Can there be an object without any subject?

[tantric]

I did three years of PhD in ecology and epidemiology - you can assume scientific literacy

Let's try another approach. Do you belief in the Uncaused Cause? If you accent linear times and the ultimate chain of cause and effect, either there is no beginning or, well, God did it.

The idea of the spinning rock in your head, or whatever, is more of this:

Modern science says that some millions of years ago, the newly cooled earth was lifeless and that life originated in the ocean. Buddhism never claimed that the world, sun, moon, stars, wind, water, days and nights were created by a powerful god or by a Buddha. Buddhists believe that the world was not created once upon a time, but that the world has been created millions of times every second and will continue to do so by itself and will break away by itself. According to Buddhism, world systems always appear and disappear in the universe.

The very simplistic Buddhist way out of the uncaused cause is 'everything depends on something, everything causes everything else, with no beginning or end' - which isn't nonsense, it's Systems Theory.

The systems view of reality as process, its perception of self-organizing patterns of physical and mental events, and the principals it discerned in the dynamics of these natural systems struck me as remarkably consonant with the Buddha's teachings. Like the doctrine of paticca samuppāda, systems theory sees causality as reciprocal, arising from interweaving circuits of contingency. [...] Despite the obvious contrasts in their origins and purposes, each of them—early Buddhism and contemporary systems theory—can clarify what the other is saying.

This is the essence of an ecosystem, no food chain, but a food web and a nutrient cycle. If you stop the system to study it, you destroy it - it can't be known that way.I'm aware of some of the more esoteric theories on the origin of the universe, how time itself shrank or was coiled, and I see emptiness in that. Besides, if time is a a dimension, that cause and effect must be bidirectional.

Before that sets off the woo alarms, let's be clear - there are conditions that can be appealed to for the explanation of existing phenomena.

Suppose that you ask, "Why are the lights on?" I might reply as follows: (1) Because I flicked the switch. I have appealed to an efficient condition. Or (2) because the wires are in good working order, the bulbs haven't burned out, and the electricity is flowing. These are supporting conditions. Or (3) the light is the emission of photons each of which is emitted in response to the bombardment of an atom by an electron, and so forth. I have appealed to a chain of immediate conditions. Or (4) so that we can see. This is the dominant condition. Any of these would be a perfectly good answer to the "Why?" question. But note that none of them makes reference to any causal powers or necessitation.

Despite how it's perceive by some in the West, and others in the East, the essential arguements are never contra reality. So

in examining a phenomenon and its relations to its conditions, we do not find that phenomenon somehow contained potentially in those conditions.... in exploiting an event or entity as a condition in explanation, we do not thereby ascribe it any causal power. Our desire for light does not exert some occult force on the lights. Nor is there anything to be found in the flicking of the switch other than the plastic, metal, movement, and connections visible to the naked eye. Occult causal powers are singularly absent. On the other hand, Nagarjuna points out in the same breath that this does not mean that conditions are explanatorily impotent. In a perfectly ordinary sense--not that which the metaphysicians of causation have in mind--our desire is active in the production of light. But not in the sense that it contains light potentially, or some special causal power that connects our minds to the bulbs

therefore...if this makes any kind of sense of you, I'll continue, but if it's gibberish, i'll try again later

defends dependent arising while rejecting causation. He notes (1: 6) that if entities are conceived as inherently existent, they exist independently, and hence need no conditions for their production. Indeed, they could not be produced if they exist in this way. On the other hand, if things exist in no way whatsoever, it follows trivially that they have no conditions.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Let's try another approach.

Umm ... no. If you answer my questions, I'll be quite happy to answer yours, but I won't do so beforehand if you just ignore what I asked and change the subject.

Do you believe in evolution, specifically the evolution of our senses? I'm interested in your words and not an unattributed quote from somebody else. If so, do you believe that our senses came about to allow us to interact with an external world or was there a different reason that we developed them and what would that reason be?

