Am I an object or a person?
Will you make me into one or the other?
Re-Assembling Reality #18 by David A. Palmer and Mike Brownnutt.
When we try to gain objective knowledge about something (Re-Assembling Reality #11), the thing we are trying to gain knowledge of is an object.
Let’s think a little bit about objects. Imagine yourself as a prehistoric human, preparing for a hunt. You’re with your younger brother and you want to make a spear for yourself. As you walk around, you survey the ground. You notice a shape and dislodge a stone from the ground. You turn the stone around in your hands, look at it from all sides, run your fingers against its surface, gently throw it up and catch it in your palm to test its weight. You throw it to your brother who does the same things to it. The two of you talk about the stone, commenting on its suitability to be carved into an arrowhead, pointing to its various features.
Then, as your brother holds the stone, you look into the trees and point at a slender branch, which you now break off the tree. Then you pull off the twigs and leaves from the branch. You turn the stick in various directions, looking at it from different angles, hit it against the tree trunk — and, teasingly, against your brother — to test its strength. Then you set about carving the stone into an arrowhead, and tie it to the stick.
The stone and the stick became “objects” in the full sense of the word when you separated them from the ground or the tree, then started manipulating them in your hands, examining them from all directions, and testing what you could do with them. By doing this together, comparing and combining your observations, you acquired increasingly “objective” knowledge of them.
Before you did all of this with the stone and the branch, they weren’t distinct objects — the stone was part of the ground, and the branch was part of the tree. They were not taken and manipulated for any human purpose. You could say that they were things, which you have now objectified. You turned the thing into an object.
An object is a thing that humans have a very specific type of relationship to. An object is a thing that has its own consistency, that is separate from other things, that I can handle and examine — literally or figuratively — from different angles, that can be handled by you in such a way that you will see the same things as me. Possibly not exactly them same thing. But close enough to the same thing for all practical purposes.
Finally, the object, since it can be separated from other things, can be used instrumentally, for my own purpose, regardless of whether the thing has any purpose intrinsic to itself. You can do things with it that it would not have done on its own. A branch on a tree will rarely skewer an animal. A stick — selected for its rigidity, stripped of twigs, tied to a flint— may well do so.
We have been objectifying things since the dawn of time. The story of human technology shows how we have learned to objectify an ever-increasing array of things, to acquire knowledge about them, and to invent and produce ever more powerful objects. Modern science relies on this capacity of objectification — the capacity to turn things into objects, to separate them from their natural setting, to manipulate them, to measure them, to compare them, to test them, to observe and communicate about their properties.
Am I a person?
The Cambridge Dictionary tells us that an object is not a living animal, plant or person.
Let’s think about persons.
We spend much of our lives interacting with persons. We cultivate and deal with relationships with them, and we get to know the persons that we interact with.
We also spend a lot of time interacting with objects — our smartphones, chairs, books, escalators, buildings, cars, clothes, toilet paper, and so on. We also acquire a lot of knowledge about the different objects in life.
Is there a difference between the way we relate to a person and to an object? In Re-Assembling Reality # 14, we made the distinction between an I-Thou and an I-It relationship.
I can buy or sell an object, but it is not considered ethical to do the same to a person. I can own an object, and do what I want to it. If I get frustrated with it, I can smash it against the wall and throw the pieces into the rubbish bin. But I can’t own a person and do whatever I want to them.
Note that a person is not the same as a human being. Personhood is granted by society. Nowadays, society, at least in theory through the legal system, automatically confers personhood on all humans. But less than two centuries ago, not all humans were given the status of persons. Slaves were objects. They could be bought and sold. At the market, prospective buyers inspected them like you inspect a vacuum cleaner at the department store. Their owners could assault them or kill them. Slavery objectified humans.
Think about it some more, and you’ll realise that you can’t just classify humans into two groups: those who are treated as persons, and those who are treated as objects. There’s a continuum of objectification: at one end, there are human beings that you will only ever treat more or less purely as persons, and at the other end, there are human beings that are (or in the past were) treated more or less purely as objects. And there are many people who are persons sometimes and objects sometimes.
My wife is a person, with will and hopes and fears and passions, to be held and loved through thick and thin. I do not — cannot — own her.
My slave is an object, a tool to an end, to be used and discarded once it has served its purpose or outlived its usefulness. I own it.
My employee is somewhere in between. When I buy them a cake for their birthday, or give them sincere compliments for their work, or let them have the afternoon off because their son is sick, I treat them as a person.
When I hire this assistant that one because of how many words per minute they can type, I functionalize them, I objectify them. When I lay them off because we need to make cost-savings in the department, they are an object to me.
I do not own my employees, but I own their time. I paid for 40 hours of their time, and for those forty hours a week their time, their effort, their attention — yes, they — are mine.
