If the object of an investigation is to find out something we do not know then the clues we discover along the way are the signs which determine that object.

People will continue to be confused about determination so long as they can think of no other forms but analytic-behaviorist-causal-dyadic-temporal, object-as-stimulus, sign-as-response varieties.  It is true ordinary language biases us toward billiard-ball styles of dyadic determination but there are triadic forms of constraint, determination, and interaction not captured by S-R chains of that order.  A pragmatic-semiotic object is anything we talk or think about and semiosis does not conduct its transactions within the bounds of object as cue, sign as cue ball, interpretants as solids, stripes, or pockets.

References

• Peirce, C.S. (1859–1861), “My Life, written for the Class-Book”, pp. 1–3 in Writings of Charles S. Peirce : A Chronological Edition, Volume 1, 1857–1866, Peirce Edition Project, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1982.
• Peirce, C.S. (1877), “The Fixation Of Belief”, Popular Science Monthly 12 (Nov 1877), pp. 1–15.  Reprinted in Collected Papers, CP 5.358–387.  Online.