When you have something like the rock cycle which happens on its own through inanimate processes without any subjects around, do you believe that it's actually occurring? Do you believe that this process exists in reality without anyone interacting with it?

 

[tantric]

Didn't do that on purpose - I thought the 'PhD in Ecology' would imply belief in evolution. But your quote is very problematic. 'Our senses came about in order to allow us' won't fly in an evolutionary biology class. It is a given that there is no purpose or direction to evolution, hell, it's dogma. Vision didn't evolve in order to do anything, except propagate our genes. In species with vision, at some point having better vision was a survival advantage. It doesn't mean anything. That's the theory, and in evobio either you toe the line or they fail you. I find Teilhard de Chardin interesting, but not scientific, but the right now evobio is so embattled that if you doubt one tiny bit, you're labeled a Dinosaur Riding Creationist. I know - I ventured the opinion that panspermia isn't impossible or untestable and for the rest of my undergrad class the prof was dead convinced I was a fundie.

So yes, vision developed because it offered a survival advantage at some point. Period.

For the rock cycle - I don't use boolean logic. There are three states - true, false and indeterminable. Your rock cycle is indeterminable, which is entirely different from existing or not existing. I process does, I admit, most likely exist, assuming we find it afterwards, but it had no *meaningful* existence. Frankly, it's like God. God is of no interest to science if he is actually omnipotent and doesn't want to be found. There's not possibly of a testable hypothesis about such a God. It could be true - but it's irrelevant because even if it is, such a God isn't meaningful. I can't determine anything about it, I can't measure or test it, I can make predictions based on it, so it's just not important. That's the scientific approach to god - shrug, disinterest. This is not Buddhist - it's the logic of evolution. This is gonna look like tacky name dropping, but it's really a shoutout.Jaap de Roode was my mentor in this - we sat across from each other in the lab and he and I worked though a kind of dialectic for this, when I was digging into the deep meaning of science. He's brilliant, stellar - though I still say his piece on the history of the peppered moth in science should have been title 'the Checkered History of the Peppered Moth'. Blah blah - the point being, the teleology of evolution is just as strange a thing to grasp as emptiness.

Problem - that was pretentious and not helpful. But your POV is based on assumptions that make the conclusions forgone, even though you are obviously intelligent and rational. I can teach the ideology of science, such as it is, I might be able to share the Buddhist point of view, but you're gonna have to break into a new mode - fuck it, pretend you're in the matrix. This isn't life or death - it's gibberjabber.

 

[fromderinside]

Didn't do that on purpose - I thought the 'PhD in Ecology' would imply belief in evolution. But your quote is very problematic. 'Our senses came about in order to allow us' won't fly in an evolutionary biology class.

Sure it would. We always attribute purpose to things that came about by whatever. Assigning motive is not the same as attaining capacity, but, it is a convenient way to describe what happened without getting into purpose if one has already advised others of such.

As for object is that something existing or is it something existing seen by the subject? Analytically one can describes things that are there that one has never seen. So the possibility is that objects exist without mind. How else can one explain dreams?

Our sense of sight came about as the result of conditions and demands that lead to seeing as evidenced by the fact that seeing animals exist.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Didn't do that on purpose - I thought the 'PhD in Ecology' would imply belief in evolution. But your quote is very problematic. 'Our senses came about in order to allow us' won't fly in an evolutionary biology class. It is a given that there is no purpose or direction to evolution, hell, it's dogma. Vision didn't evolve in order to do anything, except propagate our genes. In species with vision, at some point having better vision was a survival advantage. It doesn't mean anything. That's the theory, and in evobio either you toe the line or they fail you. I find Teilhard de Chardin interesting, but not scientific, but the right now evobio is so embattled that if you doubt one tiny bit, you're labeled a Dinosaur Riding Creationist. I know - I ventured the opinion that panspermia isn't impossible or untestable and for the rest of my undergrad class the prof was dead convinced I was a fundie.

