On the Relationship between Concepts, Subjects, and Objects

TheGreatArcanum

When I conceive of my physical body as a defined object in space in relation to myself as nothing but an abstract concept with no definite spatial location, I am relating in my mind and memory that which is abstract to that which is concrete. And when I perceive and conceive of bodies existing externally to my own in the world at large, I am using myself as an abstract concept to formulate a bridge between my own body and those in the world around me, so the relationship between objects, so far as I can know, is necessarily contingent upon the existence of the abstract, that is, my own subjectivity, or rather, subjectivity itself; and if the relationship between two objects is purely abstract and therefore non-spatial, well then so are the objects themselves in their truest essence;

for if sets A and B correspond to ontologically distinct entities, whether they be abstract or concrete in their nature, and part of set A is contained within set B and part of set B is contained within set A, and sets A and B thereby share a common intersection (A ∩ B), and set C corresponds to the set of abstract relationships that relate and intersect entities A and B, it must be the case that those abstract relationships are contained within a higher set D that not only contains sets A, B, and C, as a subset within itself, but precedes its existence in time (The Ontological Principle of Precedence and Intersection); and also, is purely abstract and non-spatial in its nature and not concrete (spatial). And that, more generally speaking that, the nature of the abstract relationships between things necessarily precede the things themselves, meaning that the essence of the object in concept, necessarily precedes the essence of the object in actuality relative to perceiver with an a priori limited sense perception, and that, paradoxically speaking, the brain as a concept necessarily precedes the brain as an object.

I like sushi

This is kind of circular as we can say that an object is a concept of an object of a concept ad infinitum. I should state that when it comes to this line of thinking I much prefer to take in a phenomenological perspective - meaning I don’t care about the conceptual distinction between apparent “object,” “subject” and/or “concept”. All is a “field” of phenomenon (singular as there is no plural of an eidetic being).

None of this means I disregard empiricism or physicalism as perspectives worthy of exploration. If I was to come closer to what you’ve said in the OP I guess I’d have to reframe any idea of subjective or objective as being non-absolute - they are just apparent poles, and more so of language than raw experience that is quite obviously set apart from any “object” which is solipsistically framed as a mere “concept” that is “abstracted” - yet it is not abstracted from because there is no where if there is no objective reference.

It’s a whole mishmash of words and it all gets terribly tangled so I just tend to fear get tied in knots and believing I have a grasp of what use this is.

@TheGreatArcanum I see a common interest between us but fear we’re far too far apart to be able to find any common ground to start a fruitful discussion. Who knows though? Maybe something will happen and if not we can at least try when and where we can for common ground then we can enjoy learning where we don’t have any common ground :)

TheGreatArcanum

This is kind of circular as we can say that an object is a concept of an object of a concept ad infinitum. I should state that when it comes to this line of thinking I much prefer to take in a phenomenological perspective - meaning I don’t care about the conceptual distinction between apparent “object,” “subject” and/or “concept”. All is a “field” of phenomenon (singular as there is no plural of an eidetic being). — I like sushi

there is no infinite regress, our conception of the object has its origin in our perception of the object, and our perception of the object has its origin in the original concept of the object and ourselves as an object, and those original concepts have their origin in the Absolute Subject which perpetuates their existence, and creates and destroys them.

there is an inverse relationship between object and subject, and also, a Transcendental Subject which perceives and conceives of the process. In the process there is a set of mathematical wave associated with the object of perception, and an inverse set of waves assorted with our brains, and when they meet, there is perception. then there is an awareness of that event, whether it be a sound in the form of a thought or a feeling associated with a chemical reaction, that conceives of it and gives meaning to it. This awarnesss, the Transcendental Subject, the Self (not the self) is outside of space and time in the relative sense of the word. This is the basic structure of the mind.

fresco

↪TheGreatArcanum

I suggest you examine the concept of 'existence' itself ! You may come to the conclusion that 'existence' (like all concepts denoted by a word), simply implies 'human contextual functionality', and that ' expected physicality' is merely one aspect of that functionality.

TheGreatArcanum

I suggest you examine the concept of 'existence' itself ! You may come to the conclusion that 'existence' simply implies 'human contextual functionality', and that ' expected physicality' is merely one aspect of that functionality. — fresco

I am very well versed in the concept of being itself, and in no way to I think that existence itself is continent upon human functionality at all, but that the converse is true. that physicality itself is not eternal, and predicted upon the essence of being itself being what it is is, that which both contains, initiatites, destroys and preserves the essence of change itself.

fresco

↪TheGreatArcanum

See my Wittgenstein footnote.
I repeat...all concepts/words take their meaning from specific contexts. Nebulous (philosophical) contexts result in 'language on holiday'.

