Logic as Semiotic : The Theory of Signs:

C. S. Peirce devolped a semiotic theory. Derived from a theory of representation, where a

‘mental product’ ‘reflected/mirrored’ the world.
Focul point of text is the trichotomy of ways a sign passes through a interpretant,
and what this relasonship tells us process of the production and interpretation of signs.
Peirce defines a sign as “is something which stands to somebody for
something in some respect or capacity”
Sometimes uses term representamen, means the same as sign.

Charles Morris agrees. Also mentions Karl Bühler

Process open to variation,

Three fundamental semiotic relasonships between a sign and object:

- Indexes: Physical/excential connection with each other, one proves the
excistence of the other. Bullet hole proves there is a bullet.
- Icon: Based on resemblance between each other. Share properties. Computer
Icons.
- Symbol – Signify without motivation, through conventions and rules.

Man is sign, every thought is a sign. The mind is structured as a sign process.
This is the thesis of Locke aswell (An Essay Concerning Human Understanding)
We construct both ourself and our world from this.

We see an sign, observe characteristics of it. Then through Abstraction, we can be led to
statements about what must be the character of all signs used by intelligent life.
Abstraction is a kind of observation.

abstractive observation. Say your curious if you’d like to be made of gold, abstractive
observation is where you imagine it, examine it, and then observe if it’s a positive.

A sign of representamen is “something which stands to somebody for something in some

respect or capacity”
A representamen, creates a sign in a persons head, called a interpretant. Which
stands for something, the thing it stands for is a object
Object is spefic and unique, Called the ground of the representamen.
Thus, a representamen is connected to three things, the ground, the
object and the interpretant.

Semitoics has three branches:

- gram- matica speculative (Or, Pure grammar) - Discover the true representamen
used by ‘scientific intelligence’ to embody meaning.
 - Logic proper – What is true of the representamen, they we notice it represents
the object (I think?)

- Pure rhetoric – How a person makes a conncection between two signs. Or how
the Interpretnet bit works (I think?)

The three are depented on each other.

2. Three Trichotomies of Signs:

A Sinsign, actual real event/sign

A Qualisign – A quality but not a sign in itself, like a characteristic? Unsure.
A Legisign – Not actually a sign in itself but been universially agreed to mean something. Like
the word The.

A Rheme – Offers information without us realising. Like its linked due to a realsonship.
Represents charecteristics.
A Dicent Sign – Sign of actual existence.
An Argument – NO clue. It’s a Sign of law

“virtue of a law” – Meaning societally agreed. Not naturally the case ya know.

Sign can be iconic – meaning it represents object through similarities.

Icons – Images, Diagrams, Meataphors.

“For a great dis- tinguishing property of the icon is that by the direct observation of it other
truths concerning its object can be discovered than those which suf- fice to determine its
construction”

“But in the syntax of every lan- guage there are logical icons of the kind that are aided by
conventional rules. . . .”

Photography is a second class of sign. Those by physical connection.

Many diagrams resemble their objects not at all in looks; it is only in respect to the relations
of their parts that their likeness consists.

Index:
Associated with object through dynamical connection.
No significant recembelnce to object. Refer to indivituals/singular.
Assoction by contiguity. (No indrinsic connection, a bullet hole wouldn’t mean a bullet if
you’d never seen one)
Can be the junction between two experiences, like something that startles you. (Can a
movie not have a index then? I thought they could?)

Letters aren’t inherently representative of the thing. “A said to B…” we attach a likeness to
A.

Selective and Possive pronous are indxes, tell the reader what to do or refers to a person.

Symbols “it must denote an individual, and must signify a character”

man walking with a child points his arm up into the air and says, “There is a balloon.”
The pointing arm is an essential part of the symbol without which the latter would convey no
information. But if the child asks, “What is a balloon,” and the man replies, “It is something
like a great big soap bubble,” he makes the image a part of the symbol

“Loveth” is a symbol. “Romeo loveth Juliet” – Romeo and Juliet are indexs. And the mental
image that sentence pops up is the icon.
I thought Index had to be real? The ballet example are not real.

Symbols grow and change over time, While a individual cannot change them.

TEN classes of sign:

- A Qualisign – Like a charectristic and a sign? (Eg, “The colour Red”)

- An Iconic Sinsign – A charectstic makes you think of an object? (EG, a Diagram)
- A Rhematic Indexical Sinsign – Something that brings attention to a object? (e,g
a spntanious cry).
- A Dicent Sinsign – Gives information regarding its Object, must be real like a
index I think? (Eg, a thermostat)
- An Iconic Legisign – A societally agreed object that carries a charectersitic that
conjures up a mental image, but only because its law (e,g A diagram without the
words?)
- Rhematic Indexical Legisign – A law, which draws attention to its object (eg, the
word This/That)
- A Dicent Indexical Legisign – I don’t know. A Street Cry
- A Rhematic Symbol or Symbolic Rheme – A sign connected by genral ideas, like a
concept (Commen nouns, like Bread, or Boy).
- A Dicent Symbol – No clue?
- An Argument – The Hidden sign we view truth through?

Do not get the variety.

First and secondenss?

Replica?

“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 deter- mining a Third, called its lnterpretant, to assume the same triadic rela- tion 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. That is the reason
the lnterpretant, or Third, cannot stand in a mere dyadic rela- tion to the Object, but must stand in such a relation
to it as the Represen- tamen itself does. Nor can the triadic relation in which the Third stands be merely similar
to that in which the First stands, for this would make the relation of the Third to the First a degenerate
Secondness merely. The Third must indeed stand in such a relation, and thus must be capable of determining a
Third of its own; but besides that, it must have a sec- ond triadic relation in which the Representamen, or rather
the relation thereof to its Object, shall be its own (the Third’s) Object, and must be capable of determining a
Third to this relation. All this must equally be true of the Third’s Thirds and so on endlessly; and this, and more,
is in- volved in the familiar idea of a Sign; and as the term Representamen is here used, nothing more is implied.
A Sign is a Representamen with a mental lnterpretant. Possibly there may be Representamens that are not Signs.
Thus, if a sunflower, in turning toward the sun, becomes by that very act fully capable, without further
condition, of reproducing a sun- flower which turns in precisely corresponding ways toward the sun, and of
doing so with the same reproductive power, the sunflower would be- come a Representamen of the sun. But
thought is the chief, if not the only, mode of representation.

READ THIS AGAIN

Jay Zeman, “Peirce’s Theory of Signs,” in A Perfusion of Signs, edited by Thomas A. Sebeok,
Burks’s “Icon, Index, Symbol,”