided into term, proposition and argument before these
became explicitly an independent division at the time of the Lowell Lectures in
1903. Returning to a passage of which a part was already discussed in Chapter 1,
we can see how the object participated in the single division in 1866:
As relations separate into two kinds on account of the double reference they
contain, so representations from containing a triple reference separate into
three kinds. For the relation of a repraesentamen to its object (correlate) maybe
a real relation and, then, either an agreement or a difference, or it may be an
ideal r[elati]on or one from which the reference to a correspondent (subject of
representation) cannot be prescinded by position. (W1 355)

The object was a non-predicable ‘substance’ or IT or ‘thing’, as Peirce was later

to refer to it in ‘On a New List of Categories’ (CP 1.547, 1867), an idea which
corresponds to later definitions of the dicisign in which the subject is not a
predicate, of course, but can be associated with one. Note, too, that what was later
to become the ‘second correlate’ in Peirce’s formal definition of representation
(EP2 290, 1903) had already also been defined as a correlate: ‘A ground is that
pure abstraction, the embodiment of which makes a quality. A correlate is a
second substance with which the first is in a comparison. An interpretant is a
representation which represents that which is referred to it as a representation
of the same object which it does itself represent’ (W1 524, 1866). This was the
situation by 1903, one much more fully documented in Chapter 1. A second
 Interpretation, Worldviews and the Object 149

stage comes in 1904, which is an important year for two reasons. This can be
seen first in this long extract from the text ‘New Elements’:
A sign is connected with the “Truth” i.e. the entire Universe of being, or, as some
say, the Absolute, in three distinct ways. In the first place, a sign is not a real
thing. It is of such a nature as to exist in replicas. Look down a printed page, and
every the you see is the same word, every e the same letter. A real thing does not
so exist in replica. The being of a sign is merely being represented. Now really
being and being represented are very different. Giving to the word sign the full
scope that reasonably belongs to it for logical purposes, a whole book is a sign;
and a translation of it is a replica of the same sign. A whole literature is a sign.
The sentence “Roxana was the queen of Alexander” is a sign of Roxana and of
Alexander, and though there is a grammatical emphasis on the former, logically
the name “Alexander” is as much a subject as is the name “Roxana”; and the real
persons Roxana and Alexander are real objects of the sign. Every sign that is
sufficiently complete refers to sundry real objects. All these objects, even if we
are talking of Hamlet’s madness, are parts of one and the same Universe of being,
the “Truth.” But so far as the “Truth” is merely the object of a sign, it is merely
the Aristotelian Matter of it that is so …. All these characters are elements of the
“Truth.” Every sign signifies the “Truth.” But it is only the Aristotelian Form of
the universe that it signifies. (NEM4 238–39, 1904)

According to the Editors of EP26 this text was probably written early in
1904. Consequently we find no trace of the distinction between immediate and
dynamic objects Peirce was to develop in his letter to Lady Welby the following
October. Nevertheless, as the quotation shows, the text anticipates the three
universes described in the letter and drafts to Lady Welby of December 1908
and the universe of existence defined in a draft letter to William James of
February 1909 (EP2 492–97). The notion of a universe of existence as such is not
developed in the passage – what we have here is a universe of being presenting,
in its reference to the object of a sign being the ‘Truth’, a more metaphysical than
ontological character, which suggests that Peirce had the three types of inference
in mind when he was working on this part of the text (cf., for example, CP 2.229,
CP 2.253, 1903). Nevertheless, we see Peirce already contemplating the idea that
the object of a sign is the universe which is determined by the ‘real’ objects which
are members of it, these real objects becoming the ‘partial objects’ of 1907 and
the ‘special’ objects of 1909; and there is, too, the reference to Hamlet’s madness
that we find in a draft letter to William James of 1909.
In this context, then, the letter of October 1904 also heralds a new stage in the
development of the object, for as seen in Chapter 2, within a year of giving the Lowell
150 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

Lectures Peirce had expanded the original triad of correlates to six: two objects,
the sign and three interpretants. Concerning the two objects he made this highly
relevant remark: ‘I’m now prepared to give my division of signs, as soon as I’ve
pointed out that a sign has two objects, its object as it is represented and its object
in itself ’ (CP 8.333). Another way of describing them, and one highly pertinent to
the present topic, is, as we saw in Chapter 2, to distinguish between the object as
it informs the sign and the object as it really is independently of its representation.
The very possibility that a single sign should be capable of representing an object
other than the one perceived as in the examples discussed earlier in the chapter thus
stems from the now explicit distinction between the immediate and the dynamic
objects, a distinction reiterated by Peirce on too many occasions to cite. What we
need now is a means of ascertaining the sorts of dynamic objects of which the
immediate objects might be the determinations. In short, we have to distinguish
clearly between the two, and yet this has proved to be highly problematic with
Peirce scholars. Consider, first, a statement by Thomas Short:
However, while no sign represents its dynamic object completely, many signs,
such as pure icons and pure indices, cannot misrepresent their objects. For
the object of such a sign is exactly whatever is presented or indicated. As no
further representation is made within that sign that might be false of that object,
the sign cannot be mistaken or misleading. In that respect, while there will be
differences, there can be no discrepancy between such a sign’s immediate and
dynamic objects.
A last word on this distinction: the immediate and dynamic objects
are not different entities. The distinction pertains, rather, to how one and
the same object is considered. The immediate object is the dynamic object
as it is represented, however incompletely or inaccurately, in a given sign.
(2007: 196)

While, in light of the material discussed in Chapters 2 and 3, we can simplify

the situation by accepting that the ‘immediate object is the dynamic object as it
is represented’,7 it is nevertheless logically incorrect to consider the two as facets
of one and the same entity. Consider now, an extract from Haussman (2012),
an extensive attempt to identify and isolate the specific characteristics of the
dynamic object:
I also describe this distinction [between the immediate and dynamical objects]
by saying that there is one referent of a sign and that the referent has two sides
or aspects. Perhaps it is helpful to say that the referent of a sign consists of two
interactive objects, the immediate object and the dynamical, or real, object, a
distinction to be considered later.
 Interpretation, Worldviews and the Object 151

The dynamical object seems to be the object that functions as the beginning
of and basis for semeiosis or the interpretive process, for it is that which is to be
interpreted. And, as I mentioned earlier, the immediate object is the interpreted
dynamical object. It is the outcome of interpreting the initiating object. (2012: 81)

The author, like other Peirce scholars, has adopted the distinctions and
terminology of 1904 for the two objects but has declined to consider the
lessons of the draft of 1906 or the way the two are integrated, along with the
three interpretants, into the six and ten divisions of 1908. In the later systems
it is simply not possible for immediate and dynamic objects to be, as Short also
appears to think, aspects of a single object, or for the immediate object to be an
‘interpreted dynamical object’, since it follows the dynamic object in semiosis
and precedes both the sign and the three interpretants: the immediate object
can’t interpret the dynamic; it receives form from it, which it communicates to
the sign, which then generates the sequence of interpretants.
The immediate and dynamic objects are, as was seen in Chapters 2 and 3,
clearly quite different entities – they instantiate different trichotomies within
the six- and ten-division typologies established by Peirce after 1904, and can
be referred to one or other of the three completely distinct universes in the
classification of a given sign.8 Moreover, by 1907 Peirce had begun to refer to
the requirement of collateral observation, experience or acquaintance of an
object in the interpretation of the sign. The concept of ‘collateral observation’
seems to have been first introduced in the ‘Pragmatism’ text discussed briefly
in the final section of Chapter 2 (e.g. R318 601, 611, 613, 623; CP 8.178; EP2
493), while ‘collateral experience’ (EP2 480, 493, 495 and 498, CP 8.183) and
‘collateral acquaintance’ (EP2 496, CP 8.183) figure in many definitions of the
sign thereafter. Recourse to such collateral experience in order to identify the
dynamic object is surely proof of the very real theoretical difference between
the two: how else should we know that Cindy Sherman’s film stills simulate a
genre that simulates real life? Classifying them as dicent sinsigns or as gratific,
sympathetic, categorical concretives tells us little or nothing about the object
represented, although in the second case we have to take it into account in order
to classify the sign as such. It is Peirce who has the last word: ‘Say the Interpretant
is that which the Sign brings into correspondence with the Object. The Object
is plainly Twofold. The Dynamic Object is the Real Object according to the
above definition [that which determines the sign]. The Immediate Object is the
Object as presented in the Sign’ (R399, 276r (H522)). And here, too: in a letter
to William James of 14 March 1909, he summarizes his position concerning the
two objects with the following statement discussed earlier:
152 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

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. (CP 8.314)

However, in spite of these notable advances in Peirce’s understanding of the

object, another stage occurs between 1906 and 1908 and begins with the draft
letter to Lady Welby of March 1906, which was discussed at length in Chapter
2. I will simply summarize the important points. In addition to the distinction
between immediate and dynamic object, Peirce also redefines the sign as the
medium for the communication of a form originating in the dynamic object
and introduces important distinctions concerning the interpretants (SS 97). In
the present context what is important is that by defining the sign as a medium
he attributed a greater role to the object in semiosis: it communicates form
via the immediate object to the sign, which then communicates it to the series
of interpretants, the form in question being the realization of one or other
or all of the categories of the forms of experience (CP 1.452, 1896), and this
independently of the utterer and the interpreter as participants in the semiosis.
If we consider anew the description of the Molenaer painting given earlier
in the chapter, it is possible to see how it would fit into the scheme of 1906. The
persons represented can be seen as the artist’s models, the apparent dynamic
objects of this complex, portrait-like painting. The representation which an
observer sees finished but which must have advanced in various stages of
completion is a determination of the immediate object – that is, the models,
the musical instruments and furniture and so on, as represented. The piece of
canvas itself is the medium – the material entity which receives the compound
form communicated by the immediate object and conveys it to whatever
potential interpretant sequence the image may produce. In this case, having
immediately interpreted the marks on the canvas as humans, dog, instruments
and furniture, Wieseman proffers the potentially surprising remark that
it represents a sort of joie de vivre. It was this joie de vivre that determined
the painting, in other words, not the artist. As was suggested in Chapter 2,
the artist, a version of Peirce’s utterer, is outside the process. He executes the
painting, but in doing so he is simply the vector of the artistic trends and
public and private ideologies of the age and, if there was one, the desires of
the patron paying for the work: according to Peirce’s conception of the sign as
medium in 1906, it is the dynamic object which structures the representation
on the sign, not the artist.
 Interpretation, Worldviews and the Object 153

From the 1906 draft on, then, in theory only the object can determine the
sign, since the 1906 redefinition of the sign simply as a medium had the effect of
diminishing the importance of both the sign itself and the utterer and interpreter
in semiosis. These are indispensable agencies in any semiosis, for there would
not be a sign in the first place without them. Note that the structure of the sign
can only come from the object since the utterer is simply a vector: in the case of
music or non-figurative art, for example, we feel that it is the composer or artist
who creates the sign, but like the utterer and interpreter in Peirce’s examples,
these are ‘outside semiosis’, so to speak, as indispensable but ‘inefficient’ quasi-
minds. It is the object which ‘efficiently’ structures the sign. Any wave of Puccini
orchestral sound or any patch of colour on a non-figurative canvas must be the
determination of an orchestra and its sets of instruments and musicians or of
a brush and paint. If the qualities of these sounds and images were classified
as ‘abstractives’, they would be ‘possible’ objects and we should be unable to
perceive them.9 Just what sort of objects might determine such works, and any
others, and just what role the utterer might ultimately have in the process Peirce
was to review to in 1908 and 1909.
Summarizing the evolution of the object so far, we find, first, that Peirce has
now introduced the crucial distinction between the two objects, a distinction to
be found in all future definitions of the sign and, more importantly, a distinction
which makes it logically possible for the dynamic not to be at all like the immediate.
Second, we find that the material from the 1906 definition of the sign as medium
had the effect of diminishing the importance of the sign in semiosis, and at the
same time it gave the immediate object a specific representative status as a sort
of filter, communicating parts of the form or structure of the dynamic object to
the sign. Third, the 1908 letter to Lady Welby set out a new way of classifying
the sign with reference to three universes instead of the three categories of 1903,
with the object as the initial determining element in the semiotic sequence, as
illustrated in Table 4.2.
The final stage in the development of Peirce’s conception of the object concerns
the two ways in which he expanded its scope in 1908 and 1909. Indeed, his final
statements on the universes of necessitant, existent and possible entities and the
types of subjects these universes ‘hold’ or contain enable us to establish just how
it is that the interpreter, like Susan Sontag looking at images of Bergen-Belsen,
Hariman and Lucaites analysing the importance of the screaming student in the
image of the Kent State massacre and Betsy Wieseman in the quotation from the
beginning of the chapter, actually identifies an object which is not necessarily
like its representation. This final part of our review of the development of the
154 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

object and of our examination of what signs might really represent involves two
lines of enquiry. The first is Peirce’s conception of the three universes mentioned
in the 1908 letter to Lady Welby and their modes of being as they were described
in Chapter 3, and second, as seen in the previous chapter, the idea that the object
itself constitutes in fact a universe of existence.
In the case of the three universes, Peirce is quite explicit as to their
different modes of being in the same letter. However, with the exception of the
oversimplifying remarks concerning the English common noun beauty, he gives
little indication of the sorts of objects that are members of each of the three
universes and in terms of which signs can be classified as, for example, collective,
concretive or abstractive. However, as seen in Chapter 3, in a draft to Lady Welby
dated two days later, which presumably was never sent (CP 8.366), he illustrated
the range of dynamic objects of signs according to the universe to which they
belong: possibles (signs of such objects being abstractives), existent objects
(individuals and the facts concerning them, signs of these being concretives)
and collections or classes (signs of these being collectives), thereby giving us
some idea of the sorts of entities these universe might be the receptacles of.
In the first case the objects are qualitative entities represented by colours,
mass, texture and so on; in the second, existents such as humans, animals, tables,
individuals and named individuals such as Napoleon, Charlemagne and Dean
Moriarty; finally, in the third, general classes such as mankind, prime numbers,
classes, categories, habits and types. However, in another text of 1908, ‘The
Neglected Argument for the Reality of God’, he breaks new ground, describing
the three universes and, more importantly, the sorts of objects they comprise in
greater detail. The least complex, the universe of possible objects, ‘holds’ ideas;
the second universe is composed of existent objects – occurrences and the facts
containing them; and the third and most complex universe comprises more
general objects:
Of the three Universes of Experience familiar to us all, the first comprises all
mere Ideas, those airy nothings to which the mind of poet, pure mathematician,
or another might give local habitation and a name within that mind. Their
very airy-nothingness, the fact that their Being consists in mere capability of
getting thought, not in anybody’s Actually thinking them, saves their reality. The
second Universe is that of the Brute Actuality of things and facts. I am confident
that their Being consists in reactions against Brute forces, notwithstanding
objections redoubtable until they are closely and fairly examined. The third
Universe comprises everything whose Being consists in active power to establish
connections between different objects, especially between objects in different
 Interpretation, Worldviews and the Object 155

Universes. Such is everything which is essentially a Sign, – not the mere body of
the sign, which is not essentially such, but, so to speak, the Sign’s Soul, which has
its Being in its power of serving as intermediary between its Object and a Mind.
Such, too, is a living consciousness, and such the life, the power of growth, of a
plant. Such is a living institution, – a daily newspaper, a great fortune, a social
“movement” (CP 6.455)

It follows from the sections above that what we see when we look at an
image of any sort, or what we hear when we process an utterance of any sort,
or what we read in a text of any sort is, of course, what their immediate object
has filtered through to them from the object they represent. We also know now
that by 1908 Peirce had defined the range of possible dynamic objects to be
virtually inexhaustible, and that the dynamic object is not in any way necessarily
like the immediate. Peirce’s late illustration of various types of dynamic objects
– ‘a daily newspaper, a great fortune, a social “movement”’ – not only opens
up our understanding of how others interpret signs but also liberates our own
conception of what a sign might stand for. Barely three months later in a draft
letter to William James, Peirce offered a frustratingly brief description of the
relation holding between the universes and the objects which determined them,
a topic referred to in the previous chapter.

