Editing Subject and object (philosophy) (section)

==== Analytic philosophy ====
[[Bertrand Russell]] updated the classical terminology with a term, the ''[[fact]]'';<ref>{{harvnb|Russell|1948|p=143}}:</ref> "Everything that there is in the world I call a fact." Russell uses the term "fact" in two distinct senses. In 1918, facts are distinct from objects. "I want you to realize that when I speak of a fact I do not mean a particular existing thing, such as Socrates or the rain or the sun. Socrates himself does not render any statement true or false. You might be inclined to suppose that all by himself he would give truth to the statement ‘Socrates existed’, but as a matter of fact that is a mistake."<ref>Pg. 182. Russell, Bertrand. “The Philosophy of Logical Atomism.” Essay. In Logic and Knowledge; Essays, 1901-1950, Ed. by Robert Charles Marsh. Allen, G., 1966.</ref> But in 1919, he identified facts with objects. "I mean by ‘fact’ anything complex. If the world contains no simples, then whatever it contains is a fact; if it contains any simples, then facts are whatever it contains except simples... That Socrates was Greek, that he married Xantippe {{sic}}, that he died of drinking the hemlock, are facts that all have something in common, namely, that they are ‘about’ Socrates, who is accordingly said to be a constituent of each of them."<ref>Pg. 285-286. Russell, Bertrand. “On Propositions: What They Are and How They Mean.” Essay. In Logic and Knowledge; Essays, 1901-1950, Ed. by Robert Charles Marsh. Allen, G., 1966.</ref>

Facts, or objects, are opposed to [[belief]]s, which are "subjective" and may be errors on the part of the subject, the knower who is their source and who is certain of himself and little else. All doubt implies the possibility of error and therefore admits the distinction between subjectivity and objectivity. The knower is limited in ability to tell fact from belief, false from true objects and engages in [[reality testing]], an activity that will result in more or less certainty regarding the reality of the object. According to Russell,<ref>{{harvnb|Russell|1948|pp=148–149}}.</ref> "we need a description of the fact which would make a given belief true" where "Truth is a property of beliefs." Knowledge is "true beliefs".<ref>{{harvnb|Russell|1948|p=154}}.</ref>

In contemporary analytic philosophy, the issue of subject—and more specifically the "point of view" of the subject, or "subjectivity"—has received attention as one of the major intractable problems in [[philosophy of mind]] (a related issue being the [[mind–body problem]]). In the essay "[[What Is It Like to Be a Bat?]]", [[Thomas Nagel]] famously argued that explaining [[subjective experience]]—the "what it is like" to be something—is currently beyond the reach of scientific inquiry, because scientific understanding by definition requires an objective perspective, which, according to Nagel, is diametrically opposed to the subjective first-person point of view. Furthermore, one cannot have a definition of objectivity without being connected to subjectivity in the first place since they are mutual and interlocked.

In Nagel's book ''[[The View from Nowhere]]'', he asks: "What kind of fact is it that I am Thomas Nagel?". Subjects have a perspective but each subject has a unique perspective and this seems to be a fact in Nagel's view from nowhere (i.e. the birds-eye view of the objective description in the universe). The Indian view of "Brahman" suggests that the ultimate and fundamental subject is existence itself, through which each of us as it were "looks out" as an aspect of a frozen and timeless everything, experienced subjectively due to our separated sensory and memory apparatuses. These additional features of subjective experience are often referred to as ''[[qualia]]'' (see [[Frank Cameron Jackson]] and [[Mary's room]]).