Cell Language Theory, The: Connecting Mind And Matter

272 The Cell Language Theory: Connecting Mind and Matter

b2861 The Cell Language Theory: Connecting Mind and Matter “6x9”

concluded that a sign or representamen is one of three kinds (Qualisign,

Sinsign, or Legisign); it relates to its object in one of three ways (as

Icon, Index, or Symbol); and it has an interpretant that represents the

sign as a sign of possibility, fact, or reason, i.e., as Rheme, Dicent

Sign, or Argument. These three sets of three terms are the “trichoto-

mies” in Peirce’s semiotic. The strange words in this paragraph have

evoked much confusion and disgust and have been obstacles to the

influence of Peirce’s thought. But if we keep the following in mind,

these terms become quickly understandable: the first term in each tri-

chotomy describes the Firstness of the sign, object, and interpretant;

the second term in each trichotomy describes the Secondness of the

sign, object, and interpretant; and the third term in each trichotomy

describes the Thirdness of a sign, object, and interpretant.

The content of the above paragraph is summarized in Table 6.6, which

shows the formal (see the left-most column) and ontological (the upper-

most row) characters of e-signs. This table also proposes a new system of

notation of e-signs.

Each of the nine signs in Figure 6.6 can be represented as Si,j, where

S indicates “sign”, the first running index i refers to the formal category

(i.e., the rows), and the second running index j refers to the ontological

category of S, an elementary sign (i.e., the columns). Both i and j run

from 1 to 3. For example, e-S1,3 denotes Legisign, e-S2,1 refers to Icon, etc.

The traditional names of the e-signs are given in parenthesis.

6.6.2 The 10 Classes of Signs

According to Peirce, an embodied sign or c-Sign is composed of three

elementary signs or e-Sign. That is,

c-Sign = 3 e-Signs (6.6)

Unlike baryons which are unordered sets of three quarks, c-signs are

ordered (and hence “informed”) sets of three e-signs:

c-Sign = {(S3,j), (S2,j), (S1,j)} (6.7)

The 10 classes of signs defined by Peirce in the form of Eq. (6.7) are

given in Table 6.7.

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