There are many gaps in the environment of an organism. This is to say that though there may be an interaction between the mass of the organism and the mass of Jupiter, the organism does not respond to Jupiter in any observable way. Yet the organism, as in the case of a migrating bird, has been shown to respond to the magnetic field of the earth or the position of the sun.
IV
An organism may also, either by being genetically coded or by learning — that is, by modifying certain neurones in its central nervous system — respond to certain signals in its environment by a behavior oriented toward other segments of the environment. Thus, a Texas leaf-cutting ant which discovers a food source too big to move will deposit a trail of pheromones on the ground, which other ants will follow for several hundred meters from the nest:
The Texas leaf-cutting ant is genetically programmed so to respond. But Pavlov’s dog — or any other mammal exposed to certain changes in its environment — can learn to respond to a signal in an appropriate manner — by eating, fleeing, or fighting — through modification of cells in its central nervous system.
A gorilla (A) in its natural state can utter one of a dozen or so vocal signals which are responded to by other gorillas (B, C, …) in an appropriate fashion — e.g., the bark wraagh is a signal of a sudden alarming situation, such as unexpected contact with buffalo, which signals flight in other gorillas.
The chimpanzee Lana has been taught by the Rumbaughs, through a learning program of rewards, to punch differently marked keys of a computer and “ask” for food, liquids, music, etc.
Next the Rumbaughs taught two chimpanzees to communicate with each other, e.g., one chimp punching a marked key to ask another chimp for a certain food to which the importuned chimp had access. The Rumbaughs called the marks on the computer keys “symbols” and the transaction between the two chimps “the first successful demonstration of symbolic communication between two nonhuman primates.”
Whereupon B. F. Skinner showed that two domestic pigeons (Columba livia domestica) could learn spontaneously to use such “symbols” to communicate with each other. The two pigeons, named Jack and Jill, could conduct a “conversation.” Jack was the observer and Jill the informer. Jack and Jill first learned to associate marked keys with three colors. Jill was taught to “name” three colors to respond to the keyboard-question “What color?” Jack was taught to select the color corresponding to the name. When the pigeons were correct, they were rewarded with grain. Then Jack learned to ask Jill for a color name by depressing the WHAT COLOR? key. Then Jill looked behind a curtain at a color hidden from Jack. Then, while Jack watched, Jill selected a “symbolic name” for the color. When Jill was right, Jack rewarded her by pushing the THANK YOU key. Then, while Jill moved to her reward, Jack selected the right color. Then Jack was rewarded.
Whether Skinner was out to discomfit the Rumbaughs and prove that pigeons are as smart as chimps, or whether both were out to prove that pigeons and chimps are as smart as people, or at least that their intelligences are not qualitatively different, we must admire the skill of both teams of investigators in teaching communication skills. But what has been called into question in these and like experiments is the use of words such as language, symbols, sentences to describe this kind of communication. Investigators such as Terrace and Sebeok have shown that such communication does not bear the test of language in the human sense, e.g., having a rule-governed syntax. One of the weaknesses of semiotics is the all-too-frequent use of words like language and sentence in a loose analogical sense.
This argument aside, what matters here is that these communications in Skinner’s pigeons and the Rumbaughs’ chimps can be understood perfectly well by Peirce’s familiar dyadic model, as a sequence of interactions or dyads:
This sequence can of course be broken down into smaller dyads, e.g., interactions between Jack’s conditioned neurones, electrical discharges along the efferent nerves leading to Jack’s pecking muscles, and so on.
An African gray parrot named Alex at Purdue University has been taught to call forty objects by name, identify five colors, and distinguish between a square, a triangle, and a pentagon. When he wants to return to his cage, he says, “Wanna go back.”
Many people, including some scientists, like to speak of the “language” of the Rumbaughs’ chimps, Skinner’s pigeons, and the Purdue parrot, to say nothing of the song of the humpback whale. These communications, however, bear little if any resemblance to human language. The former can be understood as dyadic events not qualitatively different, albeit much more complex, from other dyadic events in the Cosmos. The latter cannot be so understood.
V
Extremely recently in the history of the Cosmos, at least on the earth — perhaps less than 100,000 years ago, perhaps more — there occurred an event different in kind from all preceding events in the Cosmos. It cannot be understood as a dyadic interaction or a complexus of dyadic interactions.
It has been called variously triadic behavior, thirdness, the Delta factor, man’s discovery of the sign (including symbols, language, art).
This phenomenon occurred in the evolution of man. It may have occurred elsewhere in the Cosmos, or it may have occurred in other creatures on earth. We do not know. But it is not known to have occurred elsewhere in the Cosmos and it has not been proved — despite heroic attempts with chimps, gorillas, and dolphins — to have occurred in other earth species.
The present argument does not require that triadic behavior be unique in man. Perhaps it is not. Semiotics proposes only that where triadic behavior occurs, certain new properties and relationships also come into existence,
Triadic behavior is that event in which sign A is understood by organism B, not as a signal to flee or approach, but as “meaning” or referring to another perceived segment of the environment:
This triad is irreducible. That is to say, it cannot be understood as a sequence of dyads, as could the events, say, when Miss Sullivan spelled C-A-K-E into Helen’s hand and Helen went to look for cake — like one of Skinner’s pigeons.
At any rate, a triadic event has occurred and it is unprecedented in the Cosmos. Thus, there is a sense in which it can be said that, given two mammals extraordinarily similar in organic structure and genetic code, and given that one species has made the breakthrough into triadic behavior and the other has not, there is, semiotically speaking, more difference between the two than there is between the dyadic animal and the planet Saturn.
Certain new properties appear. For example, all triadic behavior is social in origin. A signal received by an organism is like other signals or stimuli from its environment. But a sign requires a sign-giver. Thus, every triad of sign-reception requires another triad of sign-utterance. Whether the sign is a word, a painting, or a symphony — or Robinson Crusoe writing a journal to himself — a sign transaction requires a sign-utterer and a sign-receiver.
Other new properties appear, such as the relation between the utterer and the receiver, which are subject to such familiar variables as “intersubjectivity” (I-thou) and “depersonalization” (I-it).