Appendix a

Objects

pp. 267-275

in: Mario Bunge, Matter and mind, Berlin, Springer, 2010

Abstract

In ordinary language, the word "object" denotes a material thing that can be seen and touched. By contrast, in modern philosophy "object" (objectum, Gegenstand) stands for whatever can be thought about: it applies to concrete things and abstract ones, arbitrary assemblages and structured wholes, electrons and nations, stones and ghosts, individuals and sets, properties and events, facts and fictions, and so on.