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Truth, Scholastic Transcendentals, and the Implications of Ideal-RealismFilosofia 67 201-224. 2022.The paper explores the possibility of philosophical cooperation between Thomism and American pragmatism by resurrecting a largely forgotten debate between Wilmon Henry Sheldon and Jacques Maritain. The discussion focuses primarily on the problem of truth as it is discussed by Peirce and by some contemporary Thomists, including Maritain but also Milbank, Pickstock, Lonergan, Balthasar, Pieper, and Ulrich. The paper claims that, if we bring Peirce’s version of pragmatism into the picture, cooperat…Read more
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Culture: Techne and ContemplationLogos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 26 (1): 115-118. 2023.
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14The Ideal and the Real: Studies in PragmatismMimesis International. 2022.The current volume provides an interpretation of American pragmatism according to which pragmatism is not opposed to metaphysics but instead represents a vital, non-dismissive, non-deflationary attempt to respond to classical questions of philosophy concerning the nature of reality, truth, goodness, beauty, ideality, etc. American pragmatism has been often interpreted as a form of crass utilitarianism applied to all areas of philosophy – a precipitation of the “industrialist” spirit of the Unite…Read more
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9History and the Manifestation of the Good in Plato’s RepublicPhilosophies 8 (2): 37. 2023.This paper suggests that history, both personal and political, plays a crucial role in the manifestation (or concealment) of the Good in Plato’s Republic. After an introduction on how to read Plato’s dialogues vis-a-vis the problem of history, this article offers a close reading of Books I and VIII of the Republic.
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19Making Sense of ‘Being Dead’Studia Neoaristotelica 18 (2): 187-213. 2021.What does ‘being dead’ mean? Should we understand ‘being dead’ as a real property or state of a subject or as something different? Does the study of death belong to metaphysics or philosophy of nature? Does the meaning of ‘being dead’ change when referred to a corpse or to a separated soul? What kind of negation does it entail? The present paper discusses these and related questions concerning the meaning of death. To do so, the paper assesses the contemporary debate concerning the so-called “te…Read more
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11“I” Who? A New Look at Peirce’s Theory of Indexical Self-ReferenceThe Pluralist 10 (2): 220-246. 2015.The aim of this article is to address the problem of what is usually called “self-consciousness” by studying Charles S. Peirce’s semeiotic treatment of self-referential statements. Peirce believes that an adequate study of the mind requires “to reduce all mental action,” including “self-consciousness,” “to the formula of valid reasoning” (W 2:214, EP 1:30, 5:267, 1868) and its semeiotic nature. While Peirce makes frequent use of the notion of “consciousness,” he is at the same time distant from …Read more
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31Mortality in the Light of Synechism: A Peircean Approach to DeathTransactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 55 (4): 387-407. 2019.If we take Charles Peirce's "Immortality in the Light of Synechism" at face value, synechism has implications for "religious questions" or, one might say, for questions regarding the destiny of human life. In that same essay, Peirce begins to work out some of these enigmatic yet insightful consequences concerning the problem of immortality. The aim of this paper is to apply the principles of Peirce's philosophy, chiefly synechism and related doctrines, in order to investigate the nature of one o…Read more
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19Dewey, Semiotics, and SubstancesThe Pluralist 14 (3): 26-50. 2019.Although the Deweyan notion of experience has been largely developed by the pragmatist scholarship, it is surprising that its semiotic structure has been mainly overlooked. The reasons for this gap in the literature could be the fact that "semiotics" is usually associated with the work of Charles S. Peirce rather than Dewey and that Dewey never developed a general theory of signs. The aim of this paper is to introduce a semiotic reading of Dewey's theory of experience through the key notion of i…Read more
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37Death as Material Kenosis: A Thomistic ProposalHeythrop Journal 61 (2): 327-346. 2020.This paper explores the possibility of developing a new understanding of the traditional notion of human death as the separation of soul and body by relying on the resources of St Thomas’s hylomorphism. It therefore develops the concept of material kenosis, showing in what way the Thomistic understanding of death should be broadened beyond the mere understanding of it as substantial change. The paper concludes by suggesting that this view of human death supplements St Thomas’s interpretation of …Read more
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22Understanding Hylomorphic DualismProceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 91 145-158. 2017.In this paper I will claim that the standard interpretation of Aquinas’s philosophy of mind is not satisfactory. A better reading is possible, which I will call strong hylomorphic dualism. Thus, I intend to do three things: first, I introduce strong hylomorphic dualism by highlighting the shortcomings of the standard reading, to which I will refer as weak hylomorphic dualism; second, I reconstruct two arguments provided by Aquinas to prove that his position is in fact best understood as strong h…Read more
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27Can Thomism and Pragmatism Cooperate?International Philosophical Quarterly 59 (4): 467-484. 2019.The paper explores the possibility of philosophical cooperation between Thomism and American Pragmatism by resurrecting a largely forgotten debate between Wilmon Henry Sheldon and Jacques Maritain. The discussion focuses primarily on two topics: the compatibility between a substance ontology and a pragmatist-evolutionary ontology, and the compatibility between the scholastic and the pragmatist theories of truth. The paper claims that, if we bring Peirce’s version of pragmatism into the picture, …Read more
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12Wittgenstein, Peirce, and DeathIdealistic Studies 49 (1): 45-63. 2019.The paper presents a Peircean criticism of Wittgenstein’s views on death. By exploring the notion of ‘limit’ central to both Wittgenstein and Peirce, the paper claims that a Peircean pragmatic notion of death can retain the advantages of Wittgenstein’s ‘limit’ notion of death without incurring the shortcomings of the latter, which I identify with semantic and metaphysical externality. I conclude by sketching out some consequences of the Peircean view for a metaphysics of death.
