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