I keep wondering to what these wonderful posts refer.
This post was sent to the Peirce list. By Charles Sanders Peirce invented triadic thinking and the concept of three stages of thought. My method of being, triadic philosophy, is based on but does not in any way attempt to represent Peirce, who was a scientist, not a theologian or for that matter ordinary person.
I keep wondering to what these wonderful posts refer. I am not being ironical or sarcastic. Jeff’s first paragraph sweeping description of first, second and third is beautiful. But to what does it refer? What is its practical effect? How is it used?
Here is my answer. Triadic thinking is conscious consideration by individuals. The first stage is that vague reality that comes up as a sign and ends up becoming more likely a word than anything else. That enables consideration, a second stage, an indexical query, sort of. For me that is a list of values which are in effect an index of what Peirce called memorial maxims.
What Jeff calls metaphysical refers to the third stage which is indeed the effect or action or expression that results from the consideration of the first, the sign. This third is the effect, the practical outcome of the triadic consideration, sign, index, symbol or reality, ethics and aesthetics.
For Peirce, is this not the sine qua non of inquiry itself?
Any way you slice it, I cannot help thinking that this is what Joseph Brent was trying to understand in his generally maligned biography of Peirce. It was that chapter toward the end that helped me to see it. And I think Brent was also, like me, fishing for the actual reason why Peirce could make the outlandish claim that he would be built on like Aristotle.
In any case, I want to at least establish my question as legitimate. What does this all aim at if not the way a practical person thinks, which would need to be taught to replace the largely binary understandings that permeate culture and understanding generally.
