The purpose of the dissertation is two-fold: Firstly, to contribute to the interpretation of certain Peircean philosophical ideas within his esthetics, normative logic (methodeutics; pragmaticism) as well as in relation to Peirce`s few descriptions of metaphor. Secondly, to contribute to the application of certain Peircean philosophical ideas within the scientific disciplines of “Marketing and consumer research” (branding, advertising), “Forensic Semiotics” (clues and the investigative processes), “Technology Semiotics” (the technological artefact as signification/communication) and “Developing a general framework concerning the relationship between, emotion, information and knowledge”.

Concerning the first mentioned purpose: Interpreting Peirce´s philosophical ideas i) The dissertation reconstructs Peirce`s esthetics from an epistemological perspective centering around concepts such as esthetic truth, esthetic being (reality), abductive methodology, and a community of esthetic inquirers. Furthermore, a place is found, in relation to esthetics, for the artist regarding Peirce`s Summum Bonum; the artist can contribute to the cultivation of man`s habits of feeling in correspondence with the universal process of rationalization. ii) The dissertation proposes a cognitive approach to Peirce`s hypoiconic metaphor; hence, with the aid of Peirce`s concepts of abduction and realism it is shown how metaphor is an inferential mechanism related to the guessing instinct as a mechanism that can convey new insights seen from a “three-categorical-universe” of real possibles, actuals and final causes. Furthermore, this perspective is compared with newer theories of cognitive metaphor (Eco and Lakoff and Johnson) iii) The dissertation revisits Peirce`s pragmatic maxim and finds different conceptual conditions for the mature Peirce`s maxim demonstrating its normative function in relation to the universal process of rationalization. Concerning the second mentioned purpose: Applying Peirce`s philosophical ideas. iv) “Marketing and consumer research”. The dissertation theorizes concerning the communal character of the branding process as related to what is understood as “the normative dimension of the branding community”. This dimension centers around what can be described with the Peircean inspired concepts of ideals and values where brand users become attracted to brands and their feelings, actions and thoughts, can come together in a “sense of our brand”. (v) The dissertation describes the Peircean “inference model of comprehension in print advertisements” concerning its relation to the abductive guessing instinct of the consumer as well as his inductive habit confirmations both underlying different processes that make comprehension possible.

Hence, it is demonstrated how certain types of print advertisements prompt either creative processes of comprehension or influence the built up of consumer satisfaction because the consumer is conceived as a “bundle of habits”. Furthermore, via a critical examination of Val Larsen`s Peircean research program (Val Larsen 2008) on the image within print advertising the dissertation puts forth a few programmatic points where the image is understood as an artefact with certain iconic, indexical, and symbolic qualities within a Peircean realistic ontology/epistemology. (vi) “Forensic Semiotics”. The dissertation contributes to the new semiotic field Forensic semiotics from a threefold perspective: it focuses on epistemological factors of crime solving - how to know - but also ontological factors - what to know, or clues as information - as well as normative factors - how to value the different processes, or inferences, of crime solving. Central to the contribution is the formulation of “the semiotic gab” between investigator and the crime. (vii) Technological artefacts are, of course, more than mere isolated things describable in pure technological terms as systems (see Jensen 1994). Rather, technological artefacts involve and are involved in processes of signification and/or communication.

The dissertation introduces a semiotics of technological artefacts involving grammar, logic and rhetoric offering the self-driving car as through-going example. (viii) Emotion, information and knowledge are generally held to be central aspects concerning human existence and mental life - e.g. regarding perception, meaning, cognition, purposeful action, and communication. Here an argument is developed where information is related to Peirce`s category of secondness, while emotion and knowledge are related to the categories of firstness and thirdness, respectively.

Consequently, it is information, as outer signs, which begins the meaning creation process causing emotion, as inner signs, and knowledge that mediates between information and emotion. The process of meaning creation involving emotion, information and knowledge, hence, seem to be dividable into three different, but continuous phases of meaning. With affinity, and seen from the perspective of Peirce`s objective idealism, does emotion instantiate chance, while information constraints what can be felt and known in the first place. Finally, knowledge instantiates reasonableness. For Peirce mind and matter are folded into each other and therefore the meaning creation process is immanent in world. Despite how diverse the topics of the dissertation are, in the concluding chapter, it is also suggested, that a “Peircean concept of normativity”, explicitly or implicitly, is running through the interpretations and applications.