On the Genealogy of Meaning in Peirce's New List of Categories

Abstract

Many scholars believe that “On a New List of Categories” is a metaphysical or transcendental deduction. This essay will argue that Peirce derives the categories by induction and validates their order by precision . The paper will then draw on Peirce’s early and mature writings to explain how the new way of listing the categories can serve as a genealogy of signification : how different types of terms, propositions, and arguments emerge in the process of reasoning as different types of signs. In this way, the genealogy of signification would then qualify as both a phenomenology of logic and a science of semiotics . Such a science of semiotics will have three types of comparison corresponding to the sign-relation in inference: namely, uniparance, diaparance, and comparance. Then, the three types of comparison will give rise to three types of relatives in different types of proposition: namely, competitors, disquiparance, and equivalence. Finally, the three types of relatives will give rise to the different types of signs corresponding to the different types of terms: namely, icons, indices, and symbols. With this classification, there is then an explanation of how the process of reasoning is a semiotic process with three forms of valid arguments: namely, hypothesis, induction, and deduction.