I cannot do anything I want to my employees. But I can do many things. I can demand they be at work on time: “Be in the office at 9 am or find a different job!” I cannot demand such of my wife!
By way of driving home the point that employees are — to an extent — viewed as objects, consider our resources. A “resource” is “anything used [you use objects, tools, not people] in the production of something.” And the types of resources are three:
Capital resources (because equipment is ours for the using),
Natural resources (because trees are ours for the using),
Human resources (because employees are ours for the using).
Knowing persons and objects
Now, think about how I can acquire knowledge of a person and of an object. To know an object, I can measure it, describe its features, and take it apart. If I don’t have enough time to do these things, I can just read about what others know about the object after they took it apart and measured its components.
But is that how I could get to know you as a person? Perhaps a doctor could acquire knowledge about your body as an object in that way, by taking measurements, blood tests, X-rays and MRI scans — or rather, by reading the reports printed by the nurses and medical technicians in charge of those measurements and instruments. But even then, the doctor would only know about you as an object; they wouldn’t know you as a person.
We can always increase our knowledge about objects. For example, I may increase my knowledge of the mass of an electron. There are two ways I can do this: I can come to know it more precisely, or come to know it more accurately. In this respect, there is always more that I can know, and that I might learn in future, about the mass of the electron. But this is simply adding precision or accuracy: I used to think it had a mass of 0.6MeV, and now I know it is 0.511MeV. But knowing more in this sense is just adding more decimal places. As such, this is a pretty thin kind of knowing.
We have the same kinds of knowledge (and same kinds of “more knowledge”) with persons: improved accuracy (I used to think my wife hated ice cream, but now I know she likes it) and improved precision (I used to think she liked to eat ice cream, now I know she likes to eat it from the tub, on the sofa, after the kids are in bed.)
But we have another type of knowledge about persons: relational knowledge.
To know you as a person, I need to talk with you, and to listen to you as you talk with me. But I’ll only know you superficially if we only have conversations, maybe through texting. To know you better, we need to see each others’ faces; we need to do things together. The more I know you, the more I’ll know how you signal your happiness, and know what you like and don’t like. And it will be the same for you, as you get to know me. We’ll know what we can do together, and what things we’d better avoid when we’re together.
So that’s how we get to know a person. The knowledge comes out of the relationship.
That applies to our knowledge of objects too, doesn’t it? If Alice cares about charge and Bob cares about mass, they will relate to an electron differently and know different things about it. (Namely, its charge and its mass, respectively.) In this respect a different relationship might lead them to know the electron differently. But Alice and Bob are more or less interchangeable and, if Bob suddenly showed an interest in charge, he could know the electron just as Alice does.
By contrast, I know my daughter in a way totally different to the way her teacher knows her. Her teacher will never, and can never, know the look on my daughter’s face when she makes eye contact with her father. Because she only ever has that expression when she looks at me. Similarly, the teacher will never know the pain I feel when I let her down, because a teacher and a father let children down in different ways. Also, the teacher cannot play Bob’s trick of attempting to interact with my daughter as a father. He might become “as a father”, or even become a stepfather. But he will never know her as I do.
Now there are some special things about this relational knowledge: first, it never ends. Even though at some point I might say that I know you quite well, I will never know you completely. I can always be wrong or mistaken. There is always more I could know about you, and that I might learn in the future, as our friendship continues. This is far richer than the simple “add more decimal places” way in which we know more about an electron’s mass.
During the time it takes me to know you, you have been growing and changing, and, to some degree, changing as a result of our relationship. And you change me. The “you” that I know ten years from now, will not be entirely the same “you” as today. And since I will have changed — and partly changed through you — the “I” who knows more about you in ten years, will not be the same “I” as today.
There are three things going on here:
- There is more to know because you are changing (on your own, because you are not static).
- There is more to know because I am changing (and as I change, our relationship changes, and what there is to know as well as what can be known depends on me and my relationship to you, see above).
- There is more to know because I am changing you. And because you are changing me, and the entire process is caught in an intractable feedback loop. And since the knowledge comes from the relationship, a different relationship might lead me to know you differently. What I know of you might be quite different from what your other friends, or your sister, or your father and mother, or your boss know of you.
Now, this example is based on the development of a friendship between us, but the same logic operates if the relationship is one of enmity: I know my adversary by fighting him, and the more I fight him, the more I am changed through the fighting — to some extent I become like him, adapting my fighting methods to his; he has become a part of me. And this may even happen if I never fight him — he was rude to me once, and I spend my days ruminating about him, enacting scenarios in my mind in which I get even with him and humiliate him in return. All day long he is in my angry thoughts — he has become part of me, even if he does nothing more to me, and even if I never act out my revenge.
The same logic applies to a relationship of distant cordiality, such as with my neighbors — the knowledge by which we learn to live side-by-side in harmony, avoiding behavior that causes conflicts between us — or even with strangers, such as how we learn to coexist harmoniously with people in crowded buses and Metro carriages.
