Abstraction

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

I made the following post in another thread. It was an interjection, and probably seen as a digression. I thought i’d post it as a new thread, in case it invites any discussion. I was thinking about such a post, to try to discuss related claims like “everything we can think of must exist”. Or something like that. My claim is that only that which is empirical exists. This prompts questions like “Then how can an idea change the world?”. Or something like that. [O_H - perhaps you want to excise the post from that other thread - “Why is materialism so popular?”]

The nexus between the physical and the nonphysical is abstraction, or meaning. So, numbers are not physical, but the meaning of a number is a preserved (durable) relation in our brains - and that relation is born of an abstraction. Abstraction is what we do to form words, or to recognise them. Numbers are like words in this way. The formation of what Russell calls words in the object-language are first-order abstractions, and further abstractions - to the point of nonsense or pure fiction are possible - so abstraction creates meaning, but can also destroy it. Abstraction has no conscience about such things, and neither do some philosophers.

This is actually one of the few subjects of philosophy not easily summarized in a brief way - it’s not complicated, but requires precision of terms and relations between them. It’s like a chemical formula - it looks more complex than it is.

What humans do is learn. We are able to preserve patterns and transpose them from one application to another. This is done in the brain (or the neurological system). When we read, we do not read each symbol individually. There are many musical compositions that are impossible to play if they are read note for note. Most, I would say. They are read in patterns. Patterns are a conceptual overlay that we can remember. I would have to look up the brain architecture to even begin to explain this physiologically, so i won’t.

Numbers are among the class of abstractions that are fictitious but not nonsensical. Their sense is found only in that they are part of a closed system, but that’s okay - because that is exactly why they are so useful. Numbers are only meanings. They must have been “discovered” only after a long series of hierarchical abstractions. And when we learn arithmetic as children, we mimic that process, to some extent. Some people never get past mimicking the early stages - we call them math dunces. I was an algebra dunce, until I studied Boolean algebra. Go figure.

In any event, the non-physical can “interact” with the physical in the human brain. Because we attach meaning to some nonphysical entities. That can lead to error as well as to something useful. But it’s not particularly mysterious. We learn. That’s just something that we do. And we can learn crap as well as gold. Philosophy, science, even religion are ways in which we strive to discern the difference.

To be clear about my scare quotes - it’s not the nonphysical entities that interact with the physical, it’s the meanings we assign them that do. And these meanings are learned information, stored in the brain. It’s a chemical rearrangement.

2

Here is how I see:

  • Sensors of the sensory system abstracts the energy they sense, and give us the input.
  • It goes through multiple stages of information processing at different levels.
  • Resulting information is used for the output causing actions, as well as for feedback.
  • Our actions (output) may change the matter or energy states in environment, and sensing the changes work as the external feed back.

Common problems occurs because:

  • Inputs are fed into what I call as the field of awareness, but often without distinction of dimensional/structural order and differences. So, it’s a flatland, mixed bag.
    Sensory information is mixed with highly abstract notions coming from memory, for example.
    However, ANY data in the information processing system is ALREADY in abstract format. Although there are differences of degree, but all information in the system can be considered as “non-physical” and abstract, if we prefer.
  • There are other sources of problem as we can see in the illustration, below.
    In short, our thought isn’t very reliable, very often, unless we are really careful and well trained in specific subject matter.

mini.dreamhosters.com/dot/Inform … ssing.html

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I like your flow charts, Nah, but I’m not used to defining human thought in the yes/no, on/off manner of computer ‘thinking’–there are too many variables in human thought.
Faust, I agree with what you say, in general, but would like to fill it out a bit, if I may.

