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  1. Interpreter and Interpretant • Selection 4
    inquiryintoinquiry.com/2025/01

    Interpretation and Inquiry —

    To illustrate the role of sign relations in inquiry we begin with Dewey's elegant and simple example of reflective thinking in everyday life.

    ❝A man is walking on a warm day. The sky was clear the last time he observed it; but presently he notes, while occupied primarily with other things, that the air is cooler. It occurs to him that it is probably going to rain; looking up, he sees a dark cloud between him and the sun, and he then quickens his steps. What, if anything, in such a situation can be called thought? Neither the act of walking nor the noting of the cold is a thought. Walking is one direction of activity; looking and noting are other modes of activity. The likelihood that it will rain is, however, something suggested. The pedestrian feels the cold; he thinks of clouds and a coming shower.❞ (John Dewey, How We Think, 6–7).

    #Peirce #Logic #Semiotics #Semiosis #SignRelations #TriadicRelations
    #Cybersemiotics #Interpreter #Interpretant #Hermeneutics #Hermenaut
    #JohnDewey #HowWeThink #Inquiry #Abduction #Deduction #Induction
    #Abstraction #HypostaticAbstraction #Reflection #Interpretation

  2. Reference —

    Peirce, C.S. (1866), “The Logic of Science, or, Induction and Hypothesis”, Lowell Lectures of 1866, pp. 357–504 in Writings of Charles S. Peirce : A Chronological Edition, Volume 1, 1857–1866, Peirce Edition Project, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1982.

    Resources —

    Hypostatic Abstraction
    inquiryintoinquiry.com/2008/08

    Survey of Semiotics, Semiosis, Sign Relations
    inquiryintoinquiry.com/2024/01

    #Peirce #Logic #Semiotics #Semiosis #SignRelations #TriadicRelations
    #Cybersemiotics #Interpreter #Interpretant #Hermeneutics #Hermenaut
    #Abstraction #HypostaticAbstraction #SopToCerberus #Interpretation

  3. ❝I think we need to reflect upon the circumstance that every word implies some proposition or, what is the same thing, every word, concept, symbol has an equivalent term — or one which has become identified with it, — in short, has an “interpretant”.

    ❝Consider, what a word or symbol is; it is a sort of representation. Now a representation is something which stands for something. I will not undertake to analyze, this evening, this conception of standing for something — but, it is sufficiently plain that it involves the standing to something for something. A thing cannot stand for something without standing to something for that something. Now, what is this that a word stands to? Is it a person?

    ❝We usually say that the word “homme” stands to a Frenchman for “man”. It would be a little more precise to say that it stands to the Frenchman's mind — to his memory. It is still more accurate to say that it addresses a particular remembrance or image in that memory. And what “image”, what remembrance? Plainly, the one which is the mental equivalent of the word “homme” — in short, its interpretant. Whatever a word addresses then or stands to, is its interpretant or identified symbol. […]

    ❝The interpretant of a term, then, and that which it stands to are identical. Hence, since it is of the very essence of a symbol that it should stand to something, every symbol — every word and every “conception” — must have an interpretant — or what is the same thing, must have information or implication.❞ (Peirce 1866, Chronological Edition 1, pp. 466–467).

    #Peirce #Logic #Semiotics #Semiosis #SignRelations #TriadicRelations
    #Cybersemiotics #Interpreter #Interpretant #Hermeneutics #Hermenaut

  4. Interpreter and Interpretant • Selection 3
    inquiryintoinquiry.com/2025/01

    The following selection from Peirce's “Lowell Lectures on the Logic of Science” (1866) lays out in detail his “metaphorical argument” for the relationship between interpreters and interpretant signs.

    #Peirce #Logic #Semiotics #Semiosis #SignRelations #TriadicRelations
    #Cybersemiotics #Interpreter #Interpretant #Hermeneutics #Hermenaut
    #Abstraction #HypostaticAbstraction #SopToCerberus #Interpretation

  5. Interpreter and Interpretant • Selection 2
    inquiryintoinquiry.com/2025/01

    A idea of what Peirce means by an Interpretant and the part it plays in a triadic sign relation is given by the following passage.

    ❝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 I despair of making my own broader conception understood.❞ (Peirce 1908, Selected Writings, p. 404).

    According to his custom of clarifying ideas in terms of their effects, Peirce tells us what a sign is in terms of what it does, the effect it brings to bear on a “person”. That effect he calls the interpretant of the sign. And what of that person? Peirce finesses that question for the moment, resorting to a “Sop to Cerberus”, in other words, a rhetorical gambit used to side‑step a persistent difficulty of exposition. In doing so, Peirce invokes the hypostatic abstraction of a “person” who conducts the movement of signs and embodies the ongoing process of semiosis.

    Reference —

    Peirce, C.S. (1908), “Letters to Lady Welby”, Chapter 24, pp. 380–432 in Charles S. Peirce : Selected Writings (Values in a Universe of Chance), Edited with Introduction and Notes by Philip P. Wiener, Dover Publications, New York, NY, 1966.

    #Peirce #Logic #Semiotics #Semiosis #SignRelations #TriadicRelations
    #Cybersemiotics #Interpreter #Interpretant #Hermeneutics #Hermenaut
    #Abstraction #HypostaticAbstraction #Interpretation