As used in philosophy, object is a thing, an entity, or a being. This may be taken in several senses.
In its weakest sense, the word object is the most all-purpose of nouns, and can replace a noun in any sentence at all. (In ordinary usage, the word has something like this effect, but not as extreme.) Thus objects are things as diverse as the pyramids, Alpha Centauri, and the number seven, my belief in predestination, and your mother's fear of dogs.
In a more restricted sense, An object is something that can have properties and bear relations to other objects. Properties and relations (as well as propositions), on this account are not included among objects, but are explicitly contrasted with them, as falling into a different logical category. Sets and universals are also perhaps not objects on this account.
In a further resricted sense, objects do not include anything abstract, but only things located somehow in space and time--minds and bodies, for instance. Numbers, ideas, and the like are right out.
In further restricted senses, objects are often just the material objects (excluding minds), or even just the inanimate material objects (the protons and electrons we are made of, but not we ourselves).
Symbols represent objects; how they do so, the map-territory relation, is the basic problem of semantics.
Objects are often treated as types of particulars, but occasionally, philosophers see fit to speak of abstract objects--Platonic forms would be an example. An abstract object is normally referred to something that does not exist physically. It is rational to say that as opposed to physically, it exists psychically.
Objects can also be viewed as entities.
See much more at objecthood.
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Last updated: 08-01-2005 13:32:52
