Subject and object (philosophy)

Last updated

The distinction between subject and object is a basic idea of philosophy.

Contents

A simple common differentiation for subject and object is: an observer versus a thing that is observed. In certain cases involving personhood, subjects and objects can be considered interchangeable where each label is applied only from one or the other point of view. Subjects and objects are related to the philosophical distinction between subjectivity and objectivity: the existence of knowledge, ideas, or information either dependent upon a subject (subjectivity) or independent from any subject (objectivity).

Etymology

In English the word object is derived from the Latin objectus (p.p. of obicere) with the meaning "to throw, or put before or against", from ob-, "against", and the root jacere, "to throw". [2] Some other related English words include objectify (to reify), objective (a future reference), and objection (an expression of protest). Subject uses the same root, but with the prefix sub-, meaning "under".

Terms and usage

Broadly construed, the word object names a maximally general category, whose members are eligible for being referred to, quantified over and thought of. Terms similar to the broad notion of object include thing, being, entity, item, existent, term, unit, and individual. [3]

In ordinary language, one is inclined to call only a material object "object". [3] In certain contexts, it may be socially inappropriate to apply the word object to animate beings, especially to human beings, while the words entity and being are more acceptable.

Some authors use object in contrast to property ; that is to say, an object is an entity that is not a property. Objects differ from properties in that objects cannot be referred to by predicates. Some philosophers include abstract objects as counting as objects, while others do not. Terms similar to such usage of object include substance, individual, and particular. [3]

There are two definitions of object. The first definition holds that an object is an entity that fails to experience and that is not conscious. The second definition holds that an object is an entity experienced. The second definition differs from the first one in that the second definition allows for a subject to be an object at the same time. [3]

One approach to defining an object is in terms of its properties and relations. Descriptions of all bodies, minds, and persons must be in terms of their properties and relations. For example, it seems that the only way to describe an apple is by describing its properties and how it is related to other things, such as its shape, size, composition, color, temperature, etc., while its relations may include "on the table", "in the room" and "being bigger than other apples". Metaphysical frameworks also differ in whether they consider objects existing independently of their properties and, if so, in what way. [4] The notion of an object must address two problems: the change problems and the problems of substances. Two leading theories about objecthood are substance theory, wherein substances (objects) are distinct from their properties, and bundle theory, wherein objects are no more than bundles of their properties.

René Descartes

The formal separation between subject and object in the Western world corresponds to the dualistic framework, in the early modern philosophy of René Descartes, between thought and extension (in common language, mind and matter). Descartes believed that thought (subjectivity) was the essence of the mind, and that extension (the occupation of space) was the essence of matter. [5] For modern philosophers like Descartes, consciousness is a state of cognition experienced by the subject—whose existence can never be doubted as its ability to doubt (and think) proves that it exists. On the other hand, he argues that the object(s) which a subject perceives may not have real or full existence or value, independent of that observing subject.

German idealism

Subject as a key-term in thinking about human consciousness began its career with the German idealists, in response to David Hume's radical skepticism. The idealists' starting point is Hume's conclusion that there is nothing to the self over and above a big, fleeting bundle of perceptions. The next step was to ask how this undifferentiated bundle comes to be experienced as a unity – as a single subject. Hume had offered the following proposal:

"...the imagination must by long custom acquire the same method of thinking, and run along the parts of space and time in conceiving its objects. [6]

Kant, Hegel and their successors sought to flesh out the process by which the subject is constituted out of the flow of sense impressions. Hegel, for example, stated in his Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit that a subject is constituted by "the process of reflectively mediating itself with itself." [7]

Hegel begins his definition of the subject at a standpoint derived from Aristotelian physics: "the unmoved which is also self-moving" (Preface, para. 22). That is, what is not moved by an outside force, but which propels itself, has a prima facie case for subjectivity. Hegel's next step, however, is to identify this power to move, this unrest that is the subject, as pure negativity. Subjective self-motion, for Hegel, comes not from any pure or simple kernel of authentic individuality, but rather, it is

"...the bifurcation of the simple; it is the doubling which sets up opposition, and then again the negation of this indifferent diversity and of its anti-thesis" (Preface, para. 18).

The Hegelian subject's modus operandi is therefore cutting, splitting and introducing distinctions by injecting negation into the flow of sense-perceptions. Subjectivity is thus a kind of structural effect – what happens when Nature is diffused, refracted around a field of negativity and the "unity of the subject" for Hegel, is in fact a second-order effect, a "negation of negation". The subject experiences itself as a unity only by purposively negating the very diversity it itself had produced. The Hegelian subject may therefore be characterized either as "self-restoring sameness" or else as "reflection in otherness within itself" (Preface, para. 18).

