The Greatest Discrepancy in the Peirce-Welby Correspondence

Abstract: This paper addresses what in 1909 Charles Peirce calls the “greatest discrepancy” between his trichotomy of interpretants and Victoria Welby’s three orders of signification. That discrepancy concerns the difference between Peirce’s dynamical interpretant (as the actual effect a sign produces) and Welby’s notion of meaning (as involving the intention of the sign-user). After providing a close reading of the March 14, 1909 letter in which Peirce compares his triad with hers, I re-evaluate what scholars have made of the discrepancy and defend the view that it is a genuine one. I argue that, as Peirce understood it, the root of their disagreement stems from their different views about the aim of semiotics more generally. Welby limits her study of signs to language, whereas Peirce is interested in applying Semeiotic to the science of reasoning. I conclude by suggesting that Peirce and Welby ought to form an enterprise, as each seems to add what the other lacks: Peirce complements Welby’s theory by generalizing the sign, and Welby complements Peirce’s theory by further developing the speculative rhetoric of the sign.