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Of all living things we can say that they are semiosic creatures, creatures
which grow and develop through the manipulation of sign-vehicles and the
involvement in sign-processes, semiosis. What distinguishes the human being
among the animals is quite simple, yet was never fully grasped before modern
times had reached the state of Latin times in the age of Galileo. Every animal of
necessity makes use of signs, yet signs themselves consist in relations, and
every relation (real or unreal as such) is invisible to sense and can be
understood in its difference from related objects or things but never perceived
as such. What distinguishes the human being from the other animals is that
only human animals come to realize that there are signs distinct from and
superordinate to every particular thing that serves to constitute an individual in
its distinctness from its surroundings.
Such an animal, capable of coming to know that there are signs as well as
of using signs to hunt and fish and find its way through the surroundings, is
generically semiosic but specifically semiotic, the only animal capable of
knowing that there are signs to be studied as well as made use of to more
“practical” ends. So a definition of the human being as “semiotic animal” is not
modern. In the modern understanding of the philosophers, ens reale went under

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In this way it can be seen that objects, normally confused with things by
human animals, are not only distinct in principle from, while yet always
partially involving, things, but also (what is far from evident and indeed quite
surprising) that objects actually presuppose signs in order to be objects in the first
place, and presuppose signs no less in order subsequently to be distinguished
from things in the course of experience.22
20 This failure, philosophically at least, is the essence of nominalism, as it turns out.
But that is another story: see Deely 2001: esp. Chaps. 8–10 & 15.
21 The interpretant is distinct in principle from an interpreter, even though, like
objects and things, the two may happen to coincide. Thus, in the more obvious cases,
representation is mad to a person or cognizing organism, but not necessarily in cases

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further the difference between objects and signs. On the one hand, things
are themselves, whereas objects represent themselves. On the other hand, signs
represent always something other than themselves, something which they
themselves are not; and they do so respecting some third element or factor with
respect to which the representation takes place. It matters not whether the signs
in question be based on the psychological states of the organism, cathectic and
cognitive, or on aspects of objects founding interobjective relations. In every
case, the elements comprising the sign are three, and the being of the sign as
such transcends the three elements by uniting them according to three
respective roles, namely, the role of sign-vehicle (the element of otherrepresentation),
the role of object signified (the other than the sign vehicle
represented), and the role of interpretant, the term to or

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rationis. Being as first known by the human mind, ens primum cognitum, Aquinas
tells us, transcends this distinction, and so cannot be identified with either term
of it, even though ens reale maintains its ontological priority in the experiential
discovery that there is more to the being of the objective world than can be
reduced to our experience of or interests in it. The “external world” is not
discovered as external; it is discovered as a dimension within objects irreducible

to our experience of them. The “problem of the external world” such as we find
it in Berkeley, Hume and the moderns after them, including Kant, is not really a
critical problem so much as it is a quasi-error rooted in the failure to recognize

further the difference between objects and signs. On the one hand, things
are themselves, whereas objects represent themselves. On the other hand, signs
represent always something other than themselves, something which they
themselves are not; and they do so respecting some third element or factor with
respect to which the representation takes place. It matters not whether the signs
in question be based on the psychological states of the organism, cathectic and
cognitive, or on aspects of objects founding interobjective relations. In every
case, the elements comprising the sign are three, and the being of the sign as
such transcends the three elements by uniting them according to three
respective roles, namely, the role of sign-vehicle (the element of otherrepresentation),
the role of object signified (the other than the sign vehicle
represented), and the role of interpretant, the term to or

04

rationis. Being as first known by the human mind, ens primum cognitum, Aquinas
tells us, transcends this distinction, and so cannot be identified with either term
of it, even though ens reale maintains its ontological priority in the experiential
discovery that there is more to the being of the objective world than can be
reduced to our experience of or interests in it. The “external world” is not
discovered as external; it is discovered as a dimension within objects irreducible
to our experience of them. The “problem of the external world” such as we find
it in Berkeley, Hume and the moderns after them, including Kant, is not really a
critical problem so much as it is a quasi-error rooted in the failure to recognize

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hasized by Aquinas is more ontological than experiential. The fact that
some among objects before us are also present-at-hand as things in their own
right (indifferent to any relation to us in objectivity) is an awakening unique to
the human animal, and the source of the experience which leads the human
animal to recognize that there is a difference between being and non-being,
where being means precisely ens reale and non