According to the third trichotomy, a sign can be classified as a rheme, a dicisign, or an argument (also known as a dicent sign) with regard to its relationship with its interpretation (see fig. 2). A rheme is a sign that, with regard to its interpretation is a sign of qualitative possibil-ity. It is understood to represent a certain kind of possible object, and it represents its object’s character. Any rheme will yield some infor-mation. A dicisign is a sign, in relation to its interpretation of actual existence. It cannot be an icon, which has no interpretation of actual existence. Inherent in the category of a dicisign is the fact that it is interpreted. The term argument means that an interpretation tends to be culturally established as the “truth.” In this case, an argument can be a symbol and a legisign. For example, it can be argued that in an artwork, the color black can symbolize death (Peirce 1956, 101–15;
1978, 118).
Peirce’s pragmatism is not only about how we think, but about how we can think more effectively. For his theory of ideas, he started by examining ideas to distinguish among different types. Every simple idea belongs to one of three classes. A compound idea, in most cases, belongs to all three of the classes (Peirce 1960, 4).
Peirce described ideas in terms of three modes of reality, three cate-gories of being, or three universes of experience, which can be divided into the three categories of firstness, secondness, and thirdness. Peirce added that, aside from its essential philosophic significance, this phe-nomenology is methodologically important because it supplies an
organized matrix to test the theories of philosophy (Peirce 1972, 10).
Inasmuch as signs are ideas, they too can be divided into three catego-ries: firstness, secondness, and thirdness (see fig. 3).
The idea of firstness is an idea of something by itself, without refer-ence to anything else. It is the mode of being of that which is as it is.
It is the potentiality of an actual idea, and for this reason firstness is called a possibility. It is quality of feeling and is unspeakable. The idea of firstness is an idea of a perception. It is not an actualized idea. It only becomes actualized when it is experienced by some mind—for example, an idea of the present and the qualities of feelings or appear-ances. The unanalyzed impression is created by the quality of a simple appearance (Peirce 1958b, 220–27; 1960, 4; 1972, 9–11, 16).
Chiasson (2001, 162) said that Peirce did not believe “a logic of cre-ativity could exist in an aesthetic sense.” He believed that the aesthetic could only be a state of firstness. Firstness includes impulse, feeling, intensity, and beingness. Chiasson thought that Peirce was trapped by the belief that the aesthetic is only a firstness state, and this kept him from realizing that aesthetics requires forms of reasoning comparable to logic. Chiasson maintained that the logic of discovery and the logic of creativity use the same methods. She wrote that Peirce was inter-ested in discovery rather than in creation.
The idea of secondness involves two things. It is an idea of some-thing acting upon somesome-thing else, or a mode of being with respect to a second. The idea of secondness is an idea of an action and not of a feeling. It is an experience of an effort. Secondness is often either genuine or corrupted, because the idea that is produced may be a sin-gle happening or is based on only a sinsin-gle fact. The idea is attached at once to two objects, as an experience. For example, the idea is attached to an experiencer and to the object experienced. It is a brute action in which one thing acts upon another. Peirce explained that secondness is brute, because when an idea of any law or when any reason is intro-duced, then, by definition, thirdness comes in (Peirce 1958b, 220–27;
1960, 4; 1972, 9–11, 16).
Thirdness is a mode of being that brings a second and a third into relationship with each other. The secondess should be investigated completely until the mode of thirdness can be understood. Instead of the brute action of secondness, mental action is involved in thirdness.
It is an idea of a sign or a communication conveyed by one person to another, or to himself at a later time, with regard to a certain object well known to both. Thirdness is an idea that involves three things, where one of them represents another to a third. It is a meaning, a general concept. Additionally, a third is something that brings a first into relation to a second. An example of this kind of idea is a sign that represents some object to some interpreter. Thirdness is a triadic relationship among a sign, its object, and an interpretation. A sign mediates between an interpretation, the sign itself, and its object. A sign’s interpretation is not necessarily a sign. Any concept is a sign, of course. An interpretation of a sign is not a thought but an action or an experience. The meaning of a sign to its interpreter is the mere quality of a feeling (Peirce 1958b, 220–27; 1960, 4; 1972, 9–11, 16). To know the meaning, which is what a sign expresses, may require the highest power of reasoning (Peirce 1958b, 137).
Peirce added that no theory of meaning can explain the meaning of the first and the second. He explained that if a man does not know what redness is, we cannot tell him verbally. If he does not know what, for example, being stuck by a pin is, we cannot tell him. A first and a second cannot be defined verbally. An example of firstness would be the possibility of a simple sensory experience—the possibility of a color sensation, such as redness, or the possibility of a pain sensation, such as a toothache. The only type of idea determinable verbally is thirdness, which is explained as an intellectual concept (Peirce 1972, 17).
Furthermore, sensory experiences as firstness, and actions as sec-ondness are related to each other. An example is when you turn a car key and you have an idea of hearing a motor start. The idea of turning a key is an idea of acting, and therefore it is secondness. An idea of hearing a motor start is an idea of a sensory experience, and
therefore it is firstness. These ideas are related by the idea that if you turn a key, a motor will start. Thus, if you act so as to produce this sec-ondness, then you will experience that firstness. Such a relationship is called a consequence. You can say briefly: if action A, then experience B, which means that an experience follows from an action. A conse-quence is neither an action nor an experience, but it is a statement that an experience follows from an action (Peirce 1972, 17).
This study considers a rheme to be similar to firstness, a dicisign to be similar to secondness, and an argument to be similar to thirdness.
As an example of an interpretation, Peirce (1958b, 137) wrote:
Thus if Sign be the sentence “Hamlet was mad,” to understand what this means one must have seen madmen or read about them; and it will be all the better if one specifically knows (and need not be driven to presume) what Shakespeare’s notion of insanity was. All is collat-eral observation and is no part of the Interpretant. But to put together the different subjects as the sign represents them as related—that is the main (i.e., force) of the Interpretant-forming. Take as an exam-ple of a Sign a genre painting. There is usually a lot in such a picture which can only be understood by virtue of acquaintance with customs.
The style of dresses for example, is no part of significance, i.e. the deliverance, of the painting. It only tells us what the subject of it is.
Subject and Object are the same thing except for trifling distinctions.
. . . But that which the writer aimed to point out to you, presum-ing you to have all the requisite collateral information, that is to say just the quality of the sympathetic element of the situation, generally a very familiar one—a something you probably never did so clearly realize before—that is the Interpretant of the Sign—its “significance.”