The notion of ground in Peirce is characterized by T.L. Short as being obsolete to his mature sign theory, having later been specified into the object dimension icon-index-symbol (Short 2007: 1986: 107), although he still uses the term “grounded interpretability” intuitively to refer to icons and indexes insofar as they obtain independent of symbolic articulation, or signification proper (Short 2007: 53). Umberto Eco in The Role of the Reader initially finds the ground of the sign within the interpretant (Eco 1984[1979]: 180—191), but later in Kant and the Platypus concedes it rather to the object dimension, specifically with firstness and iconicity. (2000[1997]: 99—102). Ivan Mladenov likewise finds the ground in firstness and iconicity, but attributes to the sub-symbolic a measure of semiosis – if not of signification proper – greater than what Eco grants (Mladenov 2006: 36—52). Göran Sonesson finds the ground in the object dimension also, but with secondness and indexicality, rather than with firstness and iconicity (Sonesson 2010), stressing the point that these grounds constitute no signification in and of themselves, but remain integral to the sign process. Similar to Sonesson, Luca Russo in his recent treatment maintains the stance that the ground is the relation between the representamen and object, but which position there emphasizes neither firstness nor secondness exclusively (Russo 2017: 97—110). Most recently, Terrence Deacon’s development of the ‘symbol un-grounding problem’ emphasizes the involved process by which symbols come to be detached from their grounds. This emphasis has a telling and as yet unremarked parallel in something Jacques Derrida once said about the sign theory of Peirce, specifically regarding icons and indexes: “Peirce seems to have been more attentive than Saussure to the irreducibility of this becoming-unmotivated. In his terminology, one must speak of a becoming-unmotivated of the symbol” (Derrida 1997[1967]: 48). The ongoing debate in semiotics, over whether or not icons and indexes (independent of symbolic articulation) can be called signs, is divisive. An answer appears between supposedly opposed circles. The two research areas (cognitive science and structural semiology) flank the sign theory of Peirce in unexpected fashion.