Talk:Subject (philosophy)

This page needs disambiguation. A former article "Subject (discourse)" has been removed and redirected here. However, the meaning of subject as used in "the subject of that book is American History" is NOT identical with the meaning of "subject" as presented below. --BirgerH (talk) 09:52, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

moved from article:

''I think the above view of what subjectivism might represent the caricature of subjectivism that people sometimes bandy about, but I don't see how it's philosophically interesting. I'll have to work on this article at some later date. See this link to get an idea of how little this phrase, 'metaphysical subjectivism', is even used. The view described is similar to (but a caricature of) what is known by philosophers as 'phenomenalism' or 'subjective idealism'. Any discussion of that view should mention George Berkeley, Gottfried Leibniz, and David Hume before Churchill. --LMS''

I, Martin, am the author (U129960) of the corresponding h2g2 text.

I wasn't sure this should be added to the article, but for what it's worth:


 * The invention of machines that can "see", "hear", or otherwise observe and record events provides a thought experiment . . . that is difficult for subjectivists to explain.

Yes, but the machines are created to see and to hear. They are still analagous to our eyes and ears. Perhaps the machines would xyphliate, if we ourselves had glizma organs with which to xyphliate. (Get me?) Gyrofrog

NPOV
Why was this added to NPOV (disputes) ??? I don't see a lot of evidence for this article to be in dispute. I think very few edits are happening to this article, and very, very little discussion is even occuring. Is the person who added this just being a vandal? KeyStroke 19:49, 2004 Sep 17 (UTC)


 * I sent a message to the user who added the notice, explaining that without an explanation the notice will be removed. Let's give it a couple days, and if there is no reply remove it.  -Seth Mahoney 20:56, Sep 17, 2004 (UTC)

I don't think this article is NPOV for the same reasons brought up on this discussion page, i.e., Basically, the first section of the article seems glib and non-encyclopedic, and I would like the information to be backed up by some external sources. --Wikiwikifast 21:52, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * "the above view of what subjectivism [is] might represent the caricature of subjectivism", and seems to describe subjective idealism
 * the term "metaphysical subjectivism" is not as common; perhaps we should have a "subjectivism" article instead
 * the Winston Churchill thought experiment seems to be biased against subjectivism and contributes to the caricature of subjectivism mentioned above


 * Thanks for the quick reply. That doesn't so much seem to be an NPOV issue, so I changed the notice to  and listed it on the appropriate page, along with your comments.  I'm also going to list it on the WikiProject Philosophy tasks page.  -Seth Mahoney 22:07, Sep 17, 2004 (UTC)


 * Nice edit. It doesn't seem POV anymore, but it still needs sourcing and revision, as you said. --Wikiwikifast 22:18, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)


 * Thank you much. Its amazing what moving a paragraph to the end can do.  -Seth Mahoney 22:32, Sep 17, 2004 (UTC)


 * Indeed! Wikiwikifast 01:23, 18 Sep 2004 (UTC)

A sick and untimely joke
(I couldn't resist this)

Surely debate over this article is merely a matter of personal opinion???

(okay... nothing to see here... move on... move on...) One Salient Oversight 05:11, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)

A note for editors of this article
According to the Manual of Style... Avoid self-referential pronouns "Wikipedia articles cannot be based on one person's opinions or experiences. Thus, 'I' or 'we' can never be utilized, except, of course, when they appear in a quotation. For similar reasons, avoid the use of "one," as in: "One should note that some critics have argued in favor of the proposal," as it sounds more personal than encyclopedic." Edwardian 9 July 2005 00:27 (UTC)

Article title
Shouldn't this be called "Subjectivity" or "Subjectivism"? I'm not expert enough ... philosophically or Wikipedically ... to change it. Sfahey 22:26, 19 July 2005 (UTC)


 * If memory serves me correctly, there was a separate article called "Subjectivity" or "Subjectivism", and it was merged/redirected into this one. -- Gyrofrog (talk) 22:57, 19 July 2005 (UTC)


 * I think "Subjectivism" is worthy enough of its own article. Objectivity and Objectivism do not redirect to Object (philosophy), so it doesn't make sense that Subjectivity and Subjectivism redirect to Subject (philosophy). Well, Subjectivism doesn't directly redirect... Edwardian 07:21, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

A reply to the Churchill question
I'm sorry if this isn't the appropriate place to post this kind of thing, but I'd like to discuss the Churchill experiment. Just so that it's clear, the following are my own thoughts. I have no intention to evangelize or otherwise expound on the views of any particular authority.