So yes, vision developed because it offered a survival advantage at some point. Period.

OK, so how did it give a survival advantage? If there's nothing out there until we experience it as being out there, what are the selective pressures which give a survival advantage to those with vision over those without vision? If there's an external world separate from us which the organism needs to interact with, the benefits of vision and other senses are obvious and it's clear to see why being able to gather information about that external world grants an advantage. If there's not, I don't know what it is that you mean when you say "vision developed because it offered a survival advantage". Could you expand upon how it would do that?

For the rock cycle - I don't use boolean logic. There are three states - true, false and indeterminable. Your rock cycle is indeterminable, which is entirely different from existing or not existing. I process does, I admit, most likely exist, assuming we find it afterwards, but it had no *meaningful* existence. Frankly, it's like God. God is of no interest to science if he is actually omnipotent and doesn't want to be found. There's not possibly of a testable hypothesis about such a God. It could be true - but it's irrelevant because even if it is, such a God isn't meaningful. I can't determine anything about it, I can't measure or test it, I can make predictions based on it, so it's just not important. That's the scientific approach to god - shrug, disinterest. This is not Buddhist - it's the logic of evolution. This is gonna look like tacky name dropping, but it's really a shoutout.Jaap de Roode was my mentor in this - we sat across from each other in the lab and he and I worked though a kind of dialectic for this, when I was digging into the deep meaning of science. He's brilliant, stellar - though I still say his piece on the history of the peppered moth in science should have been title 'the Checkered History of the Peppered Moth'. Blah blah - the point being, the teleology of evolution is just as strange a thing to grasp as emptiness.

Problem - that was pretentious and not helpful. But your POV is based on assumptions that make the conclusions forgone, even though you are obviously intelligent and rational. I can teach the ideology of science, such as it is, I might be able to share the Buddhist point of view, but you're gonna have to break into a new mode - fuck it, pretend you're in the matrix. This isn't life or death - it's gibberjabber.

Yes, that's the problem. It's gibberjabber. It is, of course, interesting gibberjabber, in the same way that doing some acid with your buddies and spending a couple hours delving into the exciting topic of "Dude ... have you ever realized that chairs are just baby tables" is interesting. What that does not do, however, is give you any information about either chairs or tables and if you try to apply the theories to chairs and tables, you end up having less knowledge about them than you did when you started. The entire theory might have a completely logical internal structure, but unless it corresponds to something outside of that structure, it subtracts from your knowledge about what you're trying to apply it to rather than increases your knowledge.

Also, yes, there is a distinct difference between something having an actual existence and something having a meaningful existence. They are two entirely different concepts. What one cannot legitimately do is talk about the latter and then apply the conclusions from that onto the former simply because both of these separate concepts happen to use the word "existence" in them.

 

[tantric]

Okay, I just got the connection between evolving eyes and perceiving...hold on. There's the phenomenon, a seeing being, and there are conditions that can explain that in various ways. How did sight evolve (if nothing existed beforehand because it was unseen)? Okay, I'm not going to pick at this, because I see the point. So, what would you give as the reasons for the seeing being? Perhaps his habitat changed, so that light was present (as in, not deep sea). Or he was preyed upon by those that swam above him and cast shadows. Or was it that one specific mutation? Whatever. What is *the* cause for the evolution of his sight? Can we look back and find the exact flatworm in the exact circumstance and point to it? No. There are many factors leading up to this, and it's not possible to separate them. And yet when we look at the predator above, nowhere do we see the evolution of sight - it's not inherent, it's an explanation that makes sense to us. We might say it's the mutation, but the mutation isn't an advantage with the light. We assemble a story, but causation remains elusive.

. What one cannot legitimately do is talk about the latter and then apply the conclusions from that onto the former simply because both of these separate concepts happen to use the word "existence" in them.