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321Assessing Technoscientism: Body Enhancement, Human Experience, and the Missing 'Technomoral' VirtueSociología y Tecnociencia 8 (1): 43-59. 2018.In this paper we assess two sides of the debate concerning biomedical enhancement. First, the idea that biomedical enhancement should be prohibited on the grounds that it degrades human nature; second, that biomedical enhancement can in principle remove the source of moral evil. In so doing, we will propose a different notion of human nature, what we shall call the agato-teleological idea of human nature, and its implications for a philosophical understanding of the human body. Also, we will poi…Read more
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260La logica del riconoscimento ontologico in Charles S. PeirceIn Massimo A. Bonfantini, Rossella Fabbrichesi & Salvatore Zingale (eds.), Su Peirce, Bompiani. pp. 91-106. 2015.
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811“I” Who? A New Look at Peirce’s Theory of Indexical Self-ReferenceThe Pluralist 10 (2): 220-246. 2015.The aim of this article is to address the problem of what is usually called “self-consciousness” by studying Charles S. Peirce’s semeiotic treatment of self-referential statements. Peirce believes that an adequate study of the mind requires “to reduce all mental action,” including “self-consciousness,” “to the formula of valid reasoning” and its semeiotic nature. While Peirce makes frequent use of the notion of “consciousness,” he is at the same time distant from the understanding of the “consci…Read more
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33The Pragmatic Maxim and the Normative Sciences: Peirce's Problematical ‘Fourth’ Grade of ClarityTransactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 51 (1): 34. 2015.One of the crucial debates within pragmatism concerns the import of Charles S. Peirce’s “pragmatic maxim.” The aim of this article is to show that Peirce maintains a twofold attitude toward his maxim. I would call this twofold approach ‘problematical,’ not because it is the origin of inconsistencies within Peirce’s thought, but because the collocation and use of the pragmatic maxim constitutes a genuine problem upon which Peirce continued to reflect throughout his life.1 This problem concerns th…Read more
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10Wittgenstein, Peirce, and DeathIdealistic Studies 49 (1): 45-63. 2019.The paper presents a Peircean criticism of Wittgenstein’s views on death. By exploring the notion of ‘limit’ central to both Wittgenstein and Peirce, the paper claims that a Peircean pragmatic notion of death can retain the advantages of Wittgenstein’s ‘limit’ notion of death without incurring the shortcomings of the latter, which I identify with semantic and metaphysical externality. I conclude by sketching out some consequences of the Peircean view for a metaphysics of death.
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31W.T. Harris, Peirce, and the Charge of NominalismHegel Bulletin 36 (2): 135-158. 2015.While a number of classical pragmatists crafted their philosophies in conjunction with a careful study of Hegel's works, others saw their philosophies emerge in antagonism with proponents of Hegel. In this paper, we offer an instance of the latter case. Namely, we show that the impetus for Charles S. Peirce's early articulation and avowal of realism (the claim that some generals are real) was William Torrey Harris's claim that the formal laws of logic lacked universal validity. According to Harr…Read more
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24A Deweyan Assessment of Three Major Tendencies in Philosophy of ConsciousnessTransactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 53 (3): 466. 2017.In recent years, philosophy of mind has been concerned primarily with consciousness. Despite technical differences and minutiae, the problem of consciousness is widely identified today with that of subjective experience. Philosophers recur to different characterizations of subjective experience, including qualia, phenomenal or experiential properties, and what-it's-like-nesses, in the attempt to clarify what makes our conscious life what it is beyond the underlying machinery of neurophysiology. …Read more
Marco Stango
St. Bernard's School of Theology and Ministry
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St. Bernard's School of Theology and MinistryAssistant Professor
Areas of Specialization
3 more
Philosophy of Mind |
American Pragmatism |
Thomas Aquinas |
Persons |
Charles Sanders Peirce |
Metaphysics |
Medieval Philosophy: Topics |
Christianity, Misc |