Q&A: On Objects
On Objects
Question
Hello Rabbi,
Several questions came to mind regarding the concept of an object. I am starting from the same assumption as yours: that there are spiritual and material objects, and properties are their properties.
- An electron is a material object, but so are an atom, a molecule, a cell, and so on. I would also add the following fact: a cell is composed of molecules, a molecule is composed of atoms, and atoms are composed of particles (including electrons). If so, my understanding is that several objects together can create a new object. In the spiritual dimension this also happens: a people is an object distinct from the collection of objects (the human beings) that make it up. Do you agree with the claim that there are objects that are more than the collection of particulars (the objects) that compose them? In other words, that several objects together create a new object that is not just their sum, but something beyond that.
- Does this also apply to artificial objects? That is, is a table, for example, an object that exists in the world, and not merely the sum of the objects (for example, the atoms) that compose it?
- A spiritual object can contain only spiritual properties, and a material object contains only material properties. But a human being contains both spiritual and material properties. Does that mean that a human being is a “special” object that contains both kinds of properties? If not, it would seem that there is a spiritual object (the soul) and a material object (the body), and the human being is neither one of them, but rather their sum. It feels to me that this explanation actually means there is no human being—that the human being is the collection of his components (or the soul and body together) and not something beyond that. What do you think about this? Whom are we talking about when we refer to ourselves? (By the way, the question applies to anything that has both a body and consciousness, such as animals.)
Answer
1-2. This is usually a matter of definition. You can define it as an object, and you can also choose not to.
3. I did not understand what the problem is. A human being is a combination of the spiritual and the physical. One might perhaps think of this as an object that has two aspects: physical and spiritual. When I speak about myself, I usually mean my soul and not my body. Certainly when I say that I thought or wanted such-and-such. But even when I say that I caused damage, I mean the soul that caused the damage by means of the body.
Discussion on Answer
I answered everything. I do not see what is being added here.
Regarding 1 and 2, you can see that there are ways in which these things appear to us as objects. For example, from a moral standpoint we judge a people and see the individuals within it as belonging to it. Another example: we identify the “group of tables” or the “group of lemons,” and the very fact that we identify a group of things might indicate some kind of metaphysical existence of the group (for example like a “democratic state,” which in one of your lectures you referred to as an existing object). So I am asking less about the meaning we assign to the concept of an object in how we define it, and more about the metaphysics of objects.
Regarding 3, and like 1 and 2, I am trying to understand some such metaphysical existence of the concept “human being” or “I.” I have no doubt at all about the existence of the spiritual object and the bodily object, but their connection supposedly creates a third object that has 2 aspects, as you wrote.
It is true that most of our references to ourselves refer to the spiritual object, but we are also a bodily object, and therefore I am asking about the identity of the “I.”