Talking to Tom Fuerstner and looking at his blogjects an idea strikes me. What if we extend our century-old talking about objects and subjects to a talking about catjects? Looking at computers' and networks' abilities to handle multimedia quasi-objects (Michel Serres) and boundary objects (Susan Star), and not only to handle them but to indexicalize, catalogize, link and search them, we certainly deal with a new kind of -jects which take on a life almost all of its own. Remember Jacques Derrida's theory "jetties"? They are similar, being missiles send on their way and related to by observers of most different perspective.
Objects, for Aristotle, are the hypokemeinon, the underlying stuff and substance of the writing society. Aristotle, in his first book on logic, the Categories, tries to fix them such decisions can be taken whether assertions about them are true or false. Reading his text it is fascinating to observe how he has to rely, first, on forms, then, on genres, in order to fix at least our talking about them, since the objects themselves are elusive. They emerge, and vanish the moment you look at them. Ever since, we argue about the reality of our perceptions.
Subjects, for Hume, Descartes, and Kant, are the hypokemeinon, the underlying stuff and substance of the printing press society. Human reason, individual doubts, judgements become the address to which categories get attributed such that we know what and how we are able to talk about. However, these subjects are as elusive as the objects before. They have to be transcendentalized in order to fix them, framing them with respect to sensus communis, to acceptable ways of talk, in order to get them pinned down where logics need them. In fact, subjects are individuals having their own minds and hearts and bodies and memories and fears and desires. They don't accept being looked at as being in charge of reason. Let reason take charge of itself, Kant therefore had to muse. That cuts a long story short. Ever since, we argue about the truth an observer may claim.
Catjects are an idea which might be appropriate for computer society. That idea, crude as it is as yet, takes seriously that the categories that were attributed first to objects and then to subjects and didn't stick, at least underwent their own development and refinement. From Peirce to Whitehead and more recently on to Joseph A. Goguen, Bill Lawvere, and Ernst Kleinert, categories enter the center stage of mathematical and philosophical thinking. We might try to look at how they start to lead their own life, becoming catjects, based not on substance nor on reason, but on their own form, their own morphism, emerging as an eigen-value of nonlinear recursive processes in syntactical, semantic, and pragmatic computations, in pictures, sounds, texts, and gestures, a kind of sociological topology (or topological sociology) for which ideas of all kinds abound. Ever since, we love to argue about the functions of our arguments.
That is an idea spelled out at its most crude. The literature is rich, yet complicated. Maybe, we look a little closer at the authors quoted for ideas how to do what System One attempts to do, flashing out semantic webs for almost about everything.
Let me go back before the beginning in that a paradigm is what you think about something before you start thinking about it [S. Faiz Khan]: "Ject", if you will, means "to throw" - hence 'eject'-to throw out; 'project' to thrust out or throw forward; 'object'- to put or throw toward or in front of the [senses, mind]; and "subject"-to place or throw under - almost literally a loan translation of the Gk. hypokeimene (Aristotle) as posted above - i.e. "that which lies beneath," - and used in the modern sense of "subjective" (existing in the mind) since 1707.
'Object' and 'subject' as used these days implicitly carries water for the implicit presence of 'sense', or, more complexly, 'mind'. In the more complex case, one of the states reached by meditation - 'no mind' - practically erases - for the mind - the distinctions it, the mind, generates into object and subject - i.e. it (sense or mind) no longer pro-jects. The essential observation here is that what the mind or sense "projects" is 'attention', where 'attention' can be understood as an awareness (sense field) that becomes focused and thence, to coin a term on the fly, 'locused'.
In modern terms, a projection inwards [of minds focal awareness], or inwards attention - [anything from the boundary sense field on into the depths of being] - and what that focal awareness reveals - is described as "subjective". A projection outwards [of minds focal awareness], or outwards attention - and what that focal awareness reveals is described as "objective." We don't have an everyday common English word for what is or isn't when the field of awareness isn't foused into or onto a locus but instead evenly distributed (in Japanese "zanshin" is quite appropriate, though not the only term].
Mentioning "zanshin" reminds me of a beautiful example of this as echoed in the words of a legendary Japanese swordsman, Yagyu-Tajima-nokami. Speaking of Zanshin he once spoke thus:
"Where should the mind be placed in a duel with swords? If it is set on the opponent's movements, it stops there. If it is set on his sword, it stops there. If on the thought of killing him, it stops with that thought. If on one's own sword, it stops there. If on the thought of not being killed by him, it stops with that thought. Where should it be set if one wants it to function freely, without check?”
In fact, if it is set anywhere, you will be restricted. The answer is to have no idea at all about setting the mind. If you can avoid setting it any particular place, it will pervade the entire body, down to the tips of the fingers and toes. If hands are to move, they move the mind at once; if the eyes are to look about, they instantly follow the order of the mind. Therefore mind is not to be focused on any part of the body.”
- Yagyu-Tajima-nokami, Teacher of swordsmanship to the Shogun Hojo Tokiyori, (1227-1263) in the Kamakura era.
What am I saying (or trying to say about catjects :-)? An important aspect of the functioning of our minds is their apparent transparency, keeping us from realizing that we are dealing directly ONLY with them, our cognitive systems, and only indirectly, and through them, with reality. This is the transparency illusion. A window or a pair of glasses functions best when it is as invisible as possible. "Subject" and "Object" are directions and territories of "Project" as an action of mind (or a sense).
Given this view (and that's all I claim here in 'comment land'!), what is a "catject"? Clearly, from the foregoing, another Jedi mind-move (affectionately :-)), in the sense of a kind of throw, or, more subtly, a throw of a focus of attention by sense or mind onto, into, around, et al, someth* {thing, thema, think, thrust, or combinations thereof}.
From my point of view "what is turning a form into a form" is clearly a sense or mind. And no objects ever "rely" on their own, thanks to creation and nature, to define their form, since such "objects" are always a co-creation of ours. We have subjects borne by reason -true - as well as simply and fundamentally by inner attention - to bring form to everyth* we sense. Yet this too, "subjects" is a habit of conditioned mind. (albeit by habit and not formal training). Onto "catjects"!
To say that "catjects define the way observers are necessary to determine the indeterminate" might be said to be an egg's way of looking at a chicken. It seems to me that "catjects" are DEFINED by the way observers determine their "seeing" and "holding". Catjects are indeed about the relation of a thing to an observer, however, not to become a thing, or to become an observer but how an observation becomes a "th*" through a description process of the sense or mind done in part via functors, framing relations, et al. The horse BEFORE the carriage, so to speak.
Morphisms in the sense of catjects (and as I presume to understand the concept) would enable a distinction [useful, arbitrary, creative, as and even where congruent] of the patterns and network patterns any "one" [distinguished as] object, and subject, "relies" upon to be what it is [I would say 'becomes' within a mind or the reach of a sense]. So, are catjects attention categories of the sense or observer "thrown out" so to speak? Are they a way [formally by you chaps] of distinguishing the relations the sense or observer makes to sense and observe?
I claim no answers, hopefully some good questions, and, in general,just hoping to inject another view and hopefully, a useful view, into your discussions and product design.
Cheers,
Chromatic