Göran Sonesson
The interpretation of “what Peirce really meant” can only be the first step towards a theory of iconicity relevant to present concerns. To go further, it is not only important to take into account more recent contributions stemming from Husserlean phenomenology, but also from the psychology of perception and the different cognitive sciences. Most of all, the antinomies, which are found to be internal to Peircean theory, must be resolved; and the arguments addressed to the very idea of iconicity have to be countered. This can only be done by means of developing a semiotic ecology that accounts for the possibility of there being such things as iconic signs. Semiotic ecology itself forces upon us a division of iconicity into instances which are of the primary and the secondary kind, where the second type itself must be subdivided into two species.