Kingston Philosophy Café

At 19:00 Kieran Quill will give a talk on the subject of Objects.

     We speak of “subjects” and “objects” when describing our experience. To start with we have ordinary objects, medium-sized “physical things” in the middle distance, that  we, as subjects, are aware of in the everyday sense. But nowadays, objects seem to cover a very wide range- from hyper-small “things” like quarks, to vast cosmological objects such inter-galactic structures.

    The physicist Paul Dirac stated that with the advance of quantum physics, physical objects start becoming more structures (mental ideas?)  than real things. We also speak of “abstract objects” that do not exist at any particular time or place. We (sometimes) try to think in terms of objects as they are “in themselves”, what they “really are”, in contrast to mere appearance. And, by implication, what “subjects” (like you or me) “really are”.  Is this a useful enterprise, outside of the ordinary everyday way of talking?