The Commens Dictionary

Quote from ‘Firstness, Secondness, Thirdness, and the Reducibility of Fourthness [R]’

The most characteristic form of thirdness is that of a sign; and it is shown that every cognition is of the nature of a sign. Every sign has an object, which may be regarded either as it is immediately represented in the sign to be [or] as it is in it own firstness. It is equally essential to the function of a sign that it should determine an Interpretant, or second correlate related to the object of the sign as the sign is itself related to that object; and this interpretant may be regarded as the sign represents it to be, as it is in its pure secondness to the object, and as it is in its own firstness. Upon these considerations are founded six trichotomic divisions of signs…