[CG] Re: Interpreter and Interpretant

Interpreter and Interpretant • Selection 3 • https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2025/01/08/interpreter-and-interpretant-sele… 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. ❝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). 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 • https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2008/08/08/hypostatic-abstraction/ Survey of Semiotics, Semiosis, Sign Relations • https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2024/01/26/survey-of-semiotics-semiosis-sign… Regards, Jon