Bilig 49. sayı

Soykan, A Proposal for the Classification of Objects 
 
181 
the appearance is compatible with the thing of which it is an appearance, but 
that is a technical matter. I perceive the appearance before me as my object 
as it is. Here, it is not possible to talk about two different things - that one is 
the object itself and the other its appearance - and consequently not about 
compatibility or truth between the two. 
As the thing from which the object of intuition is obtained and the 
appearance are found in the same form before every single subject, there is 
no problem regarding the communication of the object of intuition and the 
appearance from one subject to another. I show them as “This” or “That” to 
another. The communication is carried out by assuming that the other sees 
what I see. 
When neither the physical thing from which I obtain the intuition nor its 
appearance is in front of me and when, instead, I create them in my mind, 
the representation I obtain we call a mental object. The mind is a kind of 
sensibility because a mental object is always an imaginable thing.  For the 
mental object there is no difference between itself and its object (as in the 
difference between the object of intuition and the thing that is its intuition). 
Consequently, one cannot speak of a compatibility or truth here. My 
consciousness folds on itself and sees the mental object as it is without being 
connected to any perspective. We call this act of folding “intellectual view”. 
The mental object is the object of this view. When communicating a mental 
object to another, I say the word that shows it in the language, i.e. the name 
of the thing or the appearance. As language is used commonly, I assume 
that the other understands what I mean.  
There is no difference in the giving to a subject of a physical or 
physiological-biological thing and a social event. We always see a social 
event that we are observing from a perspective, and we obtain a 
representation of it by keeping its appearance in our memory. This is also a 
mental object. With regard to our standpoint and to the principle of 
economy, We are not specifying a new kind of object for the social event 
and we understand its object as an intuition object. However, the situation is 
different for a historical event, which can be understood as a social event in 
the past. The historical event is not before us; we do not have an intuition of 
it. We can only obtain a representation of it through observing the 
documents etc. about it. We do not call this an object of intuition as we did 
not obtain this representation from the intuition of something; we did not 
create it by sensibility. We classify it within the class of imagination since we 
created it with our imagination. By the same token, it is my imagination 
which enables me to imagine an event that is happening now of which I am 

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bilig, Spring / 2009, Number 49 
 
182 
not a witness but of which I am told. Such objects are classified within the 
class of imagination objects.  
I feel a sense of pain that I receive from any part of my body or a sensation 
of joy in my soul as they are, not from any perspective. It is through the 
senses other than sight, namely hearing, touch, smell and taste that I sense 
the sensations I obtain either from my body or from outside without any 
perspective. These sensations are only given to me in different degrees of 
intensity depending on their distance. I sense my sensation at every level as 
it is. Since there is no intuition for such an object of sense, there is no 
representation of it either. It is perceived instantly and cannot be recalled. I 
can neither preserve nor recall a sound I heard a while ago. I cannot receive 
any sound, any touch, any smell, any taste unless I hear a sound, I touch 
something, I smell something or I taste something. We call this type of object, 
perceived by the consciousness and the soul, a psychological object. A 
psychological object is perceived by introspection. However, when it is 
intense enough, as in the case of a sense of pain, a sense of sound or an 
intense sense of joy, it is perceived directly by means of sensibility without 
any need for an act of introspection. Both kinds of psychological objects are 
instantaneous; there is no difference between the thing itself and its object . 
However, there is a difference between it and the thing that is its source. 
When we define this source as the thing itself and my sense as the object of 
it, whether it is in my body or outside, one can argue whether the intensity 
between the two are compatible with each other. Of course, it is nonsense to 
talk about truth simply because we are talking about two separate things and 
compatibility. No epistemological truth may be looked for between the 
intensity of a sound at its source and the intensity I hear depending on my 
distance from it, on my threshold of perception etc.; no question may be 
asked concerning which sound from which distance is true. One can only 
talk about the presence and absence of a psychological object, and this 
cannot be a matter of doubt.  
The cause (source) of a psychological object may be some thing 
physiological that happened in my body or some particular thing coming 
from outside (sound, etc.). From this standpoint, there is no difference 
between these psychological objects in terms of of type of perception as 
these are both objects of sense; as in, for instance, my hearing a grumble 
coming from my stomach and hearing a noise coming from outside. 
Although the object of emotion and the object of sensation are the same, 
from the standpoint of the manner in which the subject is making them 
object we consider them as two sub-categories of psychological object 
because they are different from the perspective of perception. The object of 

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