Signals and Semaphorics

Despite his pioneering Pragmatism, Peirce's equally pioneering Semiotic, like his less original Phenomenology, remains rooted in orthodoxy. As elaborate as that Semiology is, and as committed as he is to transmuting the fixation of belief into the adoption of a rule of action, all Signs, as he conceives them, are fundamentally descriptive. That is, they are representations of something that pre-exists them, as part of the triadic structure Sign-Object-Interpretant. But, rules of action, i. e. precepts, do not fit easily into that pattern, primarily because they are prescriptive, and, hence, pre-exist their Objects, if the latter ever come to exist at all. A better configuring of of the functioning of prescriptive Signs is Sign-Interpretant-Object, in which the Interpretant is the adoption by the addressee of the Sign as a rule of action, and the Object is their performance of the action. In contrast, the standard designation of the Object of a prescription, a wish in the mind of the prescriber, is as incomplete an explanation as an interpretation that a buzzing alarm clock refers only to what time it is. The distinction between descriptive and prescriptive Signs seems decisive enough to warrant a special classification for the latter, e. g. 'Signals', just as the structure in which they are implicated, Sign-Interpretant-Object, seems distinctive enough to warrant a branch of Semiological study separate from Semiotics, e. g. 'Semaphorics'.