What is abstraction?

@kidvisions,

kidvisions;126335 wrote:

And why do people accuse philosophy of being too abstract when they fail to understand it?

In philosophical terminology, abstraction is the thought process wherein ideas [3] are distanced from objects. Abstraction uses a strategy of simplification, wherein formerly concrete details are left ambiguous, vague, or undefined; thus effective communication about things in the abstract requires an intuitive or common experience between the communicator and the communication recipient. This is true for all verbal/abstract communication.
Abstraction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I think the answer to your second question is hidden above in the answer to your first. I suggest looking into linguistic philosophy. Here's a little scoop on that, also from Wiki:

Wittgenstein held that the meanings of words reside in their ordinary uses, and that is why philosophers trip over words taken in abstraction. From England came the idea that philosophy has got into trouble by trying to understand words outside of the context of their use in ordinary language (cf. contextualism).
For example: What is reality? Philosophers have treated it as a noun denoting something that has certain properties. For thousands of years, they have debated those properties. Ordinary Language philosophy would instead look at how we use the word "reality". In some instances, people will say, "It seems to me that so-and-so; but in reality, such-and-such is the case". But this expression isn't used to mean that there is some special dimension of being that such-and-such has that so-and-so doesn't have. What we really mean is, "So-and-so only sounded right, but was misleading in some way. Now I'm about to tell you the truth: such-and-such". That is, "in reality" is a bit like "however". And the phrase, "The reality of the matter is ..." serves a similar function - to set the listener's expectations. Further, when we talk about a "real gun", we aren't making a metaphysical statement about the nature of reality; we are merely opposing this gun to a toy gun, pretend gun, imaginary gun, etc.
The controversy really begins when ordinary language philosophers apply the same leveling tendency to questions such as What is Truth? or What is Consciousness?. Philosophers in this school would insist that we cannot assume that (for example) 'Truth' 'is' a 'thing' (in the same sense that tables and chairs are 'things'), which the word 'truth' represents. Instead, we must look at the differing ways in which the words 'truth' and 'conscious' actually function in ordinary language. We may well discover, after investigation, that there is no single entity to which the word 'truth' corresponds, something Wittgenstein attempts to get across via his concept of a 'family resemblance' (cf. Philosophical Investigations). Therefore ordinary language philosophers tend to be anti-essentialist. Of course, this was and is a very controversial viewpoint. Anti-essentialism and the linguistic philosophy associated with it are often important to contemporary accounts of feminism, Marxism, and other social philosophies that are critical of the injustice of the status quo. The essentialist 'Truth' as 'thing' is argued to be closely related to projects of domination, where the denial of alternate truths is understood to be a denial of alternate forms of living. Similar arguments sometimes involve ordinary language philosophy with other anti-essentialist movements like post-structuralism.

@kidvisions,

kidvisions;126335 wrote:

And why do people accuse philosophy of being too abstract when they fail to understand it?

Abstraction is a bugaboo to scare away would be philosophers. Berkeley rejected the doctrine of abstract ideas.

@kidvisions,

and the reason they accuse philosophy of being too abstract, is because it is abstract, and therefore difficult to capitalise, consumerise, unitize or make something useful out of. We are nowadays not very much h. sapiens (human wise) but homo faber (human fabricating), not part of nature or community so much as part of a production system.

For a nostalgic look back at 60's pop philosophy on exactly this theme, see Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man, and Guy DuBord, the Society of the Spectacle, from whence this splendid quote:

Quote:

"But for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, appearance to essence . . . truth is considered profane, and only illusion is sacred. Sacredness is in fact held to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness."

-Feuerbach, Preface to the second edition
of The Essence of Christianity

@kidvisions,

An abstract entity is an entity which has no temporal or spatial predicates. The number three is an abstract entity. Democracy is an abstract entity. The class of all mammals is an abstract entity. Whether there are abstract entities is a matter of controversy. Those who think there are are called "Realists" (sometimes "Platonists") Those who deny the existence of abstract entities are "Nominalists".

Just a little information might be of help.

@kidvisions,

Opinion is never based on understanding, nor is it often guided by the intellect. There is a social bias towards the concrete, with which most people deal on a daily basis, both in their toils and in their leisure; for the most part, these people pay lip-service to philosophy or to God or to truth because they feel it is expected, the "thing to do." A Roman citizen would nod respectfully to Seneca on his way to the Circus unless he were late for the spectacles and combats. How many great architectural monuments have been torn down so their materials could be used to build beehives, factories, or state prisons?

