key problem in the debate between Howard and Jon ...

Gosh, I wish you had not told me we were having a debate --
up until now I was enjoying the conversation ...

ET: ... is that Howard is viewing semiotics, in a nominalist way,
    as a 'system of representation' while Peirce's semiotics is
    instead not a system but a process of relations.  That's also
    why Peirce calls his semiotics non-psychological, because it
    is not representational -- which requires an egential mind
    to house those re-pr