Everything we see is an abstraction; e.g., we don’t see things at an atomic level. We take what we see and mix it with our memories of what we’ve seen before and come up with the ‘idea’ of what we’ve seen and then classify it under whatever label the majority of humans has accepted as a defining label for what we’ve seen. So, say we see a chair–there are many different types and styles of chairs, are there not? There are also one person, two person, three person (or more) chairs for which we have different labels, and so on. Each label, or word, brings with it a different mental image depending on the meaning we give to that label. The validity of the label can be shown empirically only if the majority of people agree that a chair is a functional object meant to be used to sit on. But what about the wild cat trainer who uses the chair as both a training tool and a shield? What about a chair used as a door lock–or a door stop? Or what about an aboriginal tribe given wooden chairs and tables by a well-meaning missionary in order to get them and their food off the ground when they eat, do with those appliances. Would they automatically put their food on the table and use the chairs to sit around that table to eat–Or would they break them apart and use them as fire-wood. That’s the abstraction some aboriginals have used.

The concepts of numbers, space, time, direction, dimensionality etc, are extremely difficult to grasp by anyone who hasn’t been taught the accepted meanings of the labels we’ve been taught, if we’ve been taught them in a way we can understand. I’m a mathematical putz because no one ever taught me the language of maths. I don’t think I’ll ever get over that lack in my learning without a great deal of effort. In that sense, it is mysterious.

Of course, I learn–I hope I learn every day. I just learn in words. I can say that some abstractions are non-physical, I suppose, but I’m not sure what you mean by that, exactly. The abstractions I’ve listed above–time, space, dimensionality etc. are all non-physical, to me. It’s because they’re abstractions–as are the physical, empirical abstractions I ‘see,’–that my brain can interact with them. To me, it isn’t a “chemical rearrangement,” it’s simply how I view things–everything is an abstraction!

Now, if someone would explain to me why the value of pi is so important, in words I can understand, I’ll have learned something. :slight_smile:

4

Take ‘mind’ for instance. If you can’t see it or touch it, it’s intangible. I’m sure you would say you have one as something like an accumulation, but an accumulation of what? …. more abstraction?

In our experiencing of the world, we are conscious of it; a one to one association of what is out there being what is supposed to be inside us. It must be without other consideration that the senses transfer information from the world exactly as it is to the brain. Where translation and interpretation occur is another matter completely. As long as we function the same (save the rare inaccuracies caused from physical malfunction), which we can pretty much agree, we can say with some assurance that what takes place beyond that in speculation and assumption (from interpretation) is where we need to take heed of the company of deception that can survive in much of the mind’s content that we hold so precious.

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The charts aren’t about "ON/OFF’ thinking nor require one.
And I’m making them so that even a kid may understand.
I mean, it’s very easy to understand that we use the results of our own thought process (a.k.a. Information processing) in subsequent thought/evaluation.
And this is called feedback, and it’s an important notion when we want to understand seemingly complex thing like consciousness and awareness, moreover.

I use these terms and perspective, and charts, so that we can look at (focus on) certain aspects of our thinking process without getting distracted by the complexity involved.

And in summary, this explains a bit more about the second chart (“internal mechanism of information processing”)

1. We can focus on any idea, feeling, sensation, as long as we are aware of it.
The field of awareness is entire spectrum of things we can focus. 

2. To think and evaluate about something, it's important to focus on something out of everything else in the field of awareness.
If we don't focus precisely enough, we can't think/evaluate. 

3. To focus, we use certain property of things as criterion, like the location, shape, color, relation to something some notions, and so on.
The focus is dependent upon these criterion (and the property of things). 

4. To think and evaluate, we need more than one focus. With two focuses, we can compare them. We may be able to use one focus as a reference, and measure another against it. With multiple focuses, we can perform multitude of evaluations and establish the relation between these focuses about certain properties. And this is the base of logical thinking (especially in the broader sense). 