It is only certain abstractions spurned as philosophical. Most people use abstractions and are all-too-comfortable with them, even to the point of bigotry and political generalisations. These are always very handy and are not too much trouble.
What people object to, and perhaps under certain conditions fear, are generalisations that have to be thought about for more than a few minutes, and then tested, and perhaps revised as a result. Philosophy is the human endeavor that puts all generalisations at hazard and "disturbs the peace" both of the individual and his society.

@jgweed,

jgweed;126420 wrote:

Philosophy is the human endeavor that puts all generalisations at hazard .

Even that all water is wet, or that all planets circle the Sun in elliptical orbits, or even that all knowledge is true?

@kidvisions,

kennethamy;126429 wrote:

Even that all water is wet, or that all planets circle the Sun in elliptical orbits, or even that all knowledge is true?

Of course. Virtual water isn't wet, and you can't circle something if your orbit is elliptical. And knowledge is a vague word, although I'm sure you think there's one obvious definition, it is still argued about regardless.

kidvisions;126335 wrote:

And why do people accuse philosophy of being too abstract when they fail to understand it?

They see people arguing for pages about "what is knowing? Can we ever know things? Is there true knowledge?" etc, and think: "What on earth is the point?". I have that reaction myself sometimes.

But those seemingly abstract arguments can have real world applications. Consider the "sale of drugs thread", at a certain point the debate hinged on what was required for people to know the consequences of taking drugs.

@kidvisions,

kidvisions;126335 wrote:

And why do people accuse philosophy of being too abstract when they fail to understand it?

... because it's an easy attack on what many view to be a wishy-washy, head-in-the-clouds endeavor. The problem is, we all do it - and especially so in this era of numbers, statistics and generalizations. Abstraction allows one to take an entire caste of <whatever> and talk about it.

I came across a good delineation as follows:[INDENT]"From early childhood, ABSTRACTION serves to organize the world; from this red apple we learn to think of all red apples in general, then of apples regardless of color; Climbing the ladder of abstraction enables one to deal with large groups of things or ideas on the basis of their common features. The law is a good example. If it states that first offenders shall receive lenient sentences, the individual traits of this offender are irrelevant; he may be thin or fat, black or white, Christian or Buddhist, he is solely a first offender - a category, not a description." Dawn to Decadence, J. Barzun, (c)2000(link)
[/INDENT]Perhaps moreso, the accusation of which you speak comes more from the context in which something is less-concrete (twin to the description above). Philosophy isn't about this object or that - and in that way it isn't a tangible.

I wouldn't worry about it. As others have said here, most facets of philosophy are concerned with abstractions. It's also something we must guard against lest we fall into the trap of over-generalization/abstraction.

Thanks

@Jebediah,

Jebediah;126433 wrote:

Of course. Virtual water isn't wet, and you can't circle something if your orbit is elliptical. And knowledge is a vague word, although I'm sure you think there's one obvious definition, it is still argued about regardless.

They see people arguing for pages about "what is knowing? Can we ever know things? Is there true knowledge?" etc, and think: "What on earth is the point?". I have that reaction myself sometimes.

But those seemingly abstract arguments can have real world applications. Consider the "sale of drugs thread", at a certain point the debate hinged on what was required for people to know the consequences of taking drugs.

I did not say "virtual water is wet". I said that water is wet. The thing about circle and ellipses is desperate. I mean "circumscribe", obviously. That knowledge is argued about doesn't show that whether all knowledge is true is "at hazard". And, it may be that knowledge is argued about, but whether knowledge is true is not argued about. Whether these abstract arguments have real world applications (whatever that may be) has nothing to do with whether the arguments are interesting or significant. I certainly do not care about that.

@kennethamy,

kidvisions;126335 wrote:

And why do people accuse philosophy of being too abstract when they fail to understand it?