American pragmatism

Charles S. Peirce of the late-modern American philosophical school of pragmatism, defines the broad notion of an object as anything that we can think or talk about. [8] In a general sense it is any entity: the pyramids, gods, [3] Socrates, [3] the nearest star system, the number seven, a disbelief in predestination, or the fear of cats.

Late modern and contemporary philosophy

In Continental philosophy, the subject is a central term in debates over the nature of the self. In Analytic philosophy of the Anglo-American tradition, the subject is also central in debates over the nature of subjective experience.

Continental philosophy

The thinking of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud provided a point of departure for questioning the notion of a unitary, autonomous Subject, which for many thinkers in the Continental tradition is seen as the foundation of the liberal theory of the social contract. These thinkers opened up the way for the deconstruction of the subject as a core-concept of metaphysics.[ citation needed ]

Freud's explorations of the unconscious mind added up to a wholesale indictment of Enlightenment notions of subjectivity.[ citation needed ]

Among the most radical re-thinkers of human self-consciousness was Martin Heidegger, whose concept of Dasein or "Being-there" displaces traditional notions of the personal subject altogether. With Heidegger, phenomenology tries to go beyond the classical dichotomy between subject and object, because they are linked by an inseparable and original relationship, in the sense that there can be no world without a subject, nor the subject without world. [9]

Jacques Lacan, inspired by Heidegger and Ferdinand de Saussure, built on Freud's psychoanalytic model of the subject, in which the split subject is constituted by a double bind: alienated from jouissance when they leave the Real, enters into the Imaginary (during the mirror stage), and separates from the Other when they come into the realm of language, difference, and demand in the Symbolic or the Name of the Father. [10]

Thinkers such as structural Marxist Louis Althusser and poststructuralist Michel Foucault [1] theorize the subject as a social construction, the so-called "poststructuralist subject". [11] [ additional citation(s) needed ] According to Althusser, the "subject" is an ideological construction (more exactly, constructed by the "Ideological State Apparatuses"). One's subjectivity exists, "always-already" and is constituted through the process of interpellation. Ideology inaugurates one into being a subject, and every ideology is intended to maintain and glorify its idealized subject, as well as the metaphysical category of the subject itself (see antihumanism).

According to Foucault, it is the "effect" of power and "disciplines" (see Discipline and Punish : construction of the subject (subjectivation or subjectification, French : assujettissement) as student, soldier, "criminal", etc.)). Foucault believed it was possible to transform oneself; he used the word ethopoiein from the word ethos to describe the process. [12] Subjectification was a central concept in Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's work as well. [13]

Analytic philosophy

Bertrand Russell updated the classical terminology with a term, the fact ; [14] "Everything that there is in the world I call a fact." Russell uses the term "fact" in two distinct senses. In 1918, facts are distinct from objects. "I want you to realize that when I speak of a fact I do not mean a particular existing thing, such as Socrates or the rain or the sun. Socrates himself does not render any statement true or false. You might be inclined to suppose that all by himself he would give truth to the statement ‘Socrates existed’, but as a matter of fact that is a mistake." [15] But in 1919, he identified facts with objects. "I mean by ‘fact’ anything complex. If the world contains no simples, then whatever it contains is a fact; if it contains any simples, then facts are whatever it contains except simples... That Socrates was Greek, that he married Xantippe, that he died of drinking the hemlock, are facts that all have something in common, namely, that they are ‘about’ Socrates, who is accordingly said to be a constituent of each of them." [16]

Facts, or objects, are opposed to beliefs, which are "subjective" and may be errors on the part of the subject, the knower who is their source and who is certain of himself and little else. All doubt implies the possibility of error and therefore admits the distinction between subjectivity and objectivity. The knower is limited in ability to tell fact from belief, false from true objects and engages in reality testing, an activity that will result in more or less certainty regarding the reality of the object. According to Russell, [17] "we need a description of the fact which would make a given belief true" where "Truth is a property of beliefs." Knowledge is "true beliefs". [18]

In contemporary Analytic philosophy, the issue of subject—and more specifically the "point of view" of the subject, or "subjectivity"—has received attention as one of the major intractable problems in philosophy of mind (a related issue being the mind–body problem). In the essay "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?", Thomas Nagel famously argued that explaining subjective experience—the "what it is like" to be something—is currently beyond the reach of scientific inquiry, because scientific understanding by definition requires an objective perspective, which, according to Nagel, is diametrically opposed to the subjective first-person point of view. Furthermore, one cannot have a definition of objectivity without being connected to subjectivity in the first place since they are mutual and interlocked.