The object as universe

The 26 February 1909 letter (EP2 492–497) raises a delicate problem already
alluded to in the Introduction. It is a draft letter, and as we have seen
throughout the book, there are a number of antecedent drafts that have raised
important theoretical issues but which, for various reasons, were probably
never dispatched to their intended recipient. For example, the draft of July 1905
to Lady Welby dismissed the representamen from Peirce’s theory of signs of
the period, and yet we know that he subsequently re-used the term in at least
one of his final texts. The draft of 9 March 1906, like several other texts of that
period, introduced the idea that the sign was a medium, but Peirce never really
developed the theoretical potential of the idea, and, judging by the contents
of Ogden and Richards’ Appendix D, the letter of which we have the draft was
never sent. There were drafts of December 1908 that contain most of what we
know of the ten divisions supposedly yielding sixty-six classes of signs, but they
were never sent either, although Peirce in a letter of 14 March 1909 does admit
to Lady Welby to having found one of them in his portfolio, and expresses the
hope that he had actually sent it (SS 109). As in the case of the draft letter to
156 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

William James, one wonders whether these were never sent because Peirce had
forgotten them in his portfolio or had simply lost interest in the theoretical
points they contained. Whatever the reasons why the draft to James was never
sent, it nevertheless constitutes a remarkable statement on the object of the
sign. As mentioned briefly in the previous chapter, he now associated the object
with one or other of the three universes – not the categories, note – subdividing
the divisions to which signs were referred in the course of classification. This is
a useful opening statement:

A Sign is a Cognizable that, on the one hand, is so determined (i.e., specialized,

bestimmt) by something other than itself, called its Object (or, in some cases, as if
the Sign be the sentence ‘‘Cain killed Abel’’ in which Cain and Abel are equally
Partial Objects, it may be more convenient to say that that which determines
the Sign is the Complexus, or Totality, of Partial Objects. And in every case the
Object is accurately the Universe of which the Special Object is member, or part,
while, on the other hand, it so determines some actual or potential Mind, the
determination whereof I term the Interpretant created by the Sign, that that
Interpreting Mind is therein determined mediately by the Object. (EP2 492)

Peirce’s problem here is to distinguish the parts from the whole. For
example, in an earlier version of the theory the model in the portrait in Figure
2.2 is what we assume to be the dynamic object of the representation on the
artist’s sketch pad. Now that the object in 1909 constitutes by itself the universe
of existence the theoretical status of that model becomes problematic. Peirce’s
answer is in the new vocabulary that he employs. Cain and Abel are now both
‘partial objects’, a term which, as mentioned earlier, he seems first to have
used in 1907.10 The strategy here is somewhat reminiscent of the way Peirce
describes the dicisign in 1906. This latter class of signs has the advantage
of being composed of two readily identifiable parts: in the 1903 system the
proposition, a dicisign obviously, was defined as a double sign associating an
index and a rheme (CP 2.251). In the relatively informal epistolary statement
of 1906, these two terms are abandoned and Peirce simply refers to the ‘part
appropriated to representing the object, and another to representing how
[the] sign itself represents that object’ (RL 463, 28); in other words one part
representing the sign’s partial objects (the indexical element of 1903), and
another signifying the form of the relations holding between these partial
objects. The theoretical entity we are dealing with now is, of course, far
more complex than a proposition or dicisign, but Peirce makes an analogical
distinction between the components of the universe and the universe itself.
 Interpretation, Worldviews and the Object 157

The term ‘partial object’ is simply a syntactical convenience – both Cain and
Abel are ‘subjects’ of the example sentence in the Peircean sense, whereas,
grammatically speaking, Cain is the subject and Abel the direct object; both,
too, are partial objects in the new terminology. However, he introduces for
the first and only time as far as I have been able to tell, the term ‘Special
Object’ to refer to the erstwhile dynamic object. In the case of the sentence
‘Napoleon is lethargic’, both Napoleon and lethargy are partial objects, but of
the two, lethargy surely cannot be the special object – the universe would be
too great, comprising not only Napoleon but also many politicians, university
administrators, a few students and so on, whereas we surely interpret Napoleon
as being more ‘thematic’ and therefore the special object. This is the case, too,
with the wrecked train in Figure 4.6: although there are other partial objects
on the photograph – windows, an awning, pillars and so on, it is surely the
locomotive itself which is the special object of the photograph, while in the
case of Cain and Abel both must be special objects. So much for the special
object, what follows is equally innovative:
In the sentence instanced [‘Napoleon is lethargic’] Napoleon is not the only
Object. Another Partial Object is Lethargy; and the sentence cannot convey its
meaning unless collateral experience has taught its Interpreter what Lethargy
is, or what that is that ‘‘lethargy’’ means in this sentence. The Object of a Sign
may be something to be created by the Sign. For the object of ‘‘Napoleon’’ is the
Universe of Existence so far as it is determined by the fact of Napoleon being a
Member of it. The Object of the sentence “Hamlet was insane” is the Universe of
Shakespeare’s Creation so far as it is determined by Hamlet being a part of it. The
Object of the Command ‘‘Ground arms!’’ is the immediately subsequent action
of the soldiers so far as it is affected by the molition expressed in the command. It
cannot be understood unless collateral observation shows the speaker’s relation
to the rank of soldiers. You may say, if you like, that the Object is in the Universe
of things desired by the Commanding Captain at that moment. Or since the
obedience is fully expected, it is in the Universe of his expectation. At any rate, it
determines the Sign although it is to be created by the Sign by the circumstance
that its Universe is relative to the momentary state of mind of the officer.
The Sign creates something in the Mind of the Interpreter, which something,
in that it has been so created by the Sign, has been, in a mediate and relative way,
also created by the Object of the Sign, although the Object is essentially other
than the Sign. And this creature of the Sign is called the Interpretant. It is created
by the Sign; but not by the Sign quâ member of whichever of the Universes
it belongs to; but it has been created by the Sign in its capacity of bearing the
determination by the Object. (EP2 493)
158 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

Like the extract from ‘The Neglected Argument for the Reality of God’
discussed above, this extract introduces a series of examples of how a universe
is determined by the partial or special objects that are members of it. For one
thing, as we saw in the previous chapter, it neutralizes neatly and economically
the conventional distinction between fact and fiction, between cases where the
universe is ‘real’ and where it is ‘fictive’ as in the quotation from EP2 498 above.
The universe determined by Napoleon’s being a member of it and the universe
determined by Hamlet’s being a member of it are logically the same sorts of
universe; this means, too, that Neal Cassady and Dean Moriarty determine
their respective universes, and from a logical point of view there is absolutely no
difference between them, either. Note, too, that without indulging in any form of
psychologism, Peirce has redefined the participation of the utterer in semiosis:
whatever motivation he or she has, the object of the motivation is in a universe
defined by that very object – desire, expectation, volition: this is an important
statement which in no way invalidates the earlier principle that there is nothing
in the sign that doesn’t originate in the object or in the universe defined by that
object.
We also have in this passage from the draft a partial theoretical explanation of
the strategies of interpretation when people read a novel or a newspaper or watch
a documentary on TV or a wildly imaginative science-fiction film at the cinema:
they become involved in, bored or thrilled by, a universe of existence determined
by its protagonists. Since such universes are always anthropomorphic and
thus composed of events of everyday experience, we come prepared to novel,
newspaper, documentary or film with a store of collateral experience enabling
us to follow events and to disregard the boundaries between fact and fantasy.
The determination by its members of a universe of existence also enables
us to explain another important difference between the hexad of 1908 and the
10-class system of 1903. The icon was then defined in such a way as to be able
to represent an object but, unlike the index, not to be able to offer any proof of
its existence: it is a sinsign whose relation to its object is purely qualitative, not
existential: Figure 1.3, the drawing of Cheyne Walk beside the Thames, is an
iconic sinsign. However, when examining the very same image from the point
of view of the hexad, the sign is necessarily concretive: it represents humans,
trees, a river and boats, buildings and so on, all of which determine a universe of
existence, even though certain or all of the characters and trees represented never
actually existed. As suggested earlier, in its very simple way Peirce’s theory of the
object as it is presented in the draft to William James is an embryonic theory for
an ontology in the modern sense: it is not a theory of being or existence in the
 Interpretation, Worldviews and the Object 159

conventional philosophical sense, but a skeletal theory of the sorts of realizations

of objects and relations occurring within particular representational genres such
as film, novel, poetry, photography and so on.
We come now to the final stage in Peirce’s development of the object and its
implications. The reader will probably be wondering what sort of logic enables
Peirce to claim that a newspaper or a social movement can be the dynamic
object of a sign, and what sort of sign that might be. It is to the answers of such
questions that we turn now through the analysis of three case studies. Since the
universes of existence were discussed as analytical instruments in the previous
chapter, the remainder of this one will be devoted to Peirce’s late inventory of
the diverse classes of dynamic objects as described above. But first we need the
logical justification for such an inventory. As in the cases studies in Chapter 4
exploiting the universes of existence, the purpose is not to suggest or to provide
a new methodology for the arts, but is, rather, an attempt to apply Peirce’s late
definitions to a variety of complex signs.
The fundamental semiotic principles involved can be established if we return
briefly to hexadb as represented in Table 4.2, from which we can infer that
unlike a universe of existence such as the one determined by Napoleon’s being
a member of it, or the one determined by Dean Moriarty’s being a member of
it, the universe determined by ‘a living consciousness, the life, the power of
growth, of a plant …. a living institution, – a daily newspaper, a great fortune, a
social “movement”’ enjoys a more complex logical status: these are objects from
the universe of necessitants, and therefore the signs representing them are to be
classified, at that point in the hexad in Table 4.2 (Od), as collectives. However,
as the table also shows, while a given sign can be classified as a collective in
reference to its dynamic object, at the immediate object stage (Oi) that same
sign can be classified as either copulant, designative or descriptive. Now if the
sign is designative or descriptive, the immediate object will necessarily belong
to a different universe from that of the dynamic. Furthermore, even if in the
immediate object division the sign is copulant, to be physically perceivable at
all it will have itself to be a token at (S): a given sign can therefore have both
an immediate and a dynamic object more complex than itself. The possibility
for a sign to be classified according to objects in different universes from itself,
as in the case of a collective designative hypothetical token, clearly bears out
Peirce’s earlier remark in the Logic Notebook to the effect that the immediate
object may not be at all like the dynamic: ‘The immediate object of a sign
may be of quite a different nature from the real dynamical object’ (R339 277r
(H523), 1906).
160 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

It follows from this that in the case studies with which we engage below, the
signs are necessarily tokens and that what we shall be examining is the way they
have been structured by their respective immediate objects. It follows, too, that
even if the immediate objects are in these cases existents, making the sign a
designative, this doesn’t prevent their dynamic objects from being necessitant
and not perceivable: such objects are general and hence can only be inferred. For
these reasons, the case studies are based on two premises: first, that the dynamic
objects represented can logically be more complex than the signs and immediate
objects representing them, and second, consequently, that such dynamic objects
may not be at all like the immediate objects that they determine.

Worldviews and social movements

Westward the course of empire

We begin with a concrete example, Figure 5.1, artist Emmanuel Leutze’s study
for the mural Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way located in the House

Figure 5.1 Emanuel Leutze, Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way, 1862,
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Sara Carr Upton 1931.6.1
 Interpretation, Worldviews and the Object 161

wing, west stairway of the US Capitol. It is a stirring depiction of a wagon

train formed of a group of pioneer settlers and their scouts heading westwards
through a mountain pass. Beneath the main image is a cartouche showing their
destination, San Francisco Bay. This is the exhibition label proposed by the
Smithsonian American Art Museum accompanying the study:11

Leutze’s mural study for the Capitol in Washington celebrated the idea of
Manifest Destiny just when the Civil War threatened the republic. The surging
crowd of figures [on the mural] records the births, deaths, and battles fought
as European Americans settled the continent to the edge of the Pacific. Like
Moses and the Israelites who appear in the ornate borders of the painting,
these pioneers stand at the threshold of the Promised Land, ready to fulfill
what many nineteenth-century Americans believed was God’s plan for the
nation.