As far as abstraction goes in philosophy, I would tend to go more with the notion that it is psychological process we use to acquire some concept x. I think this is a basic faculty that everyone has in one form or another. I suppose the issue is when someone takes something to be too complicated (rather than abstract) to clearly understand. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing. In fact, this is the substantial foundation that Descartes used in Meditationssome concept x by minding features common to all and only some concept x (specifically, minding the universal category). You could also try to acquire some concept x by disregarding the spatio-temproal locus of some concept x (like picturing the concept in your mind in another place other than where it is, etc.).

The mere existence of abstraction is affirmed by Locke in Essay Concerning Human Understanding (specifically book II, 9-10, etc.). The capability for abstraction according to Locke is what separates us from the animals and also think in abstract ideas (and consequently use language). Berkeley on the other hand states in Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge that even the concept of an abstract idea is largely incoherent because it means that we have to include and exclude one and the same property. And keep in mind that this is substantial clash between the empiricists (though Berkeley is a little bit of a black sheep of the group).

Berkeley stated that any type of purported idea would have to be general enough to include everything in some concept x but should be precise enough to include only some concept xPrinciples, Intro,13). Simply, the idea of a triangle is abstractedly know somewhat, and also in what it is not.

@kidvisions,

Rather than attempt an abstract answer to the question of what abstraction is, I'll content myself (if no-one else!) by giving a concrete example of a useful abstract argument. It's taken from the beginning (as far as I've got!) of Richard Wollheim's essay Art and its Objects (1968):

Quote:

1

`What is art?' `Art is the sum or totality of works of art.' `What is a work of art?' `A work of art is a poem, a painting, a piece of music, a sculpture, a novel ... .' `What is a poem? a painting? a piece of music? a sculpture? a novel? ...' `A poem is ..., a painting is ..., a piece of music is ..., a sculpture is ..., a novel is ... .'

It would be natural to assume that, if only we could fill in the gaps in the last line of this dialogue, we should have an answer to one of the most elusive of the traditional problems of human culture: the nature of art. [...]

2

It might, however, be objected that, even if we could succeed in filling in the gaps on which this dialogue ends, we should still not have an answer to the traditional question [...]

I have the impression that the modern mind [a phrase, incidentally, which might itself only seem to denote an abstraction, but which to me is as concrete as you or I] tends to be averse to such requests for abstract definitions (which, from my faint recollection of reading Plato, are the sort of questions Socrates used to ask, rather persistently). Is there, I wonder, a general impression that Wittgenstein made them meaningless?

I'll leave it at that - not because the question isn't interesting enough, but because it is too interesting to me - for instance, back around 1973 or so, I asked the mathematician John H. Conway some confused questions about what abstractions are, but my questions made little sense to him, and I lost my nerve to ask anyone again, and so I still don't know the answers!

@jgweed,

jgweed;126420 wrote:

It is only certain abstractions spurned as philosophical. Most people use abstractions and are all-too-comfortable with them, even to the point of bigotry and political generalisations. .

Excellent point. The unconsidered abstraction makes for a great idol. Invasion to spread democracy, for instance. (We want you folks to rule yourselfs. By the way there's a curfew now, and we will storm your house at night...) Or racial purity. Or "quality of life." The list goes on.

@VideCorSpoon,

VideCorSpoon;126459 wrote:

As far as abstraction goes in philosophy...

Good, good post. Well said...

There are drawbacks to either extreme; really. The more we generalize - the more 'levels' we generalize - the more detail we lose wherein a primary risk is to associate too many elements for an accurate conclusion. If for accuracy's sake we abstract too little, our ability to correlate elements goes to pot.

In some cases, more is appropriate while in others; one shouldn't generalize at all. We'd probably agree that it depends on what's being discussed or examined.

Thanks

@kennethamy,

kennethamy;126361 wrote:

An abstract entity is an entity which has no temporal or spatial predicates. The number three is an abstract entity. Democracy is an abstract entity. The class of all mammals is an abstract entity. Whether there are abstract entities is a matter of controversy. Those who think there are are called "Realists" (sometimes "Platonists") Those who deny the existence of abstract entities are "Nominalists".

Just a little information might be of help.

What about words?

Words have no spatial predicates (whatever a predicate is), but because they have temporal predicates (seeing as they were invented), I'm thinking that words satisfy one (but only one) of the two conditions, and since I also think "concrete" and "abstract" are mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive such that all objects must be one or the other and never both, I conclude that words are concrete objects.

Philosophy Forum

What is abstraction?

Quick Links

My Account

able2know