Object (philosophy)

High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Object is a technical term used in philosophy to refer to a thing, entity or 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, the number seven, my disbelief in predestination, and your mother's fear of dogs. The pragmatist Charles S. Peirce defines the broad notion of an object as anything that we can think or talk about. In a more restricted sense, an object is something that can have properties and bear relations to other objects. On this account, properties and relations (as well as propositions) are not included among objects, but are explicitly contrasted with them, as falling into a different logical category. Sets and universals may or may not be objects on this account.