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Full Idea
We have, I think, shown the impossibility of Abstract Ideas.
Gist of Idea
Abstract ideas are impossible
Source
George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710], Intro §21)
Book Ref
Berkeley,George: 'The Principles of Human Knowledge etc.', ed/tr. Warnock,G.J. [Fontana 1962], p.60
A Reaction
He achieves this by an attack on universals, offering the nominalist view that there are only particulars. There seems to be a middle ground, where universals don't actually exist, but there are settled conventional abstraction, beyond particulars.
5105 | The incommensurability of the diagonal always exists, and so it is not in time [Aristotle] |
8910 | General and universal are not real entities, but useful inventions of the mind, concerning words or ideas [Locke] |
6717 | Abstract ideas are impossible [Berkeley] |
7700 | We can't think about the abstract idea of triangles, but only of particular triangles [Hume] |
8911 | If abstracta are non-mental, quarks are abstracta, and yet chess and God's thoughts are mental [Rosen on Frege] |
8634 | The equator is imaginary, but not fictitious; thought is needed to recognise it [Frege] |
8960 | Internal questions about abstractions are trivial, and external ones deeply problematic [Carnap, by Szabó] |
10136 | Points in Euclidean space are abstract objects, but not introduced by abstraction [Fine,K] |
10144 | Postulationism says avoid abstract objects by giving procedures that produce truth [Fine,K] |
10145 | Abstracts cannot be identified with sets [Fine,K] |
12212 | Just as we introduced complex numbers, so we introduced sums and temporal parts [Fine,K] |
4239 | Nominalists deny abstract objects, because we can have no reason to believe in their existence [Lowe] |
14592 | Some abstract things have a beginning and end, so may exist in time (though not space) [Swoyer] |