I don't follow. We can't talk about something not having a meaningful existence and then apply conclusions from that onto something with an actual existence? You are saying that because the spinning rock is unknowable that we can't proceed to say the actual rock doesn't exist? Please prove that. How do you prove that something unknowable exists? This is God. Okay - posit, there exists an omnipotent being named Cthulhu. Despite having created the world 150 years ago, he also created a perfect fact of history - old rocks, receding galaxies, etc. He is infallible in this, so much that he was used his omnipotence to create a universe that has no evidence of him in it - just like what we see today. And we are assuming he's real - so what is he? He's used his omnipotence to make absolutely sure he has no effect on reality. He's real, but he has no meaning. He doesn't *matter* (haha). Isn't this the bit atheists and Christians and been throwing around for centuries? What is the difference between this God and no God?

You are dead set on the Absolute Truth of objective reality, that were you to die, we would go on, but assuming you are an atheists, doesn't it follow that you won't know? I'm saying there's a halfway point. That's nondualism, reality is neither a monist construct that exists in our minds, nor a dualist construct that is independent of our heads, but a nondual process that requires both.

Yes, that's the problem. It's gibberjabber. It is, of course, interesting gibberjabber, in the same way that doing some acid with your buddies and spending a couple hours delving into the exciting topic of "Dude ... have you ever realized that chairs are just baby tables" is interesting. What that does not do, however, is give you any information about either chairs or tables and if you try to apply the theories to chairs and tables, you end up having less knowledge about them than you did when you started. The entire theory might have a completely logical internal structure, but unless it corresponds to something outside of that structure, it subtracts from your knowledge about what you're trying to apply it to rather than increases your knowledge.

BREAKTHROUGH. You gain NOTHING by analysis - the truth is, every layer of meaning and condition and deconstruction takes you further away from that. Words only point to more words. That's not to say you can't find neat and helpful tricks to deal with the world around you. That's good stuff. But a model, no matter how predictive, isn't the system. If you have a model that predicts how a forest grows, with calculus and matrices, that can tell you how fast it will grow back after burning, do you know anything about the forest, or just about the model?

All of this, for Buddhists, isn't based on an abstract. When we meditate, we experience nonduality and it's nonverbal. You can experience reality without binding it in language, because when you put labels on things, you see the labels, not the thing. That's what's so utterly frustrating about this - the symbol for Zen is an empty circle. All of the teachings are the line, but you can follow that forever and not experience the space inside.

This discussion is a kind of koan - the classic Japanese is 'what is the sound of one hand clapping' the American is 'if a tree falls in a forest does it make any sound'. For me, it was in 11th grade chem class as I tried to understand 'there are no absolutes'. Your mind chases its tail until POP - satori, and for a moment you are outside of it. I can't explain it to you - it will only go in circles. That sucks, and I understand that, and I can see why it's easy to call it all nonsense and woo.

I'll go on as long as you want. Well, I'll try, but you already hit the nail on the head. There's nothing there, or at least there's only more of the same. Reality is transparent to analysis. It exists, certainly, but you'll never pin it down. They thing of it is, this is actually fantastic. It's not uncertainly and being adrift without any base - it's an opportunity, but that's way gone.

Last bit - Ahimsa paramo dharma = nonviolence is the ultimate lesson. If you live your life at peace, then it's all good, however you see things, it works. That's the best philosophy or religion can do, lead people to living peacefully, and it doesn't actually work very often. Ahisma dharma was also my ferret's name, RIP, 'cause ferrets, despite being hideously destructive, have no hate or malice, and living that way is a monumental accomplishment.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Okay, I just got the connection between evolving eyes and perceiving...hold on. There's the phenomenon, a seeing being, and there are conditions that can explain that in various ways. How did sight evolve (if nothing existed beforehand because it was unseen)? Okay, I'm not going to pick at this, because I see the point. So, what would you give as the reasons for the seeing being? Perhaps his habitat changed, so that light was present (as in, not deep sea). Or he was preyed upon by those that swam above him and cast shadows. Or was it that one specific mutation? Whatever. What is *the* cause for the evolution of his sight? Can we look back and find the exact flatworm in the exact circumstance and point to it? No. There are many factors leading up to this, and it's not possible to separate them. And yet when we look at the predator above, nowhere do we see the evolution of sight - it's not inherent, it's an explanation that makes sense to us. We might say it's the mutation, but the mutation isn't an advantage with the light. We assemble a story, but causation remains elusive.

