Peirce’s Semeiotic Applied to Perception – The Role of Dynamic Objects and Percepts in Perceptual Interpretation

Abstract

The opposition between the views that we create reality and reality is discovered may be bridged by means of one component of Peirce’s semeiotic. I offer a defense of the distinction between pre-interpreted and interpreted objects, that is, between what Peirce called dynamic objects and immediate objects. Throughout his career, Peirce affirmed the importance of what he called “the outward clash,” which is his dramatic description of the role of real or dynamic objects that prompt the formulation of signs and the interpretations that refer to their objects. Thus, although the aim of interpretation is the immediate object, the cognitive object formed by the interpretation, the process of developing the immediate object is subjected to constraints, some of which come from the side of the dynamic objects.As an entry into this view of interpretation, I discuss some misleading ways of understanding what Peirce’s references to the objects of signs are. A useful way to avoid misunderstanding, I suggest, is to substitute the term “referent” for “object.” When this is done, it may be argued that there are dynamic objects even for signs that are fictions. However, for the purposes of this discussion, my primary aim is to suggest an application of the semeiotic of immediate and dynamic objects to Peirce’s account of the formation of perceptual judgments. Perception begins with percepts and develops through stages of interpretive processes that aim at forming perceptual judgments. I propose that percepts are experienced manifestations of dynamic objects so that considering how percepts constrain perceptual interpretation may help in giving an account of the function of dynamic objects in general.