Figure 5.1 reproduces the study rather than the mural for reasons of legibility
and simplicity.12 What this and other similar images seem to represent is not so
much the almost religious notion of the Manifest Destiny, as the exhibition label
for the Smithsonian study has it, but rather the project of a new, hopefully just,
expanding empire to be created on American soil in the New World.
Frances Palmer’s Across the Continent: ‘The Course of Empire Takes Its Way’
(Figure 5.2) echoes the title of Leutze’s mural and study, and displays a later,
more aggressive image of western expansion: the coloured lithograph is divided
diagonally by a railway line and displays contemporary signs of the social,
technological and transportation superiority of the settlers from the East – a
school and log cabins, a railway line, roads, covered wagons and the telegraph –
on one side, and on the other a wilderness with a group of Indians on horseback
engulfed by smoke from a locomotive.13
The image clearly illustrates contemporary perceptions of westward expansion
and the idea Frederick Turner was later to give of the frontier as ‘the outer edge
of the wave [of westward expansion] – the meeting point between savagery and
civilization’.14 Four years later, John Gast executed American Progress (Figure
5.3), a more complex allegorical painting which displays a female figure floating
westwards above yet another representation of the superiority of the means of
transportation and techniques for the exploitation of the land issuing from the
East with the advent of the settlers over that of the soon-to-be-overcome hunter-
gatherer, nomadic Indians.
If, in Table 4.2 once more, we neglect for convenience the series of interpretants
and work back from the sign division, we classify all three images as, of course,
162 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

Figure 5.2 Frances Flora Bond Palmer, Across the Continent. Westward the
Course of Empire Takes Its Way, 1868, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Hand-
colored lithograph, Image: 17 5/8 × 27 1/4 inches (44.8 × 69.2 cm) Sheet:
21 5/16 × 30 1/8 inches (54.1 × 76.5 cm), Gift of Kathy and Ted Fernberger, 2009
2009-215-2

tokens, and the fact that they may have been duplicated many times is of no
logical import. As far as the Oi division is concerned, Leutze’s study and mural
and Palmer’s lithograph are designative. The allegorical American Progress, on
the other hand, which associates a spirit of progress with the various means
of transportation and so on, is interpreted as copulant with respect to the Oi
division: we observe a physical sign in which the complex association of a wraith
from one universe of experience has been combined with groups of humans
from another, quite distinct, universe of experience by an immediate object
necessarily more complex than the painting itself. Now the protagonists of all
three images are human, suggesting that they all should theoretically be classified
as concretive signs. However, as the exhibition label suggests, Leutze’s study – the
other two images likewise – celebrates something far more general than the sum
of the beings that we can see on them. What these three very different images
represent is surely more than settlers supplanting the indigenous populations on
American soil – they validate an idea, an idea which itself legitimated westward
 Interpretation, Worldviews and the Object 163

Figure 5.3 John Gast, American Progress, 1872, Prints and Photographs Division,
Library of Congress

expansion – and so all three are collective signs at Od.15 The exhibition label for
Leutze’s study for Westward the Empire Takes Its Way suggests that it celebrated
the idea of Manifest Destiny, a concept owed to the journalist John O’Sullivan.
However, although O’Sullivan was to coin the expression in an article titled
‘Annexation’ in 1845, in an earlier text he had suggested that America should
turn its back on the Old World model of empire:
How many nations have had their decline and fall, because the equal rights of
the minority were trampled on by the despotism of the majority; or the interests
of the many sacrificed to the aristocracy of the few; or the rights and interests of
all given up to the monarchy of one? … So far as regards the entire development
of the natural rights of man, in moral, political, and national life, we may
confidently assume that our country is destined to be the great nation of futurity.
(1839: 426)
What philanthropist can contemplate the oppressions, the cruelties, and
injustice inflicted by the monarchies and aristocracies of antiquity and, by
implication, contemporary European nations on the masses of mankind, and
not turn with moral horror from the retrospect?
America is destined for better deeds. (1839: 427).16
164 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

What the Indians and the African slaves would have made of these clearly
idealistic remarks is not hard to imagine, but they formed nevertheless the
basis of a very powerful set of expansionist ideas. The idea of the empire as one
way of dominating a territory was not new. While the title of both of Leutze’s
works is probably an innocent quotation from a poem of 1727 by Bishop
Berkeley, there is clearly a reference to the inevitability of the fall of Old World
empires as described in Gibbon’s Decline and Fall in O’Sullivan’s rejection of
the earlier instances of such empires. Furthermore, the rise and fall of such
empires had been illustrated only a few years earlier by the five tableaux of
Thomas Cole’s The Course of Empire (1833–36), which seem to have inspired
the title of Leutze’s mural and study. The concept of empire was clearly in the
air of the times, especially, no doubt, in the sense of a country or territory not
owing allegiance to any foreign power or influence. So what these images seem
to celebrate is not so much a ‘Manifest Destiny’ as the ideal of a new form
of empire, for which, by celebrating it pictorially, they provided a legitimacy.
The three images may seem quaint, even innocuous, to us today more than
a hundred and fifty years later, but at the time their object was nothing less
than a propaganda effort, for they are militant images, determined not by real
pioneers and Indians but by the concept of a new empire whose sovereign
was held to be the people, in short, determined by a dynamic object of a very
complex type. As vehicles of this propaganda, they were nevertheless far less
extreme than other images determined by the same object – for example, James
Earl Taylor’s Scrapbook sketches of heroic cavalry officers and settlers, the
outnumbered victims of indigenous savages and these designative tokens, too,
were a particular determination of the same general object.

The Lady of Shalott

Another case of a much more general dynamic object than might first be
thought is provided by a painting from a series by the British painter John
William Waterhouse. It is the last in the series of three, but the first in relation
to the sequence of events in the medieval tale made famous earlier by the poet
Tennyson. The ballad recounts the tragic plight of the heroine of a medieval
legend, the Lady of Shalott. The story, briefly, is as follows. The Lady of Shalott
has been cursed for some unspoken reason. She has been condemned to live
alone in a tower, where she weaves a magic web and is only able to look at the
world outside by means of a mirror which reflects people passing along the road
 Interpretation, Worldviews and the Object 165

to Camelot. She becomes dissatisfied with her lonely existence. The following
relevant short extract is from the 1842 version of the poem:

But in her web she still delights

To weave the mirror’s magic sights,
For often through the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights
And music, went to Camelot:
Or when the moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed;
‘I am half sick of shadows,’ said
The Lady of Shalott.

One day the handsome Sir Lancelot rides by. She stops weaving and looks
directly out of the window at him instead of using the mirror, thereby defying
the curse. She leaves her castle, finds a boat and drifts downriver to her death.
Ostensibly the story is about the female victim of a curse – she is the principal
dynamic object, the ballad’s ‘special’ object, but there are, of course, other
partial objects (Lancelot, the town of Camelot, for example) in the poem –
but that is not the only way the poem has been interpreted. The following is a
sample of the critical opinions quoted in Wikipedia concerning what the poem
really represents. Feminist critics, it is claimed, see the poem as dealing with
issues of women’s sexuality and their place in the Victorian world or with the
temptation of sexuality, where the Lady of Shalott’s innocence is preserved by
death. The act of leaving the tower is considered as an act of defiance or a
symbol of female empowerment, or is thought to allow the Lady of Shalott to
break free emotionally and come into terms with her sexuality. The depiction
of her death has also been interpreted as sleep, with its connotation of physical
abandonment and vulnerability. Yet other critics have suggested that the poem
is a representation of how a poet like Tennyson lives separated from the rest
of society, and that the mirror functions as a filter, providing a form of artistic
licence.17
These divergent interpretations once more raise the problem of what
a poem, novel or pictorial representation really represents, as in the cases
mentioned earlier in the chapter. We approach the problem not by means of
the poem, but from an artist’s depiction of one of the episodes. Waterhouse’s
painting (Figure 5.4) in fact represents the earliest. Such serial paintings
were not unusual in the Victorian era, although this one, paradoxically, is
Edwardian. In Waterhouse’s case the first visually dramatic episode is from
166 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

Figure 5.4 John William Waterhouse, ‘“I am half sick of shadows,” said The Lady of
Shalott’ (Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Lady of Shalott, Part II), 1915, oil on canvas,
Overall: 100.3 × 73.7 cm (39 ½ × 29 in.) Art Gallery of Ontario, Gift of Mrs. Philip B.
Jackson, 1971, 71/18, © 2016 Art Gallery of Ontario

1888: on display in the Tate Gallery, it depicts the Lady of Shalott drifting
downstream to her death.18 The second, from 1894, catches the heroine at
the fateful moment when she sees Lancelot in the mirror and turns to look
 Interpretation, Worldviews and the Object 167

directly out of the window at him, thereby breaking the curse. Waterhouse’s
representation of the Lady of Shalott in this final version of 1915 shows her
sitting in front of her loom with the mirror on the wall beside her. She is
gazing reflectively into space, having just seen the ‘two young lovers lately
wed’ at the bottom right of the mirror. This leads her to question her life
without love in the isolation of the tower.
Referring to Table 4.2, the painting as a piece of canvass has to be classified
as a token, and indeed is actually hanging in an art gallery in Toronto, Canada.
Working back, there are two possibilities: the sign at Oi can either be a
copulant, like Jerry Uelsmann’s photograph from the previous chapter and
Gast’s painting, or else designative. If designative, as is more likely, the sign at
Od either represents a necessitant object – a class or collection or some other
general entity – making it a collective, or else represents an existent, making it a
concretive like the photograph and the drawing from Chapter 1. In view of the
materiality of the subject, the latter seems initially to be the more likely option,
and yet this would be to disregard one of the most pervasive themes of Victorian
paintings. This is immediately obvious when Waterhouse’s image is compared
with Figure 5.5. Richard Redgrave’s very different painting, The Outcast, depicts

Figure 5.5 Richard Redgrave, The Outcast, 1851, © Royal Academy of Arts, London;
Photographer: John Hammond
168 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

yet another aspect of the predicament of women in the Victorian era, but in
a far more realistic manner. We are presented with the daughter of a middle-
class family and her illegitimate child being driven from her home by her stern
and unyielding Old Testament father, oblivious to the supplications of the other
members of the family.
In spite of their obvious differences, the paintings can be construed as two
representations of middle-class Victorian anxieties concerning female sexuality.
Within this pervasive ideology the possibility for the sexual freedom of females
to be on a par with that of males represented a danger to the fabric of family and
society, and was, as paintings by Redgrave and others and the novels of Dickens,
Eliot and Hardy in particular show, often severely repressed. Augustus Egg,
for example, produced a series of three paintings depicting the downfall of an
unfaithful wife and her baby titled Past and Present (all of 1858).19 The persistent
influence of this moralizing worldview was absorbed more or less consciously by
contemporary painters such as Holman Hunt – his The Awakening Conscience
(1853)20 and John Stanhope’s Thoughts of the Past (1859)21 portray, respectively,
a mistress with her ‘gentleman’ and a prostitute in a room beside a port, two
variations on a much-worked Victorian stereotype, namely the fallen woman –
while its influence is to be seen antithetically in its rejection by artists such as
Whistler and Beardsley.
In view of this, Waterhouse’s late depiction of the Lady of Shalott is more
likely to be collective than concretive, copulant than designative: Arthurian
legends clearly interested him as they did other Pre-Raphaelite painters,
but beyond the illustration of a medieval tale the series of paintings can
be interpreted, as was the poem, as an allegory of female containment and
repression within a stern and severely patriarchal Victorian middle-class
ideology.22 If this is the case the heroine in the image represents allegorically,
and therefore indirectly, not an individual but, rather, the ‘collection’ of
Victorian middle-class females, while the general object of the series is this
very ideology, and in particular
that compulsive masculine fantasy one might call the official Victorian attitude
[to the socio-sexual division]. Its other side, the darker side of the male attitude,
can be found in fiction, and especially in poetry. The dark woman, the period
avatar of feminine evil, lurks there in subterranean menace, stationed at intervals
all the way from Tennyson’s verse to the more scabrous pornography of the age.
(Millet 1972: 122)
 Interpretation, Worldviews and the Object 169

In other words, Victorian middle-class fears of the havoc that unbridled

female sexuality might wreak on the stability and social cohesion of family and
country alike determined more or less conscious creative responses – signs,
therefore – from novelists like George Eliot, poets like Tennyson and artists like
Waterhouse.

A Sunday march
Finally, the reader is invited to examine the photograph on Figure 5.6, which
records some of the forty thousand and more people walking quietly but
determinedly through a French town in the winter sunshine.
If we adopt the system of 1903, the dynamic object of this photograph, as in
the case of all photographs, is composed collectively by the protagonists of the
image – the people we see on the photograph. According to Peirce’s definition for
the Syllabus the photograph is a quasi-proposition; the section of rays (projected
from an object, Peirce says in 1903, ‘otherwise known’) constitutes the quasi-
subject while the print is its quasi-predicate. The 1906 definition of the dicisign
examined briefly above would, if applied to a photograph, define the section of
rays as the part appropriated to representing the object and the print as the part

Figure 5.6 A crowd walking peacefully through a French town

170 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

representing the way the sign represents that object. But these definitions, in
view of the later development of the status of the object, together constitute too
simple a view, for this is not what the image really represents.
Even if we momentarily forget that this is a photograph and go ‘behind the
frame’ as Meyer Schapiro invites us to (1994: 7), and in imagination join the
walkers, there still remains the question of what caused a third of its population
to be walking around a town on a Sunday morning in the south of France in
winter. The photographer is the vector not so much of a culture’s obsession with
using its mobile phones to take innumerable images of the self, monuments
and the here and now, but in this case of a worldview that was brought violently
into being four days before the photograph was taken. This is 11 January 2015,
and throughout France citizens marched through their towns, motivated by a
sympathy for the victims of the 7 January 2015 massacre of the Charlie Hebdo
journalists, and by their resolute defence of the principle of the freedom of speech.
What the photograph represents, and indeed what the crowd itself represents,
is, according to Peirce’s wide-ranging late inventory of the entities that can
constitute necessitant dynamic objects, nothing less than a social movement. It
is this general social movement, then, that the photograph really represents, not
just a collection of individuals: the individuals represent collectively a complex
general object, which the photograph records at two removes.
How do the foregoing analyses relate to the hexad in Table 4.2? If correctly
classified as representing a necessitant object, all the images in this chapter
are collectives. However, there are significant differences between them. The
crowd photograph is necessarily literal and Redgrave’s painting is likely to be
a literal representation of the fallen woman: at Oi, then, both are designative.
On the other hand, Leutze’s mural and study, judging by their respective
exhibition labels, are not to be taken simply literally, while the paintings by
Gast and Waterhouse are both clearly allegorical (the latter represents a
contemporary female predicament by means of a medieval legend). In this case,
their immediate object, which communicates a complex structure to the sign it
determines, is necessitant, and these works, like Jerry Uelsmann’s photograph
from Chapter 4, are all copulant at this stage of the classification process. As
they are all necessarily tokens (a wall, canvases and photographic prints with
arrangements of pigments on their surfaces), Redgrave’s painting and the crowd
photograph are collective designative tokens, while the others are copulant
(collective) tokens. What their respective interpretants are, or have been, is, of
course, impossible to determine.
 Interpretation, Worldviews and the Object 171

