Gary Richmond wrote:
JO: Now when a first thing among the three is considered in itself
(i.e as a First *within the relation*), the second thing can then be
considered as "other than" the first (i.e. as a Second in opposition
to the first thing *still within the relation*), and the third thing
is considered as mediating between the first and the second, (i.e in
its role as a Third). There you have both the categories and the
ordinals.
*
order has no importance. *[emphasis added]
It is not correct to conclude as Jean-Marc does that " order has no
importance." Let's take the order Jean-Marc employs, what I've called
the Hegelian order, but which is also Peirce's order of
something/other/medium. Can one start with medium? Of course not! So
even dialectic demands and precisely /is /this order 1st, thesis, 2nd
antithesis, 3rd synthesis.Can one start with antithesis or synthesis?
Of course not!
I agree but this is not comparable at all (see below)
Take any member of the relation, it will mediate between the other two.
This has just been disproved, again in his sense that "order has no
importance" at this level of analysis.
So again, and in my opinion, Peirce is not expressing a "truism" here,
but rather, like so much else that can result from prepared,
clear-headed and open-minded diagram observation (at least since
Euclid ) it may be seen to be a "self-evident truth."
Gary, sorry I didn't find anything in your "demonstration" that is in
contradiction with what I wrote earlier. You write "This has just been
disproved" but you have only shown that in the Hegelian dialiectic the 3
moments cannot be interchanged, I never claimed they could... We are
concerned with genuine triadic relations and the
thesis/antithesis/synthesis (which by the way Hegel never called with
these terms) is a degenerate one.
to be more on the topic, are you interested in Andr¨ De Tienne's article
in which he shows in a 6-page article how:
- the sign mediates between the object and the interpretant
- the object mediates between the sign and the interpretant
- the interpretant mediates between the sign and the object
and based on Peirce's writings?
he writes for instance:
"... On the one hand, we can take this to mean that in a genuine triad,
the “first” is a first of a third, the “second” is a second of a third,
and the “third” is a third of a third, so that we are in fact working
with two different categorial levels, one being the level of firstness,
secondness, and thirdness, and the other the level of firstness of
thirdness, secondness of thirdness, and thirdness of thirdness. This is
certainly correct, but I repeat, not sufficient. One should also
consider that each “third” element of the triad can be a “third of a
third”, that is, a mediating element between the other two."
/JM
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