What is so difficult about the question? Why cannot a subjectivist (if that’s the proper term), say “yes, this occurred in the past in the sense the following sense of time:

“Time is a mental abstraction I contrapted to make sense of the world. If my experiences no longer conform to this schema then as a subjectivist, I abandon it completely; however, nothing in this experiment has in any way hurt the integrity of the time model. I can, therefore, honestly say ‘these recorded events occurred in the “past”.’. This is simply a poetic expression which condenses my experience of the experiment. This distillation has been made possible by the time model in addition to others; you must understand that for me, time has no more significance than this. Since I may take that the recording devise works as advertised, why not I take that time itself works as I have always imagined it has? The Churchill question is nothing more than another application of specific schemas I have constructed throughout my own lifetime and synthesized through an algorithm which itself is a schema which has proven successful.”?

I hope readers can take a minute to parse that, because all of that was one very long sentence beginning with “Why cannot a subjectivist”. That is how I would respond to the question in the Churchill experiment, if I were a subjectivist. I can’t quite tell yet; my schemas are not yet fully developed to detect that sort of thing ;).

Danielx 11:43, 13 August 2005 (UTC)


 * And you're completely right :o). Now what I would like to know is: why does the article carefully avoid any reference to Idealism?--MWAK 19:27, 8 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm not completely sure "contrapted" is a word. Concocted? :-) --Christofurio 20:30, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Moved from article
I've moved the following subsection from the article to the talk page. -- Gyrofrog (talk) 04:56, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
 * ==== Criticism of the Criticism ====
 * How does it fail? Because metaphysical subjectivism doesn't assume anything about how the object comes into existence. The experience of the pictures could merely have spontaneously popped into the mind of the observer, this being caused by some agency outside of typical human experience (such as Berkeley's role for God as the overall observer of everything that exists). Thus, the 'criticism' you provide is lacking.

Qualia: Moved from article
The following are examples of subjective experiences (all examples of qualia):


 * What the color red looks like to me;
 * What a musical tone sounds like to me;
 * What pleasure and pain feel like to me.

And their corresponding objective analogues:


 * The red surface;
 * The musical instrument producing oscillations in air;
 * The things that induce pleasure or pain.

The object is the thing perceived; the subject is the one who perceives.

...

Some theorists treat privileged access as a defining feature of subjectivity. One has privileged access to one's own qualia, as with the examples above, i.e. one and only one person has first-hand knowledge of that person's pain, experience of a musical tone, etc.

...

Subjectivity emphasizes an individual's having not just a passive relationship to the world and the sense impressions it causes, but also agency, an active engagement with that material. Agency might be thought to occur simply in the act of interpretation of sense data, making choices about how to allocate meanings to those data. Or it might be thought to occur in a stronger sense, acting upon the world and changing its organization to suit the subject's goals. In the latter case, a feedback loop of modified world - new sense data - new modification might be established, with open-ended consequences. Baldwinian evolution may be a candidate instance of such a feedback system.


 * In absence of attribution, this would seem to be original research. Bacchiad 19:35, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Jargon
Can we get a reduction of the pseudo-intellectual jargon here? "diagnosticize the subject"??? Is "diagnosticize" a lot like "diagnose"?? --Christofurio 02:18, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Sentence removed
I have removed the following sentence, which juxtaposes several concepts without sourcing/verification, and placing it here for further analysis and, if applicable rewriting...Kenosis 11:11, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Marx, Nietzsche and Freud are three 19th century philosophers who questioned the notion of a conscious subject, which is the foundation of the liberal theory of the social contract." ... 11:11, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

I put a re-phrased version back in. Bacchiad 18:17, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

etymology
"Heidegger later showed how subject came from the Greek "substance"": in what sense? if we are talking about etymology it is highly unlikely that subject(ypokeimeno) is derived from substance(oysia) in greek. i dont doubt that heidegger actually claims that, but it might still be wrong. (its quite frequent for philosophers to make up paretymologies based on ancient greek in order to support their arguments). or maybe heidegger meant another thing, but in this case, pls clarify. --Greece666 21:21, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Descartes
Missing in a big way from this article —Preceding unsigned comment added by 38.112.96.194 (talk) 04:04, August 28, 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I've addressed that, though briefly. --Christofurio (talk) 18:59, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Proposed disambiguation
This page needs disambiguation. A former article "Subject (discourse)" has been removed and redirected here. However, the meaning of subject as used in "the subject of that book is American History" is NOT identical with the meaning of "subject" as presented below. --BirgerH (talk) 09:52, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Althusser needs cleaning
the bit on interpellation and Althusser under Continental philosophy is wrong and needs cleaning. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.82.8.230 (talk) 16:48, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Gfhh@uihb
How can5 Sandylord.in (talk) 13:40, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

There's a usual meaning of these terms as 'opposite' what they're defined here
There's a usual meaning of these terms as 'opposite' what they're defined here. 97.113.48.144 (talk) 03:07, 25 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Use-mention distinction, for example, has one object and all subjects not one subject and all objects - "objectivism". 97.113.48.144 (talk) 03:10, 25 October 2022 (UTC)