TheGreatArcanum

↪fresco

all concepts point to a word which points to a thing, whether it be concrete or abstract in its nature, that has an essence. existence itself has an essence. the whole question of the nature of the subject and the world rests upon the answer to the question, “what is the essnce of existence itself?” it doesn’t have its origin in language, nor in the world, but beyond, because the universe isn’t eternal and existence cannot spring forth from the non-potential for existence to be (i.e. “non—existence”)

fresco

"TheGreatArcanum;290688"]

↪TheGreatArcanum

You don't appear to be familiar with the prevalent view amongst philosophers of the 'nonrepresentalist position' on language. For me, this opposes the naive realism of 'things in their own right' and is in line with 'things are thinged by human thingers' ( and that includes the thing we call 'existence' !)

On another thread I wrote...
...... 'thinghood' is what humans ascribe to some focal aspects of their perceptual interactions. In other words 'existence' is a word we use for those recurrent interactions we consider to persist in our interaction history. The naming of such functional interactions reinforces such persistence by the abstract persistence of a word or object name. And since words are socially acquired there tends to be agreement i.e. understanding about the expectancies. encasulated by 'object names'.
Simple Reference...quantum theory...'there are no 'things'....only interactions..

TheGreatArcanum

↪fresco

the thing is what it is no matter what word or definition we choose to give it. if there wasn’t first and foremost existence, and memory, and willing, and the a priori knowledge of our own wills as causal entities within ourselves (awareness), there wouldn’t even be language, so naturally, the actual essence of existence is not affected by language, nor is language a social construction in the original sense of the word; it has its origin in the unconscious and its impossible that the opposite is true. our words can do nothing to existence itself, its walls are impenetrable against our words and definitions.

I’m not sure why you’re reading the work of sophists. these people may be considered intelligent to humans, but they’re idiots in the universal sense of the word. one cannot remain ignorant of the essence of being itself and be a universally intelligent being. they’re capped out at “sophist” and “metaphysical propagandist.”

fresco

↪TheGreatArcanum

Sorry, but your absolutist/naive realist stance equates merely to 'religion' for me.

If you follow my replies on other threads you will find multiple references which support my position.

Thankyou for the conversation so far.

TheGreatArcanum

↪fresco

well, what are the axioms in which you base your philosophy?

fresco

I consider myself a pragmatist and view 'axioms' as merely 'assertions which may contextually work up to a point'..
This is in accordance with the spirit of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem' and a view of 'truth' as 'that which is good or useful to believe'. In addition, since language is. the currency of thought, and currency involves social agreement for its 'value' then philosophy which ignores those linguietic and social (paradigmatic) issues is vacuous. A final nail in the coffin of 'axioms' could be considered to be covered with Derrida's point, that every assertion is merely a 'focal privileging' which entails the backcloth of its negation for its semantic import. (His point that 'context is everything' has also been covered above)

TheGreatArcanum

↪fresco

“context is everything” yet he knows nothing of the absolute context in which he is speaking, ironically. in fact, he probably reduces the absolute context, that is, the nature of the set of all sets, to mere nothingness, that is the absence of essence, or rather, the ‘non-potential to contain existence within itself.’ that is to say that the “context” that post-modernists like Derrida place so much emphasis on, is non-existent in the absolute sense of the word, meaning that existence itself is without context. the basis of their philosophy lies in an absurdity, a contradiction, a lie; it’s all semantical nonsense, and it’s not even worth reading; reading it only gives people an faulty or perception of what is true and what is not. I will be releasing my philosophy in a few years and I will bring back philosophy from the dead.

Mww

I will bring back philosophy from the dead. — TheGreatArcanum

When did it die?

fresco

↪Mww

Good luck with your religious mission !
Forums of course constitute soapboxes for those preachers who prefer the comfort of their armchairs !

TheGreatArcanum

↪fresco

it’s taken many shots fatal shots to the body over time; it’s still salvageable, of course, because philosophy can never truly die. it take major hits when philosophers stopped trying to ascertain the essence of existence itself. now they’re conducting philosophy without a knowledge of the absolute context in which they exist. if their philosophy contradicts the absolute truth concerning the essence of existence itself, their philosophy is absurd, at least in the most general sense of the word. they cannot interpret empirical facts correctly until they know the essence of the absolute context. is there a God, or is there not? the entirety of metaphysics revolves around that question. post-modernists seem to think that they can and that philosophy can get along just fine without even dealing with the question. they’ve given up they search. and the truth is that there is a God, and you can have a direct experience of God within yourself. so all of the atheistic-materialists are far, far from genius.

Mww

↪fresco

Thanks. I guess. Dunno how anything religious got into my simple interrogative, but I do have a very comfortable, very old and well-worn, armchair, I must say.

