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sign of something by some interpreter. . . . Semiotics then is not concerned with the study of a particular kind of objects, but with ordinary objects insofar (and only insofar) as they participate in semiosis."
If the relation to the interpreter is crucial for the very definition of a sign, and if the object of pragmatics is this relation to an interpreter that characterizes a sign as such, in which sense would pragmatics then differ from semiotics?
Let us suppose that the three provinces of semiotics are not sciences but, rather, dimensions of (or descriptions under which can be approached the) phenomenon of semiosis; and let us assume, in Peircean terms, that semiosis is "an action, an influence, which is, or involves, a cooperation of three subjects, such as a sign, its object and its interpretant, this tri-relative influence not being in any way resolvable into actions between pairs" (C.P., 5.488).
From this point of view, the relationship between semiotics and its three provinces is no longer of the same type as that between natural sciences as a genus and zoology, mineralogy, and astronomy as its species. It is more similar to the relation between philosophy of science, or general epistemology, and three epistemological problems, namely, how to make a hypothesis, how to collect relevant data, and how to falsify a supposed scientific explanation. It goes without saying that (i) the very notion of relevant data can be established only on the grounds of an entertained hypothesis, (ii) a hypothesis can be made only by trying to justify something that is tentatively taken as a relevant datum, (iii) a procedure for testing an explanation can be designed only in order to cast doubt on a given hypothesis, and (iv) frequently to falsify a hypothesis means to demonstrate that the relevant data one had isolated were not such.
In the same vein, pragmatics cannot be a discipline with its proper object as distinguished from those of semantics and syntactics. The three provinces of semiotics are dealing with the same disciplinary "object," and this object is unfortunately different from the objects of natural sciences, which are natural kinds, if any. The object of pragmatics is that same process of semiosis that also syntactics and semantics focus on under different profiles. But a social and perhaps biological process such as semiosis can never be reduced to one, and only one, among its possible profiles.
Plane geometry provides an abstract representation of physical reality. Except for that in Abbott's Flatland, there is no physical two-dimension universe. There are bodies, and relationships between them. Bodies are subject to the law of gravity, whereas the figures of plane

 
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