Intentional Signs From a Peircean Perspective

It can safely be assumed that with its well-known icon-index-symbol trichotomy, Peirce's 1903 ten-class typology can adequately analyze still images, photographs and films. Moreover, given the implication principle whereby a symbol can involve an index and an index an icon, it follows that any symbolic element can, by transitivity, involve iconic elements, making it possible within this system to accommodate complex forms of signification. Its phenomenological basis, however, and the nature of the divisions composing it make it less amenable to the analysis of intentionality in signs. Now, in 1908 Peirce introduced two far more complex typologies. The first, formed of six divisions from which the icon-indexsymbol trichotomy is absent, generates twenty-eight classes of signs; the second, ten-division system, theoretically generates sixty-six. The exact order of the ten divisions forming the latter system is disputed, rendering the typology's semiotic viability uncertain, whereas the 28-class typology, which classifies signs not on how they represent their object but, amongst other things, according to the sorts of objects they represent, is fully operational. It is therefore of considerable semiotic interest to investigate the way this typology without icons, indices or symbols, might contribute to the analysis of image-based expressions of intentionality

Perspective (graphical · Computer Science · Pragmatism in Philosophy and Education · Psychology · Artificial Intelligence

• The Two-Way Interpretation Process in Peirce’s Late Semiotics

  Open Access•Tony Jappy•Language and Semiotic Studies•2016

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