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Page 183
7.2.3.
It remains for us to ascertain in which sense a ground (as a meaning) differs from an interpretant. In 1.338 (as well as in other passages) the interpretant is the idea to which the sign gives rise in the mind of the interpreter (even if the real presence of an interpreter is not required). For this reason the problem of interpretants is studied, more than in the framework of Speculative Grammar, in that of Speculative Rhetoric, which deals with the relationship between signs and interpreters. But we have seen that a ground is an idea in the sense in which an idea is caught during the communicative intercourse between two interpreters. Therefore it should be said that there is no profound difference between the meaning (as a sum of grounds) and the interpretant, a meaning being capable of being described only by means of interpretants. The interpretant is a way to represent, by means of another sign (man equals homme), what the representamen in fact selects of a given object (its ground).
The difficulty disappears, in any case, if one considers that the notion of ground serves to distinguish the Dynamic Object (the object in itself such as it "by some means contrives to determine the sign to its representation," 4.536) from the Immediate Object, whereas the interpretant serves to establish the relationship between representamen and Immediate Object. The Immediate Object is the way in which the Dynamic Object is focused, this 'way' being nothing else but the ground or meaning. In fact the Immediate Object is "the object as the sign itself represents it and whose Being is thus dependent upon the Representation of it in the sign" (4.536). The Dynamic Object motivates the sign, but the sign through the ground institutes the Immediate Object, which is 'internal' (8.534), an 'Idea' (8.183), a 'mental representation' (5.473). Obviously, in order to describe the Immediate Object of a sign, one cannot but make recourse to the interpretants of that sign.
In this sense the meaning (object of the Speculative Grammar) "is, in its primary acceptation, the translation of a sign into another system of signs" (4.127), and "the meaning of a sign is the sign it has to be trans-
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Figure 7.1

 
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