In Nagel's book The View from Nowhere , he asks: "What kind of fact is it that I am Thomas Nagel?". Subjects have a perspective but each subject has a unique perspective and this seems to be a fact in Nagel's view from nowhere (i.e. the birds-eye view of the objective description in the universe). The Indian view of "Brahman" suggests that the ultimate and fundamental subject is existence itself, through which each of us as it were "looks out" as an aspect of a frozen and timeless everything, experienced subjectively due to our separated sensory and memory apparatuses. These additional features of subjective experience are often referred to as qualia (see Frank Cameron Jackson and Mary's room).

Other contemporary understandings

An attribute of an object is called a property if it can be experienced (e.g. its color, size, weight, smell, taste, and location). Objects manifest themselves through their properties. These manifestations seem to change in a regular and unified way, suggesting that something underlies the properties. The change problem asks what that underlying thing is. According to substance theory, the answer is a substance, that which stands for the change.

According to substance theory, because substances are only experienced through their properties a substance itself is never directly experienced. The problem of substance asks on what basis can one conclude the existence of a substance that cannot be seen or scientifically verified. According to David Hume's bundle theory, the answer is none; thus an object is merely its properties.

Mahayana Buddhism

In the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā , the Indian philosopher Nagarjuna seizes upon the dichotomy between objects as collections of properties or as separate from those properties to demonstrate that both assertions fall apart under analysis. By uncovering this paradox he then provides a solution ( pratītyasamutpāda – "dependent origination") that lies at the very root of Buddhist praxis. Although Pratītyasamutpāda is normally limited to caused objects, Nagarjuna extends his argument to objects in general by differentiating two distinct ideas – dependent designation and dependent origination. He proposes that all objects are dependent upon designation, and therefore any discussion regarding the nature of objects can only be made in light of the context. The validity of objects can only be established within those conventions that assert them. [19]

Physics

Limiting discussions of objecthood to the realm of physical objects may simplify them. However, defining physical objects in terms of fundamental particles (e.g. quarks) leaves open the question of what is the nature of a fundamental particle and thus asks what categories of being can be used to explain physical objects.[ citation needed ]

Semantics

Symbols represent objects; how they do so, the map–territory relation, is the basic problem of semantics. [20]

See also

Related Research Articles

In ontology, the theory of categories concerns itself with the categories of being: the highest genera or kinds of entities according to Amie Thomasson. To investigate the categories of being, or simply categories, is to determine the most fundamental and the broadest classes of entities. A distinction between such categories, in making the categories or applying them, is called an ontological distinction. Various systems of categories have been proposed, they often include categories for substances, properties, relations, states of affairs or events. A representative question within the theory of categories might articulate itself, for example, in a query like, "Are universals prior to particulars?"

Idealism in philosophy, also known as philosophical idealism or metaphysical idealism, is the set of metaphysical perspectives asserting that, most fundamentally, reality is equivalent to mind, spirit, or consciousness; that reality is entirely a mental construct; or that ideas are the highest form of reality or have the greatest claim to being considered "real". Because there are different types of idealism, it is difficult to define the term uniformly.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ontology</span> Philosophical study of being and existence

In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being. It investigates what types of entities exist, how they are grouped into categories, and how they are related to one another on the most fundamental level. Ontologists often try to determine what the categories or highest kinds are and how they form a system of categories that encompasses the classification of all entities. Commonly proposed categories include substances, properties, relations, states of affairs, and events. These categories are characterized by fundamental ontological concepts, including particularity and universality, abstractness and concreteness, or possibility and necessity. Of special interest is the concept of ontological dependence, which determines whether the entities of a category exist on the most fundamental level. Disagreements within ontology are often about whether entities belonging to a certain category exist and, if so, how they are related to other entities.

Substance theory, or substance–attribute theory, is an ontological theory positing that objects are constituted each by a substance and properties borne by the substance but distinct from it. In this role, a substance can be referred to as a substratum or a thing-in-itself. Substances are particulars that are ontologically independent: they are able to exist all by themselves. Another defining feature often attributed to substances is their ability to undergo changes. Changes involve something existing before, during and after the change. They can be described in terms of a persisting substance gaining or losing properties. Attributes or properties, on the other hand, are entities that can be exemplified by substances. Properties characterize their bearers; they express what their bearer is like.

