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Single Idea 23640
[filed under theme 18. Thought / E. Abstraction / 2. Abstracta by Selection
]
Full Idea
I think it requires some ripeness of understanding to distinguish the qualities of a body from the body; perhaps this distinction is not made by brutes, or by infants.
Gist of Idea
Only mature minds can distinguish the qualities of a body
Source
Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 2: Senses [1785], 19)
Book Ref
Reid,Thomas: 'Inquiry and Essays', ed/tr. Beanblossom /K.Lehrer [Hackett 1983], p.192
A Reaction
I'm glad the brutes get a mention in his assessment of these questions. I take such thinking to arise from what can be labelled the faculty of abstraction, which presumably only appears in a mature brain. It is second-level thinking.
The
24 ideas
with the same theme
[mental acts which create abstract concepts]:
9789
|
You can't abstract natural properties to make Forms - objects and attributes are defined together
[Aristotle]
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9070
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We learn primitives and universals by induction from perceptions
[Aristotle]
|
10506
|
Mathematics can be abstracted from sensible matter, and from individual intelligible matter
[Aquinas]
|
9104
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A universal is the result of abstraction, which is only a kind of mental picturing
[William of Ockham]
|
23640
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Only mature minds can distinguish the qualities of a body
[Reid]
|
23653
|
If you can't distinguish the features of a complex object, your notion of it would be a muddle
[Reid]
|
19577
|
Everything is a chaotic unity, then we abstract, then we reunify the world into a free alliance
[Novalis]
|
9145
|
We form the image of a cardinal number by a double abstraction, from the elements and from their order
[Cantor]
|
13454
|
Cantor says (vaguely) that we abstract numbers from equal sized sets
[Hart,WD on Cantor]
|
9976
|
Frege accepts abstraction to the concept of all sets equipollent to a given one
[Tait on Frege]
|
9361
|
We have to separate the mathematical from physical phenomena by abstraction
[Lewis,CI]
|
10644
|
A 'felt familiarity' with universals is more primitive than abstraction
[Price,HH]
|
10646
|
Our understanding of 'dog' or 'house' arises from a repeated experience of concomitances
[Price,HH]
|
9031
|
The basic concepts of conceptual cognition are acquired by direct abstraction from instances
[Price,HH]
|
10557
|
Abstract objects are captured by second-order modal logic, plus 'encoding' formulas
[Zalta]
|
12657
|
Abstractionism claims that instances provide criteria for what is shared
[Fodor]
|
9149
|
To obtain the number 2 by abstraction, we only want to abstract the distinctness of a pair of objects
[Fine,K]
|
9150
|
We should define abstraction in general, with number abstraction taken as a special case
[Fine,K]
|
9982
|
Cantor and Dedekind use abstraction to fix grammar and objects, not to carry out proofs
[Tait]
|
9981
|
Abstraction is 'logical' if the sense and truth of the abstraction depend on the concrete
[Tait]
|
10141
|
Many different kinds of mathematical objects can be regarded as forms of abstraction
[Fine,K]
|
10229
|
Simple types can be apprehended through their tokens, via abstraction
[Shapiro]
|
9919
|
The old debate classified representations as abstract, not entities
[Burgess/Rosen]
|
8917
|
The Way of Abstraction used to say an abstraction is an idea that was formed by abstracting
[Rosen]
|