THE SIGN FOR PEIRCE Peirce starts from the assumption that everything is a sign because everything refers to something else. For something to be a sign of something else, that thing must already be a sign. This
means that if a "bloodstain" can be read as a sign of a "wound",
then we must know the "wound" sign, which must have been previously constructed.
Therefore, Peirce maintains that one cannot distinguish between what is and what is.
which is not a sign, but rather one must distinguish between the action of the sign and
other types of action. In this way, he explains that the sign is a representation
through which we can know reality.
A sign, or representamen is something that, for someone, represents or refers to something in some aspect or character. It addresses someone, that is, it creates in that person's mind an equivalent sign, or perhaps an even more developed sign. This created sign is what I call the interpretant of the first sign. The sign is in place of something, its object. It stands in place of that object, not in all respects, but only with reference to a kind of idea, which I have sometimes called the ground of the representamen (Peirce, 1986: 228).
So, every sign is going to be composed of the representamen, of the object
and by the interpretant. Now, each one of these elements, which maintain a
dynamic relationship with each other, has a quality:
· Representamen has the quality of possibility.
· The object has the quality of existence.
· The interpretant has the quality of law (of thought).
Based on these elements, the scheme of the sign according to Peirce is assembled.
POSSIBILITY
REPRESENTATION
EXISTENCE
OBJECT
LAW
INTERPRETING
· THE REPRESENTATION (SIGN): It is the representation of something. They would be the aspects of the object that can be known through a particular triad, but never the object in its entirety. This has to do with the idea that human beings access the real world" through a symbolic system.
· THE INTERPRETER: It is a sign means something because it is "instead of" that something. In other words, signs do more than replace or substitute things; they function as factors in a mediating process. Peirce calls this mediating function the “interpretant”. The interpretant of a sign is another sign. The interpretant is the modification produced in thought by a sign (thought should not be understood as an individual psychological phenomenon, but has to do with the discursive process that occurs in the human community). Each interpretant is a sign of its object and, in turn, requires another sign for its interpretation. Thus opens a chain of interpreting signs. The meaning of a representation can only be another representation. This means that it is another sign that, now, is the sign that the representative produces in the person's mind: for example, when hearing the word "bird" we all understand what is being talked about, but the variety of birds that can be represented in each person will have to be different in each case. The interpretant, then, is related to the knowledge and common knowledge of a given culture. Both the representamen and the interpretant are mental entities; It is not about tangible realities, but about symbolic operations that are carried out in order to understand the world around us.
· THE OBJECT: is the portion of reality that can be accessed through the sign. Peirce states that the sign is in place of the object, not in all aspects of it. The sign does not represent a complete object, but represents it from a certain perspective, in relation to a kind of “idea”. For example, in the relation means “wind/vane”, only the significant aspect of the wind direction and the orientation of the vane is taken into account, not other aspects of both elements. The concept of idea must be understood as a convention or as an agreement on how to interpret the sign. Mediation (or interpretation) works through conventional rules of interpretation. Every sign is representational in the sense that interpretation always involves the representation of an accumulated (learned) experience, which is encoded by means of signs. Regarding the object, Peirce distinguishes two classes of objects:
· IMMEDIATE OBJECT: It is the object as the sign represents it, and whose being depends on its representation in the sign. It would be, to a great extent, the meaning of the sign.
· DYNAMIC OBJECT: It is reality itself, it can be a real, ideal or imaginary object.
The foundation would then be the possibility, which can be analogized with the theories
(from where you study). The object is what exists, and can be analogized with what
studied (what is studied). The problem is in the interpretant, which is the law,
understood as reason or thought; think the interpretant would mean in
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