Truth or verity is the property of being in accord with fact or reality. In everyday language, truth is typically ascribed to things that aim to represent reality or otherwise correspond to it, such as beliefs, propositions, and declarative sentences.

Dialectic, also known as the dialectical method, refers originally to dialogue between people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing to arrive at the truth through reasoned argumentation. Dialectic resembles debate, but the concept excludes subjective elements such as emotional appeal and rhetoric. It has its origins in ancient philosophy and continued to be developed in the Middle Ages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Contradiction</span> Logical incompatibility between two or more propositions

In traditional logic, a contradiction occurs when a proposition conflicts either with itself or established fact. It is often used as a tool to detect disingenuous beliefs and bias. Illustrating a general tendency in applied logic, Aristotle's law of noncontradiction states that "It is impossible that the same thing can at the same time both belong and not belong to the same object and in the same respect."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">German idealism</span> Philosophical movement

German idealism is a philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It developed out of the work of Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s, and was closely linked both with Romanticism and the revolutionary politics of the Enlightenment. The period of German idealism after Kant is also known as post-Kantian idealism or simply post-Kantianism. One scheme divides German idealists into transcendental idealists, associated with Kant and Fichte, and absolute idealists, associated with Schelling and Hegel.

In logic and philosophy, a property is a characteristic of an object; a red object is said to have the property of redness. The property may be considered a form of object in its own right, able to possess other properties. A property, however, differs from individual objects in that it may be instantiated, and often in more than one object. It differs from the logical/mathematical concept of class by not having any concept of extensionality, and from the philosophical concept of class in that a property is considered to be distinct from the objects which possess it. Understanding how different individual entities can in some sense have some of the same properties is the basis of the problem of universals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Direct and indirect realism</span> Debate in the philosophy of mind

In the philosophy of perception and philosophy of mind, direct or naïve realism, as opposed to indirect or representational realism, are differing models that describe the nature of conscious experiences; out of the metaphysical question of whether the world we see around us is the real world itself or merely an internal perceptual copy of that world generated by our conscious experience.

Philosophical realism – usually not treated as a position of its own but as a stance towards other subject matters – is the view that a certain kind of thing has mind-independent existence, i.e. that it exists even in the absence of any mind perceiving it or that its existence is not just a mere appearance in the eye of the beholder. This includes a number of positions within epistemology and metaphysics which express that a given thing instead exists independently of knowledge, thought, or understanding. This can apply to items such as the physical world, the past and future, other minds, and the self, though may also apply less directly to things such as universals, mathematical truths, moral truths, and thought itself. However, realism may also include various positions which instead reject metaphysical treatments of reality entirely.

French philosophy, here taken to mean philosophy in the French language, has been extremely diverse and has influenced Western philosophy as a whole for centuries, from the medieval scholasticism of Peter Abelard, through the founding of modern philosophy by René Descartes, to 20th century philosophy of science, existentialism, phenomenology, structuralism, and postmodernism.

The Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of the mind and its relation to the body and the external world.

Western philosophy refers to the philosophical thought and work of the Western world. Historically, the term refers to the philosophical thinking of Western culture, beginning with the ancient Greek philosophy of the pre-Socratics. The word philosophy itself originated from the Ancient Greek philosophía (φιλοσοφία), literally, "the love of wisdom" Ancient Greek: φιλεῖν phileîn, "to love" and σοφία sophía, "wisdom").

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to metaphysics:

The philosophy of self examines the idea of the self at a conceptual level. Many different ideas on what constitutes self have been proposed, including the self being an activity, the self being independent of the senses, the bundle theory of the self, the self as a narrative center of gravity, and the self as a linguistic or social construct rather than a physical entity. The self is also an important concept in Eastern philosophy, including Buddhist philosophy.

An ontological argument is a philosophical argument, made from an ontological basis, that is advanced in support of the existence of God. Such arguments tend to refer to the state of being or existing. More specifically, ontological arguments are commonly conceived a priori in regard to the organization of the universe, whereby, if such organizational structure is true, God must exist.

Personal identity is the unique numerical identity of a person over time. Discussions regarding personal identity typically aim to determine the necessary and sufficient conditions under which a person at one time and a person at another time can be said to be the same person, persisting through time.

