In the next passage up for review the hypostatic abstraction of a person to conduct the movement of signs is described by Peirce as a Sop to Cerberus, a rhetorical gambit set to side‑step a persistent difficulty of exposition.

It is clearly indispensable to start with an accurate and broad analysis of the nature of a Sign.  I define a Sign as anything which is so determined by something else, called its Object, and so determines an effect upon a person, which effect I call its Interpretant, that the latter is thereby mediately determined by the former.  My insertion of “upon a person” is a sop to Cerberus, because I despair of making my own broader conception understood.  (Peirce 1908, Selected Writings, p. 404).

Reference

• Peirce, C.S. (1908), “Letters to Lady Welby”, Chapter 24, pp. 380–432 in Charles S. Peirce : Selected Writings (Values in a Universe of Chance), Edited with Introduction and Notes by Philip P. Wiener, Dover Publications, New York, NY, 1966.

Resource

• Hypostatic Abstraction

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