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Full Idea
It is unclear how we manage to refer determinately to abstract entities in a sense in which it is not unclear how we manage to refer determinately to other things.
Gist of Idea
How we refer to abstractions is much less clear than how we refer to other things
Source
Gideon Rosen (Abstract Objects [2001], 'Way of Ex')
Book Ref
'Stanford Online Encyclopaedia of Philosophy', ed/tr. Stanford University [plato.stanford.edu], p.6
A Reaction
This is where problems of abstraction overlap with problems about reference in language. Can we have a 'baptism' account of each abstraction (even very large numbers)? Will descriptions do it? Do abstractions collapse into particulars when we refer?
| 8912 | Nowadays abstractions are defined as non-spatial, causally inert things [Rosen] |
| 8913 | Chess may be abstract, but it has existed in specific space and time [Rosen] |
| 8914 | Sets are said to be abstract and non-spatial, but a set of books can be on a shelf [Rosen] |
| 8918 | Functional terms can pick out abstractions by asserting an equivalence relation [Rosen] |
| 8919 | Abstraction by equivalence relationships might prove that a train is an abstract entity [Rosen] |
| 8917 | The Way of Abstraction used to say an abstraction is an idea that was formed by abstracting [Rosen] |
| 8916 | Conflating abstractions with either sets or universals is a big claim, needing a big defence [Rosen] |
| 8915 | How we refer to abstractions is much less clear than how we refer to other things [Rosen] |