Humeanism refers to the philosophy of David Hume and to the tradition of thought inspired by him. Hume was an influential Scottish philosopher well known for his empirical approach, which he applied to various fields in philosophy. In the philosophy of science, he is notable for developing the regularity theory of causation, which in its strongest form states that causation is nothing but constant conjunction of certain types of events without any underlying forces responsible for this regularity of conjunction. This is closely connected to his metaphysical thesis that there are no necessary connections between distinct entities. The Humean theory of action defines actions as bodily behavior caused by mental states and processes without the need to refer to an agent responsible for this. The slogan of Hume's theory of practical reason is that "reason is...the slave of the passions". It restricts the sphere of practical reason to instrumental rationality concerning which means to employ to achieve a given end. But it denies reason a direct role regarding which ends to follow. Central to Hume's position in metaethics is the is-ought distinction. It states that is-statements, which concern facts about the natural world, do not imply ought-statements, which are moral or evaluative claims about what should be done or what has value. In philosophy of mind, Hume is well known for his development of the bundle theory of the self. It states that the self is to be understood as a bundle of mental states and not as a substance acting as the bearer of these states, as is the traditional conception. Many of these positions were initially motivated by Hume's empirical outlook. It emphasizes the need to ground one's theories in experience and faults opposing theories for failing to do so. But many philosophers within the Humean tradition have gone beyond these methodological restrictions and have drawn various metaphysical conclusions from Hume's ideas.

The distinction between subjectivity and objectivity is a basic idea of philosophy, particularly epistemology and metaphysics. It is often related to discussions of consciousness, agency, personhood, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, reality, truth, and communication.

References

  1. 1 2 Heartfield, James (2002). "Postmodernism and the 'Death of the Subject'". The Death of the Subject. Retrieved 28 March 2013.
  2. ↑ Klein, Ernest (1969) A comprehensive etymological dictionary of the English language, Vol II, Elsevier publishing company, Amsterdam, pp. 1066–1067
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Rettler, Bradley and Andrew M. Bailey. "Object". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 29 January 2021.
  4. ↑ Goswick, Dana (27 July 2016). "Ordinary Objects". oxfordbibliographies. doi:10.1093/obo/9780195396577-0312. ISBN   978-0-19-539657-7 . Retrieved 20 April 2020.
  5. ↑ Descartes, René. "LIII". The Principles of Philosophy . Retrieved 19 July 2016.
  6. ↑ Hume, David. The Philosophical Works of David Hume (1826 edition) , p. 27, at Google Books
  7. ↑ "Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit".
  8. ↑ Peirce, Charles S. "Object". University of Helsinki. Archived from the original on 2009-02-14. Retrieved 2009-03-19.
  9. ↑ Farina, Gabriella (2014). Some reflections on the phenomenological method". Dialogues in Philosophy, Mental and Neuro Sciences, 7(2):506–2.
  10. ↑ Elizabeth Stewart, Maire Jaanus, Richard Feldstein (eds.), Lacan in the German-Speaking World, SUNY Press, 2004, p. 16.
  11. ↑ Edel Heuven, "The Poststructuralist Subject and the Paradox of Internal Coherence", M.Sc. thesis, Wageningen University and Research, 2017, p. 2.
  12. ↑ Foucault, Michel (2006). The hermeneutics of the subject : lectures at the Collège de France, 1981-1982. New York: Picador. p. 237. ISBN   9780312425708.
  13. ↑ Gary Genosko (ed.), Deleuze and Guattari: Deleuze and Guattari, Routledge, 2001, p. 1315.
  14. ↑ Russell 1948 , p. 143:
  15. ↑ Pg. 182. Russell, Bertrand. “The Philosophy of Logical Atomism.” Essay. In Logic and Knowledge; Essays, 1901-1950, Ed. by Robert Charles Marsh. Allen, G., 1966.
  16. ↑ Pg. 285-286. Russell, Bertrand. “On Propositions: What They Are and How They Mean.” Essay. In Logic and Knowledge; Essays, 1901-1950, Ed. by Robert Charles Marsh. Allen, G., 1966.
  17. ↑ Russell 1948 , pp. 148–149.
  18. ↑ Russell 1948 , p. 154.
  19. ↑ MMK 24:18
  20. ↑ Dąmbska, Izydora (2016). "Symbols". Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences & the Humanities. 105: 201–209 – via Humanities Source.

Bibliography

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.