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.
Cartesian dualism 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. 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.
Substance theory 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.
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. 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." 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. In a general sense it is any
entity: the
pyramids, gods,
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. Thinkers such as
structural Marxist Louis Althusser and
poststructuralist Michel Foucault theorize the subject as a
social construction, the so-called "poststructuralist subject". 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, ) 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. Subjectification was a central concept in
Gilles Deleuze and
Félix Guattari's work as well.
Analytic philosophy Bertrand Russell updated the classical terminology with a term, the
fact; "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." 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." 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, "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". 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). == In other disciplines ==