Thank you Mikhail. I'm reading a lot of metaphysics, and thinking hard about the nature of programming and object orientation, so I appreciate your philosophical approach to the problem. I wasn't aware of Ilyenkov.

To answer your question:

> What would be a minimal working thing that we can reliably call an object?

You might enjoy this paper a lot: https://piumarta.com/software/id-objmodel/objmodel2.pdf

Also check out the primary author's work on COLA as well for mind-bending possibilities this would unlock.

> First, there must be no inheritance.

The paper uses inheritance, but I've been exploring the same concepts WITHOUT it, and it works as well, if not better. Composition and delegation are more flexible. My current working theory is that inheritance is overrated at best, and too dangerous in the hands of common mortals, because it makes you think on the level of idealized categories rather than concrete things.

As further reading, your explanation of things vs words reminded me of prototypes vs classes, so I'll recommend this article by Henry Lieberman: https://web.media.mit.edu/~lieber/Lieberary/OOP/Delegation/D...