TheGreatArcanum

↪fresco

what are you talking about “religious?” my philosophy invokes no religion at all. when you discount the possibility that subjectivity precedes the existence of matter, you only hurt yourself. you can acquire an IQ over 200, but you cannot do so as a materialist; you cannot be granted access to your unconscious mind, which is, of course, conscious in itself if you still naively believe that ‘nothing precedes something’ (existentialism) in the absolute sense of the word, or that change is infinite and all of our thoughts and actions follow by necessity from a deterministic casual chain (physicalism)...only an extensive knowledge of absolute truths will gain you access, but you don’t even think that there is even one absolute truth, and you think that it is absolute! Needless to say, you have a lot to learn, and judging by the fact that you think post-modernism actually has merit, you most certainly won’t be discovering the truth in this lifetime.

Terrapin Station

If we can only conceive of abstract concepts and not objects, and seemingly, this must be so because we cannot fit objects into our mind, but only our conceptions of them, either objects do not exist in the actualized sense of the word, or they are at the same time both objects and concepts. — TheGreatArcanum

(1) If conceiving of an object is identical to the object literally being present, then what work is the word "conceiving" doing there anyway? In other words, if a conception of an object is identical to the object, then the word "conception" appears to be completely empty and unnecessary semantically. This is especially curious given that we'd be saying that some noun and some action, some verb, performed with respect to the very same noun are supposedly identical.

Otherwise "conceiving an object" isn't actually the same thing as the object itself. A conception of an object would be something different than the object. So the fact that a conception of an object doesn't entail the object literally being present wouldn't negate that there is a conception of an object.

(There might be ways to make sense out of saying that "conceiving an object" is identical to "object" by the way--perhaps akin to my ontology of time compared to some conventional utterances about time, but you'd need to be able to explain the apparent conflicts there.)

(2) Given the above, the fact that conceiving an object has to be different than the object itself if we're not simply adding superfluous, empty words to our utterances, the fact that our conceptions aren't identical to what they're conceptions of doesn't tell us anything about the objects themselves.

fresco

↪Mww

My apologies. I'm new to the forum the post was to TheGreatArcanum

fresco

↪TheGreatArcanum

I consider all absolutism to be religious, (absolute truth being the mythical crock of gold at the end of the rainbow), and it is you who appears to have the learning deficit.
Lets face it, your knee jerk reaction to post-modernism, which is largely embellishment of pragmatism, is a bit of a give away! I suggest you take seriously Rorty's warning that 'philosophy' per se has zero authority in epistemological matters relative to that of the sciences. This is particularly pertinent when considering the comparative physiology of perceptual system, or the Copenhagen iinterpretation of QM in which there are no 'things', only 'interaction events'. But then you may come to understand that when you extend your learning.

Mww

↪fresco

No prob.

Harry Hindu

If we can only conceive of abstract concepts and not objects, and seemingly, this must be so because we cannot fit objects into our mind, but only our conceptions of them, either objects do not exist in the actualized sense of the word, or they are at the same time both objects and concepts. — TheGreatArcanum

They are not one and the same just as effects are not the same as their causes. Concepts are about objects and their aboutness comes from the causal relationship between the object and the concept. Effects carry information about their causes. Effects can be representations of their causes.

I don't understand this notion of abstract concepts not having spatial properties when it is obvious that they do. If your ideas had no spatial property then how can you tell one idea from another. Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus are separate ideas and can both appear together in one's mind as distinct entities, or else how could you tell them apart in your own mind when you think of them both at the same time?

Almost every sensory impression (visual, auditory, tactile and gustatory) has a spatial property relative to the other sensory impressions and include the property of being extended from a central location (my head). I can hear something coming from behind me while only having a visual awareness of what is in front of me. If someone was coming towards me from the front to greet me and shake my hand, I would see them, hear them, and feel them all at the same location. These separate sensory impressions line up in their extended locations, which is how we end up using different senses to reinforce the location of objects relative to our own bodies.

TheGreatArcanum

I consider all absolutism to be religious, (absolute truth being the mythical crock of gold at the end of the rainbow), and it is you who appears to have the learning deficit.
Lets face it, your knee jerk reaction to post-modernism, which is largely embellishment of pragmatism, is a bit of a give away! I suggest you take seriously Rorty's warning that 'philosophy' per se has zero authority in epistemological matters relative to that of the sciences. This is particularly pertinent when considering the comparative physiology of perceptual system, or the Copenhagen iinterpretation of QM in which there are no 'things', only 'interaction events'. But then you may come to understand that when you extend your learning. — fresco

Modern scientific discoveries in particle physics support the existence of a non-local substratum to reality, for in terms of the phenomenon of quantum entanglement, (def.) a change in particle A reflects in particle B instantaneously despite the distance that exists between them, and this is impossible unless both particle A and B are contained within some set C, a non-local medium, (A ∈ C) and (B ∈ C) which both precedes and causes the simultaneously changes in them both; that is to say that change, at the fundamental level of our reality, is born, not out of localized actuality (change and space), but out of non-localized potentiality (time and memory).