Summary and discussion

When Peirce defined logic in 1903 as the philosophy of all representation, ‘so far
as representation can be known without any gathering of special facts beyond
our ordinary daily life’, the logic had a restricted definition of the sort of entity
that an object might be. In order to show how the later semiotics expanded
this conception, the chapter has traced the evolution of Peirce’s conception of
the sign’s object through two important stages: first, the distinction between
the immediate and the dynamic object, a significant development in its own
right, but, more importantly, making it theoretically possible for there to be a
representational discrepancy between the two; second, the extended inventory of
potential dynamic objects established in the years 1908 and 1909 which reflected
the virtually limitless potential of the three universes. Indeed, as these case
studies have shown, the late conceptions of 1908 and 1909 provide the researcher
with a very powerful range of necessitant objects which all participate, at times
imperceptibly, in our ordinary daily lives. On the other hand this extensive
expansion of the 1903 system might, for some, mean that Peircean semiotics has
now reached a stage of formal break-up where ‘anything goes’. There are at least
three answers to such a charge.
First, we note that Peirce’s conception of the final interpretant underwent
a series of revisions contemporaneous with those of the object once he had
expanded his interpretant system from one to three. In 1906 in ‘Prolegomena
to an Apology for Pragmaticism’, for example, in an early reference to the
concept, he defined the final interpretant in the following manner: ‘Finally
there is what I provisionally term the Final Interpretant, which refers to
the manner in which the Sign tends to represent itself to be related to its
Object’ (CP 4.536). Examination in Chapter 2 of the various typologies Peirce
established in the years 1904–1906 showed great hesitation in the naming and
status of what was in 1909 to become the final interpretant, and in most cases
at the time this was associated, as in the definition above, with the way the sign
represents itself to be related to the object. However, definitions from 1909
suggest a much broader view, in which what might be called the ‘consensual’
logical status of the final interpretant placed the onus of interpretation on the
community of interpreters rather than on the intrinsic manner in which signs
tend to represent themselves to be related to their objects, as in the definition
of 1906. The following is from the draft letter to James dated January 1909
discussed above:
172 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

As to the Interpretant, i.e., the ‘‘signification,’’ or ‘‘interpretation’’ rather, of a sign,

we must distinguish an Immediate and a Dynamical, as we must the Immediate
and Dynamical Objects. But we must also note that there is certainly a third kind
of Interpretant, which I call the Final Interpretant, because 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. (EP2 496, 1909)

To this we can add a similar definition in a letter addressed to Lady Welby

two months later: ‘the Final Interpretant is the one Interpretative result to which
every Interpreter is destined to come if the sign is sufficiently considered …
The Final Interpretant is that toward which the actual tends’ (SS 111, 1909),
by which we understand that the purpose of signs for such an interpretant
must, at If in Table 4.2, be self-control. By this time, however, Peirce appears
to have dropped the strict formality of previous definitions – the definition of
hexadic semiosis and the ten-division classification postulated in the letter to
Lady Welby of 23 December 1908, for example – in favour of a more relaxed,
even anecdotal approach in his late correspondence. This is confirmed by the
following definition addressed this time to William James a further month
later: ‘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’ (EP2 499, 1909), where
by the expression ‘the way every mind would act’ we are to understand the
establishment of a ‘communal’ habit (he is discussing yet again the ‘Ground
arms!’ military command, here with respect to the three interpretants).
A second reason to reject the notion that the late systems have reached a
stage where interpretation has become anarchic and idiosyncratic lies in
the very nature of representation. In view of the fact that the hexad of 1908
involves a very different approach to signs from that of 1903 – in the case of
an image, for example, the system of 1908 invites the semiotician to examine
the form inherited from its immediate object and draw up an inventory of its
‘contents’ – the analyses given above might be mistaken for the methodology
developed by Barthes in Mythologies, ‘Rhetoric of the image’ and ‘Éléments de
sémiologie’ (Barthes 1970, 1977, 1964, respectively), in which he identified the
signifying elements in a court trial, advertisement, magazine cover and so on,
and, by means of a complex semiotic superstructure, censured the bourgeois
ideology which had, he thought, determined them. But Peirce was no proto-
structuralist, and the analyses conducted in the course of the case studies above
were not informed by any ‘semioclastic’ intention any more than Peirce’s own
discussions of example signs. It is simply that, rather in the manner of Eco’s opera
aperta principle, once a representation has been made public and recognized
 Interpretation, Worldviews and the Object 173

as such, there is no theoretical limit to the interpretations it can stimulate,

irrespective of what the original sign-producer intended. And so it is only in
the long run, if ever, that any consensus can be reached by any single group –
a social ‘commens’ – concerning a given sign’s appropriate final interpretation
and with it the identification of its dynamic object, namely, the identification
of what it really represents. Sontag, Hariman and Lucaites and Wieseman in
the examples given earlier interpreted photographs and a painting by looking
at their immediately perceivable objects and then drawing conclusions based
upon their experience, that ‘cognitive resultant’ of their past lives, as to what the
images mediately represented, which, in every case, turned out to be something
more complex than the elements immediately displayed: ultimate horror, the
tension between individual rights and collective obligations – ‘the concepts of
democratic citizenship and dissent’ (Hariman and Lucaites 2007: 48) – and joie
de vivre. They may have been mistaken in their interpretations, but that is beside
the point: they posited a concept, a necessitant object, for very existential signs
independently of any theory of semiotics: these were genuine interpretations.
For similar reasons, the very obvious lack of consensus in the various critical
responses to Tennyson’s ballad culled from Wikipedia and quoted above
is evidence that interpretation of the work is far from complete and that any
final interpretation lies in a probably distant future. But this is not a situation
to deprecate or to combat on some anxious theoretical front; it is a perfectly
normal situation and one for which Peirce’s late conception of the interpretants
provides a logical explanation.
Finally, it is important to realize that Peirce’s late sign-systems and the
broadening of the scope of the dynamic object has developed our understanding
of what was identified above as an ideologically charged object following Peirce’s
extension of the list of necessitant objects in ‘The Neglected Argument for the
Reality of God’. Now, it is obvious from the logical possibility of concretive and
abstractive signs that not every object is necessarily necessitant, and even when
necessitant, not necessarily ideological in nature. Nevertheless, the criterion
Peirce offers concerning objects belonging to the universe of necessitants is to be
found in this extract from a quotation given earlier: ‘The third Universe comprises
everything whose Being consists in active power to establish connections between
different objects, especially between objects in different Universes’ (EP2 435).
Any object of this universe has at least to be systematic, that is, to belong to a set of
entities interconnected by some relation: ‘Now, a class is a set of objects comprising
all that stand to one another in a special relation of similarity. But where ordinary
logic talks of classes the logic of relatives talks of systems. A system is a set of
174 Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation

objects comprising all that stand to one another in a group of connected relations’
(CP 4.5, 1898). Consider in the light of this two definitions, both from the OED:
‘Ideology: 4. A systematic scheme of ideas, usually relating to politics or society,
or to the conduct of a class or group, and regarded as justifying actions.’ Returning
to the examples it would surely be gross naivety to think that the Lady of Shalott
serial paintings are simply a pictorial reworking of a medieval Italian tale of a
young woman mysteriously imprisoned in an ivory tower, ignoring the Victorian
capitalist ideology that allowed owners of factories and mills not only to exploit
women (and children) in complete impunity but also to keep their females as
though in a gynaeceum. And the OED has this for propaganda: ‘3.The systematic
propagation of information or ideas by an interested party, esp. in a tendentious
way in order to encourage or instil a particular attitude or response. Also, the
ideas, doctrines, etc., disseminated thus; the vehicle of such propagation.’ And
so it would also be gross naivety to think that Leutze’s mural and study, Palmer’s
lithograph and Gast’s painting are simply ingenuous records of the movement
westward and its attendant dangers: they were, rather, contributions to, and
determinations of, what was in fact imperialist propaganda.
By focusing on the object of complex signs such as advertising, slogans,
Internet blogs, paintings, photographs and written documents past and present
and so on, it is now possible within Peircean semiotics to identify and examine
their ideological determinants.23 Although analysts adopting the 1903 system
obviously have little difficulty in inferring the ideology behind a given sign, that
particular system is not entirely suitable for ideological analysis: there is no class
of signs in the system which enables us to identify the sign’s dynamic object –
such a strategy requires recourse to the 1908 28-class system since this provides
access to what a given sign’s immediate object has communicated to it and thus
to ‘contents’ from which to infer the possibly necessitant object, and offers a
theoretical approach much closer to our everyday engagement with signs both
familiar and unfamiliar.
Should there be readers still in doubt as to the ideological character that
certain signs can present, they might like to decide whether the first two lines
of a recent poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti refer to a bucolic world of nymphs,
shepherds and sheep or, rather, to something more sinister: ‘Pity the nation
whose people are sheep/And whose shepherds mislead them.’ They might also
like to identify the sort of object John Goto’s photographic tableau Deluge,
number VIII in the series High Summer, really represents.24 The final word goes
to Peirce: ‘A Sign necessarily has for its Object some fragment of history, that is,
of history of ideas’ (R849, 1911).
 Conclusion

This study began with a reference to a programme for semioticians which

might further our understanding of Peirce’s sixty-six classes of signs. The
research undertaken in the previous chapters involved a less ambitious project,
one that sought to exploit not all of the original ten divisions announced in the
1908 letter to Lady Welby but a subset of six of those divisions, and to contrast
it with his better-known three-division system from 1903. The very significant
differences that the study has brought out between the two can be summarized
as follows. In the first case, the 10-class typology was defined within a
phenomenological framework since it used three categories – predicates bearing
on whatever can be present to the mind – as the criteria by means of which to
subdivide the sign and two sign-correlate relations. The second typology, on
the other hand, was defined within an ontological framework, and employed
three universes – receptacles of what there is, embracing possible, existent and
general objects – to define the subdivisions of the six correlates of semiosis
which, when properly combined, generate twenty-eight very different classes.
Such an ‘ontological turn’ – modal and diagnostically triadic – can be nothing
but the inevitable consequence of Peirce’s unremitting realism: collections are
real and so are the collective signs that represent them.
In view of his desire to classify as many possible signs as was in his power, the
attraction of establishing sixty-six classes must have far outweighed the twenty-
eight offered by the six divisions as described in the study, and this probably
explains why Peirce never sought to develop and exploit what is in effect an
organically organized set of divisions. Moreover, as he admitted to William James
in the 25 December 1909 letter mentioned in Chapter 2, he was not so much
interested in classifying existing classes of signs as in discovering new ones: in
his search for possible signs Peirce presumably passed over the semiotic interest
of the 28-class system, and one can only surmise what might have happened if he
had developed the full potential of the 1908 hexad. In spite of this evident lack of
interest on Peirce’s part, within the restricted but more feasible project adopted
in the study, the following conclusions can be drawn, although they might better
be considered as programmes for future research.
176 Conclusion

First, one of the very interesting results of the work on the hexad has been
to identify clearly the relations holding between the two objects and the sign
with respect to one another and the way these relations come to determine the
structure of the latter, with interesting implications for future work in the field
of rhetoric. The definitions and conventions attributed by Peirce to the hexad
have shown that each of the three can belong to one or other of three universes
of increasing complexity. This means that the sign can be as complex as, or less
complex than, the two objects, and that the immediate object can be as complex
as, or less complex than, the dynamic. This being the case, tokens, which
form the vast majority of the signs we use to communicate with others, can
be classified with respect to two objects as complex as, or more complex than,
themselves. This makes it possible to explain how allegorical and metaphorical
utterances, text and images, and so on, which perforce are existential themselves,
can present a form which may be underspecified with respect to their respective
dynamic objects. It was seen to be the immediate object, functioning as a sort of
filter, which determines what form or forms emanating from the dynamic object
find expression in the sign. If the immediate object is a necessitant, for example,
the dynamic object must be, too, while the sign, if it is a perceivable and therefore
existent entity such as a painting, a photograph or an utterance in a conversation,
will display a complex, sometimes incongruous but logically valid structure.
This incongruity stems from the sign’s being identified as copulant with respect
to a necessitant immediate object, a class of objects ‘which neither describe nor
denote their Objects, but merely express the logical relations of these latter to
something otherwise referred to’ (CP 8.350). It is these logical relations which
determine the complex structure that has to be accommodated by an existent,
simply structured token, leading to underspecification and incongruity. Such
underspecification and incongruity were accommodated in the 1903 system by
Peirce’s theory of the hypoicons, but the theoretical justification of how these
functioned semiotically was never given: however, the notion that metaphor is a
formal configuration representing a parallelism between two or more universes
can now be justified logically by the semiotic differential between the two objects
and the sign as defined within the hexad of 1908.
Second, the study has brought out the explanatory power of Peirce’s late
definition of the object, which led to several lines of enquiry. For example, it
was shown in Chapter 4 that reference to one or more universes organized
in very specific ways but represented in a single sign offered an alternative
analytical methodology to the hypoicons in the analysis of certain types of
figurative signs, metaphor, irony and simulation being the cases in point.
 Conclusion 177

Here, too, there is much promising work to be done. Another line of enquiry
involving the concept of the universe of existence was explored in Chapter 5
and concerned the sorts of objects identified by Peirce in 1908. Now, at the
time of writing, Britain is preparing for a referendum on its continued presence
in the European Union, while in the United States presidential candidates are
vociferously debating their differences. In both cases, battle lines between
newspapers have been drawn, with each expressing its particular editorial
stance, and although the articles published are written by individuals, it is the
opinion of the institution – a necessitant object – which is being canvassed (a
more sinister scenario would have obscure, money-hungry gnomes working
the strings of their puppet media, but even in such cases the object is quite
general). These living institutions, daily newspapers, together with other
sources of public expression unimaginable in Peirce’s time – social media such
as Facebook, Twitter and the applications on mobile telephones – are the new
realizations of Peirce’s extended conception of the sign’s object. The logic now
has the theoretical means to specify the sign’s dynamic object more fully than
in 1903, with the result that in addition to changes in the direction of the wind
and the unexpected presence of another human on an island, the inventory
of potential objects can now be extended to include propaganda, worldviews
and social movements. Peircean semiotics, which appeared to be ‘frozen’
in 1903 and the triadic system developed for the Lowell Lectures with its
reassuring abundance of examples and comments from Peirce himself and an
often perfunctory reference to the two objects and three interpretants from its
commentators, has, with the later systems, been shown to be logically capable
of accommodating the complex signs of our age.
Third, the study has contributed to the specificity of Houser’s programme by
isolating the 28-class system and establishing its viability as a means of analysing
signs. There obviously remains much research to be conducted in this field, too,
particularly with respect to the interpretants, but discussion of the ordering
problems encountered in Chapter 3, for example, offers researchers interested in
the 66-class system a number of lines of enquiry, and shows that in attempting
to establish the correct order of the ten divisions, it is a theoretical necessity and
a source of considerable semiotic interest to work out what sorts of sign classes
the hypothetical arrangement might lead to, and actually give examples of them
– a challenging enterprise. The hexad has been shown to be a fully functional,
organically organized and autonomous system, enabling the researcher not
only to analyse signs but understand better the way the various subjects of the
typology relate to each other.
178 Conclusion

