Indeterminacy and final causation in the process of sign determination

In semiotics, final causation can be related to the process of determination (PAPE, 1993). From Peirce’s point of view, determination is not a causal determinism, but a delimitation of a range of possibilities. One starts from objects towards interpretants, in a process mediated by the sign, in which the dynamic object works as a force that constrains interpretants to correspond to their objects. The correspondence between object and interpretant is important because it is through a generated interpretant that the object of a sign can be known. Even though this process of determination coincides with the idea of final causation, there is a certain indeterminacy in it. For Peirce (EP 2:353, 1905), vagueness and generality are two types of indeterminacy. In the terms of the phenomenological categories, vagueness is an indeterminacy of the order of firstness, generality an indeterminacy of the order of thirdness, and both, to some extent, are opposed to that which is defined, which belongs to secondness. Each aspect of the sign may vary according to the three phenomenological categories. Consequently, degrees of imprecision are added to the semiotic process, which is a determination process. Peirce asserts that the perfect precision of thought is theoretically unattainable (SS 11, 1903). Every sign is vague or general at least to some degree. In this paper, we seek to perceive degrees of indetermination and causality from an analysis of the kinds of objects and interpretants proposed by Peirce in the system of 28 sign classes.