Regardless of the quality and depth of the relationship, there are essential differences between our relationships with persons and our relationships with objects.
One of these differences is a moral one. We understand that a person must be treated with a minimal amount of respect and dignity. And that person will respond to how I treat her. If I treat her well, it is likely that as a person, she will respond in kind. And the response will be negative if I don’t treat her well. A person who consistently treats others as nothing but objects, will be considered a psychopath or a sociopath. In the army, soldiers are trained to treat the enemy as objects rather than persons; otherwise, research has shown that they are reluctant to shoot to kill.[1]
Objectifying animals
Objectification seems to be incompatible with personalization. It is impossible to treat a thing simultaneously as an object and as a person. If you see a dog, you can turn it into a person by adopting it as a pet, giving it a name, and treating it as a family member. Or you can turn it into an object. For example, you can turn it into an object for scientific research.
During the Renaissance, animals were to some degree treated as persons — they were notably taken as the incarnations of moral virtues. The horse was the embodiment of hard work. The swan represented elegance. The dog was the exemplar of loyalty and friendship.[2]
One of the greatest breakthroughs in the history of modern biology was the discovery of how blood circulates in the body. William Harvey (1578-1657) is credited for his fundamental contribution to the discovery of the circulation of blood and to the experimental method of conducting research on animals:
Harvey studied the hearts not only of various fishes, amphibian, reptiles, birds, and mammals, but also those of various other animal species. But most important, he not only compared these, he manipulated them in living as well as dead animals. He isolated parts of the heart; he ligated and divided arteries; he exerted pressure on veins on either side of the valves. His observations of dissected hearts showed that the valves in the heart allowed blood to flow in only one direction. Harvey measured the volume of the left ventricle and calculated that the amount of blood that passes through the heart of a man in an half hour and established that it was greater than the amount contained in the whole body. Direct observation of the heartbeat of living animals showed that the ventricles contracted together, dispelling Galen’s theory that blood was forced from one ventricle to the other. Dissection of the septum of the heart showed that it contained no gaps or perforations. When Harvey removed the beating heart from a living animal, it continued to beat, thus acting as a pump, not a sucking organ. [3]
Harvey’s “scientific method” was vivisection. The method became popular among experimentalists in the newly established Royal Societies, the first formal scientific institutions.
They took live dogs, tied them to a table, and cut them open, while they were still alive, to observe the inner workings of their body. While conducting the experiments, the scientists had to learn to ignore the dogs’ shrieks and cries of pain as they cut them open with their scalpels.
Here, the dog responded as a person to objectification. As a person it could call out and demand that it be treated with respect. By crying out it could differentiate itself from the other things in the room, the mute, dumb things which did not call for my attention.
But in dissecting the scientist makes it an object. He cut its vocal chords and so takes away its ability to cry out and call for compassion. It is no longer Fido, the beloved pet, who could be known as an individual and whose plaintive cry could be recognised. It is de-personalised; just another dog to be dissected, like the last one and like the next one. It is undifferentiated from the other dogs which are otherwise like it. Therein lies its objectification.
The scientists needed to ignore their innate tendency to treat the dogs as persons, to experience them as beings with feelings and intentions — in this case, the desire to flee the operating table. They needed to suppress their own tendency to respond as persons to the dogs’ cries of pain — to respond with empathy and compassion, with a sense of moral compulsion toward the dog. By repeatedly conducting vivisections, the scientists learned how to depersonalize the dogs, and to depersonalize themselves. From then on, they knew how to treat the dogs objectively — that is to say, as objects. They could even record the dogs’ cries as the auditory signals that are emitted when certain of the specimen’s nerves are stimulated — and they knew how to separate their personalized, emotional responses into a separate part of themselves, that must be put aside in the process of objectification.
Are we inherently objects or persons?
When we introduced personhood above, we differentiated it from being human by way of saying that personhood is granted by society. This is how personhood is often conceived, and it explains how we can treat a particular race as objects and slaves in one age, while treating them as persons and equals in the next. Nothing biological has changed. The change is societal.
Following on from our discussion of ontological realism Re-Assembling Reality #17a) this immediately jumps out as an ontologically realist/anti-realist distinction. My status as a human exists regardless of societal decisions, while my status as a person is conferred on me by society. Someone is human, and we (individually or as a society) can chose to treat them as a person or treat them as an object.
Taking this anti-realist approach to personhood makes certain things easier to understand, and also easier to accept.
Slaves, for example, are not persons independent of societal norms: personhood is conferred on them (or withheld from them) by society. A slave owner who lives in a society where slaves are not counted as persons, and who does not treat their slave as a person, is acting appropriately according to the norms of that society. His conscience can be clear.