What of the sixty-six classes of signs? As far as adding the four supplementary
divisions as Peirce suggests in the 1908 letter, there are two possible strategies:
first, to add them to the end of the hexad in the order Peirce suggested, or some
variant of it, and in effect combine divisions obtained within distinct theoretical
frameworks; second, as several authorities have tried to do, interleave them
with the divisions of the hexad. In the first case, it may be possible to find some
arrangement which, respecting the universe hierarchy rule, might generate the
sixty-six classes; in the second, disturbing the order of the hexad by interleaving,
for example, the division concerning the relation between sign and dynamic
object, the sign’s mode of representation, in other words, between the divisions
of the dynamic and immediate objects might disturb the organic unity of the
original association of the two and introduce ‘noise’ into the hexadic system.
Such a strategy might work, but the lessons to be drawn from the comparisons
conducted in Chapter 4 incline to doubt.
As for the philosophy of representation which occupied much of Chapter 1,
the 10-class system remains, but the project of a grand logic with all its branches
accounted for is a task for future Peirce scholars since the great man was forced
by age, ill health, overwork and incredible poverty to abandon this mission. This
will not be an easy task: as the later sign-systems grew in importance, the hopes
of a grand logic seemed to diminish. What we are left with, on the other hand,
shows how Peirce had departed from the European tradition in which he began
his logical investigations and had finally forged his own.
The third branch of Peirce’s grand logic may never be satisfactorily developed.
There may never be a solution to the problem of the correct ordering of the ten
divisions, either. Whatever the case, the present study will, perhaps, contribute
to Houser’s programme by stimulating informed reactions to it or further
research into the classes of signs made available by the late sign-systems, the
more manageable hexadb in particular. A final word, now, and a personal one:
the research reported in the previous chapters was undertaken by a – hopefully
– responsible academic, who is also – most certainly – an unregenerate member
of the ‘wrong crowd’.
 Appendix

The eight typologies from Peirce’s Logic Notebook (R339) to follow were
produced by Peirce between August 1904 and August 1906, and testify to his
growing mastery of the classification of signs in this period; they also show him
passing from six divisions to ten. As mentioned in the Abbreviations page, the
Houghton sequences are not synchronized with the page numbers of the Logic
Notebook, and so the appropriate sequence number in parentheses has been
added for readers wishing to check the manuscript themselves. Three of the
tables have already appeared in the main text with comments, while on Table
A.4, from the entry for 8 October 1905 (page 3), the notes added by Peirce beside
each of the three interpretants have been placed at the bottom of the page. As
mentioned in the introduction to Chapter 2, Peirce reviewed and replaced a
number of labels in his typologies. Those that seemed important to me have
been retained in barred form in the following tables. Note, finally, that the tables
have been presented as they appear in the Logic Notebook, and have received no
special formatting.
180 Appendix

Table A.1 August 1904?

Aug 1904? 239v (H450)

B Icon B Index B symbol

are Icon Index Symbol
in the genuine sense
A Icon A Index A Symbol
are Icon Index Symbol
in the degenerate sense
C Rheme C Dicent C Argument
are Rheme Dicent Argument
in the genuine sense
Rheme is represented in the proper signified Interpretant as if a Quality of the Object
Dicent is represent [sic] in the signified Interpretant as if in a Real Relation to its
Object
Argument is represented in the signified Interpretant as if it were a Sign
Rheme professes to describe a quality
Dicent has two terms professing to describe Quality & Existent
Argument has 3 terms professing to be Major Quality, Minor Existent, Middle Sign
B Rheme B Dicent B Argument
are Degenerate Rheme Dicent Argument
B Rheme determines its interpretant formally by definition making it one sign
B Dicent determines its interpretant by force
B Argument determines its dynamic interpretant by its being represented as doing so
B Dicent has to be asserted C Dicent may be asserted
A Rheme A Dicent A Argument
are Dedegenerate Rheme Dicent Argument
NB. The hesitation in the dating is explained in Note 7 of Chapter 2.
 Appendix 181

Table A.2 7 August 1904

7 August 1904 240r (H451)
The distinction of Icon Index Symbol may be two ways defined
1st A-_ Icon formal Quality
A _ Index
A _ Symbol } has for its immediate object
{ Existent
Law
2nd B _ Icon Own Internal
B _ Index
}
is determined by its dynamic
object by virtue of
{ nature Real Relation
to Object Being
B _ Symbol Interpreted as such
(Imputed in
Interpretant)
The distinction of Rheme Dicisign Argument should, then, be three ways defined
A _ Rheme formal Quality
A _ Dicisign
A_ Argument } has for immediate Interpretant
{ Existent
Law
B _ Rheme refers to
determines its dynamic Own Internal Nature
B_ Dicisign
B_ Argument } Interpretant
by virtue of
{ Real Relation to it
Interpreted as such
C _ Rheme refers to proper Quale
C _ Dicisign
C_ Argument } is represented by its signified
Interpretant as if { Second
Sign
182 Appendix

Table A.3 8 October 1905

8 October 1905 252r (H477)
Division of Signs
A As to being of Sign
Qualisign — Sign is Presentment or Abstraction
Sinsign — Sign is Existent
Legisign — Sign is Generality in itself
B As to Object
a As to Immediate Object
Vague Sign Sign represents object as Indefinite
Singular Sign Sign represents " " Individual
{Abstract/Concrete/Collective
General Sign " " " " Distributive general
b. As to Dynamic Object
Icon Sign affected agrees with object by virtue of
Common Quality
Index " " " " " " " Being Really
acted on by it
Symbol " " " " " " " Being so
interpreted
C As to Interpretant
a As to Immediate Interpretant
The sign represents interpretant as feeling (Interjection)
Action (Imperative)
Thought Sign (Indicative)
b Dynamic Interpretant
Interprets by Sympathy by Compulsion by Reason
c Significant Interpretant
The interp. represents sign as in Rheme, Proposition, Argument
 Appendix 183

Table A.4 8 October 1905

8 October 1905 (page 3) 253r (H479)
A Division according to the Matter of the Sign
Qualisign
Sinsign
Legisign
B Divisions according to the Object
a. According to the Immediate Object (how represented)
Indefinite Sign
Singular Sign {Abstract/Concrete/Collective
Distributed General Sign
b. According to the Dynamic Object
α Matter of the Dynamic Object
Abstract
Concrete
Collection
β Mode of representing Object
Icon
Index
Symbol
C Division according to Interpretant
a. According to Immediate interpretant (how represented) Oct 9↓
Immediate interpretant represented as Vague Clamatory
" " " " Singular Imperative
" " " " Distrib. General
Representative
b. According to Dynamic Interpretant
α Matter of Dynamic Interpretant
Feeling
Action Conduct
Thought
β Mode of affecting Dynamic Interp.
By sympathy
By compulsion
By reason
184 Appendix

c According to Representative Interpretant

α Matter of Representative Interpretant
—
—
—
β Mode of being affected represented by Representative Interpretant
—
—
—
γ Mode of being represented to represent object by Repr. Interp
—
—
—
NB1 Immediate Interpretant is the Interpretant as Represented in the Sign or as a determination of the sign. To what
the sign appeals
NB2 The dynamic Interpretant is the determination of a field of representation exterior to the sign (such a field is an
interpreter’s consciousness) which determination is effected by the sign.
NB3 The representative Interpretant is the interpretant that truly represents that the Sign represents its Object as it
does
 Appendix 185

Table A.5 9 October 1905

9 October 1905 continued 255r (H483)
As it now seems to me the Representative Interpretant
is that which correctly Represents the Sign to be
a Sign of its Object and the divisions are
α According to the nature the Sign is Represented as
having in itself or as having in reference
to its immediate object
β According to the Nature of the Sign as Represented
to be determined by its Object
as Icon in a term
as Index in a proposition
as Symbol in an argument
γ According to the Nature of the Sign as
represented in the Representative Interpretant
as determining its Interpretant
Professes to be exclamatory Abductive
" " " imperative Deductive
" " " enlightening Inductive
186 Appendix

Table A.6 13 October 1905

13 October 1905 262r (H497)
A Nature of Sign in itself
Abstraction = Qualisign
Existent = Sinsign
Combinant Type = Legisign
B Of Object
a Immediate
In what form Object is represented in Sign { Indef./ Sing. /
General
as far as affects Form of Sign

b. Dynamical
α Nature of Object in Itself {Abstraction/Concrete/Collection
β Cause of/How Sign is/being determined to represent obj
Causation of sign's representing Obj
C Of Interpretant
a Immediate
In what form interpretant is repr. in sign
As far as it affects form of sign {Interrog/Imper./Significat.

b Dynamical
α Nature of Interpretant in Itself
As far as this affects Nature of sign {Feeling/ Fact/ Sign (? Sign.)

β Cause of sign being determined to affect/ being represented

Causation of Sign's affecting Interp. {Sympathy/Compulsion/
Representat.

c Representative
α In what form sign is represented in Interpretant
As far as this affects form of sign,

β Causation of representation of Sign by Interpretant

As far as this affects nature of the Sign,

γ Rationale of Connection between Sign and Object effected by

Interpretant
 Appendix 187

Table A.7 31 March 1906

Provisional Classification of Signs 275r (H521) 31 March 1906
A Sign is in its own Nature
6 5 is either A Tone A Token or A Type
What has all its Whose being exists whose being exists in the
being whether in dyadic relations order of whatever may
it exists or not come hereafter to be or
in the order that will be
shown whenever certain
kinds of action shall take
place
in reference to its Immediate Object
8 6 is either Indefinite Singular or General Sign *
in reference to the Nature of its Real Object
7 5 1/2 ? is either Abstract Concrete or Collective *
in reference to its relation to the Real Object
9 7 is either Icon Index or Symbol *
in reference to its Intended Interpretant
(1906 August 30
Transpose first & third)
5 4 is either Positive Imperative or Interrogative
in reference to the Nature of its Dynamic Interpretant
4 is either Poetic Stimulant or Impressive or
or excitant or excitant of action determinant of a
of feeling Ergoseme Habit Logoseme
Eidoseme
in reference to its relation to its Dynamic Interpretant
3 is either Sympathetic Compulsive or Rational
in reference to the Nature of its Normal Interpretant
2 is either Strange Common or Novel
in reference to the Passion of its Normal Interpretant
4 is either Substitute Suggestive or Argument
Suggestive Reactive
in reference to the Significance of its Normal Interpretant
1 is either Monadic Dyadic Triadic ??
188 Appendix

Table A.8 31 August 1906

PROVISIONAL DIVISION OF SIGNS 31 Aug 1906 285r (H534)

I. Ist Division according to the Matter of the Sign

Tinge Token Type
Vague Quality Thing or Fact
II.i. 2nd Division according to the Form under which the Sign presents the
Immediate Object
Indefinite Designation General
II.ii.1. 3rd Division, according to the Nature of the Real Object
Abstract Concrete Collection
or other Ens Rationis
II.ii.2. 4th Division, according to the Connection of the Sign with its Object
Icon Index Symbol
III.i. 5th Division, according to the Form of Signification of Immediate Initial
Interpretant
Medad Monad Dyad Polyad
perhaps Hypothetic Categorical Relative
III.ii.1. 6th Division, according to the Nature of the Middle Interpretant
Sympathetic Shocking Usual
Congruentive Percussive
III.ii.2. 7th Division, according to the Manner of Appeal to the Middle Interpretant
Interrogative Imperative Indicative
(or Suggestive)
III.iii.1. 8th Division, according to the Nature Purpose of the Eventual Interpretant
Gratific Studious Actuous Moral or Temperative
to Produced Self-
Control
III.iii.2. 9th Division, according to the Nature of the Influence the Sign is intended
to exert
Rheme Dicisign Argument
Seme Pheme Delome
III.iii.3. 10th Division, according to the Nature of the Assurance afforded the
Interpreter of taking the Sign according to its Purpose
Abducent Inducent Deducent
assurance of assurance of assurance of
instinct experience Form
 Notes

Placeholder for back of book note content Introduction

1 From R343, 1902, and quoted in Fisch (1983: xxvii).

2 The Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition (1982–), Peirce Edition
Project (Eds), Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Volume Eight, the latest in
the series, covers the period 1890–1892.
3 ‘[T]he numerical spinning of classes of signs is most confusing, and I suspect,
like Gary Sanders (1970), that attempts to detail all classes of signs is counter-
productive.’ Spinks (1991: 235n).
4 ‘The final typology adds four new trichotomies, bringing the total to 10. However,
although the final typology is an interesting experiment, it is rather underdeveloped
and tentative in Peirce. For this reason, and for the reason that the most detailed
classification of signs is associated with the interim typology, focus on the 1903
typology might be the most fruitful.’ Liszka (1996: 35).
5 Although it does reappear as one of four supplementary divisions of the 66-class
system.
6 Peirce’s terminology varied between ‘semiotic’ and ‘semeiotic’, but I have retained
the more usual term ‘semiotics’ in this study.

Chapter 1

1 It was, in fact, finalized in the first few months of 1904 but this is of little
consequence since Peirce expanded the system to six correlates the following
October.
2 In the manuscript R465 there are no commas in the final sentence but it has
uppercase T, P and R, which the editors of the Collected Papers have ‘corrected’. I
have retained the original spelling and punctuation.
3 ‘As to my terminology, I confine the word representation to the operation of a sign or
its relation to the object for the interpreter of the representation.’ (CP 1.540, 1903)
4 For the reader not familiar with Peirce the Syllabus of Certain Topics of Logic was a
pamphlet published as a supplement to the lectures themselves. It ran to 23 pages
and consequently omitted much of the material of the lectures.
190 Notes

5 ‘Logic will here be defined as formal semiotic. A definition of a sign will be given
which no more refers to human thought than does the definition of a line as the
place which a particle occupies, part by part, during a lapse of time. Namely, a sign is
something, A, which brings something, B, its interpretant sign determined or created
by it, into the same sort of correspondence with something, C, its object, as that in
which itself stands to C. It is from this definition, together with a definition of “formal”,
that I deduce mathematically the principles of logic. I also make a historical review of
all the definitions and conceptions of logic, and show, not merely that my definition is
no novelty, but that my non-psychological conception of logic has virtually been quite
generally held, though not generally recognized’ (NEM4 20–21, 1902).
6 See, too, Peirce (1982: xxxiii).
7 Max Fisch, Introduction to Writings, Volume One, page xxxiii, and (1986: 338–
341).
8 Quotations from the Critique of Pure Reason are by reference to Meiklejohn’s 1855
translation of the second edition (1787), the text used by Peirce himself, and not by
the more conventional reference to the A and B page numbers of, respectively, the
first and second editions.
9 Later to be titled ‘phaneroscopy’, which studies the ‘phaneron’. This, Peirce suggests,
bears similarities to the ‘ideas’ of, for example, a philosopher like Locke: see CP
1.285. Peirce also referred to the science as ‘ideoscopy’ in a letter to Lady Welby,
and to the categories as ‘cenopythagorean’, that is, determined by number (SS
23–24, 1904).
10 Peirce had suggested as early as 1866 that Kant’s deduction of the categories from
the faculty of judgement is flawed in that there is no guarantee that the table of
judgements itself is correct (cf. W1 351).
11 Peirce never actually proved the theorem, but cf. Herzberger (1981).
12 ‘And so you will find out that it is a universal rule that to have a testing art we need
no other knowledge than a classifying science. And, accordingly, if we wish to be
able to test arguments, what we have to do, is to take all the arguments we can find,
scrutinize them and put those which are alike in a class by themselves and then
examine these different kinds and learn their properties. Now the classificatory
science of reasons so produced is the science of Logic.’ (W1 359)
13 By ‘ground’ Peirce seems to mean qualitative continuity: ‘The ground is the self
abstracted from the concreteness which implies the possibility of another.’ (CP
1.556, 1867)
14 Peirce himself likened the cognitive process to dipping a triangle apex-first into
water. Before the triangle touches the water, there is no cognition, but subsequently,
the lines drawn by the water on the triangle represent degrees of ever-increasing
‘liveliness’. There is no first line, and as each successive line is greater, each
successive cognition more lively that the one before. Cf. CP 5.263 (1868).
 Notes 191

