1. It is a conscious process. It occurs by an act of will to focus on a triad.
2. The first is deemed to be reality whatever it may be.
3. The second is deemed to be an index - that which the first interacts with.
4. The third is a determination to express or act out the conclusion that arises from the encounter of one and two. The third is the completion of the triadic process.
This is (to me) clearly a sequence within time which could not take place without all three elements in the order given. It is conscious thought in time.
However one may refer to or illustrate time, it is an objective, real continuity that goes in some direction. Without triadic thought, there is no possibility of evolving as conscious, thinking agents in time. If we introduce into the second area ontological values, then the second functions as an ethical brake on our reality and influences our expression or action, which I take to be aesthetic in nature. Time is chronological, a given, unalterable as far as we know. Space is also a given but it is clearly alterable. A world that moves to triadic thinking is capable of reflective action, even of evolving toward lower and lower levels of harmfulness.
Philosophy errs when it fails to see that ethics is rooted in the ontological and that there are core values that are universal and that should and would influence history if triadic thinking became widespread. In a sense triadic thinking is omnipresent, but it needs a push to convince us that we are indeed free to choose the values by which we live.
