Re: Peirce List Discussion • JFS • JFS • JAS • GF • JAS • GF
I realize that iconolatry — just one of many forms of dyadic reductionism — runs too deep at present for most folks to appreciate this, but it happens to be one of the consequences of Triadic Relation Irreducibility (TRI) that symbols — signs that denote their objects solely by virtue of being interpreted to do so — are the genus of all signs, while icons and indices are species under that genus. An icon is an icon only because interpreted as an icon, by dint of a property singled out from all possible properties shared with its object.
Thus symbols are the fons et origo of all other signs — they do not in the first instance grow from icons so much as icons crystallize from the primordial matrix of symbols.
Inquiry Into Inquiry 