15 ‘Thought, however, is in itself essentially of the nature of a sign. But a sign is not a
sign unless it translates itself into another sign in which it is more developed’ (CP
5.594, 1898). Note that although Locke does not state the matter in such terms,
by making ideas the signs of other ideas, he anticipates Peirce’s theory of the
interpretant as expounded in the early years of the century.
16 Cf., too, ‘The easiest of those which are of philosophical interest is the idea of a
sign, or representation. A sign stands for something to the idea which it produces,
or modifies. Or, it is a vehicle conveying into the mind something from without.
That for which it stands is called its object; that which it conveys, its meaning;
and the idea to which it gives rise, its interpretant. The object of representation
can be nothing but a representation of which the first representation is the
interpretant. But an endless series of representations, each representing the one
behind it, may be conceived to have an absolute object at its limit. The meaning
of a representation can be nothing but a representation. In fact, it is nothing but
the representation itself conceived as stripped of irrelevant clothing. But this
clothing never can be completely stripped off; it is only changed for something
more diaphanous. So there is an infinite regression here. Finally, the interpretant
is nothing but another representation to which the torch of truth is handed along;
and as representation, it has its interpretant again. Lo, another infinite series’.
(NEM4 309–10, 1894?)
17 Titled respectively, ‘Sundry Logical Conceptions’ and ‘Nomenclature and Divisions
of Triadic Relations, as Far as They are Determined’.
18 ‘By an application of Categoric, I show that the primary division of logic should
be into Stechiology [Speculative grammar], Critic and Methodeutic.’ Memoir 13
(NEM4 21, 1902).
19 Jakobson ([1965] 1971).
20 Marty (nd.).
21 Deely (2014): ‘Appendix A: Table and Texts of the 85 Peirce Definitions of Sign in
Chronological Order’.

Chapter 2

1 Some unpublished material in this chapter was presented at the Charles S. Peirce
International Centennial Congress in Lowell in September 2014, and at the
International Symposium on Cultural and Communication Semiotics, Sichuan
University, Chengdu, China, in July, 2015.
2 Cf., too, this by Max Fisch: ‘We may add now that logic also is a classificatory
science …. and that in his own lifetime as a whole, he devoted more labor to the
classification of signs than to any other single field of research.’ (1982: xxii)
192 Notes

3 Short (2007: 191), suggests that the two objects have their origin in the work of
the Stoics. Cf. ‘It will do no harm to note here that philosophists are in the habit of
distinguishing two objects of many signs, the immediate and the real. The former
is an image, or notion, which the interpreter is supposed to have already formed in
his mind before the sign is uttered.’ (R318 399–401, 1907)
4 Cf., too: ‘Objects of many signs: the immediate and the real object. The former is
the notion the interpreter is presumed already to have of the object’. (R318 529,
1907)
5 ‘The 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 what the thought is thought to be in the
subsequent thought to which it is a sign.’ (EP1 38–39, 1868)
6 ‘Now the reason why there should be three meanings but only two objects must lie
in the difference between the nature of the relation of the one and the other to the
sign. The principal difference of this kind is that the object, being the determining
cause of the sign, is previous to it, while the meaning, or interpretant, being
determined by the sign as its essential effect, is subsequent to it. This sought for
something must be of a mental nature, because such is the nature of the sign.’ (R318
407–409, 1907)
7 It is difficult to date this particular page and typology. It occurs on the verso of page
239 dated 10 July 1903 (H450), facing a similar hexadic typology on 240r (H451)
dated 7 August 1904. Peirce seems to have added it after the August typology,
which is why I have added a question mark. In any case, it is obvious it is from 1904
and not 1903.
8 See, for a different point of view, Joseph Ransdell’s essay ‘On the Use and Abuse
of the Immediate/Dynamical Object Distinction’ on the Arisbe site: http://www.
iupui.edu/~arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/ransdell/useabuse.htm (Accessed March
2016).
9 Note that an intervening classification of 7 August 1904 (R339, 240r (H451)) sets
out the divisions as (S), Oi, S–Od, Ii, Id, If (the latter is referred to as ‘signified
interpretant’ in the typology), with the three interpretants relating to different ways
of distinguishing between rheme, dicent and argument. S–Od is the only relational
division in this typology.
10 Note that Peirce appears to be inconsistent at this point, although it is more likely
that the sentence is simply elliptical. The general introduction to the typology reads:
‘Now signs may be divided as to their own material nature, as to their relations
to their objects, and as to their relations to their interpretants’ (CP 8.333), but he
refers to the Oi division as though it is independent: ‘In respect to its immediate
object a sign … [Emphasis added]’ (CP 8.336). References to this division will
simply show the relation S–Oi as in Figure 2.1.
 Notes 193

11 Cf. R793 9, which reads ‘this triadic relation being such as to determine C to be in a
relation …’.
12 The actual quotation is from pages numbered by Peirce as ‘26’ and ‘27’, but
the sequences themselves are numbers 39 and 40 out of eighty-one pages of
manuscript. The two objects in each case refer to the immediate and dynamic
objects: ‘–killed–’ is composed of two partial objects and therefore has two dynamic
and two immediate objects in each place-marker; the second, a monad, had one
dynamic and one immediate object.
13 ‘But if my words (can) be the seed (of infamy’s fruit) …’
14 The page is numbered ‘14’ by Peirce but the quotation appears on sequence 17 of
the manuscript.
15 In 1903 ‘seme’ was an alternative term for the index (CP 2.283).
16 ‘From the summer of 1905 to the same time in 1906, I devoted much study to my
ten trichotomies of signs.’ (CP 8.363, 1908)
17 Hardwick (SS 35n) notes that the order in the last two trichotomies of the hexad of
12 October 1904 is unusual for Peirce. This is because subsequently Peirce opted for
an ordering of the divisions based upon the ‘order of occurrence’ of the correlates
in semiosis.
18 Extracts from this draft are to be found in two pages of EP2 196–197, and seven in
SS 195–201.
19 Note that the page numbers in the references are those of Peirce himself.
20 EP2 544 n22.
21 ‘Analysis of the 76 definitions of the sign’ http://www.iupui.edu/~arisbe/
rsources/76DEFS/76defs.HTM (Accessed March 2016).
22 Cf., too, the entry in the Logic Notebook for 30 January 1906: ‘A sign is a species of
medium for intercommunication’ (R339 271r (H515)).
23 See, too, Bergman (2009: 128–129) for a discussion.
24 Cf. EP2 407 for a similar remark.
25 But see, too, ‘It seems best to regard a sign as a determination of a quasi-mind; for
if we regard it as an outward object, and as addressing itself to a human mind, that
mind must first apprehend it as an object in itself, and only after that consider it in
its significance; and the like must happen if the sign addresses itself to any quasi-
mind. It must begin by forming a determination of that quasi-mind, and nothing
will be lost by regarding that determination as the sign.’ (EP2 391, 1905)
26 A slightly different version of the concept of the commens is to be found in the
‘Prolegomena’ text of 1906: ‘Moreover, signs require at least two Quasi-minds; a Quasi-
utterer and a Quasi-interpreter; and although these two are at one (i.e. are one mind) in
the sign itself, they must nevertheless be distinct. In the Sign they are, so to say, welded.
Accordingly, it is not merely a fact of human Psychology, but a necessity of Logic, that
every logical evolution of thought should be dialogic.’ (CP 4.551, 1906)
194 Notes

27 See the table for August 31, 1906, in the Appendix.

28 Cf. ‘and more than these ten I don’t enquire into, not because I don’t think they are
in truth there, but simply because it will be all I possibly can do to define and to
prove these ten’. (R339 360r (H674))
29 See Liszka (1996: 120–123) for a useful discussion of the problem.
30 ‘Eventual’ and ‘normal’ are terms to which he returns on consecutive days in
December 1908 (CP 8.344, 8.372).
31 R339 271r (H515), 30 January 1906.

Chapter 3

1 The S–Ii division is one that Peirce subsequently dropped.

2 The letter is also reproduced in EP2 478–81.
3 ‘Traditionally the three modes of being are possibility, actuality, and necessity,
and it was natural that Peirce should have tried to correlate his categories with the
classic triad (6.342) The correlation, however leaves much to be desired. There is no
problem in matching Secondness with actuality, but Firstness and Thirdness do not
correspond easily with possibility and necessity … Thus any First is a description of a
possible object. But if this is all that is meant, it is obvious that there are two kinds of
possibility – relational and nonrelational – so the possibility is not confined to Firstness
but must be reintroduced in the other categories as well. In respect to Thirdness
and necessity the lack of correlation is even more obvious. Peirce seeks to justify his
position by arguing that just as the logical verb reappears in metaphysics as quality,
and the individual subject as a thing, “so the logical reason, or premiss, reappears
in metaphysics as a reason, an ens having a reality consisting in a ruling both of the
outward and the inward world, as its mode of being” (CP 1.515).’ Murphey (1993: 394).
4 Note, too, the rather curious entry in R339 concerning Peirce’s cosmological
investigations in 1908, the year of ‘The Neglected Argument for the Reality of God’:
‘Scheme of a Series of Papers, On the Cosmology of the Here and Hereafter …. I
now state the purpose of these papers. It is to show what logic demands that our
hypotheses should be in order to explain the most general phenomena of the three
Universes, in view of what science has hitherto brought to light and assuming that
we are sometimes able to communicate with the dead, and in view of the general
nature of such apparent communications. I mean, especially that 999 out of ’
[incomplete], R339 305v (H569), 2 September 1908.
5 The designation ‘token’ had already been introduced in 1885 along with index and
icon, but as an alternative to ‘symbol’: ‘A sign is in a conjoint relation to the thing
denoted and to the mind … Such signs are always abstract and general, because
 Notes 195

habits are general rules to which the organism has become subjected. They are, for
the most part, conventional or arbitrary. They include all general words, the main
body of speech, and any mode of conveying a judgment. For the sake of brevity I
will call them tokens.’ (CP 3.360)
6 Cf., too, a letter to William James (EP2 497).
7 Stjernfelt suggests that what Peirce means by this rather surprising reservation is
that the immediate object necessarily leaves part of the dynamic object unspecified
(2014: 99). Since the immediate object acts as a filter in the sequence, and
determines which parts of the dynamic object ‘reach’ the sign, this seems a very
plausible explanation.
8 In his analysis of the 70-plus definitions of the sign, Robert Marty distinguishes
between the original three correlates of the triadic relation as ‘global triadic’
and the later six-element definition as being ‘analytic triadic’. See his very
useful ‘Analysis of the 76 definitions of the sign’ http://www.iupui.edu/~arisbe/
rsources/76DEFS/76defs.HTM (Accessed March 2016).
9 The order in the case of the three ‘additional’ divisions being S–Od, S–Id, S–Od–If,
and S–If.
10 It must be understood that Peirce did not isolate the six correlates in this way, they
were included in the ten, but in a problematic order. Nor did he ever set out a table
in this ‘orthogonal’ manner.
11 The icon-index-symbol division is one of four divisions appended to the
description of the hexad in the 23 December letter (SS 84–85), and becomes the
fourth trichotomy in the ten Peirce describes in the draft of 25 December 1908
(EP2 489).
12 Andrew Diversey, personal communication.
13 Here again, as with Savan, the order presented for Lieb by Hardwick depends
crucially upon how we interpret the terms ‘destinate’ and ‘explicit’: for Weiss and
Burks, for Lieb and for the position adopted in this book, the terms correspond,
respectively, to immediate and final. Diversey (2014), like Savan, has mistakenly
inverted the order.
14 Cf. CP 8.347, where he is describing actisigns, this particular draft’s version
of the token: ‘B. Actisigns, or Objects which are Signs as Experienced hic et
nunc; such as any single word in a single place in a single sentence of a single
paragraph of a single page of a single copy of a book. There may be repetition
of the whole paragraph, this word included, in another place. But that other
occurrence is not this word. The book may be printed in an edition of ten
thousand; but THIS word is only in my copy.’ In other words, the legisign –
replica distinction of 1903 seems to have been, if not completely discarded, at
least neutralized temporarily.
196 Notes

15 Savan quoted Peirce from Buchler’s selection (Buchler [1940] 2011), presumably for
copyright reasons. In this instance the reference to Buchler 275–276 corresponds to
CP 5.473.
16 See Chapter 2, n 7.
17 Cf. OED, entry ‘Destinate: 2.2 Set apart for a particular purpose; ordained;
intended’.
18 Within his later systems, in which the type/instance distinction seems less
important (CP 8.347), the noun could conceivably have been placed at
existent ‘level’, so to speak, as a token. In CP 8.359 he maintains the distinction
between the ‘general’ word and its instances. Note, too, that it is immaterial
whether the immediate object division precedes or follows that of the dynamic.
It is the interpretant sequence determined by a possible dynamic object which
counts.
19 This was the reasoning I suggested in Jappy (1985), and thirty years later I see no
reason to change my point of view.
20 ‘The verbal expression “If—, then— ” is a Famisign, as all words are (in the sense in
which two that are just alike are the very same “word”).’ (CP 8.359)
21 Peirce had already used this denomination in the typology of 31 August 1906
(Table 8 in the Appendix).
22 The justification given for the contents of this particular division is to be found in
the preceding paragraphs, given here (CP 8.346): ‘I. A Sign is necessarily in itself
present to the Mind of its Interpreter. Now there are three entirely different ways in
which Objects are present to minds:
First, in themselves as they are in themselves. Namely, Feelings are so present. At
the first instant of waking from profound sleep when thought, or even distinct
perception, is not yet awake, if one has gone to bed more asleep than awake in a
large, strange room with one dim candle. At the instant of waking the tout ensemble
is felt as a unit. The feeling of the skylark’s song in the morning, of one’s first
hearing of the English nightingale.
Secondly, the sense of something opposing one’s Effort, something preventing
one from opening a door slightly ajar; which is known in its individuality by
the actual shock, the Surprising element, in any Experience which makes it sui
generis.Thirdly, that which is stored away in one’s Memory; Familiar, and as
such, General.’
23 See Chapter 2, n 10.
24 Savan has suggested convincingly that Peirce was influenced at this stage by the
Greek concept of ‘καλοσ’ (1988: 64).
25 Remember that in 1908 the earlier distinction between sinsign and replica of a
legisign is less rigorously stated since the token doubles for both, in spite of some
references to ‘instances’ (compare CP 8.345 and CP 8.347, for example).
 Notes 197

