Abstract
There is a strong notion in theory of knowledge of Charles S. Peirce that everytime we conceive something it is so because of representation, because of sign.
This itself is a reason why semiotics is important to epistemology - it means that the question concerning the nature of sign is more basic than our inquiry into the knowing of a thing already represented. It is necessary to show how knowledge is given to us.
The issue here is that former epistemological conceptions presupposed the thing unrepresented or unrepresentable and thus were not compatible with the theory of representation. Because of this it was necessary to ground the epistemology on something else.
In this chapter I deal with Peirce's critique of Descartes that ends with Peirce's own conception of epistemology that is founded on representation.