Dude, you can't complain about being compared to a creationist in one point and then quote creationist boilerplate a couple of posts later. You said that you have a PhD, so I'm just going to go ahead and assume that you know enough about the evolution of the eye to be able to point out all the holes in that paragraph yourself and I don't need to bother typing.

I don't follow. We can't talk about something not having a meaningful existence and then apply conclusions from that onto something with an actual existence? You are saying that because the spinning rock is unknowable that we can't proceed to say the actual rock doesn't exist? Please prove that. How do you prove that something unknowable exists?

Right now we're talking about knowable things. Like a plain, old ordinary rock. You seem to be drawing an association between meaningful existence and actual existence and saying that because nobody is assigning any conceptualizations to a particular rock that that rock is not present in reality. If that's not what you're saying, I need to know what it is that you meant when you said that a subject was necessary to give an object an instance of reality.

You are dead set on the Absolute Truth of objective reality, that were you to die, we would go on, but assuming you are an atheists, doesn't it follow that you won't know? I'm saying there's a halfway point. That's nondualism, reality is neither a monist construct that exists in our minds, nor a dualist construct that is independent of our heads, but a nondual process that requires both.

Why would a halfway point be in any way useful here? If you're talking to a Scientologist, do you assume that every second thing that he does is because a crazy alien ghost made him do it because that's halfway between all of it due to the ghosts and none of it due to the ghosts? If one thing is a little bit wrong and another thing is very wrong, going halfway between them from the former just makes you more wrong.

Yes, that's the problem. It's gibberjabber. It is, of course, interesting gibberjabber, in the same way that doing some acid with your buddies and spending a couple hours delving into the exciting topic of "Dude ... have you ever realized that chairs are just baby tables" is interesting. What that does not do, however, is give you any information about either chairs or tables and if you try to apply the theories to chairs and tables, you end up having less knowledge about them than you did when you started. The entire theory might have a completely logical internal structure, but unless it corresponds to something outside of that structure, it subtracts from your knowledge about what you're trying to apply it to rather than increases your knowledge.

BREAKTHROUGH. You gain NOTHING by analysis - the truth is, every layer of meaning and condition and deconstruction takes you further away from that. Words only point to more words. That's not to say you can't find neat and helpful tricks to deal with the world around you. That's good stuff. But a model, no matter how predictive, isn't the system. If you have a model that predicts how a forest grows, with calculus and matrices, that can tell you how fast it will grow back after burning, do you know anything about the forest, or just about the model?

We're talking about a comparison between different models here, though. If you have one model which does a damn good job of predicting how the forest will grow and one that does a crappy job of it, then you know far more about the forest by using the first model than you do by using the second model. Even if all you know is the model, how the model correlates to what the model is supposed to be modelling is the key question when judging the usefulness of the model. Dropping the self-centered arrogance and understanding what it is that our sense do helps us understand the universe and ignoring that prevents us from understanding the universe.

 

[Bronzeage]

By object, I mean a physical object like table, chair, sun or moon etc.

By subject, I mean observer, perciever, knower or cognizer etc.

Only if we accept the permanence of reality, and allow the universe to exist in it's entirety, when it's not in our conscious thought.

It makes a fun little thought experiment with the idea that the universe is a creation of our perception, but it serves little purpose and solves no problems.