Chapter 4

1 ‘Resemblance is an identity of characters; and this is the same as to say that the
mind gathers the resembling ideas together into one conception’ (CP 1.365, c.
1890).
2 Even before working on the various drafts for the Lowell Lectures on logic, Peirce
had already envisaged employing the categories to trichotomize the icon in his
Harvard Lectures on pragmatism presented earlier in the year: ‘Now the Icon may
undoubtedly be divided according to the categories; but the mere completeness
of the notion of the icon does not imperatively call for any such division. For a
pure icon does not draw any distinction between itself and its object. It represents
whatever it may represent, and whatever it is like, it in so far is. It is an affair of
suchness only’ (CP 5.74, 1903).
3 There is also an earlier version of this particular statement: ‘Icons may be
distinguished, though only roughly, into those which [represent] are icons in
respect to the qualities of sense, being images, and those which are icons in respect
to the dyadic relations of their parts to one another being diagrams or dyadic
analogues, and those which are icons in respect to their intellectual characters,
being examples’ (Lattmann 2012, 536n2). According to André de Tienne,
director of the Peirce Edition Project (personal communication), the passage is
not a variant, as Lattmann suggests, but is in fact part of a text that precedes the
composition of what was published as CP 2.277. I assume, therefore, that Peirce
preferred the version to be found in volume two of The Essential Peirce (274) and
the Collected Papers and which I have quoted in the main text.
4 ‘Slaughter-house workers’ would have been more appropriate but would have
complicated Figure 4.5. Hence ‘butchers’.
5 See chapter five of Jappy (2013) for a fuller discussion.
6 It would be irrelevant to give the details of this linguistic movement here, but the
interested reader can consult Jappy (1999) and references.
7 Note that it has to be a universe of existence; otherwise we should be unable to
perceive it. A universe of necessitants would be invisible, and a universe of ideas
and qualities would be an indefinite chaos.
8 The notion was not entirely new: ‘All propositions relate to the same ever-reacting
singular; namely, to the totality of all real objects. It is true that when the Arabian
romancer tells us that there was a lady named Scherherazade, he does not mean
to be understood as speaking of the world of outward realities, and there is a great
deal of fiction in what he is talking about. For the fictive is that whose characters
depend upon what characters somebody attributes to it; and the story is, of course,
the mere creation of the poet’s thought. Nevertheless, once he has imagined
Scherherazade and made her young, beautiful, and endowed with a gift of spinning
198 Notes

stories, it becomes a real fact that so he has imagined her, which fact he cannot
destroy by pretending or thinking that he imagined her to be otherwise. What he
wishes us to understand is what he might have expressed in plain prose by saying,
“I have imagined a lady, Scherherazade by name, young, beautiful and a tireless
teller of tales, and I am going on to imagine what tales she told.” This would have
been a plain expression of professed fact relating to the sum total of realities’ (CP
5.152, 1903). The association seems to have been inspired initially by his work on
the graphs. See, for example, CP 4.421 of 1903.
9 A figure much favoured by Dylan Thomas: ‘Fern Hill’ begins with a number of
cases.
10 See, for example, Jerry Uelsmann’s contemporary art photography in Uelsmann et
al. (2013).
11 If the analysis is correct, the photograph is a gratific, concussive, collective copulant
token, a rather soulless label for such a magnificent image.
12 The image is set, in fact, in the City of London’s financial district. The portrait is
first made in the studio and then mapped digitally onto settings like the one in
Flower Seller. For a general introduction to the series the reader can consult, as I
have, Professor Mark Durden’s essay on how Goto’s tableaux subvert conventional
documentary photography: Mark Durden, ‘Mixed Messages: Disordering
Documentary’
http://www.johngoto.org.uk/essays/%20Gilt%20City%20essay/Durden.htm
(Accessed March 2016).
13 Sontag (1977).
14 Briefly, shifters are verbal items whose meaning is determined by their relation
to a ‘deictic centre’ composed of speaker, place and time of utterance. In other
words, instead of there being a reference in the utterance to something outside
the utterance, the reference is to the act of uttering. This relation is obviously
existential, hence their classification by Peircean linguists as lexical. Peirce himself
suggests that an index is a sign of ‘direct experience so far as it directs attention
to an Object’ (CP 2.255). See, too, CP 2.287–290, for a detailed discussion and
examples.
15 ‘Simulacra and Simulations’, from Jean Baudrillard, Selected Writings, Mark Poster
(ed.), Stanford; Stanford University Press (1988: 166–184).
16 Similarly, Barbara Kruger was to subvert and at the same time emasculate, so
to speak, the existential power of the index by photographing other peoples’
photographs, generally from the 1950s, and placing lines of text on them, a strategy
which destroys their deictic character by lowering their indexical status in the
hierarchy and turning them into icons. We see, then, that although the photograph
is a truly indexical medium, the existential nature of the relation holding between
model and camera is, in fact, anything but tyrannical.
 Notes 199

17 Lakoff and Johnson (1980) was the groundbreaking study in the field, and it showed
how combinations of the universes of everyday experience contributed to the
construction and production of metaphor.
18 Cf. CP 6.338–348 and EP2 478–79.

Chapter 5

1 As mentioned in the Acknowledgements, some of the ideas in this chapter were

worked out in a paper published in Semiotics and Language Studies, Volume 1, No.
4, 2015 (Jappy 2015).
2 It is an ‘icon of dissent’ (2007: 148).
3 The National Gallery Podcast: Episode 81, July 2013. http://www.nationalgallery.
org.uk/podcasts/the-national-gallery-podcast-episode-eighty-one (Accessed March
2016). The extract from the podcast and the painting itself can be seen in Jappy
(2015: 2).
4 http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/jan-miense-molenaer-a-young-man-
and-woman-making-music (Accessed March 2016).
5 Peirce did not, of course, suggest that symbols were fixed once and for all. ‘Symbols
grow’, he wrote in 1894 (EP2 10). In 1903 he made the following remark: ‘For every
symbol is a living thing, in a very strict sense that is no mere figure of speech. The
body of the symbol changes slowly, but its meaning inevitably grows, incorporates
new elements and throws off old ones … Every symbol is, in its origin, either
an image of the idea signified, or a reminiscence of some individual occurrence,
person or thing, connected with its meaning, or is a metaphor’ (CP 2.222). This
does not mean, however, that it can represent two distinct objects at the same time
as a theory of indirection requires: for this we really need the distinction between
immediate and dynamic object.
6 EP2 300.
7 If Short had investigated the hypoicons, metaphor in particular, he might not have
made this statement.
8 Short’s remark is possibly due in part to the fact that Peirce uses the term
‘immediate object’ in at least three distinct manners. The first is the familiar
semiotic distinction that he made in 1908 between the dynamic and immediate
objects of any sign and is an important subject of the present study. The second,
earlier, conception was used in a metaphysical sense in relation to cognition in
general: ‘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 former shall be termed the objective, the latter the subjective, element of the
cognition. The cognition itself is an intuition of its objective element, which may
200 Notes

therefore be called, also, the immediate object’ (CP 5.238, 1868), while almost forty
years later, as in this extract from ‘Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmaticism’, he
was to write: ‘The Immediate Object of all knowledge and all thought is, in the last
analysis, the Percept. This doctrine in no wise conflicts with Pragmaticism, which
holds that the Immediate Interpretant of all thought proper is Conduct’ (CP 4.539,
1906). The third is confusing, and seems to be a mirror image of the immediate
interpretant inasmuch as it is the idea or notion the interpreter of, say, a verbal
utterance is supposed by the utterer to have of the dynamic object of the utterance:
‘Objects of many signs; the immediate and the real object. The former is the notion
the interpreter is presumed already to have of the object’ (R318 529 and also at
R318 401, 1907). This comes from the complex ‘Pragmatism’ text in which Peirce
is principally concerned with conceptions for which, as we saw in Chapter 2, he
suggested in his pursuit of the logical interpretant that the dynamic and immediate
objects were the determinants of the energetic and emotional interpretants,
respectively.
9 Note, however, when a label such as ‘Nocturne’ or ‘Serenade’ or ‘Symphony No. 9’ is
attached to them, the classification, even in hexadb, would be different.
10 ‘The different members of the set which is the object of a verb, – its partial objects
as they may be called, – often have distinctive characters which are the same for
large numbers of verbs’ (R318 627, 1907).
11 The Gallery label describes the mural thus: ‘Emanuel Leutze’s mural celebrates
the western expansion of the United States. A group of pioneers and their train
of covered wagons are pictured at the continental divide, looking towards the
sunset and the Pacific Ocean. The border depicts vignettes of exploration and
frontier mythology. Beneath the central composition is a panoramic view of their
destination “Golden Gate,” in San Francisco Bay. The mural’s title is a verse from
the poem “On the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America” by Bishop
George Berkeley (1685–1753)’ http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/
artwork/?id=14569 (Accessed March 2016).
12 http://www.aoc.gov/capitol-hill/other-paintings-and-murals/westward-course-
empire-takes-its-way (Accessed March 2016).
13 The coloured original can be seen here: http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/
permanent/308328.html (Accessed March 2016).
14 Turner (1893), ‘The Significance of the Frontier in American History’ (PDF). http://
nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/gilded/empire/text1/turner.pdf (Accessed March
2016).
15 Within the 10-class system all three would be classified as replicas of dicent
indexical legisigns with their respective captions, and iconic sinsigns without. To
identify what they represent, we have to have recourse to the 1908 hexad.
 Notes 201

16 http://ebooks.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-
idx?c=usde;cc=usde;rgn=full%20text;idno=usde0006-4;didno=usde0006-
4;view=image;seq=0350;node=usde0006-4%3A6 (Accessed March 2016).
17 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lady_of_Shalott (Accessed March 2016).
18 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/waterhouse-the-lady-of-shalott-n01543
(Accessed March 2016).
19 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/egg-past-and-present-no-1-n03278 (Accessed
March 2016).
20 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hunt-the-awakening-conscience-t02075/text-
summary (Accessed March 2016).
21 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/stanhope-thoughts-of-the-past-n03338
(Accessed March 2016).
22 See Roberts (1972) for a review of how Victorian artists portrayed the often
severely restricted roles Victorian society reserved for women, and the retribution
visited on the poor creatures who failed to respect them by stony-hearted fathers
and husbands.
23 It should be noted that ‘ideology’ was not a term that Peirce used – his version
was the first branch of philosophy and was variously titled ‘phenomenology’ and
‘phaneroscopy’ (he follows the French ‘Idéologues’ from the French Revolution and
their ‘science of ideas’) and was oriented towards ‘conventional’ phenomenology.
24 http://www.johngoto.org.uk/summer/8.htm (Accessed March 2016).
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 Index

abstraction 16, 53, 55, 68, 98, 148, 182, 186 Course of Empire, The 164
abstractive sign 84, 86–8, 90, 93–8, 101–2, critic (‘narrow’ logic) 8–10, 13, 23–4, 30,
118, 121, 153–4, 173 36
Across the Continent: ‘Westward The Course
of Empire Takes Its Way’ 161–2 Danaher, D. 138
American Progress 161–3 Decline and Fall 66, 163–4
An Essay Concerning Human Deely, J. 36, 51
Understanding 11, 14, 19 definite article as sign 1, 28, 66, 96, 146
Anderson, D. 78, 138 degeneracy, phenomenological principle
architectonic 14–15, 17 of 7, 16, 17, 28, 35, 44, 90
Aristotle 10, 15 Deledalle, G. 10, 43
Atkin, A. 8, 36 Deluge 174
A Young Man and Woman Making Music Derrida, J. 135
144 Descartes, R. 12, 20
diagram 27, 55, 109, 111–19, 122,
Barthes, R. 109–10, 172 126, 131–2, 136–7, 147. See
Baudrillard, J. 135 also hypoicon; three grades of
beauty, Peirce’s problematic discussion of resemblance
94–7 in hypallage and metonymy 122
Benedict, G. 51 dicent sign 30, 129, 135. See also dicisign;
Bergman, M. 69, 79 proposition
Burks, A. 2, 89–90 dicisign 30–5, 61, 88, 95–6, 103–4, 111,
120, 156
classification of signs. See typology, defined 148, 169
typologies Diversey, A. 90
categorial distinctions as classificational division of signs See under trichotomy
criteria 28–30, 35, 44, 110 drawing (Cheyne Walk, London) 33,
categories of the forms of experience 20, 117–9, 158, 167
59–60, 81, 103, 117 dynamic interpretant 41, 45, 48, 62, 64–5,
category 5, 16, 20, 28, 31, 58, 68, 75, 78–9, 67–8, 76, 87, 90, 101, 119, 128, 140
81–2, 102, 104, 111, 116. See also dynamic object 48–49, 54, 57, 90–5,
Firstness; Secondness; Thirdness 139–41, 154–60, 171–4, 176–8
collective sign 64, 84, 86–7, 90, 94, 96–7, vs immediate object 150–3, 159–60,
101–3, 118, 124, 128–9, 132, 135, 176
154, 159, 163, 167–8, 175 problematic status among scholars
commens 63–64, 173, 193 150–1
communicational interpretant 62, 92 structuring role in semiosis 60–2, 73,
concretive sign 84, 86, 97, 101–2, 118–21, 82, 139, 152
128, 135, 151, 154, 158, 162, 167–8, as universe of existence 118, 123–4,
173 126, 135, 154, 156
copulant sign 84, 86, 93, 96, 98, 101, 103,
118, 124, 128–9, 132, 135, 159, 162, effectual interpretant 62–3, 92–3
167–8, 170, 176 emotional interpretant 68, 70–1, 96, 100
208 Index

