Bibliography

C.S.P.'s Lowell Lectures of 1903 2nd Draught of 3rd Lecture

An ens rationis is something whose being consists in the possibility of something being true about something else.

Three kinds of elements can be discerned in whatever comes before the mind. The first is the element of Quality, such, for example, as Red; and including all the positive suchness of the idea in itself, as mere ideal suchness. It is that which is such as it is, positively and quite irrespective of anything else. I call this element the element of Firstness. Besides its direct presence we attribute to things out of us natures of their own irrespective of actual reactions.

…there are three kinds of signs. The first kind consists of Icons, which like all signs are such only by virtue of being interpreted as such, but whose significant character which causes them to be so interpreted is their possessing a quality, in consequence of which they may be taken as representative of anything that may happen to exists that has that quality. Of course there are no signs that are exclusively iconic. But a geometrical diagram, for example, represents, say, a triangle, simply because it is like it.

The second class of signs consists of Indices, whose significant character which causes them to be used as signs lies in a matter of positive fact, the fact that they are really related, rerelated, to the objects they denote.

…logic is the science of regulating your thoughts so as not to be surprised when it can be avoided; and therefore whatever is said in logic about the modes of being of qualities, of laws, etc must be understood as regulative truth in Kant’s sense.

There is a logical doctrine called Pragmatism. It is the doctrine that what any word or thought means consists in what it can contribute to an expectation about future experience, and nothing more.

Relations are qualities of sets of subjects. They are dyadic if the sets are pairs, triadic if the sets are triads.

The second element is directly experienced in our sense of being here, in our sense of present fact, which is the experience of actual reaction with a non-ego. It consists in anything’s being that which another makes it to be here and now. I give to this element of doubleness the name of Secondness. Besides […] directly experiencing it, we regard outward objects as compelling one another, as exerting force upon one another.

…a sign is a thing related to an object and determining in the interpreter an interpreting sign of the same object. It involves the relation between sign, interpreting sign, and object.

The third class of signs are Symbols, which not only, like all signs, function as such in being interpreted as such, but further have for their special significant character merely the certainty, based on some habit, natural disposition, or convention, that they will be understood in certain ways.

This element of our daily & hourly experience, the element of the conformity of fact to thought, – this element whose being such as it is consists in this that it has such reference to an object independent of it as to bring a third thing (the interpretation) into the same triadic relation to that same object, – this character of a sign, the being an exponent of thought, is what I call the element of Thirdness in the phenomenon.