There is a certain arbitrariness about how we define and categorize - both in Philosophy and the Sciences. We have become masters at recognizing patterns that emerge from arbitrary parts. For purposes of simplicity, we pick out those things of interest to us, separate them from the environment in which they are immersed, and then give them names and assign them an existence as autonomous parts that have meaning independent from the whole. We are the great Taxonomists.
Subject and object will always be complimentary. Something acted upon requires something acting. For example, asking what an electric charge is in and of itself is meaningless - electric charge is defined in terms of how selected objects in an arbitrary whole behave. That electric charge is something that is 'real' is not in doubt - it exists in the sense that it manifests itself when we choose to look for a particular pattern in a system. Although the pattern repeats, the pattern itself is entirely arbitrary. It is only an arbitrary part of a whole that we choose to notice for pragmatic reasons.
I am not just implying that we never really observe things in and of themselves - I am implying the idea of autonomously existing entities has no consistency. The result will always be circularity.
The same problem arises while attempting to define physical and non-physical. Words are simply metaphors for mental images. All of our concepts and ideas are defined in relation to something else. For a dualist, 'Non-physical' mental images have been derived from experiences obtained via sensory input from that which one seeks to define as 'Physical'. In this context, one cannot define non-physical as something that exists autonomously since is would be via the physical through which it was derived. The same is true for Monism. When trying to juxtapose materialism with the idea of the non-physical, you run into this same problem of circularity. Any subjective experiences can only be defined as simply an arbitrary part of a whole that has no independent meaning or autonomy. Nothing exists in a vacuum.
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