Abstract thought

“ Abstract thinking is a contradiction, and has no place in the economy of the intellect. Such thinking is only apparent—never real. All knowledge and all thought are concrete, and deal only with concretions—the concretion of the particular and the universal. What the particular and the universal are, which constitute the concrete reality of cognition, is declared in the next proposition. ”

“ That the objective world would exist even if there existed no conscious being certainly seems at the first blush to be unquestionable, because it can be thought in the abstract, without bringing to light the contradiction which it carries within it. But if we desire to realise this abstract thought, that is, to reduce it to ideas of perception, from which alone (like everything abstract) ”

“ The entire falsity of this whole philosophy of the abstract, and the nullity of all abstractions considered as self-subsisting objects of thought, will be more directly shown hereafter. For the present we say no more on this head, but proceed to consider another form in which the argument from abstract, à priori principles is presented.
We have an idea of the good, the beautiful, the true, as being necessary, universal, and eternal. ”

“ Thought determinations get their substance and the element of their existence from the ego, the power of the negative, or pure reality; while determinations of sense find this in impotent abstract immediacy, in mere being as such. Thoughts become fluent and interfuse, when thinking pure and simple, this inner immediacy, knows itself as a moment, when pure certainty of self abstracts from itself. ”

“ If, then, we consider that these sensations all have something in common with all that is in us, in so far as they modify us in a certain manner, we shall form an idea of a modification of the me, making abstraction, however, of its being a sensation, a thought, or an act of the will; and if, finally, we abstract from these things being in us, their being substances or modifications, and attend only to the fact that they are something, we shall have attained the idea of being. ”

“ Accordingly, if you have a logical head, you can deduce a variety of conclusions respecting the relationships between these abstract entities. Furthermore, if the abstractions are well-founded, that is to say, if they do not abstract from everything that is important in experience, the scientific thought which confines itself to these abstractions will arrive at a variety of important truths relating to our experience of nature. We all know those clear-cut trenchant intellects, immovably encased in a hard shell of abstractions. ”

“ Philosophical theories or ideas, as points of view, instruments of criticism, may help us to gather up what might otherwise pass unregarded by us. "Philosophy is the microscope of thought." The theory or idea or system which requires of us the sacrifice of any part of this experience, in consideration of some interest into which we cannot enter, or some abstract theory we have not identified with ourselves, or what is only conventional, has no real claim upon us. ”

“ Reality is a thing of infinite diversity, and defies the most ingenious deductions and definitions of abstract thought, nay, abhors the clear and precise classifications we so delight in. Reality tends to infinite subdivision of things, and truth is a matter of infinite shadings and differentiations. ”

“ Conception of the Abstract.—The Discursive or Reflective Power.—In the cases thus far described we have conceived of some sensible object, considered in and by itself, capable of being represented to thought. We may, however, conceive not of an object in itself considered, but of the properties and relations of objects in the abstract. ”

“ In regard to knowledge, very abstract thoughts are to be found—though of a truth they are quite as good as ours, and more ingenious—which according to their content ought to be concrete, and also were so. ”

“ But as both only represent true humanity very imperfectly—that normal humanity which requires the absolute harmony of these two operations—their contradictory objections have no weight, and if their judgments prove anything, it is rather that the author has succeeded in attaining his end. The abstract thinker finds that the substance of the work is solidly thought; the reader of intuitive ideas finds his style lively and animated ”

“ Abstract ideas are merely the mental conception of qualities or properties divorced from their associated objects by Abstraction.
Conception or Generalization is that faculty of the Mind by which it forms and groups together several particular ideas in the form of a general idea. By the processes of Conception we form classes or generalizations from particular ideas arising from our percepts. First, we perceive things ”

“ Your trouble, I repeat, is with definitions. You have grasped that man performs what is called abstract reasoning, you have made a definition of abstract reason, and, betrayed by that great maker of theories, the ego, you have come to think that all reasoning is abstract and that what is not abstract reason is not reason at all. ”

“ All other men have it in common with me to be 'I': just as it is common to all my sensations and conceptions to be mine. But 'I,' in the abstract, as such, is the mere act of self-concentration or self-relation, in which we make abstraction from all conception and feeling, from every state of mind and every peculiarity of nature, talent, and experience. ”

“ Both theoretically and practically this power of framing abstract concepts is one of the sublimest of our human prerogatives. We come back into the concrete from our journey into these abstractions, with an increase both of vision and of power. It is no wonder that earlier thinkers, forgetting that concepts are only man-made extracts from the temporal flux, should have ended by treating them as a superior type of being, bright, changeless, true, divine, and utterly opposed in nature to the turbid, restless lower world. ”

“ But like all abstractions, it will prove to have its use. If philosophers can treat the life of the universe abstractly, they must not complain of an abstract treatment of the life of philosophy itself. ”

“ Abstract theory was to be valued only just so far as it might serve to clear the tablet of the mind from suppositions no more than half realisable, or wholly visionary, leaving it in flawless evenness of surface to the impressions of an experience, concrete and direct. ”

“ Power, wisdom, and goodness, may, indeed, be regarded in one way as abstract qualities. We can reason about them, and hold them up to our contemplation, as something distinct or different from the bodies in which they reside. Hence all our speculations respecting the laws of nature, the primary and secondary qualities of matter, the relations of cause and effect, to [372] which principle of abstraction in man the various sciences owe their origin. The inductive philosophy is entirely built upon it. ”