 

[tantric]

Dude, you can't complain about being compared to a creationist in one point and then quote creationist boilerplate a couple of posts later. You said that you have a PhD, so I'm just going to go ahead and assume that you know enough about the evolution of the eye to be able to point out all the holes in that paragraph yourself and I don't need to bother typing.

Hmm, testy. When I say

How did sight evolve (if nothing existed beforehand because it was unseen)? Okay, I'm not going to pick at this, because I see the point

it means that your statement was so misparsed it indicated a lack of understanding of the principles of the science - or the specific language that is used to discuss it. But, see, I decided not to hold that against you and to try to see your point and work with it - that's communication. What you did is snark, where you try to use language to establish an intellectually hierarchy. Oops.

For the record, on the first day of the undergrad class, the proff listed biblical creation with panspermia and being untestable and pointless, so I responded that we've been testing panspermia for decade by gently crashing bacteria laden meteorites on dead worlds, but as yet the sample was too small to draw a conclusion. In his persecuted mind, that made me a dinosaur-riding creationist. The man had issues.

Right now we're talking about knowable things. Like a plain, old ordinary rock. You seem to be drawing an association between meaningful existence and actual existence and saying that because nobody is assigning any conceptualizations to a particular rock that that rock is not present in reality. If that's not what you're saying, I need to know what it is that you meant when you said that a subject was necessary to give an object an instance of reality.

No, we're not. Rock is so two posts ago. Now we're talking about God Almighty, the Omnipotent and Ineffable. He can't be understood by the mind of man, but He is what He is. He power is such that he offers us no proof, we must have faith alone. Does that mean he doesn't exist? Of course not - it means he's isn't *meaningful*. Please explain how you refute this manifestion of Him.

Why would a halfway point be in any way useful here? If you're talking to a Scientologist, do you assume that every second thing that he does is because a crazy alien ghost made him do it because that's halfway between all of it due to the ghosts and none of it due to the ghosts? If one thing is a little bit wrong and another thing is very wrong, going halfway between them from the former just makes you more wrong.

You might, I wouldn't. For one, Scientologists are a breed of beetle I haven't studied, and if I want to learn about then, I don't assume. Second, halfway isn't half - it's both and neither. Besides, isn't this about the link between object and subject, how are they 'wrong'? Where does the value judgement come from? Nondualism is a brilliant solution to the problem.

OTOH, that was a sideswipe ad hominem, which means you lose. I'm actually trying to share something with you - but you seem to have made a personal association with your ideology, so it seem like an attack. Besides, I'm not a kook. I got through 3 years of PhD before it lost its charm, but understand that my undergrad was in Asian Lit. I got a job building the database in the lab, took some classes and signed up for the GRE on a lark - and blew it out of the water. Two year full scholarship and stipend - and get this, I wasn't technically qualified because I did my undergrad at that school, so they changed the rules for me. I see complex systems intuitively and turn them to calculus with the elegance of Zen poetry. And the bitch all of it is that I never knew, 'cause I skipped calculus in HS. I'm here trying to help you see a philosophical system that's been around for 2500 years, and unlike all the others, gain in relevance with scientific progress. Do you argue with electrons, insisting that they exist outside of your observation? If you want to know how an observer is need to give a thing meaningful existencel, try the two slit experiment. I hate it for ya, but that's how it works.

We're talking about a comparison between different models here, though. If you have one model which does a damn good job of predicting how the forest will grow and one that does a crappy job of it, then you know far more about the forest by using the first model than you do by using the second model. Even if all you know is the model, how the model correlates to what the model is supposed to be modelling is the key question when judging the usefulness of the model. Dropping the self-centered arrogance and understanding what it is that our sense do helps us understand the universe and ignoring that prevents us from understanding the universe.

