ONT Standard Operating Praxis
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SOP. Standard Operating Praxis
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SOP. Note 1
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| We are all, then, sufficiently familiar with the fact
| that many words have much implication; but 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.
| Conversely, every interpretant is addressed by the word;
| for were it not so, did it not as it were overhear what
| the words says, how could it interpret what it says.
|
| There are doubtless some who cannot understand this metaphorical argument.
| I wish to show that the relation of a word to that which it addresses is
| the same as its relation to its equivalent or identified terms. For that
| purpose, I first show that whatever a word addresses is an equivalent term, --
| its mental equivalent. I next show that, since the intelligent reception
| of a term is the being addressed by that term, and since the explication
| of a term's implication is the intelligent reception of that term, that
| the interpretant or equivalent of a term which as we have already seen
| explicates the implication of a term is addressed by the term.
|
| 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.
|
| CSP, CE 1, pages 466-467.
|
| Charles Sanders Peirce,
|"The Logic of Science, or, Induction and Hypothesis",
| Lowell Institute Lectures of 1866, pages 357-504 in:
|
|'Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition',
|'Volume 1, 1857-1866', Peirce Edition Project,
| Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1982.
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