In like manner, unborn babies are not persons independent of societal norms. It is indisputable that, from the moment of conception, an unborn baby is human. A simple DNA test will show that. But disputes over the ethics of abortion do not center around whether an unborn baby is a human. If they did, there would be no dispute. The dispute centers around whether an unborn baby is a person.
From an anti-realist view of personhood, society has the authority to choose. A society is within its rights to decide that, prior to 24 weeks of gestation, an unborn baby is an object. As an object, it can be cut up, bought, sold, used for research, used for the instrumental ends of others, or thrown away. An object has no claim on me, and I have no duty to it, any more than I have a duty to my phone.
A different society can set the cut off at 12 weeks, or birth, or when the mother first feels a kick, or when the foetus has fingernails, or the child’s first birthday. And who are we to say they are wrong?
But a realist view of humanity and an anti-realist view of personhood is not the only approach to the situation. One can take a realist view of personhood.
The personhood of a human being is not conferred on them by society, but is indelibly part of them, and independent of any person’s opinion. Neither society nor an individual has the authority to chose whether a human is or is not a person, any more than they have the authority to chose whether a rock is or is not hard.
If we treat a human being as an object, not a person, we treat them wrongly. Regardless of whether society believes that a particular race is worthy of respect, that race is worthy of respect. Because they are persons. Ontologically. Any anyone who says otherwise, or acts otherwise, has set themselves against a fact of the universe.
Concerning gestation, a realist view of personhood may also say that, at some stage, the developing infant becomes a person. This personhood is independent of what laws or convention society adopts. When you treat an unborn baby as an object, not a person, you treat it wrongly. Critics of this position often try to push back because it is impractical: how do you know when an infant becomes a person?
However, as we saw in previous essays (Re-Assembling Reality 17, 17a, 17c), the epistemic question can be quite independent of the ontological question. Under ontological realism, the universe does not care whether you know a baby is a person, any more than it cares whether you know an alien exists. When facing the ontological argument that a particular human is a person, the argument that you cannot demonstrate that they are a person is quite moot.
Objects and person in science and religion
Religion, as we have said (#4) sets out how we appropriately relate to things. Unsurprisingly, religions have things to say about which entities we can treat as objects, and which we can treat as persons, and to what extent, and under what circumstances.
Science is in many senses mute on the topic of whether things are, or should be treated as, persons or as objects. That said, being goal-oriented as it is, it often has a bias towards objectifying things.
This can lead to science and religion finding themselves at odds. Though the recognition of the issue can also illuminate a path to resolving the conflict.
Medical science (particularly Western medical science) knows the patient as objects. It knows them as numbers and charts. It knows them as a skin rash, or an allergy, or a sick pair of lungs. The fact that the skin rash is connected to a human person with hopes and dreams and a family is quite irrelevant. A rash is a rash. Medicine does not have to view patients this way, but it is efficient to do so.
Once the patient is dead, providing consent was given, they can become a cadaver for use in teaching experimentation. “For use”: we use objects. We do not use persons. A cadaver is an object. To be taken out when needed, and put away when not required. To be kept for as long as it serves a purpose and then got rid of.
In Taiwan, where Buddhism is widely practiced, this objectification of a human being — even a dead human being — is seen as unacceptable. The clash should be no surprise: science sees a tool to achieve knowledge, which by default it objectifies. Religion sees a person, a member of a network of persons, to whom respect and honour is due.
Being aware of the clash, the problem turned out to be quite solvable. Tzu Chi University set up a special program involving cadavers, not as objects but as “silent teachers”.[4] Medical students met with members of the cadaver’s family, prayed with them. Learned about the cadavers as people, showed them honour, treated them as persons. The students learned from the teachers, both living and dead, as persons, not objects. The clash between science and religion was allayed.
This essay and the Re-Assembling Reality Medium series are brought to you by the University of Hong Kong’s Common Core Curriculum Course CCHU9061 Science and Religion: Questioning Truth, Knowledge and Life, with the support of the Faith and Science Collaborative Research Forumand the Asian Religious Connections research cluster of the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences.
[1] Vicki Haddock, “The Science of Creating Killers: Human Reluctance to Take a Life can be Reversed through Training in the Method Known as Killology”. SFGate.com, 13 Aug. 2013. https://www.sfgate.com/science/article/THE-SCIENCE-OF-CREATING-KILLERS-Human-2514123.php
David Grossman, On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society. Boston: Little Brown, 2009.
[2]Peter Sahlins, 1668: The Year of the Animal in France. New York: Zone Books, 2017.
[3]Ribatti, Domenico. “William Harvey and the discovery of the circulation of the blood.” J Angiogenes Res. 2009; 1: 3. doi: 10.1186/2040-2384-1-3. Available online:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2776239/
[4] Elaine Howard Ecklund et al. (2019). Secularity and Science: What Scientists Around the World Really Think About Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 173.
