Talk:Object (philosophy)

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Is this definition complete and correct? What is the difference to Object (computing) -- HJH

I would say that in object-oriented programming and object-oriented design the notion of object is used in a more specialized way. There the external world is modeled in the computer as a set of objects that exchange messages that can cause an object to change its state and send new messages to other objects, thus accomplishing certain behaviour.
In OOP the objects can have properties (usually called members or attributes) and there can also be relationships, sometimes explicitly indicated as such and sometimes only in the form of members that point to other objects. So if the current definition for philosophical object is correct (but I know computer science better than philosophy) then the OOP objects are a subset or subclass of the philosophical objects.
Whether every philosphical object is also an OOP object is a matter of debate. The OO proponents often claim that everything can be modeled that way, which would mean that the answer is yes, but this is by no means uncontroversial.
Finally, there is the problem that not all definitions of an object in the OO world are the same, and that these definitions are sometimes heavily criticized from other areas such as data modeling and database design (which is my area of research). I have seen claims that the statement that "objects have identity" is meaningless (how can something not have identity?) or completely false (OO people often mean with it that they don't have to specify an effective way to identify the object, i.e., they don't give a key, which in some sense is exactly the opposite of saying that the object has identity). IMO these criticisms are not completely unjustified. -- Jan Hidders 09:08 Aug 16, 2002 (PDT)

I need to add the Unification Thought definitions of Subject and Object, which are variations on the standard Western philosophical meanings. --Ed Poor

Go ahead, but I'd like a more general answer to the question. (I deleted the digression part of this discussion, please put it elsewhere) --HJH

[edit] Merge with objecthood

Same subject. Santa Sangre 02:26, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree - why don't you go ahead - there seems little opposition. "Objecthood" sounds like some kind of neologism anyways. Iancarter 00:08, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

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