5. We call the choice of certain focuses to perform desired evaluation as "perspective", here.

More info in this link:
mini.dreamhosters.com/PerspectiveLogic.html

And I made another chart for the “field of awareness”. :slight_smile:

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Reductionary analysis is powerful. But we must also understand thought on the level of thought, and on higher levels of the implications of thoughts (upon other thoughts, upon the future, upon non-thought). If computer-like models of thought present us with a closed system that attempts to contain all outward-striving and tangental lines and branchings, we are allowing one limited model to circumscribe an experiential process that is essentially vast and limitless (recedes either forward or backward into “infinities”). This model as an attempt at total closure can appear under various guises such as religion, philosophy, science, mathematics or reason, but ultimately its all the same mistaken metaphysical need to enclose all experiences and all unknowns under a single banner of certainty.

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liz - I may not understand you correctly, but I will respond simply by saying that the label is not the thing that is labeled. Labels serve a purpose, and the aboriginals could still call the thing a chair, but they would not attach the same significance to the chair, or the label. This is where Russell’s distinction between meaning and significance is useful. We would mean “chair”, but the aboriginals would not attach the same significance to that label.

It’s true that words are vague, but that’s okay. We can get more or less specific as we need to. There’s chair, chaise longe, stool, etc. That’s a matter of specificity, but it doesn’t affect the process of abstraction.

Does that address your concern?

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Faust, I thought that’s what I said–the label isn’t the thing that is labeled. What I also said, or tried to say, was that, while the mental process of abstraction may be the same for every human, what’s abstracted will be different depending on language and world view. Something that we may take for granted, such as time or numbers, can be extremely difficult to understand if your language (which shapes your world view) doesn’t contain the labels needed to understand the concepts. An aboriginal who sees a table and chairs as firewood has still gone through the process of abstraction; he’s simply come to a different conclusion than would either you or I. As I said in my post, I really wanted to “fill it (what you’d written) out a bit,” but only in so far as to remind readers of the different results that can be reached through abstraction. That holds true for people who may have roughly the same labels, but with different nuances because of their cultures. This is important when trying to analyze what we hear or read about in the news where the words used have gone through several different ‘translations’ even before they reach us. :slight_smile:

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Nah, I really did understand your graphs, I was simply anxious to express my own views. I was trying to acknowledge your contribution without definite comment. I apologize.

The charts reminded me of charts I had to draw up when I was working as a technical writer for small engineering companies. I used the same format and was happy to see the program that came out for use in presentations. That saved a lot of work for those of us who were involved in hand-drawing them. :slight_smile:

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Oh. Well, world view does make a difference. In the object-language, we can expect cultural differences to show, sure.

More interesting to me is the difference that different philosophical (world) views can make in abstraction. Plato’s Forms are an example of abstraction gone mad. And then he reifies his abstractions. So that the unreal-but-now-real is more real than the merely real. Plato was, above all else, an excellent liar.

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IMHO, “abstraction” is a much too limited word–limited by virtue of imprecision due to multiple interpretations–for describing the extensions and branchings that are characteristic of the dynamics of matter to mind development.
Where empiricism inevitably fails as an explanation of what and who we are, think and do is in its tendency toward limiting the self/other interactions and complementations, i.e., epigenetic influences on thought, to a sort of psychic isolationism that in its “reducto ad absurdum” becomes solypsism. Only from the empiricist perspective are such nonsensical theories as subject/object schism, thing in itself, and personally isolated quales possible.

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Oh, no need for apology. :slight_smile:

What I’m using is Graphvis. I just have to define nodes and arrows (called edge) in the text editor (or in the edit box of web browser when the chart is embedded in the wiki page). I don’t do any of “drawing”, although I can do manual modification on SVG (or other) output format.

Some examples in this page.
mini.dreamhosters.com/GraphvizExamples.html

And definition file is visible as a comment if you go to these pages that contain the charts and see the HTML source. (And charts are clickable image maps in these pages)
mini.dreamhosters.com/InformationProcessing.html
mini.dreamhosters.com/FieldOfAwareness.html
mini.dreamhosters.com/HowToThink.html

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Ierrellus - what would you suggest?

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I think what it “real” for each person can be different and it may also change.
The differences can be caused by philosophical world view and many other factors, such as the main/persistent interest of the person, core beliefs, and so on.

