SUO: Sop To Cerberus: What In Hades Was CSP Talking About?
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Those of you who do not know the reference deserve an explanation.
There is a critical passage where Peirce explains the relationship
between his popular illustrations and his technical theory of signs.
| 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.
|
| CSP, 'Selected Writings', page 404.
|
| Charles Sanders Peirce, "Letters to Lady Welby", Chapter 24, pages 380-432
| in 'Charles S. Peirce: Selected Writings (Values in a Universe of Chance)',
| Edited with an Introduction & Notes by Philip P. Wiener, Dover Publications,
| New York, NY, 1966.
A word to the wise is sufficient,
in no way universally sufficient.
Notice that this self-described "definition" of a Sign
is also self-labelled as an approximate definition, or
as a special application of a Lost Lenore (= Eurydice)
that might have been the lamented "broader conception".
As anybody, almost anybody, can plainly see, this sop
to Cerberus has to be taken with a due grain of salt
(= Lot's Wife).
I trust that will be the end of that -- hah!
Jon Awbrey
Incidental Musements:
http://www.bibleinfo.com/Asp/DisplayFullFAQ.asp?FAQid=32
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