THE CONCEPT AS A REPRESENTATION OF THE REAL AND "FORMALLY POSSIBLE OF ONESELF" JOHN BOLER'S PRESENTATION ON THE RELATIONS OF PEIRCE AND DUNS SCOTUS

Abstract

"a real entity, possibly existing in many individuals, in their own virtual knowability prior to the act of the intellect"

(DUNS SCOTUS) (In: Quaestiones VII q. 18, pp. 354-5, n. 58-65)

This paper was presented at the 23rd International Meeting of Pragmatism, held at PUC-SP in October 2024. In a slightly more courageous, and I would even say daring, way, I tried to reflect on the thought of Professor John F. Boler regarding the relationships he established when reading Charles Peirce from the thought of Duns Scotus. And in this endeavor, the question posed is – after all, is the real thing thought of as being real? Is the concept, as a representation, real in itself and not in the object? The possible answer in this little research is that in Peirce there is a given solution that Duns Scotus gave to the "problem of universals[1]".

DOI: https://doi.org/10.56238/sevened2025.001-030

[1] The scholastic realism derived from the reflection on universals in Scotus and Peirce's even more extreme proposal, allows us to project a reality from within the community, as J. Boler states. However, in view of the misunderstandings that mark the trajectory of Peirce's thought and the philosophy of pragmatism in general, [my effort will involve the task of pointing out some mistakes] is what PICH (2005) says about Prof. Boler.