That reality, and in particular the (dynamic) objects of signs, are independent of our thoughts or other representations is a crucial thesis of Peirce’s realism. On the other hand, his semiotics implies the claim that all reality and all real objects are real for us only because of the signs we use. Do these two claims contradict, even exclude, each other? I will argue that both Peirce’s metaphysics and his semiotics provide a natural via media: a structural account of the (...) openness of processes, featuring transitive relations, connects process ontology implicit in his evolutionary metaphysics and the relational, quasi-inferential features embodied in interpretational sequences of signs. It is shown that Peirce’s notion of a sign, its normative role and his account of the directional force of objects implies a sort of logical causality that supports the unity of objects. In this way sign sequences are able to relate flexibly sign use with contextually specified independent objects. That is to say, relational properties of object-oriented chains of interpretations provide sign users with a flexible, fallibilistic instrument able to capture by contingent identity relations (teridentity) of the identity of objects in changing situations. (shrink)

The first-person access to the self has been widely recognized by philosophers. But a competing idea arises, challenging the first-person givenness, from those who argue that self-interpretation and self-knowledge are acquired through the third-person perspective. I argue that these two dichotomous perspectives of the self can be mediated by the second-person perspective through dialogical semiosis of narrative. Peirce’s semiotic perspective on the self emphasizes the role of a semiotic subject that participates in sign processes as an interpreting agent. In this (...) sense, the concept of self is acquired through semiosis of narrative and at the same time it is interpreted in narrative world, taking the role of character. It is character which makes a person identifiable as a person, since character is not substance but quality as a recognized pattern or type through time, which becomes a habit of act and thought, thus forming personal identity. Within this context, I argue that from the first-person perspective a deliberate subject of self as “subjective I” and from the third-person perspective a dynamic object of self as “objective I” are mediated by the relationship between self and other as an imaginary relation in narrative world, just like an imaginary line of identity, connecting word with thing. From the second-person perspective, oneself as another forms teridentity (co-identity) in textual world. I shall illustrate the interlock between the semiotic self and narrative identity through Peirce’s semiotic approach to the self and Ricoeur’s theory of narrative identity, analyzing the filmic narrative text of Burning (2018). (shrink)

We study logical reduction (factorization) of relations into relations of lower arity by Boolean or relative products that come from applying conjunctions and existential quantifiers to predicates, i.e. by primitive positive formulas of predicate calculus. Our algebraic framework unifies natural joins and data dependencies of database theory and relational algebra of clone theory with the bond algebra of C.S. Peirce. We also offer new constructions of reductions, systematically study irreducible relations and reductions to them and introduce a new characteristic of (...) relations, ternarity, that measures their ‘complexity of relating’ and allows to refine reduction results. In particular, we refine Peirce’s controversial reduction thesis, and show that reducibility behaviour is dramatically different on finite and infinite domains. (shrink)

We argue that traditional formulations of the reduction thesis that tie it to privileged relational operations do not suffice for Peirce’s justification of the categories and invite the charge of gerrymandering to make it come out as true. We then develop a more robust invariant formulation of the thesis, one that is immune to that charge, by explicating the use of triads in any relational operations. The explication also allows us to track how Thirdness enters the structure of higher order (...) relations and even to propose a numerical measure of it. Our analysis reveals new conceptual phenomena when negation or disjunction are used to compound relations. (shrink)