TheGreatArcanum

They are not one and the same just as effects are not the same as their causes. Concepts are about objects and their aboutness comes from the causal relationship between the object and the concept. Effects carry information about their causes. Effects can be representations of their causes. — Harry Hindu

I think that the object itself, its essence and all of its changing qualities, are subsets of an 'original concept' which has become subjected to chaos, in which case, there is a dialectic between the concepts presented to the object by nature, and the original concept of the object. Man conceives of objects, he assigns words to them, to both objects and abstract relationships between objects, and those words refer to the essences of those objects; and the closer that those definitions become to the 'original concept' that is, the original essence or 'reason' for the existence of the thing, which is synonymous with its function in nature, the higher his level of knowledge is raised. That is to say that ignorance has its origin in the difference between man's conception of the essence of a thing and its original essence, as it were, and if there is too great a distinction between the two in one's mind, one believes, not in truths, but in falsehoods, and one doesn't have knowledge, but opinion. Associatively, wisdom, as distinguished from knowledge is a correct apprehension of, not the essences of particular things, but the essence of existence itself.

I'm not entirely an essentialist, because I don't believe that all original concepts are eternal, but only that some are, like specifically, Aristotle's laws of thought, which I assign actual ontological value (essence) to.

Wayfarer

our conception of the object has its origin in our perception of the object, — TheGreatArcanum

Do you have any source for that? Or is it more something that you take for granted? It seems to me that this kind of analysis is grounded in empiricism, like that of Mill and Locke, which assumes that concepts are derived from the experience of objects, but not all philosophers agree with it.

The reason I ask, is because I don't think your presentation of the idea of the 'concept' has a lot of relation to how the term is really understood in formal philosophy, for example in scholastic philosophy and its derivatives.

TheGreatArcanum

Do you have any source for that? — Wayfarer

i use set theory applied to ontology to figure these things out. we cannot conceive of the object without perceiving it, obviously, so our conception of the object has its origin in our perception of the object, but are perception of the object isn't occurring 'out there' in the object but 'in here' in the subject. our perception of the object has its origin in what I call the "microcosmic motions" which perpetuate the the existence of the brain and therefore one's perception of the body and the world. but of course, these "microcosmic motions" aren't born out of nothingness, but something, or rather, some thing which has an Essence. According to my philosophy, the Essence, involves Subjectivity, that is, Mind, or Consciousness in the absolute sense of the word. So the idea of a thing precedes the thing which precedes our perception and conception of the thing. This is not how modern philosophers conceive of the relationship between the subjects, objects, and concepts, but philosophy is going through a dark age right now.

fresco

"Modern scientific discoveries in particle physics support the existence of a non-local substratum to reality, for in terms of the phenomenon of quantum entanglement,"

No they don't. Some descriptions of phenomena are consensually more useful (in terms of prediction and control) than others in particular contexts. No description is any closer to a nebulous 'reality' than any other. (Nietzsche). The 'reality debate' is rejected as futile by Pragmatists like Rorty.

Wayfarer

we cannot conceive of the object without perceiving it, obviously, so our conception of the object has its origin in our perception of the object, — TheGreatArcanum

What you’re talking about is mental image. What traditional philosophy means by a concept is not the same as an image. Consider for example mathematical concepts or geometric forms. You might form a mental image of a triangle, but the concept ‘triangle’ - a flat plane bounded on three sides by straight lines - is a concept rather than an image, although you can form an image of the concept. The ‘essence’ of a thing is that which defines it, that without which it could not be what it is. But that is ultimately derived from the Platonic idea or form of the thing, as modified by Aristotle. The intellect is able to discern the forms of things which is the particular ability of man ‘the rational animal’, that other animals cannot.

According to my philosophy, the Essence, involves Subjectivity, that is, Mind, or Consciousness in the absolute sense of the word. So the idea of a thing precedes the thing which precedes our perception and conception of the thing. — TheGreatArcanum

That seems to me something like Vedanta, or that aspect of German idealism which is similar to it, such as Fichte’s ‘absolute ego’. Regrettably I can’t see a justification for that notion especially depicted in such summary form.

fresco

↪TheGreatArcanum

How does your philosophical evangelism which relies on classical set theory, reconcile with aspects of QM in which classical set theory is inapplicable ?Even Einstein had trouble with that one ! David Bohm tried going down Einstein's 'underlying order' suggestion, but he was sidelined by most of the profession as being 'a mystic'.

It seems to me that your one-liner about 'philosophy being in a dark place' is merely a fear of being forced to swim without a traditional buoyancy aid.

Wayfarer

↪fresco

Hi Fresco, I think I remember you from another forum - long, long ago. :grin:

On the Relationship between Concepts, Subjects, and Objects

Welcome to The Philosophy Forum!

Categories

More Discussions