Bilig 49. sayı

Soykan, A Proposal for the Classification of Objects 
 
185 
the subject; reason creates its own concepts and objects. These are not the 
intuition or sensation of any thing; they are not appointed to the subject by 
sensibility. All mathematical-logical objects-concepts, operations made by 
them, definitions, demonstrations and constructions are of this kind. While 
the mind is connected to things when producing objects, reason is not bound 
to things in this act. Reason is connected only to logical principles. Objects of 
reason, for instance forms of geometry and the numbers of arithmetic, unlike 
mental or psychological objects, cannot be comprehended from any 
perspective; instead they are perceived as they are. They are different from 
the other two kinds of objects in that an object of reason is comprehensible 
instead of perceptible. Though a geometric form, a number can be drawn on 
paper and can be perceived; but that geometric form or that number is not 
the thing seen on paper; they are ideas of reason, ideal objects. Objects of 
reason do not show anything; they are pure forms with no content. 
Consequently, there is no object and concept (term) separation for them. 
Besides mathematical-logical terms, words in daily language such as 
“whole”, or “infinite” do not show anything perceivable. They also make up 
a part of the class of objects of reason as they are also formal concepts. As 
for the communication of objects of reason - the operations carried out by 
them to another - this depends on the operations made with them being 
understood by everybody, and on their having logical principles.  
Here, we shall talk about yet another kind of object that is a combination of 
object of reason and object of intuition. Let us start with the example. One 
expression of the principle of inertia - one of the main principles of physics - 
is as follows: A body on which no force is being exerted remains still if 
standing still or remains moving if it is moving. A body such as this exists 
neither in nature nor may it be obtained by experiment in laboratory 
conditions. Consequently, such a body has never been seen and we cannot 
talk about it as an object of intuition. Nor have we a picture of it, a 
representation of it in our mind. However, we can observe that when we 
reduce the forces acting on a moving body, i.e. when we reduce the friction 
on the body, its movement does not decrease in proportion to the reduction. 
In this state, it is an object of intuition, but it is by means of reason that we 
deduce the following from this situation: if we can reduce friction to nil, the 
body will move infinitely. However, we do not have the means to reduce the 
friction to nil. We can neither make infinite movement possible, nor can we 
represent such a thing in our mind. An infinite thing cannot be represented. 
These objects, which exist in the sciences as principles, we call objects of 
inference, in the sense that they are objects which reason infers from objects 
of intuition or, in other words, objects created by reason through inference. 

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bilig, Spring / 2009, Number 49 
 
186 
Communication of this kind of object is carried out by reason and 
experiment.  
At this point, one might have expected us to speak of a sub-category of 
objects of reference consisting of terms such as “circle square”, “equilateral 
circle square” for instance, terms which reason has obtained from formal 
objects. Such terms are obtained through combining, by means of reason 
(conclusion), numerous forms that are mathematical objects in themselves 
but which cannot unite logically. However, such word combinations, which 
may indeed be a source of wealth for poetry, cannot be considered as a kind 
of object as they are nothing more than wordplay. 
We shall now speak of objects of imagination as a last kind in our 
classification. These objects are not objects of intuition or representations of 
something that the subject either found directly in itself (in its soul and/or 
body) or in something outside of itself. Instead, they are objects that it has 
constructed, with their help, through the power of its imagination. The 
imagination combines factors provided by sensibility to obtain objects whose 
elements are formed of intuitions and representations of things found in the 
outer world, but not wholly found there. Examples are Pegasus, the winged 
horse and the Centaur. We did not consider terms such as “circle square” to 
be a kind of object, and yet here in the winged horse example we find a kind 
of object that has never existed. Why should this be so? The answer is as 
follows: Firstly, a winged horse is an imaginable picture; secondly, the fact 
that no winged horse has ever been seen does not mean that such a thing is 
not possible; it is not a logical contradiction or impossibility. Indeed, 
developments in genetics today may even allow for the possibility of such a 
creature being created. The subject’s imaginings concerning an historical 
event or an event which is happening now but of which neither itself nor its 
image is available before the subject also make up a part of this kind of 
object. The object of imagination is an object that may always be visualized 
in all ways. The communicability of the object of imagination depends not 
only on reconciliation of use of language and a certain literature and 
tradition, but also on the ability of each subject to speculate about it. In the 
matter of the distinction between whether or not I am aware that I am 
dreaming, an object of hallucination in involved in the latter case. The object 
of hallucination is a result of insanity and does not have a place in our 
classification of objects of imagination.  
Something which exists cannot be negated. Negation is a logical operation 
carried out only for formal concepts. Applying this operation to real concepts 
- perceptional concepts which may be connected to perception - and for 
instance to obtaining a so-called concept such as “something that cannot 

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