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answer to this question depends on the principle that everything which can be said of a dicent and of an argument can be said of the rhemes that constitute them. In other words, the theory of interpretants (and of meaning) concerns, not only arguments, but also single terms, and, in the light of such a theory, the content of a single term becomes something similar to an encyclopedia. |
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Given the item sinner, the fact that it can be interpreted as 'miserable' should be taken into account by the compositional representation of it. Therefore the rheme sinner should imply or entail all the possible illative consequences regarding it. The argument ''all sinners are miserable, John is a sinner, therefore he is miserable'' is nothing else but the natural and necessary development of the inchoative possibilities of the rheme and the only way to make evident its interpretants. Obviously, also the opposite is true, that is, any argument is nothing else than the analytical assertion of the interpretants to be assigned to a given item (from arguments dicisigns and rhemes can be derived) (3.440). In 2.293 it is said that a symbol denotes an individual and signifies a character, this character being a general meaning (it should be remembered that the ground of a sign is its connotation and its 'imputed character', 1.559). The distinction between denoting and signifying depends on the distinction between extension and intension, breadth and depth, orin contemporary termsdenotation and meaning, or referring to and meaning somewhat. The concept of depth is linked with the one of information which is the 'measure of predication' and "the sum of synthetical propositions in which the symbol is subject or predicate" (2.418). All these concepts concern, not only propositions and arguments, but also rhemes or terms. |
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"A Rheme is a Sign which, for its Interpretant, is a sign of a qualitative Possibility" (it isolates a ground), "that is, is understood as representing such and such kind of possible Object. Any Rheme, perhaps, will afford some information; but it is not interpreted as doing so" (2.250). In other texts Peirce seems to be less insecure. Not only "the signification of a term is all the qualities which are indicated by it" (2.431), but terms appear as a set of marks (or features, or relations, or characters; see 2.776) ruled, as well as are propositions, by the principle of nota notae est nota rei ipsius (3.166). "The marks already known to be predicable of the term include the entire depth of another term not previously known to be so included, thus increasing the comprehensive distinctness of the former term" (2.364). A term can have both necessary and accidental marks, the necessary being either strict or proper (2.396), and these marks constitute the substantial depth of a term, that is, "the real concrete form which belongs to everything of which a term is predicable with absolute truth" (substantial breadth being "the aggregate of real substances of which alone a term is predicable with absolute truth") |
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