For a change, I'd live to thank you profoundly - due to the above I made a hopeless attempt to find my research, stuff I thought gone forever - and lo, I found a beat to death 1GB datastick, covered with toothpaste, that has all of it. I'm PSYCHED. I can finish my dissertation! That makes me want to believe in karma. Too bad all of it is in R, code to generate the data, instead of the papers, but I found this - here's a model of the zombie apocalypse, and for the record, I did it six months before the one that got published (though they're was much better, mine was a lark)

I'm done. I haven't actually felt good about all that stuff in years. Yeah, it's arrogant, but it's true, and I don't like being called a Scientologist creationist, apparently I was a Xenu-riding caveman? Blah - Namaste and all.

 

[tantric]

My little outburst is bothering me - it really does sound awful. Consider my bragging in context - after the grad school bit I had a crisis of faith and dropped out. I decided to try something artistic - fiction, in the manner of Coleridge and William Burroughs, Naked Lunch being my favorite book. I very deliberately got addicted to morphine, because I knew that, as Burroughs says, 'it's a literary high'. I managed about four chapters before flunking - diabetes and IV drugs really don't mix. Then prison. So it's been a long time since I've been in the science mode. And I did find my research, even the database it was based on.Would it be insane to apply for disability to spend the time doing epidemiology research? Anyway, getting in a pissing contest is a poor way to join a group, Apologies, but in my defense, well, here's the face of Scientology - that's forceable mindlessness, while this is a weasel diligently believing two impossible things before breakfast. They can both be mistaken for fools, but one you laugh at, the other you laugh with.

 

[Perspicuo]

One must distinguish object and thing.

Subject is the observing part, object is the observed part of a system of information exchange. 'Object' is part of a system of which 'subject' is also a part of. Object does not mean thing and subject does not mean person. A person becomes a subject when you are analyzing his/her role in the system. A thing becomes an object when you are analyzing its role in the system.

Don't let words confuse you.

 

[fromderinside]

One must distinguish object and thing.

Subject is the observing part, object is the observed part of a system of information exchange. 'Object' is part of a system of which 'subject' is also a part of. Object does not mean thing and subject does not mean person. A person becomes a subject when you are analyzing his/her role in the system. A thing becomes an object when you are analyzing its role in the system.

Don't let words confuse you.

OK lets call object a thing. If one observes a thing and considers it in some way it's an object. If those considerations actually do apply to the thing then the thing could be called the object without needing the one who considered it considering it. In this case there is a thing and it in some respect it is the object. Now if we remove the observer understanding the thing has properties exactly as seen by the one who would have considered it is not that thing the object?

Seems to me that there need be no subject required to observe a thing for that thing to be the object.

just sayin.....

 

[Tom Sawyer]

One must distinguish object and thing.

Subject is the observing part, object is the observed part of a system of information exchange. 'Object' is part of a system of which 'subject' is also a part of. Object does not mean thing and subject does not mean person. A person becomes a subject when you are analyzing his/her role in the system. A thing becomes an object when you are analyzing its role in the system.

Don't let words confuse you.

OK lets call object a thing. If one observes a thing and considers it in some way it's an object. If those considerations actually do apply to the thing then the thing could be called the object without needing the one who considered it considering it. In this case there is a thing and it in some respect it is the object. Now if we remove the observer understanding the thing has properties exactly as seen by the one who would have considered it is not that thing the object?

Seems to me that there need be no subject required to observe a thing for that thing to be the object.

just sayin.....

But that's why there's a need for a distinction between "objects" and "things". Within the system of information exchange, a rock can be an object or Superman can be an object. When the rock refers to an external thing, that thing isn't dependent on the subject-object relationship and the rock doesn't depend on a subject creating an object to refer to it. Superman, on the other hand, doesn't refer to anything external to the system and when the subject disappears, the Superman object disappears as well.

 

[ontological_realist]

One must distinguish object and thing.

Subject is the observing part, object is the observed part of a system of information exchange. 'Object' is part of a system of which 'subject' is also a part of. Object does not mean thing and subject does not mean person. A person becomes a subject when you are analyzing his/her role in the system. A thing becomes an object when you are analyzing its role in the system.

Don't let words confuse you.

