SIGNS IN SOCIETY - STIBA Malang

32 I Foundations of Peircean Semiotics
Vof the same correlate which this mediating representation itself represents" (CP
1.553, 1867). There are, thus, three distinct levels of reference: singular reference
to the ground of "Quality," double reference to the ground-correlate pair
or "Relation," and triple reference to the ground-correlate-interpretant triad or
"Representation." And these three levels, in turn, correspond to three fundamental
categories, which Peirce labels Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness.
The conception of a third is that of an object which is so related to two others,
that one of these must be related to the other in the same way in which the
third is related to that other. Now this coincides with the conception of an
interprétant. And other is plainly equivalent to correlate. The conception of
second differs from that of other, in implying the possibility of a third. (CP
1.556, 1867)
This direct linkage of semiotic constituents and metaphysical categories depends
not on isolated properties of the three terms of the sign relations, but rather on
the necessarily hierarchical architectonic in which reference to the correlate or
object presupposes reference to the ground and reference to the interprétant presupposes
reference to both ground and correlate.
From this analysis Peirce proceeded to deduce that there must be three types
of representation. In the first and simplest case, reference to the ground involves
a quality that the representation and object share; in the second case, reference
to a ground involves a quality that sets the representation over against the object
so that their correspondence is a matter of fact; and in the third case, reference
to the ground is impossible without (cannot be "prescinded" from) reference to
the interprétant, which supplies the imputed quality founding the relation between
the representation (relate or sign) and object (or correlate). These three
cases correspond to the well-known trichotomy of icon, index, and symbol (although
in the 1860s Peirce often used the terms "copy" and "likeness" for icon
and "sign" for index).
Peirce summed up his early position on the semiotic mediation of cognition
in the twin claims that there is no point in speaking about Being except as that
Being is cognizable (CP 5.257, 1868) and that all cognitions are necessarily
thought in sequences of signs (CP 5.251, 1868). Not just intellectual operations
such as conceptions and judgments but also feelings and perceptions are all inherently
semiotic, that is, involve the processual mediation of cognitions by subsequent
representations, with each additional representation bringing about the
synthetic unity of the previous one:
In short, the Immediate (and therefore in itself unsusceptible of mediation—the
Unanalyzable, the Inexplicable, the Unintellectual) runs in a continuous stream
through our lives; it is the sum total of consciousness, whose mediation, which
Peirce's Concept of Semiotic Mediation I 33
is the continuity of it, is brought about by a real effective force behind consciousness.
(CP 5.289, 1868)
By generalizing the Kantian notion of Vorstellung "representation" (W 1:257,
1865) to include all cognitive processes viewed from the point of view of propositional
reduction, Peirce directed his philosophical attack in the late 1860s
against all types of Cartesian intuitionism, which postulates the existence of immediate
(and thus nonsemiotic) cognition (Buczynska-Garewicz 1978, 1979; Esposito
1979). Peirce's achievement here is no less than the synthesis of ontology
(that is, the theory of categories), epistemology (that is, the theory of universal
representation), and logic (that is, the analysis of representation-object relations)
by the mediating unification of the semiotic perspective.
Thirdness as Mediation
Over the next forty-odd years Peirce modified this terminology frequently,
substituting for the category of Thirdness or Representation labels such as Mediation,
Branching, Synthetic Consciousness, Theory, Process, Law, Reason,
Transuasion, Transaction, Betweenness, Continuity, and Regularity. There is a
general tendency, however, for him to prefer Mediation for the most general characteristic
of Thirdness in writings after the early 1870s, that is, after he fully
integrated the "logic of relations" into his philosophy (CP 1.560—67; Murphey
1961:150—52; cf. Rosensohn 1974). But the common element tying together
Peirce's various views is the fundamental idea that anything that either comes
between two things in order to link them together, transfers a characteristic feature
from one thing over to another, or synthesizes elements from disparate
realms of reality must exist at a higher logical and ontological level than the initial
two things. And it is this insight that led him to claim that there is more to
reality than brute existence (Secondness) and qualitative possibility (Firstness). In
fact, the genuine reality of Thirds or triads, including prototypically fully symbolic
representations with their three references, implies that they are not reducible
to either Seconds or Firsts, although they require these lower-ranking
categories as much as they determine them. Peirce summarizes his view as of
1872—73 as follows: "A representation generally ... is something which brings
one thing into relation with another. ... A representation is in fact nothing but
a something which has a third through an other" (quoted in Kloesel 1983:115).
Having identified Thirdness on the basis of the triple references of a truly
symbolic representation, Peirce generalized this highest level category to realms
of experience not obviously thought of as semiotic. As early as 1875 the connection
between Thirdness and a variety of processes of mediation is apparent, as
in the fragment titled "Third":