“ Thus scientific objects are the concrete causal characters, though we arrive ‘at them by a route of apprehension which is a process of abstraction. In the same way, what, in the form of a sense-object, is concrete for our awareness, is abstract in its character of a complex of relations between scientific objects. ”

“ We rightly seek the meaning of the abstract in the concrete, because we cannot act in relation to the abstract, which is only a representative sign; we must give it a concrete form in order to make it a clear and distinct idea; until we have done so we do not know that we really believe—only believe that we believe it. ”

“ As there is, according to the common opinion, no object outside the magnitudes of sense, it follows that the ideas of reason are contained in the forms of sense, both the so-called abstract conceptions and the various qualities and attributes that determine sensible phenomena. ”

“ Our psychologists may guard and explain themselves as they please, but their attribution to man of a faculty called abstraction has been, from first to last, the most disconcerting and misleading hypothesis which either they or their readers could have entertained. We are supposed to have a power of forming abstract conceptions; but it is obvious from the foregoing observations that we have no such power, and that no abstract idea, either particular or general, can be attained by any intelligence. Such conceptions can only be approximated. ”

“ Something that will be of some real practical use is, in my opinion, what we want; but to talk about abstract theories, idealities, and things that have not much substance or reality in them, I do not think is of much use to anybody. ”

“ As finite intelligence we are aware in feeling of the inner no less than the outer objects of consciousness; we observe them, perceive them to be true to our senses, allow them to form part of the content of our perceptions, concepts, and finally, no doubt, to become the abstractions which our understanding presents to us, reflecting on their appearance, and endowing them with the abstract form of universality. ”

“ And this is the only true and legitimate abstraction which holds good both for science and for life. But thus to abstract our own Me and subjective peculiarities is a duty which is far from being commonly observed, and is, in truth, extremely difficult, even with the greatest honesty of purpose, perfectly to accomplish. ”

“ Yet we hold that whatever the mind cognizes at all, it cognizes in the concrete, as an individual object. And therefore we deny that the ideas of the necessary, the universal, of necessary cause, and the like, which the author calls intuitions, and treats as first principles, necessary assumptions, abstract ideas, etc., are abstractions, mental conceptions, or generalizations ”

“ I may be allowed to set off one paradox against another, and as these writers affirm that all abstract ideas are particular images, so I shall try to prove that all particular images are abstract ideas. ”

“ So that the depth of the understanding or reasoning in such cases may be explained to mean, that there is a pile of implicit distinctions analyzed from a great variety of facts and observations, each supporting the other, and that the mind, instead of being led away by the last or first object or detached view of the subject that occurs, connects all these into a whole from the top to the bottom, and by its intimate sympathy with the most obscure and random impressions that tend to the same result, evolves a principle of abstract truth. ”

“ Knowledge of external events, as we have seen, consists of a certain sensitivity to their presence, but not in having in or before our minds anything similar to them, except in certain abstract structural respects. Is knowledge of our own minds equally abstract and indirect? ”

“ For this feeling, this custom, is itself a general impression, and could not, without a power of abstraction in the mind, think, without a power of being acted upon by a number of different impulses of pleasure and pain, concurring to produce a general effect, abstracted from the particular feelings themselves, or the objects first exciting them. All abstract ideas are several impressions of the same kind, and are merely customary affections of the mind, not distinct images of things. ”

“ The metaphysical inquiry into the nature and composition of what have been called Abstract Ideas, or, in other words, of the notions which answer in the mind to classes and to general names, belongs not to Logic, but to a different science, and our purpose does not require that we should enter upon it here. ”

“ For this is one of the most extraordinary circumstances in the present affair, that after the mind has produc’d an individual idea, upon which we reason, the attendant custom, reviv’d by the general or abstract term, readily suggests any other individual, if by chance we form any reasoning, that agrees not with it. ”

“ This is the pure product of a process of abstraction from everything material and accidental, a pure object free from every subjective barrier, a pure state of self-activity without any admixture of passive sensations. There is indeed a way back to sensation from the highest abstraction; for thought teaches the inner sensation, and the idea of logical or moral unity passes into a sensation of sensual accord. But if we delight in knowledge we separate very accurately our own conceptions from our sensations ”

“ If particular objects or qualities were single things, there would then be some precise limit between them and abstract or general ideas, but as the most particular object, or qualities, as well as the most general combinations and classes of things are necessarily confused and mixed results, and nothing more than a number of impressions, never distinctly analyzed by the mind, there can be no general reasoning to disprove abstracted ideas in the common sense of the word. ”

“ The essences of things in the abstract mean nothing, nor can they become the object of affirmation or negation, unless we suppose a necessary being in which is the reason of the relations of things, and of the possibility of their existence. ”

“ No abstract definitions exist at the outset; abstraction is ulterior and derivative; foremost in each science must be placed examples, experiences, evident facts; from these we derive our general idea. ”

“ It is evident, that none of the rules of composition are fixed by reasonings a priori, or can be esteemed abstract conclusions of the understanding, from comparing those habitudes and relations of ideas, which are eternal and immutable. ”

“ Their completeness of abstraction from the accidents of experience, from the differences, qualifications, variations which contribute so largely to the personal interests of life, this it is which makes the abstract sciences demonstrative, exact, and universally applicable. In so far, therefore, as we are permitted to grasp the conception of a perfectly abstract existence prior to, and underlying, and enclosing, all separate existences, so far also do we get to a conception which is demonstrative, exact, and universally applicable throughout the whole world of knowable objects. ”