What is a thing?

 

[bilby]

One must distinguish object and thing.

Subject is the observing part, object is the observed part of a system of information exchange. 'Object' is part of a system of which 'subject' is also a part of. Object does not mean thing and subject does not mean person. A person becomes a subject when you are analyzing his/her role in the system. A thing becomes an object when you are analyzing its role in the system.

Don't let words confuse you.

What is a thing?

It's a special case of doohicky.

 

[fast]

What is a thing?

It's a special case of doohicky.

Assuming of course that a doohickey is something, it's not necessarily some thing. If there is some thing, then there is something, but the inverse is not necessarily true, for if there is something, it isn't necessarily some thing. "Some thing" implies "something", but "something" doesn't imply "some thing".

 

[WAB]

Do you think that there can be an object without any subject? And why?

If the Universe is intelligent, then the answer, of course, is no.

But (_!_)


If the universe is how mainstream science says it is, there could be objects without a subject: material in space never observed by an intelligent entity.

 

[fromderinside]

OK lets call object a thing. If one observes a thing and considers it in some way it's an object. If those considerations actually do apply to the thing then the thing could be called the object without needing the one who considered it considering it. In this case there is a thing and it in some respect it is the object. Now if we remove the observer understanding the thing has properties exactly as seen by the one who would have considered it is not that thing the object?

Seems to me that there need be no subject required to observe a thing for that thing to be the object.

just sayin.....

But that's why there's a need for a distinction between "objects" and "things". Within the system of information exchange, a rock can be an object or Superman can be an object. When the rock refers to an external thing, that thing isn't dependent on the subject-object relationship and the rock doesn't depend on a subject creating an object to refer to it. Superman, on the other hand, doesn't refer to anything external to the system and when the subject disappears, the Superman object disappears as well.

Did you notice I abstracted the object from the perception by a subject just to minimize the kind of mistake you just made. The object is not arbitrary. All I pointed out was that if one can get to object from thing with a subject, one can get to object from thing without a subject. Who give a damn if the object is rock or Superman just as long as it is a thing with specific attributes.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

But that's why there's a need for a distinction between "objects" and "things". Within the system of information exchange, a rock can be an object or Superman can be an object. When the rock refers to an external thing, that thing isn't dependent on the subject-object relationship and the rock doesn't depend on a subject creating an object to refer to it. Superman, on the other hand, doesn't refer to anything external to the system and when the subject disappears, the Superman object disappears as well.

Did you notice I abstracted the object from the perception by a subject just to minimize the kind of mistake you just made. The object is not arbitrary. All I pointed out was that if one can get to object from thing with a subject, one can get to object from thing without a subject. Who give a damn if the object is rock or Superman just as long as it is a thing with specific attributes.

But the subject is the one that creates the object. You can't abstract it from perception because you need somebody to be doing that abstraction. The object is anything but arbitrary but it is still wholely dependent on the subject's interpretation of what he perceives.

Light bounces off a rock, hits the subject's retina and then his brain creates an object as an internal representation of what his senses are showing him is infront of him. The object is the internal representation of what is in the external world and without a subject, you don't get an internal representation.

 

[fast]

Did you notice I abstracted the object from the perception by a subject just to minimize the kind of mistake you just made. The object is not arbitrary. All I pointed out was that if one can get to object from thing with a subject, one can get to object from thing without a subject. Who give a damn if the object is rock or Superman just as long as it is a thing with specific attributes.

But the subject is the one that creates the object. You can't abstract it from perception because you need somebody to be doing that abstraction. The object is anything but arbitrary but it is still wholely dependent on the subject's interpretation of what he perceives.

Light bounces off a rock, hits the subject's retina and then his brain creates an object as an internal representation of what his senses are showing him is infront of him. The object is the internal representation of what is in the external world and without a subject, you don't get an internal representation.

That's a percept. The object is independent of that. The percept is dependent on both the subject and the object.