In the case of philosophical world view, it may come from different reason, too.
For some, it’s just for intellectual hobby and what is “real” in their philosophical view may not give the sense of reality the very person advocating it.
However, some people may have formed their “philosophical view” based on their experiences and sense of reality coming from various source. In this case, their “theory” may concord with what they feel as the reality.

Now, I don’t know if Plato was was having strong sense of reality with “idea” and concept like that. It’s possible he was so immersed and absorbed in his ideas all the time that he actually felt pretty strong sense of reality/certainty in “idea”, just like someone who is obsessed about strange imagination may start to feel it as if real.

Personally, I do think “real” or not is another expression of one’s sense of certainty about something. And by taking something as “real”, the person is taking the sense of certainty up to the level of absoluteness, in many cases.
So, for these people, something “real” is absolutely so and not negotiable. They do believe firmly that it’s real for sure. And it’s not so different from religion because they are making absolute out of mere relative sensation.

I tend to think it’s a matter of how often one would focus on given direction/matter/concept/etc, and what kind of forces (such as desire/interest/hope/fear/etc) are defining the focus.
So, what is “real” is relative and it depends on such things as core beliefs/preferences of each person. As many humans are preoccupied by physical material things, many people tend to take physical/material things as real, quite naturally.
But there are people who is interested in other things, a lot more.

And we are doing our abstractions according to what is real to our conscious and subconscious senses, most probably.

15

Plato was a liar and a politician. Nietzsche wrote that, to understand an epistemic theory, look to see the morality that it supports. This is never more true than with Plato. Plato actually started with a social/political/moral theory, and then found an epistemology that justified it.

16

The abstract (or “anything we can think of”) is actually the same thing as the concrete (or “anything empirical”).
Well, the same with obvious technical differences.

Every thought is in the form of sensation, whether it be a sight or sound (such as the symbolic form of the number “2” and the sound of the word “two”) or any other sensation of the traditional 5, or it can be a feeling/emotion/internal sensation (such as the feeling of release when something is successfully associated and thus found to be meaningful). The meaning of the abstract notion of “2” is only sensed when applied to something. Before this has ever happened, the abstract notion of “2” was meaningless, and after it happened it is just a sight/sound that is remembered “in reserve” - waiting to be applied, at which point we will experience the sensation of meaningful association all over again.

A major distinction between this and the concrete is that “others” have no direct access to “your” abstract thoughts, whereas everyone supposedly has roughly the same access to concrete experience - on average. Though each are empirical - or experienced.
The fact that people generally favour the concrete over the abstract in terms of “existence” is merely a reflection on the social instincts of humans (which vary in strength from person to person). The greater “truth” of the outside world is a shared valuation by most humans, with only a few favouring the “truth” of the abstract. This is why Materialism is so popular and Solipsism is not - to reference the thread that inspired this one.

Another major distinction is that abstraction allows contradiction.

That is to say, one can combine abstract thoughts such as “nature” and “beyond” to come up with the concept “supernatural”. This is a mistake because “beyond” is of the set “nature”, and cannot concretely be applied to the set it is part of. Abstract thinkers can however successfully fool themselves into thinking they can - associating abstract thoughts such as “consistency” with the mix to create an untested (and in this case, untestable) belief.

This is where creative imagination and invention originates: contradiction is extremely valuable in thinking outside of the box. However, the side effect is plenty of misleading notions for philosophers to sort out.

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It was “metaphysics”. But anyways, you’ve done the same to Nietzsche, right?

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Sil -

Yeah, and this is the kind of thing that requires something like a theory of logical types, as you are saying. Without one, you have the kind of equivocation that allows for rationalism, idealism, and all manner of philosophical havoc.

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Monie, as i have said, I have no epistemology, and neither did Nietzsche. He made himself immune from that sort of thing.

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I’ll check them out–what I’ve used is PowerPoint. That’s what the employer provided.