empiricism 10, 17 hexadic typology 4, 5, 43, 46, 47, 52,

energetic interpretant 68, 70–1 53, 54, 73, 75, 82, 83, 85, 88, 97–8,
existent (modality of being) 99–100, 103, 104, 112, 118, 120,
interpretant 102 124, 129, 135, 138, 172, 178, 192 n.7
object 29, 71–2, 84, 98–9, 118–9, 154, Houser, N. 1–3, 37, 78, 101, 177–8
175 hypallage 122, 125
sign 28, 32, 58, 99, 101, 117, 146, 176 hypoicon, hypoiconicity 4, 27, 107,
universe 102–3, 153 109–13, 116–17, 122, 125, 136, 138,
Existential Graphs 55, 59, 85, 109, 138 147, 176. See also diagram; image;
metaphor
Factor, R. L. 138
familiar signs (famisigns) 96, 99 icon 4, 6, 17, 19, 27, 30–3, 35, 41, 44–6, 48,
Ferlinghetti, L. 174 55, 64, 67, 77, 88, 103–4, 111–13,
field of the interpretant (interpretant field) 117, 120, 125, 136, 138, 147, 158
63 defined 29, 109–10
final interpretant 54, 67–73, 76, 87–92, iconicity 35, 117, 138, 147
100–2, 105, 119, 124, 129, 140, iconography 146
171–2 ideology (the object as) 144, 152, 168,
Firstness 16–17, 19, 30–1, 35, 59, 77–8, 82, 172–4
86, 102, 110–11, 113 Peirce’s conception of 201 n.23
and hypoiconicity 113 image (hypoicon) 111, 117–118, 128–30,
and mode of representation 110–11 132, 144, 146, 152–3, 155, 158,
Fisch, M. 13–14, 37 161–2, 164, 167–70, 172–3, 176
Flower Seller 129–32 immediate interpretant 46, 48–9, 62, 65,
form communicated by medium 55–9, 67–8, 71, 76, 78, 87, 89–92, 95, 101,
61–2, 73, 81–2, 104, 116–17, 147, 119–20, 124, 128–9, 140
151–3 immediate object 43–4, 48–9, 56–7, 61,
Freadman, A. 37 64, 70–1, 76, 79, 81, 83–4, 86, 94–5,
119, 123, 126, 129, 131, 140, 143,
generality 54, 99, 124, 182 147–8, 150–3, 162, 170, 172,
Goto, J. 129–31, 135, 174, 198 n.12, 174–6
201 n.24 as semiotic filter 99, 118, 120, 138, 147,
grand logic 4, 7–8, 12, 24, 25–6, 40, 155, 176
63, 101–2, 139–41, 178. See also implication principle 29–30, 147
philosophy of representation; index 19, 31–4, 104, 109, 111–12, 117,
trivium 148
major characteristics of 35 in icon-symbol division 4, 6, 17, 19, 30,
35, 41, 44–6, 55, 88, 103, 138, 158
Haley, M. C. 138 and implication principle 29, 147
Hamilton, (Sir) W. 43, 82 photograph as 33, 133–4
Hariman, R. 144, 147, 153, 173 informational sign 28, 30, 33–4, 95
Haussman, C. 138, 150 the photograph as 23, 129
hexad 52, 62–3, 65, 75–7, 86–7, 89, 95–7, instance 29, 34, 52, 65, 124, 146–7, 157,
99–101, 103, 107–9, 117–18, 122, 164. See also replica; token
125, 131, 138, 148, 158–9, 170, 172, intentional interpretant 61–3, 91–3,
175–8 109–110
hexad of 1904 47–9, 76 interpretant 21–3, 61–3, 71, 73, 76, 85,
hexadb 87, 89, 104–5, 118–20, 124, 91–3, 102, 109–110, 118, 152
128, 131, 143, 159, 178 continuous series of 21–3
hexadic semiosis 85, 88, 103–4, 112, 172 orthogonal perspective 100
 Index 209

in triadic relations 26 Manifest Destiny 161, 163–4

interpretant sequence 71, 73, Marty, R. 36, 56
93, 95, 102, 118, 152. See also McLuhan, M. 59–60
dynamic interpretant; field of the medium, media 16, 22, 32–3, 55–62, 83,
interpretant; final interpretant; 98, 112–13, 115–17, 119, 124, 134,
immediate interpretant 137, 139, 143, 148, 152–3, 155
interpreter 17, 21, 59, 61–3, 67, 70, 84, hexadic expansion 55–6
95, 98, 101, 114, 123, 125, 147–8, in rhetoric 112–21
152–3, 157, 189, 192–3 sign defined as 58, 62
irony 131–2, 176 sketch-pad as 57, 156
as contrasted universes 132, 135, 137 Merrell, F. 50–1
diagrammatic structure of 131 metaphor 27, 109–117, 137–8, 176, 199
Issues of Pragmatism in the Normative incongruous and underspecified
Sciences 58 character of 114–5, 117, 137, 176
parallelism in 114, 116, 122, 128, 137, 176
Jakobson, R. 35, 191 n.19 phenomenological bottleneck 115
James, W. 40, 68, 79–80, 122–4, 136–7, metaphysics 15, 70
140, 149, 151, 155–6, 158, 171–2, methodeutic 4–5, 8–9, 13, 23–4, 36, 39,
175, 195 n.6 75, 102, 108, 136, 138–41. See also
speculative rhetoric
Kant, E. 10–11, 13–16, 18, 20 metonymy 122
Keats, J. 96 Minute Logic 36, 108
Kent, B. 9 modalities of being 77–82, 84, 102, 104
Krauss, R. 133–4 mode of representation 27, 88, 96, 110,
147, 178. See also hypoiconicity;
Lady of Shalott, The 164–8, 174–9 icon; iconicity; index; symbol
Lalor, B. 68–9, 100 Mona Lisa 113, 120
Lattmann, C. 138, 197 n.3 Morand, B. 90
legisign 1, 28–9, 31–5, 48, 53, 55, 65, 66, Müller, R. 90
77, 83, 86, 90, 96, 99, 104, 111, 117, Murphey, M. 10, 15, 80
146
Leibnitz, G. W. 20 necessitant (modality of being)
Liszka, J. 3, 8–9, 37 interpretant 101–2
Locke, J. 10–14, 16–22, 105 object 71, 84, 90, 98, 128–9, 160, 167,
conception of logic 13 170–1, 173–4, 176–7
concept of semeiotic 11, 14, 17, sign 83, 87, 94–5, 101
19–20 universe 82, 135, 153, 159, 197 n.7
concept of sign 12 Neglected Argument for the Reality of God,
logic. See also grand logic The 78, 98, 154, 158, 173, 194 n.4
obsistent (critic) 36 No Caption Needed 144
originalian (speculative grammar) 36 number, idealist tradition 20
as semeiotic 13–4
transuasional (speculative rhetoric) 36, object 48–9, 54, 57, 60–2, 73, 82, 88,
108, 136, 138 90–5, 113–16, 118, 120–4, 126,
logical interpretant 40, 66, 67–8, 70–3, 97, 128–9, 135, 137, 139–41, 144–5,
200 n.8 149–60, 165, 171–4, 176–8. See also
ultimate 72–3 dynamic object; immediate object
Logic Notebook 31, 39–41, 44, 46–9, 53, collateral experience/knowledge/
65, 67, 100, 140, 159 observation of 83, 123, 129, 132,
Lucaites, J. L. 144, 147, 153, 173 151–2, 157–8
210 Index

historical review of 148–55 Prolegomena to an Apology for

as universe 155–9 Pragmaticism 53, 59, 77, 79–81,
Ogden, C. K. 3, 89, 155 138, 171
On a New List of Categories 21 propaganda (the object as) 164, 174,
On Photography 139, 143 177
ontology, ontological 90, 149, 158, 175 proposition 18–9, 27, 35, 58, 71, 82, 88, 96,
ontological turn 175 101, 109, 146, 148, 156
ordering problem in typologies 3, 89, 103, propositional structure 32, 34. See also
107, 177–8 dicent sign; dicisign
correlate order 44, 54, 65, 76, 82, 89,
91–2, 94–5 qualisign 28, 31–2, 35
cyclical correlate order 77, 89 quasi-mind 61, 116, 193 n.25
semiosis order 75, 94 quasi-predicate 34, 132, 169
O’Sullivan, J. L. 163–4
Outcast, The 167–8 Reid, T. 43
relational divisions of signs 28, 35, 89, 91,
partial object 60, 95, 113–16, 118, 120–1, 103, 110
126, 128–9, 137, 144–5, 149, 156–7, replica 1, 28–30, 33–4, 52, 117, 124, 126,
165. See also special object 146. See also instance; token
perception 10, 22, 47 representamen
Pharies, D. 137 in correlate order 44
phenomenological complexity as critical controversy concerning 50–2,
classificatory criterion 35, 49, 54 69, 73, 155
phenomenological criteria in typology and definition of sign 35, 50–5
ordering 89–90, 104, 114–7, 175 triadic relations and 25–6, 28, 112
phenomenology 7, 15–19, 21, 23–5, 30, 35, resemblance, three grades 111–12. See also
90, 201 n.23 hypoiconicity
defined 15 rhetoric 112–21
philosophy of representation 7–35, 40, 55, and hypoicons 110–21
60, 75, 102, 104, 107–8, 117, 137–8, and speculative rhetoric 108–9
140, 178. See also. critic; grand and universe of existence 122–38
logic; trivium Richards, I. A. 3, 89, 155
photograph 33, 57, 59, 108, 113, 117,
119–20, 131–9, 143–5, 157, 159, Savan, D. 3, 68, 78, 89, 91
167, 169–70, 173–4, 176, Schapiro, M. 170
198 n.10 Secondness 16–17, 19, 28, 30–1, 35, 59,
as dicisign 31, 33–4 77–8, 82, 86, 102, 115
as quasi-proposition 134, 160 in hypoiconicity 113
possible (modality of being) and mode of representation 111
object 30, 84, 94, 153, 155, 194 n.3, semiosis. See also sign-action
196 n.18 correlates involved in 59, 81, 93, 141,
sign 82, 95 175
universe 102–3, 153–4, 175 hexadic typology 54, 85, 88, 99, 104,
pragmatism 40, 44, 66, 70, 72–3, 97, 199, 109, 112, 172
197 n.2 role of the object in 60, 94, 139, 148,
predicate 151–3
basic structure 59 order of determination in 85–6, 88
predicate-based classification 104 role of the sign in 36, 50, 52, 63, 138
prescission 16. See also abstraction restricted role of utterer in 61, 158
 Index 211

semiotics 2, 4–5, 7–11, 13–14, 17, 19, 21, subject-predicate distinction 15–16, 18,
23, 27, 36–7, 39–40, 43–4, 63, 52, 30, 33–4, 148
55, 63, 69, 73, 80, 97, 99, 101–3, syntax in double signs 30, 34
107, 120, 136, 138, 140, 143–5, 153, Syllabus of Certain Topics of Logic (Syllabus)
159, 171–6 8, 22–3, 46, 84, 169, 189 n.4
as logic 13–14, 17, 19, 21, 27, 36–7, symbol 4, 6, 8, 13, 17, 19, 22, 27, 29–32,
174–7 34–6, 41, 44–6, 48, 55, 63, 64, 77,
Shapiro, M. 3, 138 85, 88, 103–5, 108–12, 114, 122,
Sherman, C. 132–5, 151 124, 126–7, 138, 145–8, 165
Short, T. 3, 37, 44, 46, 68–9, 73, 78, 137, defined 145
150–1 dicent 125–6
sign 3, 23, 25–6, 35, 40, 42, 55–7, 59–60, different from icon and index 112, 122,
110, 112, 153, 171 138
defined 1, 9, 22, 26, 50, 61, 69, 149, 156, as potential vehicle of indirection
190 n.5, 191 n.15, 193 n.22, 194 n.5 145–6, 148
sign-action. See also semiosis types of cultural symbol 146–7
definition 3, 23, 52 Symbolic Mutation 126–9
as mediation 112 system 173–4
sign-system 2–5, 7, 23, 25, 39, 75–105,
107, 123, 132, 143, 173, 178. See ten classes of signs of 1903 23–4, 30–4
also typology, typologies 10-class system 4, 47, 83, 95, 102, 158, 175,
defined 3 178, 200 n.15
simulation 135–7, 176 Thirdness 7, 16–17, 19, 28, 30–1, 35, 59,
sinsign 28, 31–5, 48, 53, 55, 65–6, 77, 83, 77–8, 82, 86, 101, 111
86, 99, 103, 111, 113, 117, 119–20, and hypoiconicity 113
126, 129, 132, 138, 151, 158 and mode of representation 111
iconic sinsign 32, 103, 117, 120, 138, 158 Thomas, D 122–6
sixty-six classes 1–3, 42, 54, 102–4, 109, three grades of resemblance 111–12. See
123–4, 155, 175, 178 also hypoiconicity
category vs universe 104 token 53, 64–6, 83, 86, 90, 99, 101, 108–9,
classificatory principles 103 118–120, 124, 128, 132, 135, 159, 167
ten divisions 2, 75, 104, 109, 122–3, tone (replacing qualisign) 64–6, 83
155 transuasional logic 36, 108, 138. See also
66-class system (of signs) 4, 75–6, 88, 97, methodeutic, speculative rhetoric
99, 118, 177, 189 triad 15–16, 20–1, 53, 60, 65, 67–70, 90,
social movement 160–4 103–4, 117, 150
Sontag, S. 133, 139–40, 143–4, 147, 153, triadic relation 25–27
173 triadomany 21
special object 124–6, 149, 156–8, 165 trivium 8, 13. See also grand logic;
speculative grammar 8–9, 13, 17, 24, 30, philosophy of representation
36, 40, 108–9, 116, 139–40 Turner, F. J. 161
speculative rhetoric 4–5, 9, 13, 24, 36. See 28-class system 4, 8, 76, 80, 84, 102–3, 139,
also methodeutic 174–5, 177
Spinks, C. W. 2–3 typology, typologies 3–6, 23, 35, 39–42,
subject 15–16, 18, 30, 33–4, 59–60, 86, 91, 44, 45–9, 52, 54–5, 65, 75–9, 86–95,
93, 97, 102, 118–19, 148 98–100, 102, 105, 107, 118, 120,
and hexadic typology 97, 118 123–4, 135–6, 138, 141, 151, 171,
quasi-subject in photographs 34, 119 175, 177. See also ordering problem;
in semiosis 55–6 sign-system
212 Index

Uelsmann, J. 126–9, 144, 167, 170, 198 n.10 Untitled Film Still #14 132–6
universe utterer 59–63, 92, 115, 140, 152–3, 158,
confused with category 77–9, 103–4 200 n.8
and definition of sign 81, 83 in semiosis 158
and hierarchy principle 85–6, 94–5
implicit 131–2, 137 Weiss, P. 2, 89–90
and range of dynamic objects 118 Welby, (Lady), V. 41–4, 47–9, 63, 67–8,
vs universe of discourse 79–82 79–81, 83, 87–9, 91–3, 98, 100,
universe of existence 79–80, 83, 116, 102–3, 141, 149, 152–4, 172, 175
122–6, 129, 132, 137, 144, 149, 154, Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its
156–9, 177 Way 160, 162
universe of experience 79, 162 worldview 160–4. See also ideology