What makes abstractions abstract, wand what is so bad about them ?
We all know what abstractions are, right ?
Insubstantial, ghostly entities whic we should treat with suspicion.
And we know what sorts of things are abstract, right ? Typical expamples
include:-

Numbers
Properties, qualities, and universals.
Anything outside space and time.
Space and Time.
Theories and concepts.

Ok, we all know numbers don't exist. The highest prinme doesn't exist,
and the number 23 doesn't "exist", either. Well, the number 23 does exist
mathematically -- unlke the highest prime, which doesn't evenm exist that
way -- bu there isn't a number 23 floating around in space somewhere.
You can have 23 OF something, but you can't have just 23. So, that is one 
kind of abstraction: we separate the 23-ness from the 23 apples or 
23 oranges.

This brings us on to the subject of properties, qualities and attributes,
and their metaphysical cousins, Universals, and Platonic Ideas. These
are the sorts of things typically associated with words ending in -ness:
redness, squareness, etc. This story is similar to the one about numbers.
We can have a red thing in a particular place at a particular time, but
can we have redness flating abput somewhre -- or nowhere ?
Plato thought so, but most people find it hard to swallow.

So is abstractness a quality, property or attribute that redness and 
23 have in cmmon ? That would be a very confusing conclusion. It seems
odd to say that properteis can have properties, and things get worse 
when we turn to numbers. Number already have properties, susch as being 
odd or even, 'being abstract' doesn't seem to be a mathematical property.

And if we say that properties, attributes and qualities fall into the
class of abstractions, simply by virtue of being properties, attributes
and qualities, what do we make of properties of numbers, such as 
evenness ?
if the number 23 is abstract, its oddness and prime-ness must be doubly
so. Numbers and nesses certainly have non-spatio-temporality in common,
but htey are as much unlike as alike. Quantities and qualities, 
which is 
another name for what we are talking about, are definied in opposition
to each other, after all.

The distinction between abstract proeprties, -nesses, and the things 
that 'have' them is not so clear-cut, either. We are tempted to say 
that redness is abstract becaue it does not have any particular 
spatial location, buit the same applies to such 'concrete' terms as 
'chair', 'tree', etc. There can be any  number of chairs in any number 
of places. Out langiage struggles to pin things down so precesely that 
a word or phrase picks out a single individual.

Abstraction is often linked with separation - indeed, that is the literal
meaning of the word. We arrive at the abstraction 'redness' 
by separating a certain quality from all the objects that have it.
But in speaking o f achair, or a tree, we do not mention its background,
the room it is in, or the soil in which it is planted. Separating a 
chair from any kind of context whatsoever is no more physically 
possible thant separating the greenness of an apple from the rest 
of the apple.

There is a sense in which nothing is abstract, because nothing is 
separate. Abstraction is a process of treating as separate that which 
is not separate, but merely distinct. We do not find abstractins,
we make them. Abstraction is not a pre-existing proerty of certain 
things.Abstraction is a process. And it is a prcess which is a necessary 
part of any attempt to speak or think about the world.

People often object to someone else's opinions on the grounds
that they are 'abstract' or 'theoretical' or 'conceptual' -- but
all words, theories and concepts are abstractions by virtue of being 
words, theories and concepts. This forn of argument does nto pick out
good ideas from bad ones, since it focusses on a feature they all
have in common.

What people *might* mean by this is something like: "you are using 
abstractions which 'stand out' to me, because they are unfamiliar --
unlike my favoured abstractions, which don't seem like abstractiosn 
to me because I believe in them, so to me thay are just transparent 
windows onto reality. In other words, concreteness is familiarity,
and abstraction unfamiliarity here.

To be a bit more chairtable, what the complaints about abstraction might 
also mean is something like: "this is just a conjecture, a hypothesis
or concept which is not nailed down to concrete reality in any way.

This needs some expansion:

1) Concept-without-corresponding-reality
(e.g. Unicorn, Santa Claus)

2) concept-with-corresponding-reality
(e.g. Chair, Tree)

3) element-of-reality-with-no-correspondng-concept
(e.g. various things unknown to us).

Now, the claim in question might be a prefectly valid claim of type (2)
that there is no evidence to support the existence of some hypothetical
entity or to back up a theory. On the other hand, it might be
a confusion between (2) and (1) -- that because God, Time, gravitational
fields or whatever can be conceptualised, they are NOTHING BUT concepts.

The psychology here is the same as before: the other fellow's concepts
are works of the imagination, whilst I do not employ whilst I do not
employ concepts at all -- my beliefs are transparent insights into the
way things are.

Peter D. Jones 10/8/01