Is there purely objective reality?
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Nelson Ramírez
Abstract
Most readers of Deely's Four ages volume encounter difficulty with his use of the terms “subject” and “object,” which are key to the book. In this essay I try to remove this difficulty by exploring and laying out in detail the notion of what “purely objective reality” becomes according to Deely's usage. Is there such a thing? This question can be answered only if one understands the meaning of the expression “purely objective reality”. My paper explores the expression in two ways: (1) from current ordinary usage of the terms making it up; (2) from a technical usage once common but now rare. According to the results of the first investigation into the terms of the expression, I attempt to put together what the whole expression might mean. Then, according to the results of the second exploration, I show that one can answer affirmatively to the question of this essay. However, I also point out how the common usage of the term “reality” holds within itself significant connections to the technical meaning of the term “purely objective reality,” and suggest that Deely's now technical usage may actually become a postmodern common usage.
© 2010 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/New York
Articles in the same Issue
- The concept as a formal sign
- Charles Peirce's understanding of the four ages and of his own place in the history of human thought
- Semiotics and philosophy: Working for a historical reconstruction of human understanding
- Is there purely objective reality?
- Platonic reflections upon Four ages of understanding
- Christian philosophy in John Deely's Four ages of understanding
- Semiotics or metaphysics as first philosophy? Triadic or dyadic relations in regard to Four ages of understanding
- After Deely: If I walk the “way of signs,” where am I going?
- Semiosis and the elusive final interpretant of understanding
- Semiotics and human nature in postmodernity: A consideration of animal semioticum as the postmodern definition of human being
- The history of philosophy conceived as a struggle between nominalism and realism
- From here to the Latin Age and back again: A four-cause category-based exploration of Adrian J. Walker's article on von Balthasar's concept of “love alone”
- The review essays in paraleipsis: Looking forward while looking back
Articles in the same Issue
- The concept as a formal sign
- Charles Peirce's understanding of the four ages and of his own place in the history of human thought
- Semiotics and philosophy: Working for a historical reconstruction of human understanding
- Is there purely objective reality?
- Platonic reflections upon Four ages of understanding
- Christian philosophy in John Deely's Four ages of understanding
- Semiotics or metaphysics as first philosophy? Triadic or dyadic relations in regard to Four ages of understanding
- After Deely: If I walk the “way of signs,” where am I going?
- Semiosis and the elusive final interpretant of understanding
- Semiotics and human nature in postmodernity: A consideration of animal semioticum as the postmodern definition of human being
- The history of philosophy conceived as a struggle between nominalism and realism
- From here to the Latin Age and back again: A four-cause category-based exploration of Adrian J. Walker's article on von Balthasar's concept of “love alone”
- The review essays in paraleipsis: Looking forward while looking back
