Bilig 49. sayı

Soykan, A Proposal for the Classification of Objects 
 
179 
ontological difference”. Thus, if we make a complete classification of objects 
here, we shall have right to say that this also replaces ontology at the same 
time.
1
  
Two other main benefits of making a separation between the thing itself and 
its object are as follows: Firstly, the possibility of obtaining different and 
more detailed knowledge about the same thing and of making progress in 
science can be explained. Secondly, and connected to the first, is that the 
meaning is explained of our inability to distinguish between “scientific law” 
or “empirical law” (law derived from experiment) and “natural law” – which 
in fact we cannot know belongs to nature (though it probably does) - and 
that we cannot know whether or not we know the latter. Our inability to 
know “the thing itself” shows the limit of our knowledge. It is self evident that 
this limit is not constant; it can expand forever with new objects that we 
make from the thing itself. Thus, a conclusion arising from these 
explanations is as follows: “The thing itself” is an acceptance.  
An object of any kind is an object of my reason, my mind, my memory, my 
consciousness, my soul or my imagination. These abilities the subject uses 
during the act of knowing are adequate points of view for a complete object 
classification for the subject, since the subject has no other ability to know, 
i.e. obtain objects. (Of course we exclude here methods dependent on 
religious belief such as “revelation”) These points can be seen as non-
physical spaces where objects are found in the subject in a mental-
psychological sense; for instance, as in the case where I say “I have a table 
representation” and somebody asks “Where in you do you have it?” and I 
reply “In my memory”. Accordingly, the place of a feeling of joy that I have 
is my soul and the place of a pain I feel because of an injury to my arm is 
not that point on my arm but also my soul. The place of Pegasus, the 
winged horse of fiction, is my imagination. The place of a mathematical 
concept is my reason.  
While my consciousness is in an active state engaged in activities such as 
seeing, hearing, thinking etc., I cannot make it an object which can follow 
these acts. Consciousness can realize a representation, an experience 
available in it, when it is folded over on itself. However, it cannot be 
conscious of its own act simultaneously with the action. I can only be aware 
that I am performing acts during the acts of my consciousness.
2
 Although the 
difference between the one who is aware and the thing of which one is 
aware can be deduced, at the same time one cannot speak of a 
simultaneous subject-object difference or of a knowledge that the object as 
the thing one is aware of cannot stay as an active state of consciousness. Let 
us put it more clearly: Thinking is thinking a thing. Now, I am thinking. The 

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bilig, Spring / 2009, Number 49 
 
180 
moment I am aware that I am thinking, I lose the thing that I am thinking; 
because awareness has replaced it. Consciousness is subject only when it is 
active; it is not possible to have two active consciousness in the subject at the 
same time. We understand awareness as if it were a shadow accompanying 
all the acts of our consciousness. As I have an awareness for every kind of 
acts of my consciousness, it stands as an indispensable condition of all kind 
of consciousness acts and knowledge. We may put it in a Kantian manner as 
follows: Awareness is the thing that accompanies all my mental activities.
3
 (In 
a state of illness, I may lack awareness. This, like the above-mentioned 
revelations, is not within the scope of our subject). 
When a physical thing is in front of us we call that thing we obtain from it 
“intuition”. When the thing is removed from sight, the protection of its image 
in the memory is called representation. We always perceive a three-
dimensional thing before us from a single standpoint; a single perspective.
4
 
Even if we look at it while rotating around it continuously and rapidly, 
neither in perception nor in representation can we unify its two-dimensional 
facets; in other words, we cannot grasp its perception as its three dimensions 
and we cannot keep such a perception as representation in our memory 
because representation depends on the appearance obtained from the thing. 
All the representations in our mind are two-dimensional. We call this object 
type of a physical thing that is provided by a single form of sensitiveness (by 
means of sight) an object of intuition. We take the object of intuition that is 
an object of sensitiveness as a kind separate from all other objects of 
sensitiveness also provided by sensibility, the reason for which will become 
clear when the psychological object is considered below. Since there is a 
difference between the object of intuition and the thing by which it is 
provided, we may speak of a truth as to whether or not there exists 
compatibility between the two. 
In the case of an event I do not witness personally but which is provided by 
means of media instruments such as newspapers or TV, it is also 
sensitiveness which provides me with the appearance of a physical thing on 
a two-dimensional surface. I see not the thing itself but its appearance. We 
call this type, provided by all visual techniques, an object of appearance. The 
appearance stands in front of me exactly like an object of intuition. 
However, there is nothing itself in front of me from which I obtain its 
intuition. In other words, its intuition and its appearance are one and same. 
As the object of appearance is provided through sensitiveness – in this case 
by means of sight, i.e. a form of sensitiveness - it stands as a kind of sense of 
sight in our classification. Unlike the object of intuition, I do not perceive the 
object of appearance from any perspective. One may argue about whether 

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