Abstract
Semiosis or "the action of signs" is at the root of our ability to both understand and live, because everything that we can grasp and deal with already participates in it. It is impossible to think (or even to react to) anything without it being already presented to us as something.
Thanks to semiotic, the difference between how things "are" can be explained as a difference in how certain aspects of things show itself in representation. The whole action here already involves a representation as a triadic entity which parts cannot "exist" on its own, but are, as Deely puts it, a relational being.
I deal with Deely's terms for some of these aspects of how things are given to us, and I show how his semiotic approach can change the way we think about presumably certain dichotomies that are apparent in many aspects of human understanding to the world.